Final Flesh
Entry updated 24 August 2026. Tagged: Film, People.
US film (2009). PFFR. Playa's Entertainment, PornForThePeople. Directed by Ike Sanders (and uncredited others). Written by Vernon Chatman. Cast largely uncredited, but includes Kesha, Melvin and Yvonne. 71 minutes. Colour.
A contender for the title of strangest Post-Holocaust film ever made, and a rare example of an sf film that is also a genuine conceptual art object, as well as being one long absurd joke (see Absurdist SF). Comics and Television writer Chatman, best known for the animated series Wonder Showzen (2005-2006) and for voice and writing work on South Park (1997-current), sent scripts to four different porn companies, who specialize in custom-made films in which they act out submitted fantasies and produce one-off films in return. Instead of explicit sexual activity, he supplied surreal scenarios featuring families surviving after a nuclear bomb has dropped. A woman gives birth to meat and other food items, another lays an egg, one family "bathes in the tears of neglected children", a man in convinced he is a baby, another woman performs a wedding ceremony for corpses, and so on, while characters are also holding nonsensical debates about God, death and the end of it all, and the threat of incest is ever present.
The four different companies vary in professionalism, and the gusto with which they take on the challenge, some not inappropriately listlessly, others with considerable comic timing. Indeed, while watching it is hard not to wonder what they made of the scenarios they were supplied with. However flagrantly unrealistic, by never breaking from a deadpan straight-faced delivery, Final Flesh captures the absurdity of post-Apocalypse survival better than most genre films, while also often being very funny. [CWa]
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