Vernon Chatman, from the doomed and beautiful comedic television program

Wonder Showzen, has a new thing coming out on DVD this month. It’s called Final Flesh and the deal is this: He located a company, a pornography-production company, that uses its stable of professional humpers to turn any script that you send them into a dirty movie. They will say, aloud, whatever you wrote in your script. So Vernon did that; he sent them some scripts, and since he is what a New York cop who is chasing a serial killer in a movie would call a “sick fuck,” the movies are sick and fucked. They are also hilarious. And scary. The Final Flesh series of short films (there are four in all) takes place in a postapocalyptic world in which bewildered adult entertainers speak in cryptic riddles to one another. I have no idea what people will think of it. I imagine Final Flesh being screened in a big room, which is divided up into two sides: Those who are with it, and those who are not with it. Now, the not-with-it side of the room could say that this stuff exploits porn performers even more than getting anally gangbanged does because in this stuff they have to act, and they are not good actors, and it’s maybe even more psychically revealing for them than having all their orifi (that’s a new plural for “orifice” that I just made up) illuminated by megawatt film lights. But that would be bullshit, as evidenced by the fact that all the actors here look like they’re having fun and also that they are grateful for the day off from sex. There is nudity in Final Flesh, to be sure, but not any sex. There is one boner. There is a vagina being masturbated with a pencil. There is a woman breastfeeding a raw steak. There is a woman shitting out a muffin. There is ketchup dumped into a conch shell. But there is no sex. But then the other side of the room says something along the lines of, “Yeah, well, so much porn nowadays is about humiliation but it’s always kind of faked, but in this the humiliation is sort of more real because they can’t hide behind their vaginas and penises here. They actually have to be more like themselves while trying to recite these lines than they do when they’re getting fucked by a stranger on camera.” To this I would also say: “Bullshit.” Final Flesh defies description. It’s one of the weirdest things I have ever seen. I was going to do a little caption for every screengrab over there, but you know what? I give up. I can’t. Just look at that shit, try to honestly tell me you don’t want to see this, and then head for the store and buy it. Because the record label Drag City is putting Final Flesh out on DVD this very month. That’s right. This month. Final Flesh. On DVD. You buy. JOHN BLOUGH