How Insane is the Pro-Life Horror Flick The Life Zone? Let Us Count the Ways
Regardless of where you fall on the ideological spectrum regarding abortion, you'll likely find something cringeworthy in The Life Zone. Written and produced by former New Jersey judge/current State Senate hopeful (and, according to Zone's trailer, "Best-selling Author)" Kenneth Del Vecchio, the film premiered over the weekend at the Hoboken International Film Festival (which Del Vecchio, uh, founded) and is making the rounds as a trailblazing example of pro-life cinema -- and not necessarily in a good way. Movieline has yet to check the film out but has inventoried all of the peripheral jaw-droppery in the news:
[Spoilers ahead]
1. First, the trailer, which lays out the plot and characters but, on its own, leaves some ambiguity as to Life Zone's true philosophy:
2. And as you've seen, there's that ensemble, perhaps most succinctly and elegantly cataloged by NextMovie's Jenni Miller: "The cast is quite a humdinger, with Robert Loggia as the priestly creeper, Blanche Baker, who scared the poo out of viewers as the suburban housewife turned torturer in The Girl Next Door, and former Playboy Playmate Angela Little as one of the pregnant women."
3. And let's not forget co-star Lindsay Haun, an occasional True Blood guest who explained to a reporter after the premiere, "The woman who is completely pro-life and who never changes her opinion, and the woman who is pro-choice and never considers the other side, they're so pig-headed in their own views and not willing to debate, so they face the consequences." So it's about compromise and discussion, right? Except...
4. ...There's this, from the same Jersey Journal reporter who attended the screening:
The pregnant women are often tortured by dreams of death and despair -- montages of swarming bees, swirling tornadoes and speeches by Hitler one night, African-Americans and foreigners shouting "abort me" in foreign tongues the next -- while Dr. Wise experiences flashbacks to the dissolution of her marriage which fell apart when she learned she couldn't bear children. Her parents cursed her for not taking better care of her body, a poor diet, too much work, while her husband -- The Karate Kid's bad sensei Martin Kove -- divorces her, leaving her for a woman capable of having his children, a moment that pushes Dr. Wise to desperate measures.
5. And then there's the big "twist ending," which couldn't be more on-the-nose if it were a Breath Right strip:
All three women deliver and finally the first of the plot's twists are revealed. Staci, most opposed to pregnancy, is blessed with two children - twins - while her fellow captives only give birth to one baby each.
Later, Staci wakes up. The two new mothers are no longer captives, they've presumably ascended to heaven with their babies. It's revealed all along the women had been in Purgatory, after having died on the operating table of abortion clinics. But because Staci attempted to miscarry even after a second chance at motherhood, and because she never accepted the error of her ways until she experienced the physical joy of giving birth, of seeing her children for the first time, she will be doomed to eternity in Hell.
Loggia is Satan and he informs Staci she will spend all eternity in a cycle of pregnancy and childbirth and Dr. Wise will forever be her doctor, as the movie's final twist plays out: Wise too will spend eternity in Hell. She was so weak she committed suicide when her marriage collapsed and must suffer the fate of forever bringing life into the world, endlessly having to appreciate what she did not value on Earth.
I've got two words for that: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ???????????????
6. Del Vecchio is not a stranger to controversy! He resigned as a judge in New Jersey -- after only four months on the job -- because of politically incendiary fare like O.B.A.M. Nude, featuring Del Vecchio himself as a coke-snorting college kid who makes a deal with the devil, attends Harvard Law School, becomes a community organizer and becomes U.S. president. ("Satan tutors him on political points, so he can trick the masses by a mantra of hope and change," he explained last year to TPM.) Of his new film's title, Del Vecchio said: "It's like the Twilight Zone. Life, like pro-life; zone, like the Twilight Zone. [...] I think the audience will walk away not knowing what the filmmaker's position is, it gives both sides of the coin."
Well, kind of: Though The Life Zone is officially directed by O.B.A.M. Nude helmer Rod Weber, writer-producer Del Vecchio's Senate campaign Web site, meanwhile, states his belief that abortion amounts to "mass murders of human lives every day."
7. Following the premiere, the "pro-life" Loggia was reportedly surprised to hear he is in a Del Vecchio campaign commercial, which he definitely is:
8. The great, 88-year-old Charles Durning is apparently in this! Not only that, but he is something of a Del Vecchio stock player, having previously appeared in The Great Fight ("Del Vecchio examines autism with an Oscar-class cast," reads the blurb on the candidate's site) and An Affirmative Act ("Del Vecchio's acclaimed first-ever gay marriage courtroom drama").
