The Compulsion (1997)

Tagline: Try as you might, you cannot hide from The Compulsion.

People are afraid to leave their houses. There is a curfew in action. The number of attacks is increasing with each day.

FBI agent Cindy Hassles is put in charge of what will transpire to be the most horrifying job of her life: protect the queen of England on her visit to New York.

But it was not to be.

Flying through the air like a string of milky phlegm, our villains gelatinous discharge shoots across her majesties face like a hot onslaught of silly string, left riling, tendrils of glutinous man muck clinging between her royal fingers, the queen asks one thing of Cindy: “Stop that man.”

Now, going rogue and risking her career, Cindy descends into the gritty underbelly of the New York homeless scene in a desperate attempt to stop the near mythical Seagull-Man before he can attack again.

***

I wrote The Compulsion shortly after watching “Silence of the lambs” A fairly decent story, but lacking in the necessary thrills and spills to make it a true classic.

The compulsion is then, a thinly veiled remake, my gift to the masses, a contemporary thriller exploring themes of sexual addiction, mass hysteria and loyalty.

The shooting of the movie was fairly straightforward with the exception of our casting choice for Seagull man, who, in a shocking violation of the elderly lady cast to play the queen, revealed after one take that the prosthetic penis was in fact perfectly real, and that the onslaught of fetid mayonnaise he had splashed across her face was as genuine as it was sticky. He promptly escaped from the set, his long trench coat flapping openly as he vanished out the fire exit, guffawing like a deranged pervert.

He was replaced.

Again, as with my modern masterpiece; the Cowboy and the Quadruped, the censors didn’t take so well to the subject matter. We were unable to secure a theatre release, however The compulsion enjoyed considerable success on the VHS market, where is has been adopted – to my disgust – as a sort of “instructional manual” on the art of surprise sexual humiliation, Again, as with TCATQ we have garnered great success in Japan.