Grimoire Video | Buy at Amazon | Review by Jonathan Plombon
On the cover of Bill Zebub's BREAKING HER WILL, there's a "Gorezone Magazine" quote that reads, "After many years watching films like CANNINBAL HOLOCAUST, PIECES, and so on, I thought it would be impossible for a film to make me uncomfortable and nervous. I was wrong."
"Gorezone" has rarely been so astute in its assessments. BREAKING HER WILL clocks in at 94 minutes. That doesn't sound long. But it feels long. Really long. Ass long. It just won't end. You watch the first ten minutes. You think, "This can't be the entire thing." You're wrong. It is the entire thing. You think, perhaps this is intentional, perhaps the severe boredom one experiences while enduring BREAKING HER WILL is Zebub's way of inserting the viewer into the shoes, or handcuffs, of the film's tortured hitchhiker. We interactively feel her pain because we too have that uncomfortable feeling that this will never end.
I doubt that death-metal fanzine editor Zebub put that much thought into it. I'm sure he just thought it would be a "fucking awesome" idea for a movie. For the casual viewer, you can hit "stop." But for us Exploitation Retrospect reviewers, we have to sit through the entire thing. And that's what BREAKING HER WILL is. It's painful.
BREAKING HER WILL rips its "plot" from your standard LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT exploitation fare, only reduced to the bare essentials of storytelling. You know those things in LAST HOUSE? Those things where we become emotionally invested in the characters so that their desecration actually means something? Fuck that, Zebub says with his script. That's not death metal enough, Zebub announces, probably while flashing finger devil horns and donning a black-pentagram t-shirt
This is the crux of BREAKING HER WILL: A man (Brian Joseph Glietz) abducts a female hitchhiker (Jackie Stevens), stashes her in his basement, disrobes her, and humiliates her in various ways all while uttering dialog like "I'm not going to fuck you if you're going to be into it" and "Just remember, I'm your God now." Jackie Stevens grimaces and mumbles well, muttering incoherently at the correct moments. Unfortunately, she eventually has lines. And even if I were wrapped up in the "story," I'd find it difficult to remain sucked in when she stoically (but also clearly, the woman can enunciate the hell out of a word) says, "For your defiance, you're gong to be fucked by five different men. They will each do it privately and report your behavior. "
Dialog is the cornerstone of any Zebub film. It's so important that on Zebub's official Web site, he has it listed as a choice in a poll that asks for your favorite quality of his films. It's not even good dialog or witty dialog. It's just dialog. It's as if dialog is a quality unfound in the majority of other films. And here's an example of his dialog, as spoken by a woman (Kathy Rice) as she's being raped: "I don't love you. I will never love you. I love my boyfriend."
Zebub falls back on his reoccurring themes and images whenever possible: naked women crucified, verbal attacks on Christianity, a pounding metal soundtrack, and, of course, dialog. Apparently, Zebub doesn't have to change things up. He plays by his own set of rules. It's his way or the highway. How do I know this? It's on the back of the BREAKING HER WILL DVD packaging. The packaging states that Zebub is "an auteur [or auter, as it is spelled on the back] who only answers to himself," and this "allows him to take chances and push his films to the limits only he sets."
Those chances really aren't that big. I mean, for being such a "realistic portrayal" of indecent, incessant molestation, BREAKING HER WILL sure stops short. There's no penetration. No male nudity. A scene of forced urination is only heard. There are sex scenes, but Zebub doesn't usually aim the camera on the sex, but on the rapist's face as he cries like a baby because, I think, he can't relate to women. Zebub's nuances are difficult to pick up at times.
Look, I'm sure that Zebub is Satan's right-hand man, and that if the two of us were to get into a squabble, my Carpenters record collection would quickly succumb to his gang of tattoo-loving, pancake-makeup-wearing Norwegian metal heads. With that said, I think if Zebub was really that committed to unleashing demented hellfire and brimstone on our Christian society through the carnage of BREAKING HER WILL, he would have at least made the moral-deprived antagonist a Bible-thumper .
It's awful. But I will give it this: watching Glietz' face turn to tears as he rapes Stevens is pretty fucking funny.
