MAN BITES DOG

Coming off as Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer meets Spinal Tap, Man Bites Dog was all the rage back in the early ‘90s for horror and indie-movie fans (the movie won a ton of awards, including one at Cannes in ’92). 

The film follows a documentary crew who, in turn, follows a twisted serial killer named Ben around Belgium (there’s subtitles!). We meet Ben’s parents and girlfriend between his numerous killings and corpse disposals (one scene has Ben give the magic formula for weighing bodies down in the river). 

Like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, Ben comes off as urbane and cultured and often goes off on long diatribes about architecture and classical music. I guess it’s an unwritten rule in the ‘candid-look of a serial killer’ sub-genre, where we’re forced to see how close they are to us.

I found the theme witty enough. Since Michael Moore’s Roger & Me, documentaries have slid into a weird world where the filmmaker either becomes the subject or at least an active participant in the narrative, so it was nice to see the filmmakers skewer this trope. In Man Bites Dog, the killer slowly involves the crew in his crimes before becoming their movie’s financier (throwing the fake film’s objectivity completely out the window). 

But for me, the fuel in the tank petered out an hour in. There’s a fine balancing act when it comes to marrying humor to horror but watching a kid smothered and a woman gang-raped in front of her husband is frankly a bit too dark for my tastes. They make scenes that are actually smart and creative bitter to swallow (one sly scene has the filmmakers bump into another film crew following their own serial killer). I don’t know if the Kody of twenty-years ago would rave about the filmmaker’s audacity of Man Bites Dog; all I know, present-day me wished I’d put something a bit more fun or meditative on for Halloween Horror Night.