VICE sits down with British politician and humanitarian David Miliband to talk about his work at the International Rescue Committee, the state of affairs in the world now, and the role of the international community in humanitarian crises.

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I moved to London from Greece in May 2014, hungry for stories from the capital of Europe. In my mind, London was a metropolis—a financial center as well as a birthplace of art and fashion. Soon, I realized that the city was also quirkier than I imagined.

I was walking around Camden Town on a sunny Sunday morning, when I saw the boathouses parked along the riverside. For the next few weeks, I wondered what it would be like to live in one of those boats but also why on Earth anyone would chose to do that in the first place.

I started looking into the subject just before last Christmas. While tracking down the boats was rather easy, talking to the boaters was not. They don't have a permanent address or wifi, so it's hard to track these guys down.

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After a bit of digging, I found Yann—a young musician who also works in the entertainment industry. We went out for couple of drinks and chatted about the difficulties of living in London and our future plans. Meeting Yann made me even more curious about life on the boats. A few weeks later, he invited me to his houseboat for tea and some photos. I was in. In the following days, I was introduced to other boaters who were happy to be photographed for my project.

Every one of them had a unique story. My favorite subjects were Andy and Emily, a young couple who met when Emily was studying in Manchester. When she decided to move to London—where rents are soaring—she decided to rent a boat as it would be cheaper than a flat. It turned out to be more exciting too. For Andy and Emily, living on a boat is a lifestyle choice, not a last resort.

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Similarly, Marie-Ann and her husband decided to leave the apartment they had been living in for 15 years, randomly, during a slightly drunken night. They bought their boat on eBay.

London's Water Hippies is potentially an ongoing project. However, I have no idea where I'll be in two months time. Between March 21–24, my work will be exhibited in NEC in Birmingham as part of Magnum Photos' 30 Under 30 exhibition, which looks at the best emerging documentary photographers internationally. Besides that, unfortunately my future as a photographer seems uncertain—who knows when the next opportunity will come along?

See more of Anna's work here.

Gunmaker Richard Giza with a schematic of his recoil-free rifle. Photo by the author

At the turn of the millennium, an amateur gunsmith living in Australia claimed to have achieved the impossible. To the quiet amusement of weapons engineers around the world, Richard Giza, the Polish co-founder of Recoilless Technologies International, announced that he'd built a mechanism that eliminated recoil from firearms.

Recoil is the kickback felt when firing a gun. The stronger the gun, the bigger the pulse and the greater the chance of hitting something other than your target. To those in the weapons industry, eliminating it would be a Holy Grail scenario, leading to better accuracy and larger payloads. In terms of achievability, it's up there with nailing cold fusion and inventing time travel.

This didn't bother RTI. By 2001, the company was briefing Australian defense scientists and working alongside gun manufacturers like Glock and Beretta. In January 2006 Peter Dunn, an Australian retired major general, told the Age newspaper that RTI had "the potential to fundamentally transform the way ballistic weapons are deployed." The firm was sitting on millions in investment dollars, its success all but assured.

Fast-forward to December 2013, and Giza was starving himself on the steps of Melbourne's Parliament House. This was a hunger strike, and it wasn't his first. Giza's company was being liquidated and every vestige of his illustrious future had come undone. He and his colleagues had, in a sense, shot themselves in the foot.

Giza was born in western Poland in March 1955. His earliest memories are of his father conspiring with Poland's underground anti-communist resistance, the Z.ołnierze Wykle'ci, or Doomed Soldiers. "I would stay awake and listen," he says of his dad's secret meetings. "The idea of revolution was normal for me, and that's just how I grew up."

In 1967 his father's branch of the Doomed Soldiers came undone, forcing the family to settle in Australia, where Giza had an uncle. And while late-60s Melbourne was livelier than Soviet-era Poland, the future inventor kept to himself. "The other boys would go to discotheques while I'd stay home to read text books," he recalls. "Military magazines, physics, and technology—that's all I cared about." At the age of 13 he read about Leonardo da Vinci's design for a recoilless cannon, and it stuck in his imagination.

The next 25 years passed without incident. Giza married, had children, and worked a series of shitty jobs in both Poland and Australia. He continued to read about ballistics technology and play around with numbers, equations, and designs, but it never went further than theory.

Then, in 1992, when Giza was working at a Melbourne metals foundry, he fell out with the union and management sacked him. Unemployment is a hard knock for any father, but Giza met it by staging a hunger strike against the government, which he blamed for his situation. "I was thinking of my favorite hero, Mahatma Gandhi, and he'd done things like that," he explains, grinning. "Actually we'd done things like that in Poland too, but much shorter."

The strike worked and City Council found him a job, but he and his wife divorced. "My wife and kids always suffered because of my revolutionary activities. We were together and separated, then together again, then finally separated, but people can't stop you from fighting for your rights."

The next hunger strike came in 1996. That year a mentally handicapped loner named Martin Bryant shot 35 people in Tasmania, and the Australian government banned a wide range of weapons. "Disarmament! The government wanted to leave people unable to defend themselves," Giza recalls, still incredulous. He commenced another hunger strike on the steps of Parliament, and made a decision to pursue his oldest passion: firearms. Since 13 he'd dreamed of small weapons with immense payloads—handguns that fire 20mm rounds and aircraft that pack the wallop of tanks. Since he was jobless and single, he had more time than ever.

Giza sold his house and rented a workshop. The problem of recoil lies in the fact that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. A bullet explodes forward and something has to go backward. Giza's thinking was that if a gun's backward recoil were split into two opposing directions, backward and forward, the weapon could remain stable in the middle. This would happen if an equal amount of exploding gas were forced forward as back, causing two spring-loaded components of the gun to separate from the center. In his own words, "the gun is effectively being blown apart and the bullet leaves as a side effect." By 1998, after two years of refurbishing a .22 magnum, he had a working prototype.

Joseph Vella is a stocky Maltese mechanic who owned the garage next door. By some twist of fate, he was a shooting enthusiast who, as Giza recalls, "would always say hello and have lots of questions." When asked to remember the first time he saw the gun, Vella's eyes light up. "I couldn't believe it," he says. "I knew right away."

The pair went into business and incorporated RTI on March 23, 2000. By Giza's estimate, they received $9 million in investments over the decade, but Singapore's interest was the kicker. Several members of the country's defense ministry visited RTI's workshop in 1999, which is a moment captured on YouTube. You can see the officials watching a modified Mauser 98 bolt-action rifle suspended by four free-hanging steel cables. A shot is fired and the rifle sways gently in the wires. There's no jolt.

Giza (right) with a protester at an anti-government hunger strike. Photo by Jonathan Sheehan

Noting Singapore's interest, the Australian military signed a non-disclosure agreement with RTI, asking the firm to brief its scientists. A similar deal with Poland followed. This inspired discussions with the German manufacturer Glock, after which Vella used his shooting contacts to hash out a collaborative deal with Beretta. Vella also claims that an executive from United Defense (which became part of BAE Systems) visited them in the mid 2000s and later admitted that he was there to steal RTI's designs.

Despite the innovative technology, Giza and Vella's business decisions were unwaveringly abysmal. In 2004 the Australian Securities and Investments Commission discovered that RTI had raised their initial capital from Vella's friends and family without legislated disclosures on risk. They deemed this "misleading or deceptive" and forced the company to return $600,000 in funds or shares.

After this debacle, Giza and Vella sought to get RTI some business acumen with a smooth-talking director by the name of Andrew Flanagan. But exactly five months later Flanagan initiated legal proceedings to have the company shut down. An investigation by the Australian later found Flanagan was a repeat con artist wanted by several governments around the world.

RTI somehow survived, only to report an operational loss of $2.7 million in 2006, trailed by a $4.8 million loss the following year. According to Giza, the company's R&D simply cost more than they raised, but Valla is far more forthcoming: "It was our board treating themselves, flying everywhere first class." This all came to a head in 2007 when most of the company's investors walked, leaving the founders to go down with the ship. The end came in 2009, when Giza was diagnosed with colon cancer. By the time he'd beaten it, RTI had lost everything.

In December 2013, Giza and Vella applied for government welfare. "We had no money for food," Giza explains. "And Joseph can't write, so I had to fill in his forms." This led to a heated argument with the welfare officer, and the two men were escorted from the building. A few days later, Giza was back on Parliament's steps for his third hunger strike. For three months he lived on nothing but salt, sugar, and water, losing 92 pounds in the process. Finally the government relented and has paid for his hostel lodging ever since.

