Worth: $15.00
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Cast:
Edwin Borsheim, Rikk Agnew
Intro:
...a perceptive look at a man in constant psychological crisis...
In the annals of shock rock, Edwin Borsheim, lead singer of Californian extreme metal band Kettle Cadaver, is a relatively unknown commodity. Now, thanks to the work of young Australian filmmaker, Jai Love, he is immortal. Whether that’s for the best is an exercise left to the viewer – suffice to say, once encountered, Borsheim is difficult to forget.
Combining to-camera interviews with archival concert footage, Dead Hands Dig Deep is a portrait of the artist as a young psychopath. A profoundly damaged man from an almost indescribably abusive background, Borsheim used his work with Kettle Cadaver to process and express his issues – which means, in this case, on stage self-mutilation of the most extreme kind, exhorting his fans to commit suicide, violence and, in one memorable case, sexual congress with a dead coyote. One concert got shut down after just 26 seconds, which is surely some kind of record.
However, that was back in the ’90s. When we meet the Borsheim of today, his band scattered, he’s a lonely, alienated figure, holed up in his desert compound, surrounded by grotesque memorabilia and horrifying artifacts (skeletons, animal parts, homemade weapons and torture implements) and largely abandoned by the world. Interviews with friend and former bandmates hammer home the impression that Borsheim’s insistence of always going to the most extreme lengths possible in his life, art and violence have left him with no travelling companions, even in the often shocking world of extreme metal. His current existence, alone in his hand-built house of horrors with only the effigy of ex-wife, Christian Death’s Eva O, for company, is a singularly sad yet strangely noble one; with the world holding no place for him, he has built a world of his own, and if no one would want to share it with him, then so be it.
There’s a lot to shock the audience here, and many viewers will no doubt be drawn to Dead Hands Dig Deep by the promise of extreme, outre imagery, but this is, at heart, a humane and sympathetic film. Edwin Borsheim is probably not a person you’d want ’round for dinner, but it’s impossible not to be moved by the depth of his pain and his clear inability to express it in any more socially acceptable form. Dead Hands Dig Deep could have been a shallow freak show; instead, it’s a perceptive look at a man in constant psychological crisis trying to make sense of what must be a torturous existence.
Slamdance is releasing Dead Hands Dig Deep on iTunes from September 15, 2017
