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DEAR VICE - A KNIFE IN THE CROTCH OF MY HEART

Hey Vice,

What happened to Hollywood's penchant for graphic violence directed at the crotch or groin?Nowadays all you get is a bunch of jokey, strained-face, "that's gotta hoit" bullshit, like Arnold getting doorknobbed by his kids at the beginning of Sixth Day (5:31). Remember in Robocop when he shoots the cackling rapist right in his dick? Think how many kids that one scene turned off from rape. Probably more than we'd like to admit.

(Incidentally, why were rapists always laughing like the Cocoa Puffs bird in those movies? Those guys, Jeff Goldblum in Deathwish, everybody in The Accused. Is that an actual thing or just the writers trying to put some mental distance between themselves and the sexual predators they're responsible for?)

I was just watching Southern Comfort, which is the movie where three crafty cajuns outsmart the National Guard by knocking over a bunch of trees, and the climax involves a crotching the likes of which I haven't seen in years. Just to set the scene, the guy with the mustache just shot the dude on the ground and is lining up another when Willem-Dafoe guy storms in with a training rifle full of blanks. The rest is pure visual poetry. Watch…

STEVEN ADLER
Brooklyn, NY

Vice responds: That's a good one. We're still partial to the scene in Chuck Norris's Invasion USA where the girl's doing coke with a metal straw and the Russian guy slams her face against the table (throat just clenched writing that) then unloads his pistol into the guy's pants.