‘Frisk’: Serious, Dark Mix of Sex and Death

The novels of Dennis Cooper, with their relentless exploration of the extreme juncture of sex and death, have got to be among the most challenging to film, yet Todd Verow has brought Cooper’s “Frisk” to the screen with much impact and equal seriousness.

Verow and his collaborators intimate every kind of sadomasochistic activity but show just enough to allow us to complete the most terrifying images in our imagination. Yet by not depicting what Cooper describes in such compulsive detail Verow creates on the screen the same disturbing effect “Frisk” produces on the page.

Clean-cut, well-built Michael Gunther stars as Dennis, a young gay man who has been haunted by the memory of a series of snuff photos he saw in adolescence. Dennis and his friends all engage in frequent, casual sex, some of it kinky, but Dennis always is captivated by the desire to go further. By the time he hires a porn actor/hustler (Michael Stock) for sex he tells the man: “I’d like to know everything about you, but to do that I’d have to kill you.” So far Dennis restricts such desires to fantasy, but you wonder if and when he’ll cross over a deadly line.

“Frisk” is sensual and suggestive, but it is a serious and discreet work of considerable dark impact--and no little humor. Punctuated with strobe flashes of layered S&M; images, it unfolds in an elliptical style and downbeat mood amid largely impersonal, nondescript rooms, mainly in San Francisco.

It raises the unsettling question of the role pornography and the media in shaping an individual’s psyche, yet rightly retains an aura of ambiguity right to the end. The power of the film and the power of Cooper’s novels is their ability to persuade us to acknowledge rather than deny a human being’s capacity for unleashing the utmost savagery upon another human being, who on a certain level may actually acquiesce or even crave such treatment.

Unlike dark, punkish, no-budget movies, “Frisk” is well-written and acted. Along with Gunther, other key players are Raoul O’Connell and Jaie Laplante as two savvy brothers, longtime friends of Dennis. James Lyons and Parker Posey are among Dennis’ sadist pals, and Craig Chester is a hapless man with a need for rough sex.

* MPAA rating: Unrated. Times guidelines: The film has some nudity, strong language, scenes suggesting S&M; activities and is best left to adults.

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‘Frisk’

Michael Gunther: Dennis

Craig Chester: Henry

Parker Posey: Ferguson

James Lyons: Pete

A Strand Releasing presentation of an Industrial Eye production. Director-editor Todd Verow. Producers Marcus Hu and Jon Gerrans. Executive producer George LaVoo. Screenplay by George LaVoo, James Dwyer and Todd Verow; based on the novel by Dennis Cooper. Cinematographer Greg Watkins. Sound and music designer Mark Jan Wlodarkiewicz. Featuring music by Coil, Lee Ranaldo, Elph, New E-Z Devils, Octarine. Production designer Jennifer Graber. Art director Deborah A. Hohenberg. Running time: 1 hour, 23 minutes.

* Exclusively at Sunset 5, 8400 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (213) 848-3500.