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The Green Elephant
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Wikipedia article
'The Green Elephant' (, also known as 'Green Elephant Calf') is a 1999 Russian psychedelic exploitation horror film directed by Svetlana Baskova. The movie received a limited theatrical release in Russia, as the film's violent imagery and graphic language made it unable to be distributed through the mainstream film circuit, and it was eventually banned within Russia in 2022. Also the film included copyrighted music which was not cleared. The film was shown at the 2005 International Film Festival Rotterdam and the program commented that the movie was "even more urgent because of the escalation of the war in Chechnya and growing criminality in the Russian army".
The film stars Sergey Pakhomov and Vladimir Epifantsev, and follows two Russian officers locked in a military prison cell that must deal with "social and psychological problems" in their isolation through brutality and torture.
Plot
Two men (both being junior officers in the Soviet Army in 1986), nicknamed "Bratishka" (Little Brother) and "Poekhavshiy" (Nutcase), are being held in a penal military prison. The room which they share looks like a dark cellar with a dripping sewer pipe running through it. One of the prisoners, Nutcase, seems to be delirious and never stops talking. He tells stories of his past, sings the song of the "Green Elephant" circus, does push-ups, comes up with crazy ideas and even mimics a heron in an attempt to cheer up his cellmate Brother, leading only to an increase in his anger. He receives a violent beating from the enraged Brother, before Brother is then taken from the cell by a guard to clean up a dirty toilet bowl with a fork.
Some time later, after Brother falls asleep, Nutcase defecates on their shared plate for eating (calling it "sweet bread"), smears feces over his abdomen and consumes a large portion of it. After doing so he offers a plate with the fecal matter to the other man right after he wakes up, and drives him mad again. Nutcase tells him that he is just giving him some food to eat with together, as he fears that the guards will not give them anything to eat. Brother angrily tells him to wash himself by the dripping pipe water, threatening Nutcase that he will kill him. The guard arrives from the screaming in the cell, and drags the infuriated Brother out to clean the toilets again. The captain arrives to the cell and lectures Nutcase on the theatre of operations of the Pacific Ocean, particularly on the names and numbers of the Japanese and American ships on Pearl Harbor. He scolds Nutcase on his incorrect answers, and orders a guard to go to the canteen to prepare a glass of tea for him and the officer. The captain tastes it, and comments "It tastes like piss", spilling its contents on the guard's head. He orders to guard to hold the glass with his teeth, instructing him to go and tell the kitchen staff that "this kind of tea will not be tolerated, ever." The guard then beats up Nutcase.
The two main characters were sent to a basement and left in a pit, where the captain subjects them to various humiliating acts. He finds the guard wetting himself, and beats with a whip to make him dance while the two are forced to quickly sing "Yablochko". Brother struggles to get out of the pit, screaming and ranting of his normality, and telling Nutcase to catch a rat for him to eat. The captain returns, and asks the two about the Northern Formation.
Taunting Brother's requests for food, the captain forces him to oral sex, to which Brother begs that Nutcase receive it instead. The captain then subjects Nutcase to oral sex, while muttering the names of the Japanese carrier ships at Pearl Harbor. Driven to insanity from this, Brother beats the captain with a pipe, and bites off his face, before sodomizing him and tearing off his trachea. He then plays with the dead captain's trachea by making the now-insane Nutcase blow it, pretending that it is an elephant's trunk.
Upon realizing that he has murdered someone, Brother swaps uniforms with Nutcase, and commits suicide by cutting his wrists. Nutcase mourns him, crying for help and muttering about his experiences with his mother. The guard arrives to the bloodied basement, and goes mad, proclaiming himself as a colonel and asking for Nutcase to accompany him as a witness to the celebrations. The guard hangs himself and makes a speech, and Nutcase knocks his chair over, causing the guard to fall and suffocate from the string. Nutcase then scoffs at the guard's corpse as he ties it up with the string and the captain's trachea. He plays with the corpse, as he goes about singing about the "Green Elephant" and thrusting on his back, before tumbling over and falling asleep.
Between the lecturing and basement scenes, several black-and-white scenes were shown about the guard as he eats his meal and drinks. There, he complains about Nutcase's and Brother's behavior affecting the prestige of the military, and he curses the captain, claiming that he will become a colonel. On the credits the guard is shown, improvising his own uniform as he continually screams "I am a colonel!".
