Benjamin Shearn is a film editor and writer. His last feature, Ladyworld, premiered at BFI London, Fantastic Fest, TIFF: Next Wave and was presented as part of the Frontieres Showcase at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Shearn’s work in narrative and documentary films has also been exhibited at ComicCon San Diego, the Louisiana Museum of Art in Copenhagen, la Gaîté lyrique in Paris, as well as official selections of the CPH:DOX, Melbourne International, Planete+Doc, TIFF After Dark, Court Metrage du Clermont, Chicago and Boston Underground Film Festivals, amongst others. For more of his work, go to benjaminshearn.com and/or follow his absurd Instagram account @actorsupset.
Total Recall was my first exposure to what was, at that time, a seemingly rare and unattainable dimension of human experience: the R-rated movie. And I was forever changed. I remember feeling convinced that it had established a portal into my adolescent mind and psychically extracted all the perverse blood lust and strange sexual fantasies. And then, brilliantly, set it all on Mars.
Looking back, I can’t think of a more suitable Virgil to guide that inaugural descent into sordid, uncensored adult entertainment than the Dutch auteur agitator, Paul Verhoeven.
There are a lot of fussy subtextual theories describing (or perhaps excusing) even his most prurient films; he’s anti-religion provocateur, an anti-fascist satirist, a pro-liberation crusader. And while all of that has varying levels of credibility, I believe the true power of his work resides in something much simpler – a primal, almost carnal, understanding and articulation of base human drives. That’s what really elated and thrilled me at my tender age, and continues well into my crusty adulthood.
Some plunder Disney Plus to recapture nostalgic youth. Me? I plunge into Robocop and Basic Instinct. This essay is my attempt to unearth why that is.
