Black Eyed Susan

Hell, Oh Dolly!

Black Eyed Susan
Directed by Scooter McCrae
USA 2024
Vinegar Syndrome

I’ve been wanting to watch a Scooter McCrae film for a while now. Not because I know his work (I don’t) but because I’ve heard him guest on a couple of podcasts over a few years and he seems to be someone who has a reasonable outlook on life and maybe is happy to push boundaries. I wanted to see Black Eyed Susan at the cinema so I waited for it to come out over here in the UK and... well, it just didn’t. Having now watched it, I’m guessing the complex and dark material coupled with the fact there’s not much you can really justify cutting from it... maybe might have been a bit much for the UK censors. Or, maybe the company just didn’t bother sending it to our damned BBFC because they know their track record.

Anyway, the film is, in some ways, following a trend of movies being made about sex dolls just recently. There was the Argentinian film Maria from a few years ago (which I saw at FrightFest that year but, still doesn’t seem to have been given any kind of UK release), there’s Psycho Sex Dolls (which I’m hoping will finally turn up as my kickstarter reward before this review sees the light of day*), there’s Companion (reviewed here) and, yeah, I’m sure there are a few I’ve forgotten too. Not to mention a few other not so recent films looking at AI sex dolls through an enquiring lens.

This one is pretty unique though, I’m guessing. It doesn’t do the kiss kiss bang bang in the way you might expect. This is a pretty talkie picture but it never gets boring. Gilbert (played brilliantly by Marc Romeo) has invented a super realistic sex android called Black Eyed Susan (played skillfully by Yvonne Emilie Thälker). She is basically intended for customers to be able to beat up and vent their aggression on, in addition to the expected sexual services. So she has under skin bruising technology and bleeding etc... and has several modes she can switch between, such as encouraging or provoking abuse and punishment etc.

In the cold open we see a test subject (played by Scott Fowler) venting with the doll (which, more or less apart from some cosmetic tweaks, looks and acts like a real person) but, three months later he is somehow dead from what appears to be a suicide. However, a friend of his, Derek (played by Damian Maffei) is down on his luck and barely surviving so, he gets given the job of the next punchy sex doll tester... eventually getting into a similar situation as his former friend. And you may think that’s a straight road map to something much more conventional but, I’m telling you, what you are already thinking about the AI learning Susan and her involvement in the death of the former tester... well, you’re probably not in the right ball park (I’m happy to say since, you know, it's cliché done to death).

This film is quite dark because it explores the nature of humans and specifically the future customers who will be drawn to this product. And when Derek stops thinking of it as a product and begins to develop an emotional attachment while dealing with his own shifting darkness inside him... about that ‘one incident’ in the past when he was drunk... then things get really interesting. You might, for a while, wonder who is really being tested here... Black Eyed Susan or Derek.

There’s also another bold element in the film which I’m sure will also be something which will deter the censors of various countries from giving it any kind of certification. I’m going to try and talk around it because I don’t want to give away any spoilers but, there’s an incident where a young boy approaches Gilbert and Derek in a park when they’re talking over the specifics of the latter’s new job. It seemed a little out of place and perhaps, slightly sinister. Well, this moment does have an unexpected pay off later on in the film and the motivations Gilbert gives for doing what he does as a job is, like most of the issues in this movie (which is somehow both a little tamer than I expected but also not for the faint-hearted), not a black and white issue. It’s absolutely charcoal grey and this revelation in the last quarter of the film is definitely a sensitive issue which is going to push a lot of people’s buttons, I suspect.

So, okay, the film is low budget and you can kinda see the limitations on screen to an extent but, that being said, the production values do hold up because the director/writer/producer... aka Scooter McCrae... has written very nicely to the budget, it seems to me and has managed to solve any problems the film might run into in a creative way. And it doesn’t deter from the suspense of some sequences either. All I’m saying is... the razor blade scene might have some people squirming for the potential of what could go wrong.

And if you’re on the fence about this one and don’t know if it’s right for you, let me just say that the director has a special Thank You card on the end titles referencing Radley Metzger, Walerian Borowczyk, Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Lina Romay and Roger Corman. So, yeah, if you like all those people, now sadly deceased, as much as you should... you might want to turn on to this one.

So that’s me done with Black Eyed Susan and, it’s a rare ‘adult themed’ film in terms of the discussions and ideas explored. It was a really interesting, thought provoking time I had with it and it’s a shame I don’t know anyone else who’s seen it because there are interesting conversations to be had. Probably approach with caution if you want to be in a comfortable head space but, for all you movie warriors out there, maybe jump right in and see if you can swim.

*Okay. Yup, it’s arrived now.