I saw Kim Chapiron's SHEITAN today. It got sort of an under-the-radar R1 release from Tartan/TLA though the Christmas release date was appropriate given that this actually is a Christmas movie of a sort. Three guys and two girls meet up at the Styxx nightclub and decide to take the party back to the country estate of Eve (Roxane Mesquida, the hotter sister of Catherine Breillat's FAT GIRL and the related SEX IS COMEDY) after an altercation between drunken Bart (Olivier Barthelemy), a bouncer, and a broken bottle. Although Eve and her chateau are elegant, everything else around is decidedly "Deliverance" country, including grinning groundskeeper Joseph (Vincent Cassel in an incredibly hilarious performance) and his very pregnant wife and nympho niece. As the five settle in, they find their partying constantly disrupted by the expected wierdisms, including Joseph's "special" attention to Bart. As midnight approaches, Joseph skulks around and his unseen wife assembles a doll from disparate parts (including a lock of Bart's hair, torn out by niece Jeanne) - "All that's missing is the eyes."

Not as transgressive or brutal as it makes itself out to be, especially when compared to the almost concurrently released CALVAIRE, Capiron's film is still entertaining even if the director seems to run out of ideas at the end. Cassel and the other lesser-known actors all give good performances (Barthelemy makes the sulky and loutish Bart rather endearing actually) and its nice to see an ethnically diverse cast without calling attention to the element (except for some of Cassel's racist remarks such as "camel rider" to the attractive Leïla Bekhti). Monica Bellucci also makes a brief cameo. The cinematography of Alex Lemarque (CRIMSON RIVERS 2) and Nguyen Le's score is hard to distinguish from the rap and house music but the overall soundtrack is good (even if I'm getting tired of titles that pulse to the music).

Tartan's DVD looks good but I'm wondering if its a standard's conversion (quite a few of Tartan UK's Asian horror films have been criticized for being NTSC-PAL conversions so I wondered if it went both ways). The imdb lists a running time of 94 minutes but the film on NTSC disc runs only 88 minutes. It comes with a choice of 2.0 surround, 5.1, and DTS mixes (the Tartan standard - although the French DTS was also included on the French DVD release).

A 24 minute making of featurette is the only other extra as well as some uninteresting trailers for the two Asian horror films THE MAID (the lengthy trailer of which tells us nothing about the plot) and THE RED SHOES (which looks uninteresting and the Spanish torture horror film H6 which also doesn't look particularly interesting. The French 1 disc edition had no extras so I guess this is a step up but the 2-disc steelbook edition had the featurette (also with English subs), a short film, the other short seen in the film featuring Bellucci as a vampire, Deleted scenes (no subs), a music video (also seen in the film), some other featurettes (including one called "The Animals of Sheitan") and footage from Cannes.

Given the theatrical play of HIGH TENSION in the states, I can't help thinking this one would've played too if Lion's Gate had picked it up and given it a crappy English dub but there's so much that could not be easily dubbed (the DJ in the opening sequence as well as the rap lyrics in the music video seen later on in the film that the characters also sing along with). Worth a Netflix rental for the curious.

I saw SHEITAN at a festival earlier in the year and you're right to point out the CALVAIRE comparison. Having seen the latter film at the very same festival two years earlier, SHEITAN offered a lot less surprise. Still, it is rather enjoyable in a totally lunatic kind of way.

Coincidentally, two of the other films you mention played the same festival. RED SHOES was interesting (to me) but its problem is that it reached a satisfying conclusion... and then just kept on going. H6, on the other hand, is pretty much as you guessed from the trailer - sick enough in places that some might want to see it, but even with the chainsaws and scantily clad ladies, I just thought it was dull. That's certainly not something I'd say about SHEITAN at any rate.

I think I brought up CALVAIRE because one of the imdb comments on SHEITAN said its a movie that puts CALVAIRE in its place. I don't really agree. If anything, SHEITAN puts the American R-rated PG-13 horror backlash in their place.

I really enjoyed SHEITAN, as well. It's a crazy and fun film. I agree the entire cast did an amazing job, especially Cassel who some how manages to make a racist and insane character kind of cute and likable - not an easy task. Strange mixes of adjectives like this permeate throughout the film which may be favorite aspect of it. The dynamic of all the friends and town folk is incredibly outlandish yet somehow believable. For instance, after a chunk of hair is pulled out every one essentially just laughs it off despite the fact that a lump of flesh came with it - and as an audience we accept this as plausible. That's how original and crazy the world of this film is.

AHOY, SPOILER AHEAD!

I'm a huge hater of twist endings, such as "the whole thing was just a dream." So when the film flashed back to the bottle smashing scene at the beginning, implying the dream cop out, I was ready to be really upset, but then they did an amazing job by sucking us right back into the present day. He only dreamed it was a dream - fantastic!

As far as the whole CALVAIRE comparison goes I don't really see it, aside from being a French horror film. However, the ending did remind me a lot of MAY, with the doll eyes and all.

I can't believe I missed Monica Bellucci, where was she?

In the vampire film on the TV that the attendant at the gas station/convenience store is watching, when they gas up and don't pay.

Thought the film was very enjoyable, but liked it more after watching the documentary (and seeing how the film evolved) on the Tartan DVD.

Cassell's performance was off-the-wall hilarious (loved him also in BLUEBERRY, CRIMSON RIVERS, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF, IRREVERSIBLE and READ MY LIPS).

This was a netflix rental for me so I don't have the disc to go back and check, but did Cassell's niece really touch the dog, the way she appeared to touch the dog during the skinny dip scene at the thermal underground pool? My jaw dropped. Some transgresive sexual situations in the film would disturb many in mainstream audiences.

This may go down as the quintessential Vincent Cassel performance. I really liked this one. In many scenes, he physically reminded me of a menacing, demented Borat with that goofy grin he's sporting for half the movie ("Are we going skinny-dipping?").

I got more out of this than I did with CALVAIRE. That one just irritated me by the time it was over.

I think the French steelbook has the Bellucci short film as a seperate extra as well. I think the Tartan disc is fine.

The soundtrack might be something to track down in the future, though.

I put up a review of the Tartan disc with screencaps here.