"What was it all about?" Giza repeats my last question with a certain smugness, like he anticipated my asking it. "Forget about money," he says. "It's about solving problems created by motion." I think he means motion in a physics sense, but it's an ambiguous statement. Maybe Richard Giza just likes a fight.

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Africville during World War II. Photo via Flickr user Ross Dunn

Half a century after the City of Halifax bulldozed Africville—a small community in the north end of the city made up almost entirely of black Nova Scotians—the case is going back to court.

On February 25, a group of former Africville residents is taking the city to court seeking individual compensation. If a Supreme Court of Nova Scotia judge allows the case to go forward, it will affect people across Canada with roots in Africville.

Of all of Canada's racist urban planning initiatives, the city's ham-fisted relocation of the African-Nova Scotian suburb was one of the worst. Between 1962 and 1970, city officials took the land and demolished Africville residents' homes, businesses, and a church in a process city documents called "slum clearance."

"It was really damaging," Tony Smith, who grew up in Africville and was appointed spokesperson for the families, told VICE.

"What I know is the city basically—and this comes with race—they seen this community up in the north end and they thought it was an eyesore and they didn't want it to be there anymore and they just wanted to get rid of it," he said.

"They knew they could abuse their authority, it didn't matter what anybody says—they were just going to take it," he continued. "They did it very well, and they did it by a lie. We as a people have been saying that they stole our land, and they did it illegally. They lied about different things, and we've been saying that forever, but now we're going to be able to prove it in a court of law."

The appeal only has the support of about a third of former residents or their estates, with most accepting a 2010 settlement with the city. While that agreement paid out $5 million from three levels of government toward the community and included a formal apology, it did not include any individual compensation. For the community that Smith represents, that settlement doesn't make up for what the city took from them.

The city wanted the ground under Africville for a few reasons: they considered it valuable industrial land, they wanted to build a new bridge, and the planning concept of "urban renewal"—essentially flattening an existing urban area and building it up again from scratch—was popular at the time.

In the early 1960s, the city commissioned two reports on whether to move the community. The authors recommended relocation due to the suburb's underdeveloped nature—a situation created in part by the city itself.

It's often said that where the pavement ended, Africville began. The community had dirt roads and no sidewalks, and the city neglected to extend basic services, including running water and sewer pipes, to the suburb. The city also approved industrial hazards in and around Africville: a slaughterhouse, a fertilizer plant, human waste disposal pits, an infectious disease hospital, and an open dump.

But despite the hazards and lack of running water, Africville was home. In several meetings leading up to the relocation, the community unanimously stated they wanted to stay put. Halifax's mayor, Charles Vaughan, assured them the city would make the process as "painless as possible."

It was far from painless.

Officials "threatened, pressured and forced the Africville residents to agree to the compensation being offered by the City of Halifax" and paid them arbitrary sums for their land, court documents state.

In 1969, when the final holdout, 72-year-old "Pa" Carvery, refused to move even though his property had been expropriated, he was invited to Halifax City Hall where he was shown a suitcase full of money.

"They sent for me and when I got there I was taken into someone's office," he told a researcher for a 1970 report. "There was five or six persons in the room plus a suitcase full of money all tied up neatly in bundles. The suitcase was open and stuck under my nose so as to tempt me and try and pay me off right there and then."

"I didn't like that at all. It hurt me. I told them, 'You guys think you're smart, well, you're not smart enough.' Then I got up and walked out of the office. When they finally paid me it was by cheque and they came to my home to do business."

"Pa" Carvery was the last to leave. "By January 1970," the report states, "the black community that had existed for over 100 years was left to the pages of history."

As some of the older folks like to say, where ever the railroad goes, that's where Africville residents ended up. Some of them moved into a freshly constructed public housing block in Halifax's north end called Uniacke Square, where generations of Africville descendents still live today. Others bought houses in Halifax, although a few people lost them when they couldn't pay the mortgage or property taxes. Other Africville residents moved across the country where they had family, as far away as Calgary, where some of the complainants named in the court documents now live. Many older residents have died in the 45 or so years since the relocation.

Lawyer Robert Pineo argues the city gave residents the impression they had no legal legs to stand on when in fact the opposite was true. According to the city charter, officials should have told the residents their rights, provided them with legal advice and offered them fair market value for their properties.

"This was not explained to them at the time," Pineo wrote in a court document. "Their understanding of the matter was that the city had the power to acquire their lands unilaterally and there was no recourse available to them, and no means or process by which to contest the amount of the compensation, if any, that they were assigned."

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The Africville community church, rebuilt after a 2010 settlement between the community and the City of Halifax. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

In 2010, after former residents slammed the city with a lawsuit, the two sides reached a settlement.

In a particularly offensive act, city workers had bulldozed the community's church, known as "the beating heart of Africville," without warning one night in 1967. As part of the settlement, the city handed over 2.5 acres of land and $3 million to aid with the rebuilding of the church where it once stood. The mayor also publicly apologized.

But individual compensation was not included in the settlement. People who grew up in Africville are split on whether the 2010 settlement was adequate, or whether individual compensation is necessary.

The group asking for compensation today wants the Supreme Court judge to allow an amendment to the original claim from 1996.

According to court documents, the city is fine with some of the amendments, but opposes anything that would reopen the 2010 settlement.

"The plaintiffs, through their proposed amendments, are attempting to undo a settlement that has already been reached between the parties," city lawyers say. "A party cannot amend an action that no longer exists."

The Africville Genealogy Society signed releases on behalf of 48 estates promising not to take the city to court again over the bulldozing of the community. Another 45 people signed releases or discontinued their court claims.

That leaves 42 people and nine estates seeking compensation from the city.

Smith hopes the legal action will result in the former residents receiving fair market value for their properties. But first a judge will have to decide whether the case can proceed.

"I'm very excited to see that this is a very strong possibility after all these years, justice will finally get done and people will be vindicated," Smith says.

Follow Hilary Beaumont on Twitter.

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Kanye West is making a video game. We know this because of a report here, and this one here, and so many more. The announcement swiftly reached beyond the gaming media. It's equal-parts gossip-page material, copy for celebrity tabloids, and tech-feed filler. And it's news that'll lead many out there, I've no doubt, to ask why Yeezy is bothering with a video game.

Precedent, for one thing. West's outline for his game, revealed during an interview for New York's Power 105.1 station—"It's my mother going through the gates of heaven, and you gotta bring her to the highest gates of heaven by holding her to the light"—has it sounding like a more personal project than his wife's Kim Kardashian: Hollywood freemium title of 2014. But the success of that game, "a $200 million hit app" in the words of Forbes, will surely have resonated with the rapper. The man likes money, and there's serious sums of it to be made in gaming—and if you've got a famous face to plaster across your promotional package, there's even more reason to believe in its lucrative potential.

West has been working on his game for six months, so nobody should expect an end product any time soon, what with the small matter of an album to finish and subsequently promote. But between now and its release, we'll see more megastars from the world of music and entertainment stretch their brand to breach the gaming industry.

Katy Perry is leading the way, with an app made by the studio behind Hollywood, Glu Mobile, expected before the year is through. Games are bigger than music, and the figures are staggering: In a single month in 2013, Grand Theft Auto V outsold the entire global music industry. You don't have to be a famous rapper to conclude that you're missing a trick by not bringing your business to the gaming market.

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'50 Cent: Blood on the Sand,' trailer

And West sure isn't the first rapper to turn his attention to interactive entertainment. 50 Cent has starred in a couple of average third-person shooters, Bulletproof and Blood on the Sand (in which Fiddy and his crew shoots up a Middle Eastern terrorist cell for stealing, not even shitting you, a jewel-encrusted human skull offered as payment for a G-Unit gig), and EA's Def Jam Icon of 2007 set MC on MC in wholly inglorious one-on-one combat. The promise of Big Boi trading fists with Lil Jon and Ludacris might be appealing in your head, but in practice the game was more Milli Vanilli than Mike Jones.

EA might have been wise to look to gaming's rap past when working on Icon. Their Def Jam–licensed games to that point hadn't been terrible—two preceded Icon, the more wrestling-focused Vendetta and Fight for NY—but when Wu-Tang Clan got their knuckles bloody with 1999's Shaolin Style (a.k.a. Taste the Pain) for the original PlayStation, a warning memo should have circulated among the rap game's topmost brass. Excitement-sapping controls and ugly animation made Shaolin Style a completely forgettable entry in gaming's vast canon of fighting games. The game even had its own "W"-shaped controller, which made it even more player-unfriendly as it removed those rather essential analog sticks.

