Review – Bizarre Rituals

If the idea of watching Spider Webb bite Annie Sprinkle so hard she bleeds really gets your motor running, then this film may be for you. This is ostensibly a documentary about anthropologist Charles Gatewood, a nerdy little guy who has made an entire career out of photographing piercing buffs, nudists, pain enthusiasts and the like and then shocking pretentious east coast intellectuals with exhibits and slide shows. It’s more than a little fitting that most of the back half of the film is devoted to the mutilation antics of Fakir Musafar, a San Francisco advertising executive who’s something of a minor deity among “modern primitives.” Aside from some interesting visuals, this movie offers little beyond an extended tour of kink, fetish and semi-sociology. See if desperate