Slashing Through Review:

Movie: Afterman 2
By: Orlok666
Date: June 8, 2012
Born to be cult

Absurd. That is the word that springs to mind when watching the Belgian no-budget film “Afterman 2”. In the opening scene a man tries to make a call but is ratted out by a woman. So when the car arrives of the authorities a couple of muslims get out and arrest the man. Then their commander gets out -a male dressed as a SS officer- executing the woman and having the hand of the man cut off. And all that happening in the year 2012, Belgium. If that had your head spinning, read on because it gets a lot more absurd.

Afterman
The year is 2012 and all kinds of different regimes have taken control in parts of Europe. Their leader: Osama Bin Laden and he seems to be a big fan of Hitler. Even Saddam (or at least a lookalike) is under his command! Most of the population is put into labor camps and the people who are not in the camp have become unruly. Enter ‘Afterman’: a not-that-attractive, overweight, middle-aged, silent loner. After the death of his girl in Russia he decides to go back to Europe and more specifically Belgium. In what seems just a little walk he arrives in Europe finding it all ruined under the new reign of Bin Laden. Eventually he ends up with a group of lesbian rebellions that has their headquarters in a beer brewery. Will he (with the help of the rebels) be able to end the cruel reign of Osama Bin Laden? And will he find true love again?

All kinds of WTF’s
Watching this film was quite a unique experience: Nazi’s, Communists and Al-Qaeda regimes mingle with each other, an old woman seemingly committing suicide out of the blue and about every woman in the film has an appetite for the Afterman’s big cock that seems to be erect 24/7. The rebellions communicate both in different languages but still understand each other. Of course there are quite some soft-erotic scenes -if erotic is the correct word for seeing an older man have sex with the lots of women he encounters accompanied by hilariously cheesy music.

The film seems to be shot with a handycam and there doesn’t seem to be some post-production apart from some poor dubbing. Clearly noticeable Osama’s recordings have been used to give voice to Osama while giving it different subtitles. Or when they just saw some monks sacrifice a child and follow them to the monastery, entering it and making the remark “We will be safe here”. It all adds to the fun.

Cult as it should be
The film lacks any decent acting and has plot holes where even elephants would get lost in but this film is stuffed with quirky things. There’s this rescue mission where they want to get one of the rebel women back and Osama’s shitting loudly on the toilet and when Afterman speaks he sounds retarded. The film is spoken Flemish (it has French subtitles) but sometimes it’s hard to make out what they actually say. A lack of English subtitles makes it harder for this film to go abroad but there isn’t that much dialogue in the film so it wouldn’t matter that much. I haven’t seen “The Afterman” (1985) but I’m glad I saw this example of trash cinema, it makes me want to see the first part and I hope it is as absurd in the same way as part two. This is an ideal film to put on when you gathered some friends, opened a case of beer and feel ready to enjoy a totally weird piece of exploitation cinema. This Belgian film by Rob van Eyck has ‘cult’ written all over it.

4 out of 5 Bloody Chainsaws!

File Name…….: Afterman2 DVDrip (2005).avi
File Size…….: 1.09 GB (1,120 MB / 1,147,498 KB / 1,175,037,952 bytes)
Runtiime……..: 2:04:01 (186000 Frames)
Resolution……: 640 x 384
Framerate…….: 25.00
Video Codec…..: XviD 1.0.3
Video Bit Rate..: 1000 kbs
Video Qf............: 0.163
Audio Codec…..: 0x2000 (Dolby AC3) AC3
Audio Bitrate…: 48000Hz 256 kb/s tot , stereo (2/0)

https://nitro.download/view/81FC9D957918A3F/Afterman2_DVDrip_(2005).avi

Language(s):Dutch, English, Arabic
Subtitles:English (hardcoded)