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Even the Wu hated Shaolin Style. "It stinks" is how Method Man described the game to Complex's Alexander Carpenter, as the writer recalled in a 15th-anniversary piece. There's an interesting story to the making of Shaolin Style: it's essentially a reskin of a canceled title called Thrill Kill, but not even its background and some spectacular-for-the-time executions could win favor with a fighting crowd focused on Mortal Kombat 4 and Street Fighter III.

The Wu had a previous attempt. The Clan's 1997 album, Wu-Tang Forever, came as an "Enhanced CD," with the first disc containing a virtual Wu Mansion, explored from a first-person perspective. Wikipedia has no record of this feature, but digging out my own copy confirms those muddy memories of poking around the place on my PC, with the booklet having a whole page devoted to the interactive material. "What the @%#$! is an Enhanced CD?!?!" it asks, before telling the reader all about the "hot" objects to be found in the Wu Mansion.

There are three levels, by which I mean floors—there's no challenge to this "game." On one and two you find rooms for eight of the rappers ("Click gently," warns the instructions, "you don't want to wake the Wu-Tang Clan"). In the basement, you'll come across RZA's recording studio, within which there's some secret content stored. You'll need to visit every other room in the Mansion before accessing that, though, because that's what you want from a Wu-Tang album: boring busywork. Thankfully, disc one of Wu-Tang Forever also featured some pretty masterful music, so it wasn't a complete waste of digital space.

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Snoop Dogg in 'True Crime: Streets of LA'

Many more rappers have featured in past video games, from Snoop Dogg in True Crime: Streets of LA to the Beastie Boys in NBA Jam. (The) Game has voice-acted in games including Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which is just too perfect, and developers have also turned to fictional rhymers for their stories. The gory zombie schlock of Dead Island stars one-hit-wonder Sam B, the game opening with him performing "Who Do You Voodoo" before the whole of Banoi goes to shit, and obviously there's PaRappa. Rap's not been the same since Chop Chop Master Onion dropped some uniquely stinky science.

With Kanye's life, as expressed through his own mouth, often stranger than fiction, he's an overdue but perfect fit for a video game. Lift a line or two from his work and you've the beginning of a productive brainstorm. "Everybody knows I'm a monster... eyes more red than the Devil," certainly sets the gray matter stirring, and that's before we're onto the Ancient Egyptian imagery. But his game for his late mother, who died in 2007, is unlikely to be an Icon, a Shaolin Style, or a Hollywood-like exercise in microtransaction management. I'm thinking more along the lines of something with the aesthetic elegance of Child of Light crossed with the religion-referencing narrative of the often-overlooked El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron, albeit without quite so much scrapping.

I'm hoping it'll be much more than him cashing in on an audience already mined for riches by his wife, but whatever Kanye's game proves to be, we know this is a man who doesn't do things by halves. Charged by the memory of his mother, it'll likely be emotional, it'll certainly be divisive, and it's guaranteed to be memorable. Ideally, it should make Katy Perry's app look like a ZX Spectrum loading page beside a skyscraper-size 4K screen showing future-gen sci-fi: proper fuck-up-your-whole-afternoon shit. And if it's not amazing, at least we'll always have Kanye Zone.

Follow Mike on Twitter.

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Image by Zhang Xiao

Sydney photographer Jack Harries is one half of The Heavy Collective, a blog and community leading the curation of antipodean photography. Over the past few years he and his partner Geordie Cargill have created one of Australia's most interesting image archives by working with both big and small names through their exhibitions, book fairs, and publications. And if that wasn't enough, they also just opened Sydney's only independent photo book store, Press Books .

We called Jack just before the relaunch of their website, the release their new book, and their launch into the stratosphere.

VICE: So the Heavy Collective is making the jump from the internet to reality?
Jack Harries: We've been online for four years now—it's free, it's an easy thing to do — but print has always been the dream. We're all about print, we own a photo bookstore here in Sydney. The book's been a long time coming, it just took a long time to come.

Is there anyone in particular you were excited to have in the book?
I guess all of them. We put together a list of ten long-shot names we really respected and were shocked to have them all come on board. I'm definitely excited about all of them.

That's a very diplomatic answer.
Mark Steinmetz is a black-and-white photographer who we've had a crush on for a very long time. Tim Page is the kind of guy whose name precedes him, he was the Vietnam photographer—the guy's a living legend. I could go through all the names, I've got wonderful things to say about all of them.

Are there certain things that define the Heavy Collective aesthetic, or do you feel it's pretty open?
I think there is a bias. We definitely lean towards film photography, I mean not strictly, but me and Geordie both shoot film and I guess it's something that really appeals to us.

Has the role of a curator affected your personal work?
Yeah, definitely. I guess some days it makes you feel like you don't want to do it anymore. And some days it's great, but you have to be careful to not use other people as a measuring stick for your own output. I guess it helps in the way it lets you see how work is made—who makes it and for what reasons.

What's next for you beyond putting the book out?
We're doing a Kickstarter at the moment to relaunch the website at the same time the book comes out. We want it to have more of a focus on projects and community, mixed in with the interviews that we're known for.

Why do this book when you've already made such a place online?
Photography at the moment is kind of like running water: Everyone's a photographer and all that. In reaction to that, I feel the photo book community has really come together. There are more photo books being published now than in the last ten years. I think its never been as healthy, but never been as hard to define.

You have to embrace photography for what it is—it's the people's medium. You have to keep on top of it, we're all about paying respect to where it came from, but you have to embrace the future as well. More so now than ever.

Check out The Heavy Collective's Kickstarter before 25 March.

Words by Ben Thomson. Check him out on Instagram.

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For the first decade of my life as a gay man, countless older homosexuals branded me as a twink. For those outside the gay world, the term probably conjures up images of those Hostess desserts—vanilla cake on the outside, sweet and creamy in the center. Similar those treats, twinks are usually white, smooth, and everyone wants to eat their insides. But the word is not really one of endearment. Just as soon as an older gay would jump at the chance to rim the asshole of one of those "hairless manboys," they'd also deride them for their over-the-top flamboyancy.

Being labeled a twink is like getting the scarlet letter of the gay universe. The first time I remember being called one was at a grimy, now-defunct gay strip club in Oakland, Florida, called Oz when I was 18. A geezer who looked like the Penguin in Batman Returns mistook me for one of the gay dancers whipping their dicks around for dollars and yelped out, "Twink!" The way it rolled off his tongue stung. I could sense his lust and his scorn. And it made me, a young gay man just coming into his own, feel kind of small. From then on, I endured a constant stream of twink-calling—especially when I made the mistake of wearing cutoff shorts or a tight-fitting white T-shirt. It wasn't until last summer that it finally stopped, thanks to a beard and chest hair (which has, unfortunately, earned me another derogatory moniker—otter).

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Because many homosexuals have internalized society's hatred for feminine gay men, being labeled a twink means you embody all of their self-loathing, even if you make their dicks hard in the process. The problem is that even though everyone talks about twinks, masturbates to twinks, and wants to fuck twinks, we rarely ever hear from twinks themselves. To figure out what twinks think about the way they are fetishized and criticized in the gay community, I interviewed a bunch of young gay men in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They talked about how they feel about the term and why, as one twink told me, "Twink isn't a four-letter word."

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John Truite, Model and Writer

VICE: Where did you first hear the word twink?
John Tuite: Porn.

Do you identify as a twink?
Obviously not.

Does it bother you that you look like a twink?
I feel like if you let it bother you, you're letting the word beat you. The fact that the gay community could come up with a word that's so derogatory—and has a negative connotation for being young, thin, and attractive—shows how self-loathing the whole gay community is.

When did you realize twink was a bad word?
Just from people's tones and the kind of things that they would say when anyone says stuff like, "You're a twink." It's always looking down on someone.

Do men objectify you because of your twinkiness?
Not only by gay men—but straight women, too. If anyone tries to touch me or talk to me like that, I'm walking the fuck away.

Do you worry about the day when you will no longer have a twinky body?
I lift weights all the time, but no matter how much I work out, I weigh the same.

Does aging scare you, though?
Kind of, actually. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I'm like, Holy shit I look like my dad. That's scary, but that's something everyone deals with.

