Customer Reviews

Graphic Sexual Horror (Special Edition)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is an unblinking journey into a taboo world. I found it fascinating and stereotype-shattering to hear the models speak for themselves about their motivations and experiences, and to see the artistic vision of the founder of insex.com. The dynamics of power and money at this porn site seem little different than any other workplace. Barbara and Anna have shone a bright light into a dark corner of our society without judgement. Congratulations to them and thanks for offering this to us. See it! I laughed and cringed, but come away with my preconceptions turned upside down.

Pornography on the Internet has arguably changed the sexual and moral landscape of people world-wide, perhaps more than the sexual revolution of the 1960s. It was also the first category of Internet business to make a profit. Insex was fabulously successful financially, and has spawned dozens of imitators. This film employs interviews and behind-the-scenes shots to document the pioneering, and perhaps the most misogynistic of the hard-core sado-masochism web sites. The film was made by people who have a long-standing relationship with the site and with those who ran it. It offers unique insights into one of the driving forces behind the beginning of a social-sexual change that continues today. This is invaluable for anyone who wants to understand the current evolution of sexual morals. This film is already controversial and difficult to acquire. See it while you can.

I can only agree with the other reviewers, like Amos Lassen.

This is a fascinating documentary giving insight into the driving forces behind the INSEX site and the people involved in it.
As always, different people have different interest. If you are turned away by some aspects of the human psyche, you should probably consider seeing another of my favorite films; "Notting Hill" instead.

If, however, you are intrigued by what human beings can not only endure but also enjoy in the right set of circumstances this is your film.

I am deeply conflicted by this piece.

The good:
It offered a broad overview of Insex
Lots of access to PD and other important members of the production crew.
The cinematography is pretty good, in general.

The bad:

I found the editing in interviews jarring, and it always seemed that answers were being taken out of context, even if they were not.


The people interviewed (Claire Adams, Princess Donna, 1201, 912, Cyd Black, PD) were the ones who, for the most part, had positive experiences with the site. Those models who shot once, or did a partial shoot due to disliking the circumstances of production (see: the 'Canagirls' series of Insex videos), were not included in this documentary. Their perspective on the production would have given a strong counterpoint to what I took to be a positive-skew in the responses to Insex while also keeping with the director's wishes to refrain from using outside experts for commentary. Perhaps the anonymity inherent in doing pornography made finding these models impossible. The directors discuss this trouble in this interview: [...]. Although the citation escapes me, I also remember reading that pd had some input as to what footage of his interviews was shown. If this is the case, these omissions would further distort the reality of Brent Scott.

The inclusion of anonymous member statements, while understandable, also detracts from the credibility of the response to the film.

And, honestly, the imagery and video shown in this film was not sufficient to capture the horror of an actual Insex shoot. I admit there must be a balancing act to get the film carried by any sort of distributor, but I didn't want to vomit the same way I did when I watched the actual thing. Maybe I'm just getting jaded.

I wanted to give the film 5 stars but frankly as a documentary, it seems a little too in love with the subject to attain adequate distance - this subject certainly requires a wider context, especially if you wish to speak to anyone not already familiar with the subject.

This is about a very personal fetish/addiction/compulsion for viewing young women being elaborately bound, sexually humiliated and objectified, who also assume the appearance of being tortured - it has then been carefully funneled into a form of artistic expression. It's also about the women who almost need to be the subjects and focus of that expression. Fun fact about the internet is that as long as what you've expressed is authentic, someone out there is likely to share your passion.

What I found most satisfying after viewing this film is the very obvious ambivalence that the women participants feel about their "enthusiastic" and/or "willing" performances in the bdsm scenarios conjured up by Brent. With him, they access profound issues relating to early (childhood/pubescent?) trauma - they have found an echo in another person, one who implicitly promises to normalize the chaotic urges which are accessed, even while they remain un-normalize-able. It's a truth which flies under the radar in our desperate-to-be-glib-with-our-addictions culture. There is an obvious psycho-sexual dance between the dominant and submissive which has little to do with simple sex as it does with sexualized power and eroticized subordination.

I have always felt uncomfortable with kink.com (a popular descendant of insex.com) and it's family of sites at how they play interviews with performers after each performance. Performers speak with giddy joy at the delicious delights experienced by one or other aspect of the often brutal treatment that they'd received, ignoring the entire subject of HOW such outré experiences could be wished by (or to) anyone. This film doesn't address this aspect other than in passing, but it doesn't hide it either. I am very glad the film exists and hope it does provoke conversation about a very complicated part of our varied communal experience. I'm glad it doesn't attempt to cleanly explain away these profound urges, but a part of me wishes it tried.
A highly recommended documentary.

This is probably the most fascinating thing I ever downloaded. I was actually planning on being stripped naked and tortured by PD, but I kept putting it off, so I was VERY disappointed when I heard that Bush and Cheney hassled insex to death.

THIS IS AN AMAZING VIDEO for anyone studying the internet academically, and is MANDATORY for insex fans. You even hear about a phone call from a model's parents!

Ignore the title. I think they made it that to catch people's attention.

PD is my hero, and he can torture and rape me anytime he wants!!!!!!!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some old insex vids, and some nubbin rubbin' to do...

I was hoping for something titilating. Did NOT get that with this DVD. The interviews with the former models weren't interesting either. BORING. This is NOT porn, not instructional, not anything otehr than a sad waste of my time and money. DO NOT BUY IT.

If there are authors, Peter Acworth is certainly not one of them as he leads the main concurrent company against Insex and its offsprings. The only authors are Barbara Bell and Anna Lorentson.

I am quite sure that all of the 35000 previous members of Insex will find GSH very interesting and instructive.

It is pointless to present an argument explaining or at least mitigating the so-called evils of Insex, when the very title of GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR seems ludicrous to anyone who has seen a number of complete Insex episodes. (And you have not seen one at all unless you have seen it all). (I never joined the site, but Insex episodes were once viral in the newsgroups and elsewhere, and I discovered the site by accident through browsing.) I personally found the site rather boring, since bondage is of no real interest to me. But now and then a girl without experience in making bondage videos would liven things up, as opposed to the veteran practitioners of bdsm who almost always were the "tortured" women on the site.

No, what I consider a true horror in the listing for this video is the use of the word PHENOMENA in the singular. Shall we return to the "torture" of ninth grade spelling? Nouns of Greek neuter origin which end in -ON in the SINGULAR, like CRITERION, become CRITERIA in the plural. It is inexcusable for anyone entrusted with the writing of Amazon product descriptions to use an expression like A PHENOMENA. It is precisely the same as writing A MEN. "I saw a men at the scene. There were twelve of him." One rare PHENOMENON. Twelve rare PHENOMENA.

Compared to this atrocity, the worst lashing or prodding on Insex was an actual contribution to civilization. If I remember correctly, the chief "torturer" was a fairly articulate man.