Suck It Up!

Bizarre horror-comedy Suck It Up! is, according to the festival organizers, a film made for them. It stands with one foot in John Waters' trashy aesthetic, slides with the other across the radical brothers of Troma studio - and adds animated animals and catchy songs to boot.

The plot revolves around a caring mother who abducts a young woman and her daughter to a remote rural estate. There she asks for sexual gratification of her grotesquely mutated son - and if the abductees lack good will, the mother is prepared to resort to torturing her daughter.

The film is based on underground cartoonist Johnny Ryan's comic and was directed by Todd Rohal, who has been moving in outsider bizarre projects for years and contributed one short film to Adult Swim. Suck It Up! deliberately works with the poetics of 1970s exploitation cinema - low-budget independent films built on scandalous subjects and promises of drastic or lascivious scenes. Inspiration from classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is evident, as is the high-octane grotesqueness of Adult Swim. Ironic jabs at the shocking aura of "controversial" trash are blown up into a joyfully grotesque register.