Review – The Fourth Man

Before Paul Verhoeven made a tidy living directing bad, big-budget Hollywood epics about how evil women are, he used to direct bad, low-budget Dutch art films about how evil women are. Of particular note in this go-around is the appearance, mercifully brief though it is, of one of the most graphic castration scenes ever stored on film. The story itself is about a gay writer in a bizarre love triangle with a muscle boy and an eerie, masculine woman who seems to be in the habit of marrying and murdering. So it goes without saying that you get a fair amount of spider-related stuff. What you also get is a load of pretentious religious symbolism so thick that the plot just about chokes on it. This isn’t a bad choice if you’re in the mood for a big mess of homoerotic horror. Mildly amusing