9. IMDB lists the film's budget as "$1,500,000 (estimated)". You be the judge (no pun intended).
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Comments
One of the most insightful films I've ever watched that deals with such a vulgar and volatile issue. Brilliant!
Should have been directed by Tommy Wiseau. If you are a mouth-breathing philistine, pick up a copy!
"I just Googled The Life Zone so I could go on every website and say how awesome this movie I never saw but since it deals with an issue in a way I like I am going to say it's awesome!" So convincing.
Um, abortion is evil. Men can have sex all the time because we're men. But women should only have sex if they're married and completely subservient to men because, well, we're men. So God punishes women for having sex by making them pregnant while he punishes men by letting them walk away without any responsibility whatsoever. Yeah God!
Your sexiest, woman should not have to be subservient to men just because your Men, woman should be able to feel the joys of sex just as equally as men should just because we are able to get pregnant does Not mean that we are not allowed to have sexual relations with someone who we are not married to, and another thing men are just as much a parent to that child as woman are, we are no more responsible or bound because we Carry the child!
You're missing the sarcasm pretty blatantly smeared all over that post.
I can see how you'd think it was serious though, seeing as how people here apparently think drugging and kidnapping is totally fine as long as it's to prevent abortion.
Shit like this makes it so much easier for any sane person to be pro-choice.
'Shit like this', meaning what you wrote, what the author wrote, or most of what's in the comments? No, it only makes any sane person immensely sad that people who themselves have already been born can be so astoundingly blinded and selfish as to go to any lengths to promote ending the lives of those conceived but still in the womb and hoping they too could get their chance at life but too little and powerless to fight for it, and hence - disfranchised. And to call it being 'pro-choice'! Whose choice? Not those babies' choice, to be sure. If pro-abortion means pro-women, what about those babies, half of whom - if they weren't aborted - would be women? Women voters, women politicians, women scientists, women scholars, women layers, women doctors... So getting rid of women promotes the rights of women? How?
You know Mikey, we should make another movie. In this one we have three 12 year-olds that were impregnated by their parents, and we have them all come to the realization that the pregnancies will kill the little girls that deliver. Then we have them all kidnapped and put in a hospital, there a self-righteous faith-healer/OB and a possibly psychopathic man who orchestrated it tell them that abortion is evil and God will save the children from dying in their deliveries.
The twist? The little girls die but the babies live, God doesn't save the little girls because the fathers have to suffer the cost of their sins. Wouldn't this be what every red-blooded fundamentalist wants?
Pro-choice IS the sane way to be! It's good that you recognize this.
This movie sounds crazy, no matter what your politics are. But I've never seen anything like it so at least its something new. And the topic of abortion is going to be controversial no matter what you do with it and probably always will be.
I would have loved to see what the gang at Mystery Science Theater could have done with this one...
This is quite possibly the most f'd up movies I've seen a preview for. I have no words--the girls all died on the operating table when they went in to get their abortions? Yeah, like that's realistic, since abortion/d&c is only one of the most common and safest surgeries out there. Jesus Christ, this movie is messed up.
It's a redundant movie. Many of the women in America have already been "kidnapped" because there is no place for them to go to get reproductive medical care, even when their lives are at risk. I wish Del Vecchio was a woman, so he could die in agony with an ectopic pregnancy, or slowly die of toxemia from a dead fetus that won't spontaneously pass, and can't legally be removed.
you win 10 internets!
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Horrible Christian Propaganda. This movie is one of the best examples of what would happen if the state was allowed to be controlled by Christian monsters. And the gull of the writer to imply that these are the most reasonable pro-choice arguments! but then again, if you are a Christian, I guess you are stupid beyond belief, and you cannnot deal with the complexities of reality . . .
Enlighten us, please.
I think it's really Pro-Choice COINTELPRO intending to make all Pro-Choicer's look like wacky extremists. Christians do not believe in purgatory, that is a Catholic concoction inspired by men in order to make more money for the RCC through sale of indulgences.
I meant attempts to portray Pro-lifers as extremists.
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I am appalled that abortion is the biggest controversy in this movie. Clearly the writer of this pIle of shit Movie was needing a second career after miserably failing at his first. All i can hope for is the guy is still trying to pay for the making of this mistake!! Hah!!
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this movie is hilarious. i know there's a statement t they tried to make here BUT it's just so over the top that i could never take it seriously. I will give it one thing, it's memorable. I watched this on netflix about three years ago and i still remember it and how friggin weird it was.