Do you feel like gay culture both idolizes and hates youth?
I think they're just jealous. I'm tall and lanky and I have no ass. If that makes me a twink, then so be it. But I think the important thing is that there's nothing attractive about a 30-year-old twink. You can't be a twink forever—that's just kind of messed up.

Do you think people want to be twinks forever?
Yeah, once they're old, they're desperate and clinging onto this stupid concept of twinkdom. The only people who would call themselves twinks are old and desperate and perverts.

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Benjamin Sands, Student

When did you first hear the word Twink?
Benjamin Sands: When I was realizing I was gay. So 13, 14.

Do you identify as a twink?
Yeah.

Why?
Because that's what I've been told.

Why do you think they call you twinky?
I still fall into that [body type] category, and I feel like the way that I look [makes guys] expect me to be submissive, so it's fun to play with that.

How do you play with the submissiveness?
That comes through in the sexual arena, and it's more nuanced. I would say that I'm a pretty outgoing, aggressive person. But it takes a while for that to come out. So it's getting to know people and letting them see other, more intense sides of me. I come across as more submissive at first.

Do you think everyone assumes a twink is a bottom?
Yeah, definitely.

Is that fair?
No, I definitely don't think that. I remember one time I was dating a guy—and this was when I was basically just a top—and he made a huge deal about the concept of a twink top and how we're like unicorns.

Do you ever worry about what's going to happen when you age?
I've actually thought about that—the trope of the aging twink. It's viewed as dismal, but I think that just comes with the lifestyle and how you carry yourself and what situations you put yourself into. If you're a 30-year-old twink and still acting like you're 21 and being really sloppy, that's when negative connotations can come to it. But I don't worry at all.

Do you see the word twink as both a compliment and an insult?
I don't think I'd ever be insulted if someone called me a twink—that's lazy. That's a lazy insult. There are so many other things you could come to me with.

Do you perceive it as a loaded term?
I totally understand whatever it carries, but why, like, would you give a fuck about that? Eat my ass.

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Victor and Dean, Juilliard Dance Students

How do you feel about the word twink?
Victor: It's a confusing term because I think there are a lot of people who are considered twinks, but I think it's a word that is used to encapsulate a large percent of skinny young gay guys. Just because you're skinny and young and gay doesn't mean that you're a twink.

Dean: I agree that it's a generalization for a large group of people, and I don't think it's fair to classify a certain type of person just because of a definition of a word. I do also think that it insinuates submissiveness. But I don't completely agree with that either. I like to be dominant and submissive. I like a balance.

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Does the submissive stereotype bother you?
Victor: Well, in my case, I think it's true.

Why do you think people automatically assume you're submissive?
Victor: Because we're small.

Dean: Yeah, because we're small.

Are you comfortable with being called a twink?
What I've been trying to get at is I think it's a word that we could very well be [labeled], and I see that often. But I don't want that word to cage us. I don't think it does. I don't think it ends there. Yeah, there are aspects of us that are twinky, but there's much more than just that.

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Harry Koepp, Student

Do you identify as a twink?
Harry Koepp: I think it would be really gross to self-identify as a twink, but I can definitely see it.

Why do you look like a twink?
I'm skinny. I'm gay. I've been gay for a long time, so I was like a gay child, basically. And I still look like a gay child even though I'm 21.

What's your take on the old men who call you a twink on the street and in bars?
I think they are jealous of us. And I think that they really want to hit it, and when they can't, they get that man rage thing. It's like the equivalent of straight guys seeing really hot girls that they're never gonna fuck and then getting mad.

Does everyone assume you're a bottom?
Just to set the record straight, I am not a bottom. I think that you can enjoy something without defining yourself as that. It's definitely something I enjoy, but it's not the only thing I enjoy. That would be limiting myself, you know?

Do you worry about what's going to happen when you're no longer a twink?
No. I think that I'm charming enough that even if I get disgusting, people will still want to fuck me.

Follow Mitchell Sunderland on Twitter, and see more photos by Sam Clarke here.

Makeup by Mara Palumbo, who made these twinks twinkle.

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'Majora's Mask' image via Outright Geekery

Look up: The biggest moon you've ever seen looms. It's daytime. People are preparing for a carnival. Excitement; celebratory decorations; town spirits are high. The music playing is sprightly, joyous, and hummable. But you've been here before, and you know that the music will, in just a few hours, gain an ominous undertone that threatens to consume the melody. You know how much time is left, and if you don't get moving, the moon will fall and all these people will die.

Sure, you can return here any time you like via time travel, but that means looking up at the moon again, watching the preparations, and your heart sinking as the task of stopping the apocalypse is, once again, yours alone. If you're unsure how to continue, you could face these three days of dread on an eternal loop, watching everyone die, over and over again.

The lighthearted scenario described above comes from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, just recently remastered for the 3DS. The most disturbing entry in Nintendo's hugely popular adventure franchise fills you with the unsettling horror of an approaching apocalypse. Majora's Mask, on its initial 2000 release for the N64, revealed a complex, living, and entirely doomed world, immortalized in the multi-million-selling Zelda series. This sort of story may have been told before in video games, but never on such a stage. And it was a revelation.

You are forced, by Majora's Mask's structure and mechanics, to repeatedly fail at saving the world, until you finally have the tools to succeed—it's one of the most harrowing journeys you will ever take in a video game. It's also one of the most beautiful, as what's an apocalyptic tale without redemption and triumph?

You meet Kafei, a young man looking to marry his sweetheart, Anju. But he's in hiding, turned into a child by magic. It becomes your job, as the Zelda series' primarily mute protagonist Link, to run messages between them, bringing them together for their long-awaited ceremony. Will it be too late, or just in time? Elsewhere, Romani defies her skeptical older sister, Cremia, to save the dairy farm's cows from alien abduction (yes, this is actually in a Zelda game). If she tackles them without help or adult supervision, she is abducted alongside the farm's only source of income but cruelly lobotomized before return. The cows never make it back. But with your help, she can prove her worth, save the farm, and continue her journey to adulthood.

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'Majora's Mask' 3-D—announcement trailer

You realize that this colorful world is strange, harsh, and unfair. Perhaps it deserves to be smashed into oblivion; its long-suffering people, however, do not. And you only get 72 hours of game time with these characters, enforcing the bleak fact that life is short and life is hard. Worse is that, although Link can help everyone on multiple playthroughs, we always have to reset. And to save the world, we can't make things better for everyone before the end. It's a depressing realization, and true.

Zelda is a series considered colorful by many, for a reason—typically, the games are breezy, upbeat adventures, full of optimism and life. The tone of Majora's Mask is a distinct contrast to most of its brighter brethren, in some respects a closer cousin to the bleak experiences provided by other gaming genres.

The first-person-perspective Half-Life 2 is pure dystopian nightmare within a post-apocalyptic environment, best illustrated by its beginning. You step off of a train with others wearing the same blue overalls. Your gaze is drawn to a screen broadcasting the visage of central antagonist Dr. Breen, his authoritative, faux-friendly voice welcoming you to the ominous City 17. Within seconds you see an arriving passenger being harassed by an armored policeman. Nearby, a former alien foe—so lethal in the previous game—is despondently sweeping the floor. Interact with the lawman and he shoves you away. Persist, and he will chase and beat you. You are defenseless.

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Gordon and Alyx of 'Half-Life 2,' pursued by Hunter units

A few step away, a downcast woman stands waiting for her husband, knowing he'll never arrive. A glint of hope is all she has. Man, it's depressing, and that's only the first few minutes. Each cue—the wide-eyed guy telling you not to drink the water is a nice touch—smothers you in an oppressive world where people are regularly abused by authority. Every major point of an "Orwellian" future (sigh) is here, from the suspicious lack of children to giant, talking screens: textbook. Half-Life 2 revels in detail, telling stories with landscape, and the words and actions of its non-player characters. It features nods to tyrannical history too, like the decaying eastern European architecture and Cyrillic lettering littering the skyline.

Similarly, the superb Papers Please is uncomfortably close to the darker side of our own reality. From its militaristic march theme to the 1980s-style graphics, everything attunes you to the overall theme, which is: You're in a Soviet-style state, and you're fucked.

Your family's health is represented by a balance sheet at the end of each workday. You think: "Have I made enough money to heat the house and eat tonight? Well, uncle is sick now. He needs medicine. Must work harder at the immigration booth tomorrow. I get paid for each person allowed in, but there'll be more paperwork to do tomorrow, slowing me down. Up my efficiency or turn a blind eye and risk a wage penalty? A terrorist attack could cut my day (and pay) short, too. Why not detain a few people, then? The guards will share their dodgy detainee bonuses with me, and I might also prevent an attack. Win-win."

