Sick Sex is a celebration of sorts, an attempt to emancipate the visual imagery of the snuff film from any connection to gender politics or sexuality or social mores. Everyone in this big book of perv comics and interviews with the likes of Screw publisher Al Goldstein is just another body with a couple of holes. They’ll get fucked, they’ll get killed, and it’s all in good fun. Now I’m not gonna get judgemental about any of that, and for what it is, this is a well put together, entertaining read. But it’s telling that the most interesting aspect of the magazine is the retrospective look at Quebec’s early seamy tabloid Allo Police. Here, the connection between lust and murder takes on a real element. For the people involved in these past crimes, there was something at stake, there was a power, an urge, an obsession that could only be evoked in blood. And, as the enduring success of Allo Police suggests, that thing, however foul and confused, is nevertheless compelling. So, while the bulk of this book pretends to be revealing the true nature of human need, it instead manages to make it seem common place and irrelevant, as if base desire in all its desperation only really exists in comics and pictures on the page. (HN)
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