[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/OffcKllr_Still_KS_00043.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tPhotographer\u00a0Cindy Sherman\u00a0has made just one feature film to date\u2014Office Killer,<\/em>\u00a0a 1997 box-office flop that was unloved by critics, such as the\u00a0New York Times\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0Stephen Holden, who called the movie \u201csadly inept\u201d and \u201ccrude.\u201d I agree, at least, on the \u201ccrude\u201d part: in one scene, the film\u2019s star\u00a0Carol Kane\u00a0plays with a violated corpse\u2019s guts. Once she\u2019s smeared them around the corpse\u2019s opened chest cavity for long enough, she then tries to stick them back into place using Scotch Tape. It\u2019s gross, but that\u2019s the point.<\/p>\n \n\tBefore\u00a0Office Killer,<\/em>\u00a0Sherman was better-known for her \u201cUntitled Film Stills,\u201d a series of photographs from \u201970s in which the artist poses in settings that appear to be excerpted from B-movies and pulp fiction. The year before the film was released, MoMA paid $1 million for a full set of the black-and-white pictures, which remain her most famous pieces. But during the \u201980s and \u201990s, Sherman spent much of her time making pictures that looked quite unlike her iconic work: they were filled with vomit, mold, and dismembered limbs (belonging to anatomical dolls, not humans, thankfully).\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tNotably missing from many of these later works was Sherman herself. In 2012, speaking of her \u201cDisasters\u201d and \u201cSex Pictures\u201d series, Sherman recalled wanting to see if potential buyers would be willing to \u201cput this above their couch.\u201d Most collectors declined, and by and large, critics didn\u2019t care for them either.<\/p>\n \n\tThe \u201cDisasters\u201d and \u201cSex Pictures\u201d still don\u2019t get exhibited nearly as often as the \u201cUntitled Film Stills,\u201d probably because they remain every bit as disgusting. I suspect it\u2019s also why\u00a0Office Killer<\/em>\u00a0doesn\u2019t get the respect it deserves, either. The movie was mentioned just a few times in the catalog for Sherman\u2019s 2012 MoMA retrospective, and one of those instances was in an interview with the fellow abject filmmaker\u00a0John Waters,\u00a0who expressed deep admiration for this film\u2014no surprise there. This month provides a good opportunity to get on Waters\u2019s wavelength:\u00a0Vinegar Syndrome\u00a0is releasing\u00a0Office Killer\u00a0<\/em>on 4K UHD and Blu-Ray for the first time ever, and through the distributor\u2019s fresh restoration of the film, you can see Sherman\u2019s gore with new clarity.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tUnlike most of the other cult classics put out by Vinegar Syndrome,\u00a0Office Killer<\/em>\u00a0can\u2019t be watched for the plot. It does have a vague semblance of narrative: Kane plays Dorine, a meek editor at a fictional publication called\u00a0Constant Consumer,<\/em>\u00a0whose downsizing efforts cause her to become homicidal. (Sherman cooked up the genius idea herself and was pushed to develop it into a feature by\u00a0Todd Haynes, Elise MacAdam,\u00a0and\u00a0Tom Kalin,\u00a0but only MacAdam and Kalin took screenwriting credits.) Yet there\u2019s no tension as characters played by\u00a0Jeanne Tripplehorn, Barbara Sukowa,\u00a0and\u00a0Michael Imperioli\u00a0are picked off one by one.\u00a0Molly Ringwald\u00a0is on hand as a judgmental coworker who becomes\u2014spoiler alert\u2014the final girl, but whether she lives or dies feels beside the point.<\/p>\n \n\tInstead, the film seems designed to stimulate by presenting one horror after another: lopped-off hands, bodiless heads, bleeding torsos, death by butane, attempted strangulation, slain kids, a mutilated mom, fingers lodged in places they don\u2019t belong (all evoked through campy prosthetics). And that\u2019s to say nothing of an even creepier subplot involving Dorine\u2019s incestuous father\u00a0(Eric Bogosian),\u00a0who, in one childhood flashback, caresses her bare legs.<\/p>\n \n\tAny of this might be regarded as cheap thrills in another filmmaker\u2019s hands, but the fact is that\u00a0Office Killer<\/em>\u00a0was made by Cindy Sherman. It was released, too, at the tail end of a burst of abject art embodying all that \u201cdisturbs identity, system, order\u201d and \u201cdoes not respect borders, positions, rules,\u201d as theorist Julia Kristeva wrote in an influential 1980 book. For a range of \u201990s artists, this looked like everything from\u00a0Paul McCarthy\u2019s\u00a0videos and sculptures engaging vomit, piss, shit, and vomit, to\u00a0Pope.L\u2019s\u00a0performances subjecting himself to unpleasant circumstances as a comment on individuals cast out of society. For Sherman, this meant unleashing the violence stowed away as subtext in much of her prior work on women in film.<\/p>\n Office Killer<\/em>\u00a0makes that subtext explicit with its final scene, in which Dorine flees town while wearing a blonde wig and a noirish get-up\u2014one that recalls outfits worn by Sherman in the \u201cUntitled Film Stills.\u201d Sherman\u2019s camera crawls around the roof of Dorine\u2019s car to reveal a surprise passenger: the decapitated head of Dorine\u2019s office manager, riding shotgun in a duffel bag. For a second there, just before Dorine stares back at herself using a rearview mirror, you might mistake Kane for Sherman herself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-in-america\/aia-reviews\/cindy-sherman-office-killer-blu-ray-review-1234777215\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/OffcKllr_Still_KS_00043.jpg?w=1024″] Photographer\u00a0Cindy Sherman\u00a0has made just one feature film to date\u2014Office Killer,\u00a0a 1997 box-office flop that was unloved by critics, such as the\u00a0New York Times\u2019s\u00a0Stephen Holden, who called the movie \u201csadly inept\u201d and \u201ccrude.\u201d I agree, at least, on the \u201ccrude\u201d part: in one scene, the film\u2019s star\u00a0Carol Kane\u00a0plays with a violated corpse\u2019s guts. 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