It's excellent dystopian fiction because it slowly makes you a willing part of the oppressive regime, just to survive—just to "win." You almost begin to like your power, and what has defined some of the finest dystopian stories? In order to survive, you must abandon hope and fall in line. Think about Winston in 1984: "In the face of pain, there are no heroes."

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'Papers Please'—don't be surprised if your family dies.

The best games tell such multi-layered stories of borderline hopelessness. Our intrusion into this world allows us to tell the story our way, but ultimately we want to overcome. Does that make us heroes, or suckers for punishment? We want to do this every time. Are we masochists? Sadists even, allowing these people to be crushed again and again, for our enjoyment? How sick are we?

Perhaps we like the strife. Games give us obstacles to overcome, and these scenarios are the ultimate obstacles. Some of our favorite games delight in giving you insurmountable odds. Final Fantasy VII's most shocking moment, for me, was not that death, but the moment where you first see the meteor screaming silently in the sky: impending doom. Suddenly, my task was huge. I was terrified. How I was going to stop that hurtling space rock was massively compelling to me, but not just because of typical gaming goals: I was heavily invested in the people in this vast world about to be obliterated.

Our aesthetic key texts might be Fallout and BioShock. The former is post-apocalyptic gaming's visual and atmospheric equivalent of The Stand, The Drowned World, Logan's Run, How I Live Now, and other literary go-tos. Nuclear disaster has ravaged the world and there's lots of wandering in barren landscapes and fighting violent foes. BioShock—our 1984, Brave New World, or Fahrenheit 451, perhaps—defines the dystopian ideal: a utopia, crumbled under its ambition and failed ideals, in its place a fancy, gore-streaked, Art Deco underwater hell. As far as imaginative interpretations of the genre go, it's almost certainly the stand out. Its twist (you can read about it here) provides thematic and contextual reasoning for gaming's often unexplained trope of following instructions, and enhances the world you're trapped in. In most games you are given only the illusion of choice. BioShock addressing this only adds to the horror.

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'Metro 2033'—launch trailer

Not many games reach the mastery of those mentioned above. A post-apocalyptic world is often a great environment for a shooter—like Gears of War, Metro 2033, Resistance, Super Probotector/Contra III—all of which are decent to excellent. But it's often merely a bleak background to pepper bullets into. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is a glowing exception, embracing its surroundings and weaving (corrupted) life into them.

The Metal Gear Solid series deals with the onset of an apocalyptic situation or military fascism, but it's also mostly a solo pursuit, with a few supporting characters. You rarely truly feel the entire world at large is in real danger, though philosophical musings keep us thinking. And then there is the horde of zombie-themed games. Pretty (gross) they may be, but very few of them focus on humanity's cooperation, essential in such stories. Those that do are outstanding video game examples of post-apocalyptic civilization: Left 4 Dead and The Walking Dead being two of those. The Last of Us is the acknowledged masterpiece in its post-apocalyptic glory, but will, crucially, be seen as a true core text because of its lead characters' emotional connection amid such ugliness, and its overall tragedy.

It has always interested me how we turn to the bleak, dark, vicious, and blackly humorous so often in entertainment—aren't our lives troubling enough? But the greatest satisfaction is when the despair is offset by hope. Majora's Mask, with its numerous side quests steeped in love stories and honor, is relatable and makes the plight of Termina's people mean something. Half-Life 2, of course, will always have the classic "couple on the couch" moment. Though harrowing, it's a reminder of a blissful past or a promising future. It's in your hands.

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Artwork from 'Majora's Mask'

We can feel so powerless in our lives, especially as the world seems volatile, and we just can't handle it all. Still, a lot of us try: We help others, attempt to solve problems, and try to be there for everyone. Games give us this chance. We build relationships, however fleeting, and that drives us on to claw our way through the odd, debilitating purgatory we've been thrust into. We are taking on a larger-than-life task and are spurred on by human emotion, passion, and resolve. And maybe guns. We feel like potential heroes, all of us.

If a long-term character sacrifices himself, we feel the loss. When we take down the antagonist once and for all, we feel worthy, and in a bigger way, we are equipped with lessons learned. It is not necessarily just the rotten core that we like exploring, however grim and compelling, but reaching the flickering beacons throughout. We are even taught that there's almost always redemption. A pyrrhic victory is still, sometimes, a victory. And if the worst happens, and we all fail, we have still fought for some semblance of humanity in a cruel, unfeeling, inhuman world. We can (and need) to carry this sense through our own lives—that we can, and do, help—and that can only benefit everyone. We contribute, all of us, and these games in particular remind us of that, and of what might happen if we forget.

Or perhaps you just like watching everyone die, over and over again. Sicko.

Follow Brad on Twitter.

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Screen shot via Comedy Central

"Are you up to date with Broad City?" seems to be the bones of most bar conversations right now. The Comedy Central show is a true departure in female-centric comedy, and every woman I know can't get enough. Maybe because it's the polar opposite of that other famous show about young women trying to navigate adulthood in New York, Girls, which, while valuable in its own right, sort of hinges on them all not really liking one another very much. Broad City is also a retreat from any other film or TV show that places romantic plots and stunted careers in the foreground over meaningful female relationships.

Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer demonstrate what so many women actually experience in their 20s: loads of disappointing one-night stands and unfulfilling working days that peak in the five-minute breaks you take in the disabled toilet to inspect your ingrown pubes. You get stoned, drink reduced-price alcohol the color of urine, and laugh about it all on video chat because, well, that's all you can afford or deserve. And it's fine, because you have each other.

In the show, Abbi is a struggling illustrator who earns her rent money as a cleaner, wiping up post-class pukes at an equivalent of Soul Cycle. Super-stoner Ilana works at a sales agency—"Deals Deals Deals"—where she rejoices in long morning shits before falling asleep on the toilet (she even brings her own pillow) and seems to have a special knack for pissing everyone off. From the outset, you expect Ilana to be the hedonistic one, but it's Abbi who loses a condom inside of her and later melts her neighbor's bespoke strap-on. Ilana is the one who smuggles out, ninja-style, a colossal turd that Abbi blocks a toilet with. Find me a better metaphor for true friendship, and I'll clean your kitchen with my fingernails.

Pop culture has been desperate for proper, imperfect female leads for ages. But instead of vaguely "indie" Hollywood actresses pretending to be struggling, Abbi and Ilana aren't caricatures. They're real-life friends who wear tuxedos they've stolen from catering jobs to weddings, cycle down Fifth Avenue with no pants on, and you believe they've seen their fair share of free-loading, sofa-sore-covered roommate boyfriends. They're writing for themselves, and you believe it.

That Broad City began life as a series of YouTube skits and is now executively produced by Amy Poehler is a remarkable trajectory, but when you watch the show, it makes total sense. No one does the exploring-real-female-imperfections-without-painful-self-loathing thing like Poehler does. Or at least no one did until now. After months of trying to track them down, VICE caught 15 whole minutes between bong hits (kidding—it was 10 AM) with the duo, whom you can genuinely imagine hosting something like the Golden Globes one day, Poehler and Tina Fey theatrically doffing their invisible caps in the wings.

VICE: Hi, guys. What was the transition from YouTube to Comedy Central like?
Abbi Jacobson: Interesting. We knew that our characters' dynamic was the thing that wouldn't change—we just had to build the worlds around them, asking: What and who are we going to see from their lives on a regular basis? Basically, it was a question of how to go from making something that was three to five minutes long translate into 21 minutes. We decided that, for the most part, every episode would be the equivalent of a day. It's a good limitation to have—each episode is like an adventure.

Broad City stood out to me, like everyone else, because it paints a very real picture of the world right from the get-go. You're not fucking around.
Ilana Glazer: I think that was part of the tone from the web series. We still had to learn about story arc and building a world, and that's a huge part of it. It's like the cross between "life is crap" and wonderment. The city is so gross and throws shitty things at them, and that's part of the humor, but the other side of that coin is that they love the city and it's still exciting for them to live there. They are suburban transplants, so even when the city is gnarly, they are grateful to consider themselves New Yorkers.

