'The Cinema of Transgression' was a small underground film scene in New York.Richard Kern along with Nick Zedd were the most prominent and widely known directors from that scene."Fingered" is possibly Richard Kern's most shocking and unsettling short film.It features punk rock queen Lydia Lunch as the phone sex operator.After a violent and explicit sexual encounter with one of her phone sex clients,the two set out on a rampage of murder,brutality and attempted rape leaving the viewer aroused and disgusted."Fingered" is mildly shocking by today's standards,but having seen such fare like "August Underground's Mordum","Scrapbook" or "Niku Daruma" I wasn't particularly offended.Still if you like them nasty and violent you won't be disappointed.7 out of 10.
11 Reviews
Throat-squeezing anarchistic
RobJ-24 October 1999
I saw this movie unexpected on public (!) television while I was zapping through the channels and I was captured at once. What was this? A sex movie? No... But it had some sex scenes. A fighting movie? No... But it had a lot of violence. A documentary? No... But everything seemed so realistic. This was a very anarchistic, brutal, throat-squeezing movie that grabbed my attention instantly. You really hope that it will never be reality that there are persons on the street like that and yet.... if you are really honest, it thrills you to see it happen (on screen).
Art or not? Your pick.
Horst_In_Translation12 February 2016
Warning: Spoilers
"Fingered" is an American 25-minute short film directed by Richard Kern and written by him together with his muse Lydia Lunch, who also plays the main character. The film is entirely in black-and-white and was one of Kern's earlier efforts, though not very early. It is very explicit and I am not talking about the frequent use of the F-word here, but about graphic sexuality and violence. During one scene for example, one man very randomly cuts another man's throat. And there is rape involved too. People's arguments in favor of this film include that crimes happen in reality too and this is just a realistic film. I agree mostly. However, the ending is pretty unrealistic with the woman apparently fleeing from another sex offender and she runs into two homicidal maniacs. Too much of a coincidence really. Anyway, all in all, not that great of a watch, even if it is not a failure either. However, seeing this mediocre work is probably Kern's most famous; i have little to no desire to check out further works from his filmography. Thumbs down.
This Film Really Should Have Been Titled 'Fisted'
Seamus282920 December 2008
Richard Kern (or R.Kern as he is better known as)has never made it easy for audiences to warm up to his films. He refers his films as "cinema of the transgressive". The plot concerns punk singer/performance artist, Lydia Lunch (who also co-wrote the screenplay)as a phone sex woman,who's encounter with one of her customers,ends up in a day that's one bum trip after another. What follows is a truly ugly exercise in explicit sex,murder,near murder,rape,statutory rape,a endless supply of raunchy language,etc. The obvious point of this film is what monsters some men could be (and are). No rating,but is saddled with a self contained 'X' rating on the DVD case (as well as on the old VHS video box),as it possibly couldn't earn less than an NC-17,if rated by the MPAA.
Disturbing and gut-wrenching cinema
rwagn31 December 2011
Warning: Spoilers
This one rates a 10 because it pulls no punches. The first time I saw this on a bootlegged VHS I couldn't believe what I was watching. This short film (35 minutes) plays out like a low budget documentary.If it weren't for the killings I would venture to say that most of what is being seen is actually happening. Lydia is up to the task (and genuinely seems surprised) when her client graphically porks her poop chute and later on "fingers" her with a gun barrel.I recommend that you purchase the R.Kern short film collection called "Hardcore". Along with "Fingered" there are so many more disturbing shorts to be found there. Be advised this film is not for everyone but if you like your art hot and nasty and shocking you can't go wrong here.
Kern's short masterpiece
StevePulaski30 April 2015
Fingered, from what I've seen so far, is Richard Kern's masterpiece, ranking alongside The Sewing Circle and You Killed Me First. No matter how you slice it, the short is a wickedly devilish representation of punk-rock pornography and has gone on to be a much loved piece of work by the cult director John Waters. We open by focusing on a phone sex operator (played by the gorgeous Lydia Lunch), who, we see, leads a life of tending to the perversions and fetishes of her callers, one in particular loving the idea of mother/son incest. Upon engaging in one successful call with another depraved soul, Lunch's character finds herself taken under the wing of another punk-rocker (Marty Nation) and the two engage in rough sex and an ill-behaved road trip, acting as if they're Bonnie and Clyde.
Lunch and Nation form a hilarious dynamic, as the two try to one up each other in their depravities, and Lunch's repeated acts to break free of Nation's violence also had a recurring element of fright to the picture. The no-budget aesthetic of Kern's, mixing very grainy black and white with a thrash metal soundtrack, assists in making this film look as visually grimy as possible, as if the events in the film weren't dirty and perverse enough. Finally, the sex in the film transcends eroticism into pure horror and rough unpredictability, as if Kern, who has already made very arousing shorts like The Bitches, is now trying to subvert sex into a more horrific sight than a pleasant one.
