When Troma announced their titles for Cannes 2005, the film which stuck out the most for me was Beg!  Something about the artwork, the description of the film, and the fact that the film was made in 1994 and took eleven years to finally hit distribution in the US (and it was about the same time for the UK release, which only preceded the Troma release by a few years) intrigued me.  When I finally got to see the film, I was bit let down from the high expectations I had, but upon a second viewing, I discovered that Beg! is an incredibly surreal and visually stunning feature.

Based on the play by David Glass, Beg! takes place at the decrepit St. Caninus hospital, where Dr. Penelope Second (Peta Lily), the head of the Women's Ward, has made some very startling discoveries.  Her father has been taking a drug from the hospital that had only been tested on rats and as a result, finds himself in a coma.  This is even worse for Penelope, as her father was a senior member of the hospital's staff  and was the only thing keeping the board from cutting the funding for her ward, which is already overcrowded and forced to turn away many of the ill.  Soon, a series of murders start taking place at St. Caninus, in a most peculiar fashion - a killer is sedating both his victim and a small dog, then sewing the dog into the stomach, causing quite a gory surprise for those who happen to be there when both awake.  The hospital's Big Brother-esque head of security then puts Detective Stiltskin (Philip Pellew) on the case, but his method of sending orders to Stiltskin via an earpiece and hearing his every move on a microphone implanted on his tooth, soon effects his sanity, as does his growing obsession with Penelope.

The first thing you'll notice about Beg! is how visually stunning the film is.  The visuals of the film are reminiscent of the style of Dario Argento, mixed with a bit David Lynch's Blue Velvet, though expressed through an entirely different tone by director Robert Golden. Golden pumps so much eerie imagery and colorful lighting techniques into the film that brings a twisted artistic appeal to this mind-bending thriller. Scenes which take place in the hospital's ballroom are some of the visual highlight of the film, where a woman singing to the doctors sings, almost in cries of pain, while the doctors gladly go about their folly.  The corridors of the hallway are also lit with long colored fluorescent light bulbs, with bright hues gleaming from the walls as well.  The whole film is truly a stunning sight to behold.

The cast of Beg! is incredible and it's amazing to see how well they pull off making such a surrealistic, borderline absurdist view of life work properly to present the story.  Which leads us to the only real problem of Beg!: the story tends to take the backseat to the wealth of impressive visuals.  It feels almost like the artistic appeal of the film stands in front of it's bizarre storyline at times and leaves too much up to the viewer to decipher what exactly is going on.  However, this flaw almost rectifies itself, as the confusion adds to the twisted, surreal, and occasionally absurd tone of the film.  But on the other hand, one might question what Golden was trying to say with his film.  Was it commentary on sexism, considering that Penelope is standing up against the hospital board, which is entirely male or was it just focused on poor quality of health care?  I don't know for sure, but that's part of the charm of Beg!: you're not quite sure what you're watching and it's open for interpretation with almost required additional viewings.

While it may not be a film that everyone can accept, due to it's decidedly artistically focused nature, but Beg! comes highly recommended by me.  It's not surprising that a film as subversive and downright bizarre as Beg! took eleven years to finally find distribution, after being in film festivals worldwide, including Edinburgh and, believe it or not, Sundance, but it's another testament to Troma's devotion to art.  Pick up Beg!, especially if you're a fan of surrealist cinema.