At long last the wait is nearly over! The Profane Exhibit, an anthology collection of Extreme Cinema shorts by 10 of the most boundary-pushing directors is finally making its home media debut via Unearthed Films after notoriously languishing in post-production for eleven years after its initial festival premiere in 2013. I couldn’t confirm the specifics about the cause of the extended release delay but situations like this tend to come down to unglamorous explanations involving rights issues and personality conflicts. While many fans of underground horror have been eagerly anticipating its release, the unusually long waiting period was the cause of much restless grumbling online and even speculation that the film itself was nothing more than a myth. So naturally, the first question on everyone’s mind is going to be “was it worth the wait?” Well, let’s discuss.

Each of the 10 segments is a standalone piece by a different director and are completely unrelated with only some strange footage of meat processing acting as the connective tissue, if you will. The films vary in content and quality as is always the case to some degree in anthologies with the overarching connection seemingly being “just make something super fucked up”. That’s certainly a sentiment I can get on board with as well as a collection that features heavy hitters of underground cinema on both sides of the camera…..and Uwe Boll. Ruggero Deodato (Cannibal Holocaust), Yoshihiro Nishimura (Tokyo Gore Police), Marian Dora (Melancholie der Engel) and many others all contribute segments for an unprecedented collection of international talent. On the other side of the lens, some notable highlights include legendary character actor Clint Howard (Ice Cream Man, Arrested Development) taking an exceptionally dark turn in Boll’s segment Basement, and Eihi Shiina (Audition, Tokyo Gore Police, Helldriver) crushing it in Nishimura’s Hell Chef segment like the absolute fucking legend that she is.

One of the key factors of an anthology is how you structure the segments. Ideally, the first one out of the gate should grab hold of you and set the tone of things to come until the film culminates in a showstopping finale. Unfortunately, this is where The Profane Exhibit is guilty of a major misstep by opening the collection with the tepid and underwhelming Mother May I by Anthony DiBlasi. The short tells the story of a sinister nun who deals out draconian punishments to the young women in her charge and while it is a perfectly serviceable horror short with some inspired creature effects, it feels out of place in a collection that is supposed to be centered around the concept of boundary-pushing extremity. This anthology would have been much better served by opening with almost any other segment from the collection and Hell Chef, Tophet Quorom or Manna would have all been exceptionally good ways to kick things off.

The weirdest outlier of the whole anthology is unquestionably Deodato’s segment, The Bridge. For many horror fans, Cannibal Holocaust acts as an entry point into world of darker and more obscure Extreme Cinema and even numerous genre fans who can’t stomach it are at least aware of what it is making Deodato probably the most recognizable name in the whole collection. Given the pedigree of his most notable work, it is utterly baffling how tame and innocuous his entry was. Sure, the idea is dark but this short blip of a film barely registers as horror and definitely not as something that should be in an Extreme Cinema collection. Rest in Power to a legend though.

Now I want to focus on some of the things this collection does right, because there are a lot of them. Dora delivers a tour de force with his brilliantly directed and utterly bleak (naturally) entry Mors in Tabula about a doctor called to a rural town to aid a severely ill child in World War II era Germany. Hell Chef is a very fun and brutal entry that delivers a pitch-perfect slice of Japanese Splatter Gore and while there may not have been a lot of substance to Manna, I thoroughly enjoyed it for the unrelenting visual feast of sex and violence that it was.Basement and Goodwife are both solid entries in the “human monsters hiding in plain sight in suburban America” subgenre and Tophet Quorom is an excellent segment about an evil cult that brings a well-realized story to life along with some ferocious violence. I like how the aptly titled micro-segment Amouche Bouche ties into the “meat” segments that are intercut between entries throughout. The real stand-out in this collection though is Nacho Vigalondo’s Sins of the Father. This one starts with such a strange and jarring premise that unfolds and reveals itself in unexpected ways to unveil the immensely dark and unpredictable narrative. The truly unique quality of the story coupled with the expertly crafted production make this one a haunting and mesmerizing experience that will stay will you far longer than some of the more overtly violent entries here.

I’ve seen some pretty mixed chatter about this film lately and part of that may be due to its legendarily long wait time before release building expectations to an unmatchable degree. Is it everything it could be and everything we could want in an Extreme Cinema collection that pushes the boundaries farther than any others dare to go? No, it has its missteps but there is far and away (Clint Howard reference, couldn’t help myself) much more good than not. While it’s not perfect, The Profane Exhibit is a daring and provocative collection of art that fans of twisted, underground cinema won’t want to miss. So yeah, it was worth the wait.

Availability: Upcoming Release

The film will be released through Unearthed Films on September 24th, 2024 and can be preordered here.