The post Rob Van Eyck – Afterman 2 AKA Afterman 2: A Kiss to the Devil (2005) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
What I have the honor of reviewing here is something totally unique and probably ranks quite high on the worldwide list of obscure Sci-Fi/horror movies. “The Afterman” is a Belgian post-apocalyptic thriller, but even in its own country of release (which is really small) it only received a minimal distribution and finding a decent copy on VHS is about as rare as encountering a salsa-dancing elephant. Fortunately – or unfortunately if you wish – there are not many people on the lookout for this film and that’s mainly either because they don’t know it exists or because the reputation of writer/director Rob Van Eyck isn’t exactly favorable around here. His most famous film “Blue Belgium”, inspired by the infamous Mark Dutroux pedophilia scandal, is generally considered as one of the worst Belgian movies ever and doesn’t really stimulate viewers to check out the director’s other works. Too bad, actually, since “The Afterman” is a truly special and deeply intriguing cinematic experiment, accomplished with an absolute minimum of financial means yet with a massive amount of controversial themes and downright shocking ideas in the screenplay.The rudimentary plot outline is somewhat reminiscent to “The Omega Man”, with a sole man trying to stay alive in a post-nuclear wasteland and the constant threat of other bewildered survivors trying to take advantage of him or even to kill him. Only the concepts of the two films are similar, as the elaboration of “The Afterman” is completely different. There’s no dialog in the film and – mostly due to budgetary restrictions – no use of special effects or impressively staged action sequences whatsoever. At the beginning of the film, the nameless main character is still safely entrenched in a nuclear bomb shelter. He has been there since the bomb, or whatever caused the apocalypse, and fills his days eating maggots and making love to a frozen female cadaver. When a short circuit forces him to leave the hideout he’s initially enthusiast to learn he’s not the only remaining human being left on the planet, but he quickly learns that it’s every man for himself now. His first encounter with a group of drifters results in a painful male rape scene, and perverse sexual satisfaction remains the leitmotiv throughout the entire movie. The man subsequently encounters a murderous lesbian millionaire, a couple of farmers that keep a girl locked up in a cage, a sect of fellatio-practicing monks and a sleazy type of society that imprisons women and throws food and sex orgies. The girl that the man freed following a deadly encounter with the farmers stays with him and a strange relationship develops between them, exclusively revolving on – you guessed it – sexual intercourse.

The strongest aspect about “The Afterman” is that writer/director Rob Van Eyck clearly realized what his weaknesses were, so he successfully came up with imaginative ways to work around them. For example, there wasn’t any budget to build any genuine apocalyptic-styled sets & scenery like demolished remnants of civilization or futuristic vehicles. Van Eyck worked around this by never really specifying the actual date of the nuclear catastrophe. The protagonist only comes out of his hideout when he’s forced to, so far all we know he has remained there for decades whilst the ecology outside had the chance to repair itself. Out there on the surface there are birds singing and crops growing, so maybe the actual apocalypse happened ages ago. Another obvious obstacle was that there aren’t any professional actors in the cast. That’s okay, though, since their acting duties are limited to stripping off their clothes and walk around with terrified faces. Seeing they don’t have any lines to speak, there’s also no risk of coming across as bad or incompetent actors. If you manage to overlook the poor production values, you might conclude that “The Afterman” is a really worthwhile and provocative Sci-Fi gem. There are copious of depraved undertones and insinuations in the screenplay, like male rape and necrophilia, and the film approaches all these controversial themes in a very nihilistic fashion; like its human behavior of the most ordinary kind. Through the ensemble of loathsome characters and the total lack of dialog, director Rob Van Eyck often manages to create an intense atmosphere of hopelessness and morbidity. The sex sequences are a bit numerous and, in some cases, terribly overlong (like the lesbian footage near the beginning) but that’s hardly something to complain about much.

https://nitro.download/view/444E02941E47860/The_Afterman_1985_KG.avi

Language:No Dialogue

The post Rob Van Eyck – The Afterman (1985) first appeared on Cinema of the World.