• Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
  • Search Site

Polari Magazine

  • Home
  • Up Front
    • Editorial
    • Clementine: The Living Fashion Doll
    • Polari Safari
    • WTF? Friday
    • Bulletin Board
    • Polari Facts
  • Features
    • Interviews
    • Features
    • Gallery
    • Opinion
    • Heroes & Villains
  • Community
    • Oral Histories
    • Coming Out Stories
    • Relationships
    • IDAHO
    • LGBT History Month
    • Blogs
  • Reviews
    • Books
    • Film and Television
    • Music
    • Stage
    • Visual Arts
    • Classics: Books
    • Classics: Film and Television
    • Classics: Music
  • About
    • About Polari Magazine
    • Contributors
    • Contact

You are here: Polari Magazine / Film & Television / Broken

Broken

★★★★★
Dir: Peter Christopherson
US: 20:10 min • Bootleg • 1993
Walter Beck reviews
…………………………………………………………………………………………

A legendary bootleg amongst Nine Inch Nails fans, The Broken Film has been floating around trading circles for the last twenty years. An accompaniment to NIN’s Broken EP, the film became notorious for its rumored extreme and violent content; supposedly Trent Reznor’s label wouldn’t release it due to its transgressive nature. But in 2006, a DVD quality copy of the film was leaked onto PirateBay, allegedly by Reznor himself. Now any fan with BitTorrent can finally see what this short film is all about.

Opening with a slow motion black and white sequence of a man being hung, the noose is slipped around his neck, a guard pulls a lever and he plunges into oblivion as it cuts to the next scene.

The next scene establishes the rough storyline of the film: it’s grainy, home video color footage of a deranged man stalking his victims, finally selecting one. We next see the man bound to a chair in what looks like a suburbanite garage with the maniac looming over him wearing what looks like a mask of human skin. The camera then zooms into the TV for the first song sequence.

‘Pinion’ is the first musical part of the film, a strange high-quality black and white zoom down a flushing toilet. As we follow the pipes, we find that the raw sewage is being forced into the mouth of a man in a full vinyl gimp suit chained to what looks like the padded walls of an insane asylum.

Briefly cutting back to the garage, the maniac has started pouring gasoline down his victim’s throat and then begins dowsing him with it. The music then cuts in again with the clip for ‘Wish’.

‘Wish’ is a pretty standard “live” music video, the live band of Nine Inch Nails playing the song in a giant cage, of course Trent Reznor up front in the requisite androgynous leather outfit, with thousands of kids moshing, stage diving, and rioting outside the cage. In the closing seconds of the song, they finally break through the cage and start charging in with clubs.

Back to the garage again, the maniac is watching and rewinding a tape of the ‘Wish’ clip, while the victim lays there, covered with gasoline blisters.

‘Help Me I Am in Hell’ is the second instrumental clip and it’s even more disturbing than ‘Pinion’. A bald middle aged man sits in the middle of a room, eating a steak dinner and drinking wine while thousands of flies hovering around him, he eats them and drinks them without notice, while shots of another middle aged man in full BDSM gear flicker in and out.

In the garage again, the maniac starts ripping the victim’s teeth out with a pair of pliers as it cuts to the next music clip, ‘Happiness in Slavery’.

A version of this clip did appear on mainstream television, albeit in censored form. A man in a suit, played by notorious performance artist Bob Flanagan, steps into what looks like a restroom in hell, strips naked and lies down in a metal machine. The machine begins ripping into his flesh, starts tearing out his organs and then consumes his entire body, shitting out the remains. The clip ends with Trent Reznor entering the room in the same suit as Flanagan.

‘Gave Up’, the last music clip in the film, wraps the footage in the garage as the maniac strings up the victim, dismembers him, burns him with a blowtorch, castrates him, guts him, and then begins to eat him. The footage intersects with black and white film of a cop arriving on the scene and nearly vomiting when he looks in the chest freezer and sees the bloody remains of the maniac’s victims.

The film ends back with the hanging from the beginning as the convict falls through an impossibly long drop, we see a crazed smile on his face and then the rope snaps taut.

This tape is everything fans had heard about it, it’s extremely graphic and violent, one of the most transgressive pieces of art to come out of the American industrial scene. Trent Reznor’s vision is that of self-destruction and throughout the film, it’s on display: the opening and closing shots of the hanging underlying the societal consequences of violence; the instrumental clips of ‘Pinion’ and ‘Help Me I Am in Hell’ showing how one eats his own poison, be it excrement or insects; the mob rush of ‘Wish’ illustrating group madness; and of course, the grainy snuff-film like footage throughout showing the extremity of individuals who are too far lost in their own brutality.

This film is a graphic depiction of the cycle of brutality and self-destruction. It holds up the broken mirror to those who watch it as a warning of what can happen if madness goes too far: the destruction of self and society.

Outside of Bob Flanagan in the ‘Happiness in Slavery’ clip, the cast remains unknown and while several directors were credited with the individual music clips, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, of the pioneering industrial group Throbbing Gristle, directed the garage sequences.

If you’re a serious fan of Nine Inch Nails, industrial music, or transgressive art, this is worth checking out. For the merely curious, be warned, this is the most intense twenty minutes ever laid to film.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
  • Pinterest

Search Polari

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

About Polari Magazine

Polari Magazine is an LGBT arts and culture magazine that explores the subculture by looking at what is important to the people who are in it. It’s about the lives we lead, not the lifestyles we’re supposed to lead.

Its content is informed & insightful, and features a diverse range of writers from every section of the community. Its intent is to help LGBT readers learn about their own heritage and to sustain a link between the present and the past.

Polari is designed to nurture the idea of community, whether that be social and political, or artistic and creative. It is your magazine, whether you want to read it, or whether you want to get involved in it, if you're gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, or queer.

Polari Magazine is all these: it's a gay online magazine; it's a gay and lesbian online magazine; it's an LGBT arts and culture magazine. Ultimately, it is a queer magazine.

Latest Posts

  • Polari Magazine 2008-2014December 3, 2014 - 6:16 pm
  • Tearing Up Their Map: An Interview with LambDecember 2, 2014 - 2:45 pm
  • Future Islands • GigDecember 2, 2014 - 1:41 pm
  • Puppets with Attitude (at Christmas)December 1, 2014 - 6:30 pm
  • The Aesthetic of Voyeurism: Interview with Antonio Da SilvaDecember 1, 2014 - 1:25 pm
  • Broke With Expensive Taste • Azealia BanksNovember 28, 2014 - 3:59 pm
  • Royalty Strutting on an American College Stage: Miss and Mr. Gay ISU 2014November 27, 2014 - 2:59 pm
  • Bright Light Bright Light: Everything I Ever WantedNovember 26, 2014 - 11:15 am
  • Jaime Nanci And The Blueboys: ‘Toy’ TalkNovember 25, 2014 - 4:09 pm

Twitter

Tweets by @PolariMagazine

Archive

  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • July 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • May 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
© Copyright - Polari Magazine - Wordpress Theme by Kriesi.at
  • scroll to top
  • Send us Mail
  • Follow us on Twitter
  • Join our Facebook Group
  • Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Website Privacy & Cookies