Fingered is messy and vile, but it's those traits that make it so watchable and so intoxicating as a short. Like most works of Kern, it contains visuals you can't unsee and material that you would've never believed to exist, if you were strange enough to ever even think of it in the first place.
Starring: Lydia Lunch and Marty Nation. Directed by: Richard Kern.
Lunch and Nation form a hilarious dynamic, as the two try to one up each other in their depravities, and Lunch's repeated acts to break free of Nation's violence also had a recurring element of fright to the picture. The no-budget aesthetic of Kern's, mixing very grainy black and white with a thrash metal soundtrack, assists in making this film look as visually grimy as possible, as if the events in the film weren't dirty and perverse enough. Finally, the sex in the film transcends eroticism into pure horror and rough unpredictability, as if Kern, who has already made very arousing shorts like The Bitches, is now trying to subvert sex into a more horrific sight than a pleasant one.
Fingered is messy and vile, but it's those traits that make it so watchable and so intoxicating as a short. Like most works of Kern, it contains visuals you can't unsee and material that you would've never believed to exist, if you were strange enough to ever even think of it in the first place.
Starring: Lydia Lunch and Marty Nation. Directed by: Richard Kern.
Disturbing & Realistic
zipzilla22 March 2002
If you haven't seen a Richard Kern short film then it's time to get disturbed! Black and white, low budget filming techniques help emphasize the ugliness of the graphic rape scene. It's not graphic in an erotic porn film manner -more like ugh I don't think I should be watching this.
A Simple Lydia... With Simple Desires!
ectoplasmicspace15 August 2001
This film is trashy, but I love it! Enough said!
If you like "hardcore" crassness... equipped with Lydia Lunch getting gunf***ed... this is a great 35 minutes of poop! If you dont want to be offended, keep watching the Jerry Springer show! HAH!
If you like "hardcore" crassness... equipped with Lydia Lunch getting gunf***ed... this is a great 35 minutes of poop! If you dont want to be offended, keep watching the Jerry Springer show! HAH!
A disturbing but yet fascinating film from the 80's underground.
edwardsbwwjoe1 October 2015
Warning: Spoilers
I'm actually reviewing the DVD "Richard Kern's Hardcore Collection".It seems as though there's very little information available on IMDb about Richard Kern's films.I understand that his work is still considered very underground,and it of course is not slick Hollywood fare by any means,but these shorts and videos represent a time in American culture when the punk rock ethos was seeping into films as well as music.I think that anyone interested in the history of film would at the very least find this DVD culturally significant.In the mid eighties I hung out at this amazing club that showed underground films in the basement."Fingered",and "Right side of my brain" were shown regularly,and they burned into my brain.Rediscovering them all these year's later is mind blowing!
Unmusical
tedg4 April 2005
Around the time this was made, I went to a "modern" concert. The "musicians" merely beat some members of the audience with their instruments. There was noise, there were instruments and people calling themselves musicians. Was it music?
Concept art has to be clever and profound, or possibly overwhelming or enchantingly strange. Just giving the audience the finger shouldn't be enough. This is a film only accidentally, a camera only happened to be the handy instrument.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
Concept art has to be clever and profound, or possibly overwhelming or enchantingly strange. Just giving the audience the finger shouldn't be enough. This is a film only accidentally, a camera only happened to be the handy instrument.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.
A bad review of a terrible film...
mesbrother1 December 2004
All the while that I watched this film, I kept thinking that it was perfect for a liberal college male who was just DYING to look at something pornographic, but didn't want to offend his feminist masters in school and at the local cafe. So he purchased the home video "Hardcore," a compilation of Richard Kern's films, to get what he really wanted while appearing as though he was a student of underground art. Deep, in other words, pushing the envelope, blah blah blah...
And if the bloke isn't too particular about what the woman in the feature looks like, then Lydia Lunch is his dream date.
The film is grainy, low-low budget, and grotesque. Sometimes a filmmaker who needs a few hundred hours of intense psychotherapy simply puts his nightmarish fantasies in a short film to hopefully inspire others to suffer from the same psychosis that he has. Kern definitely fits the bill, and so does "Fingered."
The way that Lung Leg is treated at the end is the perfect metaphor for how any sane audience member feels after seeing this rubbish. I wish that they had done it to Kern instead.
And if the bloke isn't too particular about what the woman in the feature looks like, then Lydia Lunch is his dream date.
The film is grainy, low-low budget, and grotesque. Sometimes a filmmaker who needs a few hundred hours of intense psychotherapy simply puts his nightmarish fantasies in a short film to hopefully inspire others to suffer from the same psychosis that he has. Kern definitely fits the bill, and so does "Fingered."
The way that Lung Leg is treated at the end is the perfect metaphor for how any sane audience member feels after seeing this rubbish. I wish that they had done it to Kern instead.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
