The Narrow Path: The Profane Exhibit (2013) and Transgressive Cinema

“I’m looking forward to seeing that new horror film.”

For as long as there have been movies, there have been movies that knowingly courted controversy. Films that set out with the express purpose to shock, to offend, to disgust. Sometimes, these pictures are intended to ask us hard questions, to hold a sardonic mirror up to social mores, to grapple with national guilt and political violence, give voice to the voiceless and speak truth to power, to push the boundaries of what is considered good taste. Other times, they are nothing more than empty provocation, with no loftier ambition than raking in a few dollars on the cachet of being taboo.

From Un Chien Andalou to A Serbian Film, this tradition of transgressive films is every bit as rich (if not necessarily as proud) as any other in cinema. And few others have inhabited that tradition as self-consciously as The Profane Exhibit, an anthology film bringing together short segments by some of the most notorious directors around the world.

Originally conceived in 2011 or thereabouts by producer Amanda L. Manuel, The Profane Exhibit first screened for audiences at the Brussels International Film Festival in 2014, where it was hailed by some as the “Biggest Cult Film Ever.” Like any good transgressive film, however, The Profane Exhibit was destined for hardships in finding wider release, which only amplified its legend, despite the fact that certain early previews lamented that, “What was shown was far from impressive. What was shown was bland and dull, to be honest.”

By 2019, Unearthed Films had finally signed on to distribute the film, though it wouldn’t see Blu-ray release until September of 2024, fully a decade after its festival premier. By then, a lot had changed. Missing from the finished product released by Unearthed Films were short segments by Richard Stanley, Andrey Iskanov, and Jose Mojica Marins, of the Coffin Joe films, all of which had originally been announced as part of the project when it was first coming together but never completed.

Also missing from the Unearthed Blu is the framing story still described in the film’s IMDb synopsis: “Deep within the underbelly of Paris, there is a club which is the home of a secret, wicked society. At first it resembles an ordinary fetish or Goth nightclub, but within the cavernous building are many hidden rooms, one of which is known as ‘The Room of Souls,’ a private gathering place of the world’s richest and most evil people. Their host is the elegant yet frightening Madame Sabatier. For their amusement, each member takes a turn and spins a true tale of depravity…”

This framing segment was written by horror author Ray Garton and was intended to feature Bai Ling and Tony Todd, according to reporting from 2013. The finished film, as released by Unearthed, has no wraparound segment whatsoever. In its place is “Amuse Bouche,” directed by Jeremy Kasten, which shows a man being cut up into sausage and fed to dogs, shown in reverse. A minute or so of this wordless short is shown between each other segment of the film, to provide interstitial bookends to the various other stories contained within.

The rest of the directors are a who’s who of names both notorious and unfamiliar. From established masters of shock and schlock like Ruggero Deodato and Uwe Boll to more recent devotees of the disturbed such as Anthony DiBlasi (Last Shift) and Nacho Vigalondo (Timecrimes). The result, like almost any multi-director anthology, is a decidedly mixed bag.

According to a 2012 press release, “The Profane Exhibit is going to be unlike anything that horror fans have ever seen. It is horror with a message… terror with something to say.” Even in 2013, that probably wouldn’t have been true, however, and it certainly isn’t in 2024.

One of the questions that a movie like this begs is: In our ostensibly jaded modern age, what even is a taboo too shocking for mainstream cinema? If The Profane Exhibit is any indication, the answers are mostly gore, rape, incest, pedophilia, genital mutilation, suicide, and, more than anything else, cannibalism. There is a lot of cannibalism going on in The Profane Exhibit.

But are any of those subjects really all that outre? We’ve had major mainstream films tackling many of them for decades, and a selection of indie horror from any given year will give you more than your share of the majority of those topics. Sure, here and there The Profane Exhibit may push the envelope a little further than most, and there are moments that are uncomfortable to watch sprinkled throughout, but there is precious little here that would jar even a remotely jaded moviegoer.

As for “something to say,” there is perhaps even less of that. Several of the segments don’t really even meaningfully end. The promising “Mother May I” from Anthony DiBlasi which opens the Blu simply cuts off without any kind of payoff, feeling like the first few minutes of a longer story, and several others follow suit. Ruggero Deodato’s extremely short “Bridge” is ostensibly about “the evilness of children,” according to the director, but even if that wasn’t an old hat subject, it comes to such a perfunctory end that you’ll practically miss it if you blink.

To the extent that segments such as Uwe Boll’s “Basement” or Ryan Nicholson’s “Goodwife” hold up a mirror to social norms, they are predominantly the social norms of forty years ago, and feel weirdly toothless and anachronistic today.

Several sequences are visually interesting, particularly “Tophet Quorom” from Wax Mask’s Sergio Stivaletti, “Mors in Tabula” by Marian Dora, and Nacho Vigalondo’s “Sins of the Fathers,” which also has probably the most inventive storytelling method of any of the shorts, and might be the only one truly worthy of rescuing from a decade spent sitting on a shelf somewhere.

When The Profane Exhibit was first announced more than ten years ago, the cinematic landscape was in a very different place than it is today. Had it come out then, when it first played the Brussels International Film Festival, it might have secured itself a place in cinematic history as something more than a curiosity trapped out of time.

The years since have given us plenty of other ostensibly boundary-pushing genre films, however, including not one but two ABCs of Death that often outdo The Profane Exhibit in the “offensive” and “hard to watch” categories, and today The Profane Exhibit just feels like something arriving at the finish line long after the race is over.