Death and sleaze guidelines

How we rate films

Video Underbelly uses a 4-star rating system, where each star is a positive response to these questions:

• Was there an emotional or memorable moment? Did we physically cry, smile, or laugh aloud? Did the soundtrack hit just the right notes, creating a more impressive and emotive scene? Did something happen that we talked about afterward, or became synonymous with the movie in our memory, or were we just jaded for most of the proceedings? Films that earn this star have an “MM” beneath their rating.

• Were we enthralled for a respectable period of time? Labeled as “EN” beneath a star, this doesn’t necessarily have to be intellectual attachment: an action movie that doesn’t let up, well-done suspense, or even visual beauty could keep one’s eyes glued to the screen. Hell, some incredibly bad movies keep us enthralled by sheer ineptitude. Our stars can never be unearned: if we’re enthralled for the first half, but the remainder is a letdown, the film has still done enough to earn this criterion.

• Would we gladly watch this movie again? In most cases, our exploration and review of a film requires us to watch it multiple times. This star, an “AG” below a film’s rating, determines if we would happily and willingly watch it yet again, when measured against limited time and an infinite number of movies still unseen. This question only applies to watching it alone: we don’t consider sitting down with a friend who hasn’t seen it, or catching it on TV because “there’s nothing better on”, adequate justification.

• Would we “stake our reputation” on a recommendation? Would we suggest this film to anyone, be they a trusted or well-loved film critic, our most cynical acquaintance, or anyone else we’d hate to waste the ever lessening free time of? Films with this star have “RR” beneath their rating, and it’s one of the toughest for us to give: we consider a movie with this star a “must-see”, regardless of your existing likes or dislikes.

For example, Morbus is a huge fan of monster movies. In a personal rating system, he’d probably give most non-American Godzilla movies 3 or 4 stars, then Buddy Christ to the Godzilla figure that’s been sitting near his TV since 1987. Based on the above criteria however, most would fall to 1 or 2 stars (memorable moment and/or would watch again), Cloverfield would make 3, but only The Host would earn a complete 4 stars.

Death and sleaze by indexing

Every time a movie character dies or does something sleazy (explicitly or otherwise), we categorize it into a “death by” or “sleaze by”. As part of this obsessiveness, we’ve developed some guidelines which help drive the categorization.

Deaths are finite: once someone is dead, that’s it... we shouldn’t see ‘em moving around again. If they’re resurrected, become undead, or turn into an evil beastie and wander around a bit more, the death wasn’t “final” and isn’t counted or categorized. Contrarily, sleaze can happen as often as necessary: if someone takes five different showers, that’s five specific sleazes.

We want to be as specific as necessary, but no more. Very narrow categories like “Death by 5-inch knife”, “Death by hunting knife” or “Death by toothed knife” aren’t entirely useful – those should all be classified as simply “Death by knife”. Exceptions include differently named items (”Death by switchblade” and “Death by machete”), or of unique interest (”Death by butter knife” might be OK, but it’ll probably only ever be used once). “Death by werewolf” is also OK (as are “vampire”, “midget”, “chupacabra”, “scarecrow”, etc.) but “Death by bear” is better stated as “Death by animal”.

The same applies to sleaze. Categories like “Sleaze by babydoll”, “Sleaze by bodystocking”, or “Sleaze by garter belt” are too specific – they should all be simply “Sleaze by lingerie”. Exceptions include items that break from a common theme (”Sleaze by thong” is OK, since it’s lingerie that is generally allowed to be seen in public), of specific intent (”Sleaze by miniskirt” is OK because there’s hope of upskirting), or of unique interest (”Sleaze by French maid costume” as it’s fetishistic).

We’re always concerned with indexing the entire death or sleaze scene, not just its final moments. Multiple categories can be applied to each action, and each category can be further tweaked with optional modifiers. Some examples follow these descriptions.

For deaths, we’ve established six modifiers: accidental, insurance, offscreen, preamble, self-inflicted, and sleaze. Some are easily explained: accidental covers falling off a mountain or onto an axe; self-inflicted for successful suicides, and sleaze notes when the death occurred with naughtiness (in a shower, during sex, vagina dentata, etc.). As for offscreen, we may see a shot of the character screaming about his impending doom, but if the scene changes and we never see that character again, the implication is that doom prevailed. No part of the act of death has been filmed. Preamble and insurance are a little more complex. A preamble doesn’t kill the character outright, but will eventually. If someone has been stabbed with a knife twenty times, begins to feebly crawl away, then gets shot, it’d be “Death by knife (preamble)” and “Death by gun”. Preamble is only used when there is no doubt the character will die from their injuries, but still clutches to life, only to be assailed yet again. Chopping off someone’s hand is probably not a preamble, as the character could create a tourniquet and have a decent chance of living. Chopping off someone’s foot and leaving them to bleed slowly to death tied to a pipe would be “Death by dismemberment” (no preamble, since there’s no other followup save time). Insurance, on the other hand, happens after the death, to assure that the character stays dead. Decapitating someone with an axe, then throwing their head in a fire, would be “Death by axe”, “Death by decapitation”, and “Death by fire (insurance)”. Insurance is only used when there is no doubt the character is already dead. Sleaze can receive five modifiers: accidental, death, public, unfulfilled, and unwilling. Accidental sleaze happens when the character didn’t want it to (dress caught in a door), compared to unwilling where the sleaze was forced upon the character by someone else (dress ripped off). Public sleaze happens in public places, which usually increases its sleaziness, such as having sex in the park, walking around the mall with your thong out, wet t-shirt contests, seethroughs, etc. The death modifier indicates the character died in the same scene. Unfulfilled sleaze tends to happen a lot: sleaze was implied but never actually occurred. If the intent of a shower scene is to see someone nude (as opposed to, say, getting clean), then not seeing nudity would be “Sleaze by shower (unfulfilled)”. On the other hand, “Sleaze by mini-skirt” is generally meant to tease with the possibility of a panty shot, but rarely “pays off”. In situations like that, we do not use unfulfilled. To save space, death and sleaze by listings appear in condensed form, as below: Death by: 1: sword (preamble), explo- 3 Introduction sion; 3, 4: helicopter crash; 5: spear, helicopter blades (insurance). Sleaze by: 1: latex; 2: sex (unfulfilled); 3: breasts; 4: thongs; 5, 6: lingerie (death). Each number represents a death or sleaze: deaths 3 and 4 were both “death by helicopter crash” and death 5 was “death by spear” and “death by helicopter blades (insurance)”. Sleaze 1 was “sleaze by latex”, 2 was “sleaze by sex (unfulfilled)” and 5 and 6 were “sleaze by lingerie (death)”.