‘The Bliss’ (2018) Short Film Review

Underground cult filmmaker James Bell has been knocking out some cool, surreal low budget films to grace this toilet earth lately. Hailing from Michigan, Bell has an endless number of horror shorts under his belt, including Nutsack, Phantom Of The Demon, Manuer, Lucifer’s Cosmonauts, Tantrum and Dog Dick. Let’s not forget his self taught and equally amazing FX pieces used in Brad Twiggs’ Wrestlemassacre (read our review here), as well as the creations he made for filmmaker James Quinn in Flesh Of The Void (read our review here) and Joe Meredith’s South Mill District (read our review here). Now, we’ve got a new film from Bell called The Bliss that we can sink our bloody teeth into.

Poster artwork for The Bliss

Bell has developed a solid following of fans and is also known for selling some of the prosthetics from his films. He also received some notoriety for his too real FX pieces which were featured on an episode of Dr. Phil. You can also check out Bell’s foray into music with his band Kids Kill Kids, which shows him delving deeper into the music he has been composing for his films and beyond for a number of years. 

Still from The Bliss

The Bliss is a 23-minute, gore-filled rancid acid trip. The film features a decrepit figure in a wheelchair and its journey in finding a female partner to partake in some beyond imaginable sexual mutilation practices. The close-up shots featuring female and male genitalia, plus a very uncomfortable mutilation of a woman’s special place, will have uninitiated stomachs churning with rancid juices. There are some incredibly twisted and imaginative scenes of utter perversion in The Bliss that will leave jaws dropping so wide you could drive an 18-wheeler through them. 

Still from The Bliss

As always, Bell’s wife, Mae Bell, is along for the ride in this nightmarish vision filled with sexually gruesome hijinks. Bell delivers on his visions of extreme gore and weirdness in ways similar indie filmmakers can only dream of. He is creating his films for him and his fans the way he wants, with no compromise, and we applaud him for that.

You can purchase prosthetics and props, crazy flesh and vagina-bound editions of his films and his regular film catalog on his Store Envy site under his company, Very Fine Crap Videos. If the current horror genre is boring you and you love no budget insanity with amazing practical effects, then I recommend checking out The Bliss, as well as Nutsack, which is one of my favorite films from Bell. Nutsack is a whole bunch of crazy and gory tomfoolery and entertaining as hell. All of his stuff is solid gold and worth its weight in brain-disintegrating madness. 

About Richard Taylor

Avid gore/horror/underground/brutal death metal/comic fiend. Got into the good stuff in the nineties by tape trading the likes of Violent Shit, Cannibal Holocaust, Cannibal Apocalypse, The Beyond, Guinea Pig series, Men Behind The Sun etc. Have written for a bunch of sites some now defunct and some still going such as Violent Maniacs Cage, ZFE Films With Attitude, Mortado's Pages Of Filth, Severed Cinema, Goregasmic Cinema, Extreme Horror Cinema and Twisted Minds.

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