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Montreal courtroom is booked for April determine whether a local filmmaker's
graphic horror flick is obscene.
Remy Couture faces obscenity charges for creating Inner Depravity,
a short film series depicting gory scenes of murder and sexual assault.
The goal was to reproduce the deviant mind of a serial killer,
said Couture, a special effects make-up artist who's worked on films such as
Barney's Version.
The series, which once won most deranged movie of the year at a
film festival, was posted online in 2005 and was eventually forwarded to
Interpol and police in Montreal.
According to a statement on Couture's website, Interpol was alerted to
the film series by a German web surfer who was under the impression that the
on-screen murders actually occurred. Police arrested Couture and raided his
studio.
Couture maintains that he created the series to flex his skills as a
make-up artist who got his professional start in the horror genre. The
website featuring his project was only available to web surfers above the
age of 18, he said in a statement. You can see the same thing in big
budget movies so why mine is worse than the others, I don't understand,
he told CTV Montreal.
Police charged Couture with production of obscene material, mainly for
his depictions of graphic sexual violence. The charges, however, have drawn
criticism from fans and some in the artistic community. He pushed some
boundaries because it is shocking with what you can see, but it's in an
artistic way, said Alexandre Duguay, a movie critic and horror
aficionado.
Couture's lawyer Veronique Robert said this is the first time she's seen
someone face obscenity charges for the content of a horror film. Previous
obscenity cases have dealt with pornography.
Couture's trial will begin in front of a jury in late April, three years
after his arrest.