Now that Dutch filmmaker Tom Six is all done with his name-making Human Centipede trilogy, it looks like the controversial writer-director is doubling down on his scandalous reputation with The Onania Club, a film that Six promises will be “one of the most vile, inhumane movie experiences of all time.” Whether you regard him as an artful provocateur or a purveyor of trash, it appears that with this new effort, he has little interest in changing your mind either way.
Between its crude title (‘onania’ is an archaic term for masturbation), the altered Venus symbol on its poster and its suggestive tagline (“Come and see, see and come”), it’s a safe bet that the flick will be taking a sex-and gender-based angle with its horrors. Six has even claimed that it features “mostly strong female characters” and will “definitely pass the Bechdel test with flying colors.”
So, rest assured that amidst the depraved spectacle, there will be at least one scene in which two named female characters have a conversation about something other than men. Given the director’s torture porn past, however, it’s hardly likely that Six’s next feature will be an attempt to rebrand himself as a feminist crusader.
As the director gets the hype train going with his talk of appalling content, details remain scant around the film’s story, other than that it takes place in Hollywood. Whether Onania will feature a concept as marketably gross as The Human Centipede remains to be seen, but early press indicates that Six is once more banking on shock appeal to sell this one. In all fairness, the approach has served him well in the past, seeing how most of us still remember the disgusting central premise of his infamous trilogy nine years after the first installment.
Whether the movie itself will be worth all the fuss is a different question, but The Onania Club is set for a fall release, giving you at least a few more months to decide whether you’ll be tracking it down or avoiding it like the plague.