Man Bites Dog

Director: Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde

1992 / 95min / 35mm

A clear inspiration on Quentin Tarantino’s story for Natural Born Killers a few years later, this rarely screened, mordant Belgian mockumentary sees its credited co-directors do something that even Stone’s satire doesn’t, appearing in the film and effectively indicting themselves as guilty of the very transgressions it portrays. Poelvoorde plays Ben, a preening, dandyish serial killer; Belvaux and Bonzel, documentarians who first set out to document his life of thrill-killing, then gradually rising to the rank of accomplices. The film’s many macabre murders are, of course, not real, but Man Bites Dog suggests there’s something basically criminal in the leering impropriety of cinema itself.

Print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive