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CSI JERUSALEM
Sorry for the lack of blog postings, but the Filmmaker staff has been busy crunching on the next issue of the magazine, which is slated to go to the printer this week.
In the meantime, I got this interesting press release from the folks at Feral House, the scabrous L.A. publisher who can always be counted on for ghoulish esoterica. However, given the various marketing tie-in’s — plastic stakes? — that The Passion of the Christ has already produced, the reissue described below seems almost tame.
“Feral House, publisher of The X-Rated Bible and Apocalypse Culture,, issued the gruesome Catholic martyrology, Tortures and Torments of the Christian Matyrs, back in 1989. This irreverent release, complete with illustrations by contemporary artists and murderers, also contained a medical investigation into the Crucifixion (reprinted with permission from the Journal of the American Medical Association), a scholarly article evidently appropriated by none other than Mel Gibson for his bloody meditation on Jesus.
“Says Peter J. Boyer in the 9/15/03 issue of The New Yorker: ‘Gibson seems to have relied heavily upon On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ, which describes the Roman tools of punishment, the choreography of the infliction, and its severity. All these elements are directly reflected in Gibson’s film.’
“In recognition of The Passion of The Christ, Feral House has re-released the bloody martyrology, complete with On the Physical Death of Jesus Christ, the entirety of the 16th-century martyrology with its original engravings, combined with illustrations executed specifically for the Feral House edition by fine artists, underground cartoonists, tattooists and murderers.
” ‘Blasphemous and obscene… [caters] to the gags-and-whips crowd… Something to offend almost everyone.’ — Los Angeles Times
“More information available at Feral House.”
