Pierre Scot | Mindfuck / 2017

not real

by Douglas Messerli

 

Pierre Scot (screenwriter and director) Mindfuck / 2017 [6 minutes]

 

In this little terror tale by French director Pierre Scot, the director performs as a journalist who, apparently on a film set, is told to drop his pants before he is tied up, handcuffed, and blindfolded by a dominant leather man (Sebastian Freeman).

    The dominant fetishist also, just before blindfolding our subject, seemingly has opened up a strange container in which there appears to be flour and something possibly atop it.

     The leather man exits the room, slamming the door behind him as the journalist is left to imagine what might be happening.

      We observe a giant tarantula crawl out of the canister, jump down from the ledge, and make its way across out journalist’s hair before moving down his face. By this time, of course, the journalist is so horrified that he is almost begun to scream out for help, the leather boy returning to tell him “It’s all in your head,” as he unmasks and unties him.

     But, of course, we didn’t imagine it even if our journalist did; we saw in upon the screen with our own eyes. Is it also in our imaginations? Obviously not. So what is the point of this little exercise? Is it a warning to stay away from such dangerous male sexual encounters? Is it actually attempting to question that what we truly believe we see in that play of flickering lights is not really a thing of reality?

     Perhaps it’s simply trying to remind us never to watch this little film ever again, or if one was actually titillated by it (I was not) to watch it over and over just for fun.

      Now if a poisonous snake had slithered across that room, I certainly would simply have clicked the film off. But we all know that although they are venomous, these hairy insects are generally

not dangerous to humans. And Sean Connery was never truly in jeopardy in Dr. No (1962), although he was terrified by spiders and a couple of nurses were waiting nearby just in case.

 

Los Angeles, February 1, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2025).