Spetters (1980)
A very different kind of “youth” movie from Verhoeven, which shows his ambition for shock and provocation early in his career, but it also lacks the perfect balance of satire he later mastered, making the controversial ideas here handled less gracefully. While the main cast of young men are clearly depicted as violent homophobes and misogynistic, Verhoeven is also mocking them showing them as pathetic in private when they can’t keep up the facade. The whole movie is rather messy and self destructive with little reasons for us to empathize or understand the characters. Verhoeven has several times explored the boundaries with sexual repression and clearly not shying away from stepping over the line, and he does so here as well with a very off-putting way of dealing with a man being gangraped by a group of other men, as it falls into the category of falling in love with your rapist. Verhoeven did something similar much later with Elle, but there appears to be no thought provoking subtleties at play here, it is just very clumsily handled. I take it is lack of proper experience at the time that the attempt fails in this instance.
Rating: 2.5