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Ilana making the most of great fitting-room lighting

How much of your own lives are echoed in the characters?
Jacobson: We used a few specifics from our lives: our names, where we are from, where we went to college. They were just fun ways that we get to shout out to those places. Ilana's from Long Island, and I'm from outside Philadelphia, so why not use the specifics of those places to make the characters funnier? We know them so well. When we come up with stuff, we talk about our own lives and then heighten those situations.

For instance, Ilana's job. It's like, how is she even still working there? The company she works at is based on this company called Life Booker where we both (and actually one of our directors) worked. So we heightened both the company and how we felt there—as long as we got a deal, the rest of the day was up for grabs. We flew under the radar a little bit. Ilana does just enough to make it by. That's a great example of how we use a personal experience.

Presumably you then take those real-life details to the extreme.
Glazer: Yeah. When we take real detail, the height to where we take it is where we find our brand of absurdity. For us, starting in the real place is what makes it so absurd. It's funny that it's relatable after it's been blown out of proportion.

Jacobson: I guess everyone has had that worst-case scenario, too. We just look at how we would feel and then heighten it.

It's not just you two writing everything, right? It must be exciting working with a team.
Glazer: Yeah! We got to hire some of our closest friends and peers, which has kept the show fresh. When you have a connection with someone it really shows. On screen you can really see, I think, that we are all real friends, and I think the writing feels like it's written by people who have real connections—we literally crack up writing it.

What's the atmosphere like in the writers' room?
Jacobson: Most of the stuff that ends up on the show does so because we were hysterically laughing at it. There's so much stuff that doesn't make it on, so if something does, it really means we had a lot of fun writing it. Most of the writers have come from a performance background; they're very playful. Sometimes we act something out and the writers have to play the other characters. It's hard work, but it's so much fun that we get to work with our friends and people we admire.

Do you still have time to hang out with the same friends you had pre–Broad City?
Glazer: Abbi and I each have an amazing circle of friends from home, college, and comedy, and those circles intersect more the longer we know each other. It's lovely to meet new people and new friends that you want to collaborate with, but the whole reaction to the show is really overwhelming. I cling to my old friends because of this newness. It's really relieving to have a good base. It doesn't matter what changes around you when you can be like, "Oh, hi, friends. I'm just an idiot joking around."

How did you get Amy Poehler involved?
Glazer: We invited her to be in the last episode of the web series. We really hit it off and asked her if she wanted to be attached to our project. We were starting to pitch it and had written a pilot and she said yes. We didn't expect her to, but we had to ask so we could say that we had asked. We just clicked. We had a similar work value. Since then it's been incredible to have her experience and her bird's-eye view on things.

When do we get more Broad City, then?
Jacobson: We start working this spring on writing the third season. I think it's going to come out the same time as the second season, like, January time.

Thank God.

Follow Hanna on Twitter.

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A still from 'Cannibal Holocaust.'

Warning: This article contains (COMPLETELY STAGED) images that some readers may find disturbing

In today's culture peddling in knee-jerk outrage has become a viable career option for thousands of struggling freelancers. You can't open a website without being crushed by a wave of think pieces on the shock revelation that American soldiers weren't big fans of Iraqi insurgents, or on how Fifty Shades of Grey is creating a generation of incipient Ike Turners.

That said, if the freelance journalists in search of a quick buck today were around in the 70s, they would have been shooting fish in a barrel. There were some genuinely outrageous things being spat out of a strange underworld of the film industry far from the black ties of Cannes and the Oscars. Of these, the films that went the furthest were the Italian cannibal movies, which this year are receiving their obligatory American homage with the release of Eli Roth's The Green Inferno.

The films I'm talking about aren't like those quaint 70s slasher flicks defanged by time. Awash with sexual violence, graphic gore, real cruelty to animals, and imperialistic racism toward indigenous peoples—not to mention terrible dubbing and a parade of Italian character actors sweating their way through the jungle—these films are the end of the line.

Every time somebody talks about how shocked they are by something that's emerged out of the mainstream, it's instantly clear they haven't seen Mountain of the Cannibal God, Eaten Alive!, The Last Cannibal World, or the undisputed sleazy masterpiece of the form, Cannibal Holocaust. Bracingly misanthropic, ethically unsound, and offensive beyond belief in terms of racism and sexism, they are the true pits of how far exploitation films of the 70s would go—but for all their crudity, there are moments of sophistication, and yes, real beauty. Nothing like them could ever be made again.

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A still from 'Cannibal Holocaust.'

Cannibalism had been in movies for years—there's even a cannibal tribe in Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. But it wasn't until the looser censorship environment of the 60s and 70s that films this explicit were even possible. Long before "accident" clips on Youtube or Bestgore.com, the Mondo series of exploitation documentaries were playing on audiences' prurient desires to see animals hacked up, or glimpse novel tribal practices in South America.

Despite their makers claiming they were merely documenting a tough world kept off TV, they played up to the folklorish horrors of the "savage" places Europeans had only recently decolonized, depicting a world of brutality where life was cheap and the white man an emissary from civilization.

This was the time when indigenous peoples in South America were arguably entering into public consciousness in the West more than ever before—the expansion of logging in the Amazon and the construction of the TransAmazon Highway led to a spate of remote tribes being forced to integrate with societies they'd dodged for years. The very occasional incidences of ritual cannibalism led to caricatures of these peoples as Stone Age savages shockingly still around in the era of Studio 54—and a sequence of books by anthropologists eager to shift units with sensationalism didn't help.

David Attenborough even made a film called A Blank On the Map in 1971, where he encounters some tribesmen in New Guinea, who promptly tell him to fuck off. The explosion of awareness toward these peoples led to a huge amount of interest, and in turn they were rewarded with epidemics, abuse, and being painted as villains in some of the grimmest films ever made.

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The first cannibal movie to really blend all this was the 1972 release Man from the Deep River, a knock-off of A Man Called Horse, where a photographer is first tortured, then accepted by a tribe in Thailand. Compared to what would come later, it's fairly innocent, but two mainstays of the genre were introduced—Me Me Lai, a Burmese-British game show hostess who would consistently play tribal girls with access to boob jobs but not clothes; and real, Mondo-inspired animal killing (in this case a monkey having the top of its head cut off).

There's really no defending this. Sadly, in a world of ISIS videos, it's not too shocking, but it's still infuriating to think of the asshole with a cigar standing behind the camera directing somebody to end this little critter's life for a film. Sure, it was a different time, but if PETA ever gets its own Yewtree up and running the Italian office is going to need double shifts.

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Five years later came Last Cannibal World, conceived as a sequel to Man from the Deep River. It ended up as a straight retread of the same turf. The grub factor is raised considerably—a real alligator is killed and skinned, and more monkeys get it. Me Me Lai returns as another native girl who helps the hero escape her tribe, only for him to rape her when she refuses to obey him. The next scene is her serving him breakfast—which is, as they now say, problematic. And that's before we get to the climax of the film, where she meekly submits to being beheaded, eviscerated, cooked, and eaten while our hero and his pal hoof it without a second thought.

I'm not sure anybody ever lost money flogging sensation to the grindhouse circuit: Last Cannibal World was a hit, sparking a wave of imitators. Some of these were essentially softcore smut with a little gore thrown in for good measure; exploitation legend Joe D'Amato turned out Emmanuelle and the Last Cannibals and Papaya, Love Goddess of the Cannibals within a year (if you find 70s threesomes juxtaposed with women being stabbed in the vagina sexy, that latter one is a must see!).

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The bigger-budget Mountain of the Cannibal God is an even stranger beast, somehow roping in Stacy Keach and convincing Ursula Andress (a long way from her Bond appearance) to be worshipped as a goddess by a tribe while butt naked.

There's also a scene where a man fucks a pig, for some reason, and the usual parade of animal guttings is present and correct, as they are in 1980's Eaten Alive!, a weird Italian cannibal-rape film that, plot-wise, loosely cashes in on the Jonestown massacre, only with a few extra cannibals.

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Also in 1980 came the big one: Ruggero Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust.

The plot centers around a team of documentary-makers and unremitting bastards who have gone missing in a part of the Amazon known as the Green Inferno (Eli Roth knows his stuff). An NYU professor is dispatched to investigate. His journey takes up the first half of the film, and you know pretty fast you're in for some disturbing stuff—a man rapes a woman with a rock then beats her to death with it as punishment for adultery, and soon we see a forced abortion performed on a crucified woman.

