Made In Britain: Donkey Punch (2008)

Donkey Punch is a film that I’ve put off seeing for a long time. For a start, and this is almost always fatal for a film, it’s got an endorsement from one H. Knowles, resident of fatland. Secondly, I read about it, and the central premise of the movie was so blindly misogynistic that it put me off a touch, and thirdly it was a very low budget British Horror movie made by a first time director, starring nobody that I’d ever heard of at the time. However, against that, Donkey Punch kicked off an absolute shitstorm in the right wing media (step forward Daily Fail) and that always makes me want to watch a film.

So, I resisted the temptation to give it a whirl for a couple of years, on the basis that it was bound to be horrible crap of the worst order. However, when I was looking through films for this series, I felt weirdly drawn to it. Mostly because despite what Amanda Platell had written here describing it as the “vilest film” that has ever passed her oh-so-delicate eyes (bear in mind that this woman was William Hague’s spin doctor, so is an absolute moral vacuum with breasts) in a spectacularly point missing article.

Helping Anglo-Spanish relations out. It's really no wonder that Europe hates us.

Still, having reread Miss Platell’s idiocy, and let’s leave aside the “corrupting the youth” fallacy, because it’s rated 18 so don’t blame the film for your shit parenting skills, for a moment, was Donkey Punch worth any kind of outcry? Well, to be honest, considering society hasn’t collapsed, then I have to say no. It really isn’t. Think A Simple Plan with chavs, sun and group sex. Oh and a little bit more violence, but not a lot. It’s a very shiny and accomplished movie, to be fair, and you can really see the director’s (Oliver Blackburn) music video background on more than one occasion, but it’s nothing original, nothing frightening and nothing really controversial.

For those that don’t know, a donkey punch is when the *cough* gentleman takes his lady vigorously up the wrong ‘un and at the moment of ejaculation punches her in the back of the neck. Said blow will apparently induce an involuntary muscle spasm in the rectum and therefore heighten orgasm for the man. I personally thought it was the kidneys, so goes to show what I know, because the film insists it is the back of the neck (and wikipedia agrees). Anyhow, cheap and tacky jokes aside, this is possibly one of the most repulsive and frankly loathsome acts and it could only be contemplated by the worst possible scumbag. Why in the name of all the legions of hell someone would chose to make this the centerpiece of a film, unless you are intentionally trying to piss off the right wing. Especially when you justify the film with “typical of my generation”. No, cuntflap, it isn’t. I’m younger than you, closer to the age of the protagonists of this film than you are, and I can guarantee you that I’ve never had group sex, and I have never once even been tempted to administer violence during the act.

To the tune of Afroman "Because I got high"

Digression aside, on to the film. Our three heroines, well, two heroines and a corpse in waiting, are on holiday in the Med. Kim (Jamie Winstone), Lisa (Sian Breckin) and Tammi (Nichola Burley) are party girls trying to have the most fun they can have in the quickest amount of time. They get picked up by four douchebags, Bluey (Tom Burke), Marcus (Jay Taylor), Sean (Robert Boulter) and Josh (Julian Morris). They go out on the boys yacht (believable) and the party begins. No sooner than you can say “please punch me in the back of the neck while kicking my shitbox in” than they’re heavily into the drugs and discussing extreme sex acts (such as the dirty sanchez and the titular donkey punch). 5 of them (Josh, Bluey, Marcus, Lisa and Kim) nip below for a spot of grubby sex, which Bluey helpfully films. In the midst of it, Bluey swaps places on Lisa with Josh. Josh wastes no time in going straight for the arse and then, being egged on by Bluey in pure porno talk (I actually believe Josh has never seen a scud film) gets carried away and administers the donkey punch. With predictably fatal consequences. Spoilers below.

The boys, understandably eager not to have to explain this to the police, decide to dispose of the body, with Marcus and Josh showing frighteningly homicidal tendencies. The girls, understandably, aren’t so keen on this idea. Events come to a head when Tammi stabs Bluey over dinner, and the whole plan goes completely to pot. Tammi shoots Marcus with a flare gun while trapped in the dinghy (which is missing it’s outboard in one of the most crass uses of Ibsen’s first law of drama that I’ve seen in a while), Josh kills Bluey, Kim eviscerates Sean with an outboard before topping herself, and Tammi executes Josh using a conveniently tied noose. The film closes with her having fired the flare waiting for rescue.

Marcus' trip to the doctor was going worryingly well.

The word you’re looking for here, by the way, is “shit”.

The problem I have with this film is that it’s all very competently performed and shot, while the soundtrack is good, and the dialogue in the script is reasonably sharp, most noticeably Bluey’s “stupid cunt” line which is a cracker. Unfortunately, it’s also completely and utterly unremarkable, mostly boring and uninteresting and populated by almost identical and unlikable characters that it’s nigh on impossible to give a fuck about. This is a film that desperately wants to be controversial, and when taken in context with the director’s comments about the youth of today, it does make me wonder what the fuck they were playing at. This is a pub story that somehow got filmed.

If you’re going to make a film where the pivotal moment of the film is something as obnoxious as a donkey punch then it must have been done for a reason, and there’s only one reason that comes to mind. Now, were I to make this film, and I appreciate that I’ve shown nothing in the way of potential for such an action so far, then I would have done it purely to provoke controversy, simply because what sort of gorehound would fail to jump at the chance to see a film described by a high ranking Tory witch as ““a morally bankrupt tale of teenage group sex, violence, drugs and sadism” and “It is, quite simply, the most distasteful, depraved and nihilistic film I have ever had the misfortune to sit through. I freely confess that there were times I felt physically ill simply watching it. Certainly, I would have walked out long before the end had I not had to write about it.” Hell, it even managed to get me to watch it.

"Wabbit?"

Just a moment on Ms Platell’s idiocy before I carry on: she could not be more wrong about this film as it is neither nihilistic, particularly depraved or morally bankrupt. If anything, this is one of the most morally centered (by her standards) films since the 1970’s. All the characters that sin (i.e. Drugs, sex) come to a messy end and the survivor girl is the one that didn’t even want to get on the fucking boat in the first place. People as stupid as her should actually not be allowed an opinion on movies. Frankly.

Which brings me back to the point: if you’re going to make a movie and back it up with intentionally inflammatory comments, and thereby paint the metaphorical bullseye on yourself for the likes of Platell, then there has to be something in the film to appeal to more than the hard-core nerds searching for the next edgy fix. If your little movie has nothing more to it than the base level of idiocy designed to appeal to the basement dwellers such as Knowles or the other denizens of aintitcool.com, then you are simply asking for trouble.

When outboard motor's go bad.

And trouble is what they have, because Donkey Punch isn’t worth a damn. For a film to be so deliberately offensive as this one, then there has to be more to it than that, there has to be some character development, some psychological movement, or even on a base level some good old fashion tension. Once the fatal blow is administered, the tension in the movie vanishes completely, the only question is how will the guys be killed, because the movie is so utterly predictable in the order that the other characters will die.

Overall, this is a pretty shit film. It’s well crafted, and Blackburn may well be one to watch in future, but this is fundamentally worthless. It falls into that category of movies that exist purely to offend, but lacks the flair of others of this type. Had this been made in the 1970’s as exploitation, then there may have been some point to it, but in the 21st Century, this is a worthless, sordid, borderline soft-porn waste of energy. Donkey Punch, needless to say, is not approved.

Next up is Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block, which is vastly better than this.

Until next time,

Jarv.