Cast
*Sergey Pakhomov as 'Poekhavshiy' (, 'Nutcase'), the first junior officer.
*Vladimir Epifantsev as 'Bratishka' (, 'Little Brother'), the second junior officer.
*Alexander Maslaev as the 'Colonel' , the guard.
*Anatoly Osmolovsky as the 'Captain' , the head of Military prison.
*Oleg Mavromati as the captain's voice in the introduction.
Production
The film was filmed during the summer of 1999 at several locations. One of them was the basement in a house that belonged to the photographer Sergei Rodkevich, located near the Kurskaya metro station, but was demolished. Another site was the basement of an abandoned factory building in Moscow's Faleevsky Lane, which was called the "Factory of Cardinal Art" (the building at Sofiyskaya Embankment, 26/1, which currently houses the headquarters of Rosneft). The last room was discovered by musicians Alexei Tegin and Svyatoslav Ponomarev. They were later they were joined by Vladimir Epifantsev, who occupied the right side of the Factory and equipped it with his own Prok-Theater, in the basement of which the shooting took place.
On the territory of the "Factory", they found overcoats in which the characters of the film put on, and a plate used as props. Some of the costumes were provided by Alexander Malyshev. The "Corridor" scenes, with the participation of the character Alexander Maslayev, were in the underpass of one of the Moscow metro stations. No investments were required for the arrangement of the film set. According to Sergei Pakhomov, the film could have been made "only in that cheap style".
Oleg Mavromati, the film's producer, admitted in an interview that he used "something like brainwashing in a sect" to convince the actors to "play the right way". According to him, people did not want to risk their lives (Maslaev did not want to hang himself) and health (Osmolovsky was afraid of getting infected from blood and intestines) or reputation (Epifantsev / Pakhomov were afraid of infamy ... homosexuality) and one had to be cunning ... setting a personal example also worked ... if someone did not want, for example, to drink blood, then I did it first.
The task of Svetlana Baskova as a director, according to Pakhomov, "was to correct improvisational flows" due to the very high degree of improvisation in the film, and the film itself "dictated the production process". The actors did not rehearse - according to Alexei Tegin, "being in this basement, such dialogues are natural ... there was total improvisation, which is good".
The blood used in the last scenes was brought from a real slaughterhouse. Real blood from the slaughterhouse, real feces said Mavromati, who said that Maslaev actually tried to hang himself and was barely brought back to life. To imitate feces the Slivochnoye Poleno desert was used.
The film was shot on an amateur (S-VHS, DV-cam) video camera. According to one version, the name of the film is taken from the song of the same name by Pakhomov, written specifically for the film, however, Mavromati claims that the title of the film came from another film - 'Pink Flamingos', under the influence of which 'The Green Elephant' was partly filmed
In the Cult of Cinema program on the Russia-K TV channel, Baskova noted that the film, in a certain sense, was conceived as a protest against the Chechen War.
Reception
'HorrorNews.net' wrote an overall favorable review for the film, stating "By the end, we find ourselves asking a lot of questions; of ourselves, of the director, of our television screens. What did we just watch? Why did these people do what we just them do? What does it all mean? I can't answer those questions, but I can tell you that it is an experience that I am happy to have gone through, and I'd definitely be interested in checking out more of Svetlana Baskova's movies."
This film is banned for distribution in Belarus.
On 6 May 2022 it was announced that 'The Green Elephant' is banned in Russia due to the film's graphic violence. The film, and any distribution of it, was banned by the government, which said that the movie's scenes were harmful to young people's mental health.[https://www.cybersport.ru/other/news/film-zelenyi-slonik-zapretili-v-rossii ], Cybersport.ru
Legacy
'The Green Elephant' has gradually gained a cult following since 2010, in which quotes from the movie were used for trolling multiplayer servers. It has also become the subject of various fan-made music videos and YouTube Poops, mocking the characters' bizarre behaviours.
Remake
On January 5, 2017, Vladimir Epifantsev posted on his Instagram account that he has started working on a remake of the film, known as "Operation ZS" ( ZS), in which he and Sergei Pakhomov will reprise their roles.However as of 2022 there have been no further news regarding a potential remake.
References
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