It gets even harder in the second half, when the documentary team's footage is taken back to New York. As well as some real execution footage from Nigeria—because why not?—we see the crew engineering tribal conflict by burning villagers alive, gang-raping a young girl who's later found impaled through her vagina, and the gang eventually being murdered and cannibalized by the tribe they're trying to provoke for the sake of their film. And, of course, a series of animals are killed in graphic detail, with a turtle's death probably the most disgusting thing ever put on film.

Not one for a Sunday night with your folks, then, but Deodato brings real skill to the barbarity. The second half's fake doc footage, executed long before Blair Witch, is convincing to a fault (Sergio Leone loved it); the feeling of escalating chaos and panic is superbly executed; and Riz Ortolani's weirdly sweet music is great (other work of his would later show up in Drive).

Deodato takes some broad swings at an exploitative media culture—the last line is, "Sometimes I wonder who the real cannibals are," which is admittedly pretty rich coming from a guy who's just made a film containing four rape scenes.

Also, as if to disprove his point, the genre soon petered out; the constant trouble with censors was more hassle than it was worth. There have been occasional flare-ups since, with a strange slew of low-budget crap in 2003, and now Eli Roth's revival, which—given what's come before—surely has to be neutered in some way if it ever wants a chance of reaching cinemas.

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So why watch these films? As is probably clear, this is grim stuff, wallowing in the worst things the makers could think of, caricaturing Italians whose worst crime was not to be born in Rome, and displaying a cavalier and hardly-sensitive attitude to sexual violence. That said, considering the lame back projections that were typical of studio films of the time, at least their makers were prepared to get out there and get dirty making these things.

To our CGI-attuned eyes, the sight of real people in what looks like a fairly extreme environment can be startlingly authentic—there's a rough and tumble realism that stands out next to today's more antiseptic shooting. They're unpleasant, but there's no denying there's an energy to them. They may often be updates of 30s adventure-in-the-Congo flicks, but an adventure film is an adventure film, even with awkwardly spliced-in footage of an anaconda eating a lizard.

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Also, like all exploitation films, they're a great time capsule to a different world. These were angry films at an angry time. The late 1970s saw a wave of Red Brigade terrorism in Italy, with major politician Aldo Moro being kidnapped and murdered. It would be weird if some of that extremity didn't find it onto the screen, and however distasteful they were, you won't find a better cinematic expression of a national "bad vibe." The unremitting ugliness and pessimism of these films is very 70s, and just because Deodato couldn't get Jack Nicholson on the line doesn't mean they should be discounted.

What's more, they have a weirdly admirable status as the most full-on that movies can be—the end of the line, a farthest point by which we can orient everything else. These are horror films, and in dwelling on our capacity for horror they make you feel bad about humanity—but which horror films don't? Sure, there are better films about people's primal nature being revealed in the jungle, but for all their cruelty there's occasionally a crude profundity.

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Herzog and Coppola went into the jungle and saw it as the crucible that would reveal the animal under the suit. And, in their own way, so do cannibal movies. Or, at the very least, they reveal something about the people going to fleapit cinemas in the late 1970s. Nothing like them could ever be made again and even hope to get widespread distribution; however extreme horror films have become since then, there's been nothing to compare, especially thanks to laws on animal cruelty.

Sure, some gore hounds online are palpably getting off on watching Me Me Lai being cooked by the hot rocks placed in her torso, and no one's saying those guys aren't sick bastards, but these films nevertheless have their place in history. It's oddly heartening to know that, in their rage and hate, we have some kind of end-point—the nastiest films ever made.

Follow Andrew on Twitter.

Michael Myers goes to the arthouse in It Follows, David Robert Mitchell's superlative second film, released this week. Mixing lilting evocations of the American suburbs with moments of gut-wrenching terror, the film concerns the predicament of a teenage girl, Jay (Maika Monroe), who is stalked by a shapeshifting, malevolent presence after she has sex with a guy while out on a date.

The presence, which our heroine learns will stop only if she "passes it on" by sleeping with someone else, can take any form it pleases and is rendered no less terrifying by its insistence on moving inexorably towards its victims at a slow walking pace. Which makes for a great premise and a load of creepy POV shots.

It's Mitchell's lyrical take on the material, however—assisted by Disasterpeace's surreal synth score—that makes this one of the best horrors in recent memory, thoughtfully exploring teenage hopes and fears about adulthood and sex even as it keeps you on the edge of your seat.

We spoke to Mitchell—who wrote the film based on a recurring nightmare he had as a child—to learn more about his unsettling vision. (Mild spoilers ahead.)

VICE: What kinds of stuff did your parents let you watch when you were young? Was there anything off-limits?
David Robert Mitchell: No! I was watching Dawn of the Dead when I was very young. But also the old Universal monster movies. Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of my favorites. Poltergeist was one that really bothered me. Just because it's a seemingly average sort of family: Everything seems normal but terrible things start to happen. I had a tree by my window at home and the branches would scrape against the glass, too.

Do you hold out much hope for the remake?
No. I think Sam Raimi is executive producing... there are a lot of great people involved, so maybe it'll be good. But the original is so great, I wouldn't go near the remake, personally.

How did you decide what forms the mysterious "it" would take when writing for your film?
Whatever seemed to trouble me I would put in there. Part of it is playing with what you expect. People expect one thing, so you give 'em something else!

Did you enjoy working in the horror genre? Were there any cliches you wanted to avoid?
For the most part I really enjoyed working within the genre. There was a bit of pressure to put jump-scares in there, which I pushed back against a little. There are a couple in the film, where you don't necessarily earn it. It's fun to have some of that, but I wouldn't want to overdo it.

There's a bit of a trend to do those things. I'm not sure if the audience expects it or it's just that people think you need to do it. You hate to go into making a film and feel like there are certain things you have to do. That's not interesting to me. But I loved working in horror because you can actually get away with all kinds of strange things, and people will go along for the ride.

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Are there any moments of homage to other horror films in there?
Most of it is not a specific reference; it's more like a general feeling. I mean, there are some specific ones—the pool stuff is a specific reference to Cat People. People mention Halloween, and I love Carpenter, but I wasn't so much trying to copy any particular film. It's more that I've watched his movies a million times; I really love his use of blocking and composition, so some of that comes out. But there are tons of horror movies that I love; Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Shining, Night of the Living Dead, Hour of the Wolf, Island of Terror...

One area where the film does consciously seem to echo Carpenter's work is in the score, by a guy who makes music under the name Disasterpeace. How did you approach him to soundtrack the film?
I heard some music he scored for a video game called Fez, which I was amazed by. I immediately thought of It Follows, which I was trying to put together by that point. So I reached out to him online, sent him the script, and showed him what I wanted to do. He would write music for scenes and send stuff to me. It was maybe not what I was expecting, but it was wonderful, and that's one of the reasons I wanted to work with him—it felt like he had such an interesting voice. He's going to do the music for the next film, which will be a very different thing.

How about Maika Monroe? She's so good in the film. How did she come to be your leading lady?
She auditioned for the film and everyone in the room was instantly like, "Whoa." I knew that the movie would live or die based on the strength of that lead performance, and we knew we were in good hands with Maika. We had to find someone who could do the semi-naturalistic parts of the film and then take it to those moments of chaos and fear, and make it believable and genuine. Because in a lot of films, it's not.

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The premise is based on a recurring nightmare you had when you were young. Can you tell me more about that?
The one I remember most clearly, I was playing on some sort of jungle gym thing with my friends, and when I looked across the parking lot at my school—way into the distance—there was this kid walking straight towards me, and instantly I knew it was some sort of vampire-monster thing. It looked like a normal kid. I kept pointing it out to my friends and no one seemed to know what I was talking about, so I ran away and got to the end of the street and stood there waiting. I waited and waited, and finally it turned the corner and kept walking towards me, so I ran home.

Then, in another part, I was with my family having dinner and someone else—an adult this time—walked in the house and started coming toward me, so I ran and climbed out of a window. I could always keep a little bit of distance (from the thing) just by walking—I guess maybe I'd seen too many vampire or zombie movies. But even if you lost them, they knew exactly where you were. It was disturbing, but I've talked to other people since who had similar dreams—I think it's an anxiety dream.

As a viewer, it feels like there's no respite in the film; even in its quieter moments, something could always come wandering into the frame.
That's one of the things that worked for us. Once you set that [premise] up, there's something there, even if nothing is happening for a moment. It's about dread. I mean, there are some chaotic moments of attack in the film, but I'm a little more interested in the wider spaces in between.

