''Singapore Sling: The Man Who Loved a Corpse'' ( el, Singapore Sling: Ο Άνθρωπος που Αγάπησε ένα Πτώμα, italic=yes, tr. ''Singapore Sling: O Ánthropos pou Agápise éna Ptóma'') is a 1990 Greek

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horror

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art film An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...

directed by

Nikos Nikolaidis Nikos Georgiou Nikolaidis ( el, Νίκος Γεωργίου Νικολαΐδης; 25 October 1939 – 5 September 2007) was a Greek film director, screenwriter, film producer, writer, theatre director, assistant director, record producer, televi ...

and regarded as his

magnum opus A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...

. Considered a difficult film to label while still managing to develop something of a

cult In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This ...

following throughout the years nonetheless, it was shot in a bizarre manner somewhat resembling

film noir Film noir (; ) is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and motivations. The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American ' ...

or neo-noir and black comedy as well as the

exploitation Exploitation may refer to: *Exploitation of natural resources *Exploitation of labour ** Forced labour *Exploitation colonialism *Slavery ** Sexual slavery and other forms *Oppression *Psychological manipulation In arts and entertainment *Exploi ...

, thriller, and crime genres mixed with some elements of eroticism and horror with sex being used as a power game and received a theatrical release in Greece on 6 December 1990. Despite Nikolaidis' career as a film director in his home country which stretches to the early 1960s he was almost entirely unknown outside Greece before the early 1990s and is still less known outside it. It was only with this film, which has immediately achieved cult status, that international fame came to him and it probably still remains the film for which he is best known today, as exemplified by the fact that it was released on DVD by

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, the only one of Nikolaidis' films to so far receive a home video release in North America. The film was officially selected for screening at the Rimini Film Festival.

Plot

Two mentally ill women who are clearly suffering from not otherwise specified delusional disorders, a mother and a (grown) daughter, live together in a secluded mansion. They are in a relationship and both are recognised for their beauty. They spend their days playing perverse

BDSM BDSM is a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics. Given the wide range of practices, some of which may be engaged ...

-related incestuous games in memory of their

sadistic Sadism may refer to: * Sadomasochism, the giving or receiving of pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation * Sadistic personality disorder, an obsolete term proposed for individuals who derive pleasure from the s ...

patriarch who, when he was still alive, raped his daughter when she was eleven, murdered several servants, and is now a mummified corpse with which the daughter is shown having sex. They occasionally kill their servants and bury their bodies in the garden. When first glimpsed the psychotic mother-daughter protagonists, half-dressed, are burying their disemboweled chauffeur into a pit, they have just finished to dig in their backyard on a dark and stormy night with thunder and heavy rain. They lay down their shovels and drag out of the bushes, his fresh corpse. He was killed in one of their usual games combining incestuous sex with murder. Shortly after this and at first unnoticed by the two women, a lovesick detective pulls his car up to the residence. He is suffering from a painful bullet wound and an equally painful yearning to track down Laura, his long-missing beloved for whom he has been searching for three years and about whom it is known that she has visited the area. What he does not yet know is that he has stumbled onto the lair of two profoundly insane women who have already lured Laura into their home and brutally killed her (in the process decorating their kitchen with her viscera, as a flashback helpfully shows). It is also revealed that the daughter is physically very similar to Laura and is desperately looking for a man's companionship. The duo then easily take the seriously wounded and bleeding detective, having already figured them out to be responsible for Laura's kidnapping, into their home, essentially kidnapping him. As the exhausted detective was silent and apparently refuses to speak, even in order to state his own name, the two women christen him 'Singapore Sling', after they discover a recipe in his pocket notebook for that type of

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. They use him as a pawn in their sexually tinged

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and as a party to their distorted and perverse form of entertainment, during which Singapore Sling, now a prisoner, is tied up, chained to a bed, vomited on, electrocuted, used as a sex slave, and subjected to various other forms of torture and atrocities in which he is forced to participate. However, as Singapore Sling's confinement wears on he regains his strength and takes a more active role in the games. His deranged captors become concerned and alarmed when a sharp kitchen knife, belonging to the late father, goes missing and they discover Singapore Sling digging a deep hole in their backyard. As psychotic as these two are, they are still lucid enough to recognize that a killing is imminent, if not two or even three. In an atmosphere of decadence and dark madness, the characters gradually sink into the depths of their subconscious mind. A few days later, the daughter decides that she is fed up with having to suffer under the yoke of maternal authority, and, together with Singapore Sling, murders her mother. Singapore Sling then takes what up until now used to be the mother's role in the sexual games. However, during one of these games, a reenactment of Laura's murder, he stabs the daughter, playing Laura, with the aforementioned missing kitchen knife now attached to his penis. The daughter, while bleeding to death, shoots Singapore Sling and then he goes out to the garden and falls into the pit which he himself had recently dug. The film hence ends, in short, with all three characters dead.

Cast

Meredyth Herold Meredyth Herold ( gr, Μέρεντιθ Χέρολντ) is a Greek film and television actress best known for '' Singapore Sling'' (1990), ''To spiti stin exohi'' (1994) and ''To koritsi me tis valitses'' (1997). As of 2011, she lived in the Unite ...

as Daughter * Panos Thanassoulis as Detective Singapore Sling * Michele Valley as Mother

Reception

Director

said the following about this film's reception during an interview: "When I was shooting ''Singapore Sling'', I was under the impression that I was making a comedy with elements taken from Ancient Greek Tragedy... Later, when some European and American critics characterized it as 'one of the most disturbing films of all times,' I started to feel that something was wrong with me. Then, when British censors banned its release in England, I finally realized that something is wrong with all of us."

Accolades

Legacy

The Icelandic neo-psychedelia band Singapore Sling is named after the film. As the band's frontman Henrik Björnsson explained in a June 2003 interview with Belgium's VRT Radio 1: "We had a first gig. It was booked and we didn't have a name and I had been looking for a film called ''Singapore Sling'' for a long time. I couldn't find it anywhere. It sounded cool, so that became the name of the band. It's some kind of dark, perverse

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

film from 1990. I haven't found it yet, so if you know someone who has it, please let me know. I hope it's good. A dark perverse noir film and a guy who has sex with a corpse. And he's called Singapore Sling." In November 2005, after the completion of his last film ''

The Zero Years ''The Zero Years'' is a 2005 Greek dramatic experimental independent underground art film directed by Nikos Nikolaidis, his final film. Plot A tale of perversion and sexual dominance set in a dystopia, the film is about four female prostitutes, ...

'', a tale of

perversion Perversion is a form of human behavior which deviates from what is considered to be orthodox or normal. Although the term ''perversion'' can refer to a variety of forms of deviation, it is most often used to describe sexual behaviors that are con ...

and sexual dominance which failed to replicate the earlier success of ''Singapore Sling'', Nikolaidis declared his intention to stop making movies in order to deal with music.

References

External links

''Singapore Sling''
a
Nikos Nikolaidis (Film Director/Writer/Producer)
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''Singapore Sling''
at the

Greek Film Archive The Greek Film Archive ( el, Ταινιοθήκη της Ελλάδος, ''Tainiothiki tis Ellados'') is a nonprofit film archive organization located in Athens, Greece, whose goal is to produce and spread Greek and international films. It's a p ...

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''Singapore Sling''
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