LE MONDE'S OPINION - NOT TO BE MISSED

The French film classification commission has given an 18 rating to the third installment of the horrific Terrifier series. The restriction was long reserved for films considered to be pornographic. And in compliance with what was known as the X law, works that were branded with the infamous mark of shame were relegated to a ghetto of specialized cinemas. Pornographic production has long since disappeared from cinemas to live out its life elsewhere such as videos on private screens and the Internet, albeit with the corresponding restrictive measures still in force.

However, in the light of attempts by some so-called films d'auteur to use pornographic elements, such as the depiction of unsimulated sexual acts, the under-16 ban was thought to be inadequate and following an edict passed on July 12, 2001, the under-18 ban was reinstated.

Virginie Despentes' film Baise-moi released in 2000 led to the resurrection of this measure, which at the time, was seen as a paradoxical way of protecting a personal and ambitious cinema, far removed from crude and commercial exploitation while still allowing it to be shown in cinemas.

At the time, few people protested against this virtuous measure, which indicated that it was simply, and rightly, another tool in the hands of film censors. It now applies to horror movies in some of their most violent manifestations and deprives distributors and producers of a fringe audience of younger viewers who are ardent fans of cinematic horror.

The main character in the Terrifier series is a monstrous, mute clown whose sole occupation is seemingly to torture and kill people with varying degrees of savagery. But the main failing of these films is in their quality. The violence is not justified by something that might transcend, validate or explain it such as psychology or myth. Rather, in its own spectacular and atrocious manifestations, it represents the matrix of a theater of cruelty whose intrinsic nature is embedded in the viewer's deepest fears, in the most harrowing sensations, and an obscure need for fulfillment.

However, the hyperrealism of the murder sequences is probably not the only reason for the censors' reaction to Terrifier 3, during which blood flows abundantly and various instruments (including a chainsaw) are sometimes deployed in the most inventive ways.

In the latest and the third part of a venture that begins as an amateurish, self-financed independent production, Art the clown, dressed up as Santa Claus, commits various acts of carnage during the festive season, sparing neither children nor their parents. The way in which the film attacks a universe and above all an ideology – that of Christmas, a time universally considered the quintessence of family unification, dedicated to children and far from the violence of the world – is undoubtedly how it achieves a truly blasphemous force.

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