A lot of mainstream horror movie-making has felt pretty lacking in recent years. Do you see any danger of a return to the classic horror era of the 1950s, say, or late 1970s and early 80s stuff any time soon?
All I can say is I wanted to make a film that would be closer to the kinds of horror films that I want to see, and a lot of those are the classic horror films that are maybe not made as much now. I was interested in more classically composed frames, and a certain amount of love and care in the style and approach to the movie. But I think there'll always be people making interesting things—you can do so many cool things with the genre, there'll always be people trying to do their own take.

One way your film nods to horror tradition is in the ending, which leaves open the possibility of a sequel, albeit in a non-hokey kind of way. Would you ever rule it out?
I can tell you that it was not my intention. The ending was more about leaving the question of what does this mean for them—what will happen from this point? I think, ultimately, you can work that out—the general sense of it. As for a sequel, you can't do this without having ideas pop into your head, but for now I want to do other things. I like the idea of working in many different genres. But I would definitely make a horror film again. This is the first one I did, and I learned a lot doing it. I know what I would work harder for and what I would avoid. But as for whether or not there'd be a sequel, honestly I don't know.

Follow Alex on Twitter.

Buy tickets to tomorrow's sneak preview of the film in New York City here.

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Follow Patrick Kyle on Twitter, look at his blog, and get his books from Koyama Press.

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Photo credit: Paul Yoon

Laura van den Berg and I talked by phone as she arrived in New York from Boston, hours before she was due to appear at a bookstore downtown for a discussion of her first novel, Find Me, published last week. The novel, van den Berg's third book, follows acclaimed and quirky story collections What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (2009) and The Isle of Youth (2013). Her stories, like the novel, incorporate odd elements, even if something is just a little bit off, like somebody dressing up in a Bigfoot costume and scaring people for a living. Written in a stream of vignettes in clean, concise prose, Find Me features a woman named Joy, who has a Robitussin addiction and meanders into a hospital in Kansas amidst an epidemic of a mysterious disease. Once there, she takes part in a bizarre quarantine that involves meditations pumped through crackly speakers, electroencephalograms, and personality tests of unknown purport. Then a whole bunch of other stuff happens in Book II, but we won't go there in case you'd like to read it (which you should).

We spoke about the science fiction-y qualities of growing up in Florida, about the hotline you have to call when an alligator rolls into your backyard (866-FWC-GATOR), blacking-out daydreaming, and all the champagne she's not drinking—along with much discussion of her brilliant and claustrophobic novel.

VICE: This book has elements of Amy Hempel's Tumble Home or even Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest mixed with more apocalyptic fiction. But it's not about people confined to a hospital for mental illness, and it's not specifically about an apocalyptic event. You've created different parameters entirely.

Which is what you created. Off-kilter.

Did you know that was where she was headed the whole time?

And this is your first novel.

Everyday life can be boring. Creating these new parameters offers a way for you to make up your own rules. Is this a reaction to daily life?

Do you do a lot of daydreaming?

[body_image width='1352' height='2027' path='images/content-images/2015/02/24/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/02/24/' filename='the-weird-will-find-you-laura-van-den-berg-on-driving-while-daydreaming-and-her-apocalyptic-new-novel-find-me-989-body-image-1424798859.jpg' id='30423']Do you like having weird experiences, as characters do in your writing, or is this only a fictional thing?

On a similar note, I'm not someone who believes that artists need to go looking for pain. Life will take care of that for you. Don't worry. I feel the same about strangeness. If we're paying attention and we're alert to the world, we can count on the weird to find us.

People can be bristly about the term "science fiction." I don't see your novel as so out there that it could be called such, but do you ever feel like embracing that more?

There's a lot of specific medical information in the book, like the Romberg, a real test which Joy thinks sounds like a dance move (it does!). How did you incorporate all of that?

In earlier incarnations of the book, the disease had a much more realistic treatment. It was more like what the ebola outbreak might look like if it happened in the US. But then I moved into this more surreal territory. There were also two magazine pieces that were helpful. One was called "Invisible Child," a series that journalist Andrea Elliott did for the New York Times. The other one was a piece by Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone called "Apocalypse, New Jersey: A Dispatch from America's Most Desperate Town." They were these incredibly disturbing, powerful examinations of the dystopia that actually exists right now in America.

I'm not the kind of person who reads the last page first, so I'm not going to talk to you much about the second half of the book.

You've received a lot of accolades for this book. Have you allowed yourself some celebration, some champagne and caviar?

Even as people are talking about it more. Salon gave you a nice hats-off last week, calling you the "best young writer in America."

Who would you put in front of yourself?

Paul Yoon happens to be your husband. What's it like to be married to another fiction writer?

And another writer knows that the act of writing doesn't always have to look a certain way.

Bibi Deitz lives and writes in Brooklyn. Recent work has appeared in Bookforum, the Rumpus, and BOMB.

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Photo by Rooney Wimms via.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

Here's some "British Traditions Dying One-by-One, Slayed By the Imperial March of the Nanny State" news: The great British tradition of drinking on trains is under threat from new legislation proposed by the Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB).

What next? Ban fried food because they often lead to acquired heart disease? Explode Stone Henge into smaller, safer pieces of gravel? Kill the Queen? Shoot the Queen in the head until she dies, so she's no longer a threat to anyone? Kill Prince Charles, too? Cull the monarchy, top to bottom, and parade their bodies on spikes up and down the Mall? In the name of political correctness? This country has gone mad.

Anyway, after a recent safety report found alcohol was a factor in as many as 21 of the 32 deaths on the rails in the past decade, the RSSB has moved to ruin the fun of all weekend-away hen parties—and every single trip to Scotland—by mooting an alcohol ban for travelers on domestic trains.

"Intoxication is associated with the potential for passengers to fall from the platform, be struck by a train while on the platform, fall between the platform and the train or slip, trip, or fall across the platform train interface," the RSSB's report said, forgetting the fact that I once fell over, shattering my knees—while entirely sober—just because I happened to be carrying a chair. You do not need to be drunk to hurt yourself very badly.

"A range of resources to support the safe management of intoxicated passengers will be piloted at all staffed stations," the report then proposed. "This formalized agreement will be supported by investigation into additional legislation and policy that could be used to support the management of intoxicated passengers, for example banning the sale and consumption of alcohol on trains (similar to TfL)."

As always, it takes former pop mogul and only-person-anyone-can-really-think-to-comment-on-a-train-story Pete Waterman to be the firm hand on the common sense tiller, telling the Daily Mail: "Most alcohol is not drunk on trains. It's people coming out of office parties and abusing staff. Ninety-nine percent of passengers drink responsibly. It would be lunacy to ban alcohol on the entire network just because of a few problems on platforms."

So far, so good. Thank you, Pete Waterman. Please continue.

"The answer is to stop drunks from entering the station in the first place."

Mm, yeah, no. Should have stopped at "on platforms."

Public transport alcohol bans are nothing new: London mayor and a grim glimpse at what would happen if you shaved and confused Winnie the Pooh, Boris Johnson, outlawed alcohol on the underground back in 2008, prompting a fun " Circle Party" on the Circle Line in response. ScotRail also enforced a ban on open consumption of alcohol on its trains between the hours of 9 PM and 10 AM back in 2012—though personal experience of the sights, sounds and smells of the Caledonian Sleeper train to Glasgow indicate that this rule is barely, if ever, enforced. It's rare the "public interest" excuse is cited so transparently, though.

Thing is—and I know I say this a lot—death is inevitable, and there is nothing you can do to outrun it. Coveting a sweet death, surrounded by your family, your face soft and folded with age and wisdom, your papery hand gripped tight by your beloved husband or wife: coveting that is a fantasy. Is there necessarily less honor in face-planting off a train and into the path of another train because you crushed nine cans of pre-mixed gin and tonic in less that 20 minutes? I proffer to you: no, there is not. You could get hit by a bus tomorrow. A tiny and precisely aimed brick could hit you on the head. You could, thanks to the influence of Special Brew, get your foot stuck in a Virgin Trains toilet while it goes sharply round a corner, snapping the ankle and leading to a bleed-out. If you are worried about dying pissed and alone on a cross-country train, are you truly living?

Do we really need the RSSB to save us from ourselves? In both mine and Pete Waterman's opinion, no. I think Pete would agree that, thanks to the beauty of the spirit of human ingenuity, even once we step safely and soberly off a train we will find ever more fantastic and inventive ways to kill ourselves. And this is the man who invented Kylie. At least, RSSB, at least let us be a bit pissed first.

Follow Joel on Twitter.