I think we can all agree on the fact that A Serbian Film is one powerfully nasty piece of work, and I think we can mostly agree on the fact that it is well-shot, the score is good, the fx are great and all the technical credits are well-done (this DOES NOT translate to me trying to say the damn thing has merit or anything, don’t get it twisted.) My question here is: who paid what could’ve been what, thousands upon thousands potentially, based simply on what it might cost to produce a smaller film, and why did they do it? The most obvious potential replies here are profit and sex. Well I truly hope that this movie was not some disgusting Serbian CEO’s fondest wish to see on the screen, because that would be vile. The next potential answer, and the most likely, is money. But A Serbian Film’s potential audience is vanishingly small, even for an extreme horror film. It had to be cut just to get an NC-17 here in America! Who the hell was out takin’ the family on a fun trip to the cineplex to see this film? My answer of course is no one. Okay, so what about in Serbia: is there some shady group of degenerates who get their kicks from watching political gore porn? Before you answer that, know that such a situation is not entirely without precedent. Bryanston Pictures funded The Texas Chain Saw Massacre in 1974 and were absolutely a front for the Mafia. The Mob also distributed lots of hardcore porn to sex theaters in the 70’s and at least a couple other horror films too. Is there a Serbian Mafia who was just dying to invest their money into a movie almost everyone would flee from by the halfway point? This is not the only film like this to have rather unbelievably managed to generate a decent chunk of budget change on the strength of content that is frankly revolting to everyone but one or two grizzled crazy people on here. Human Centipede II feels like the exact same situation to me: it was clearly shot on film and while its technical credits aren’t as impressive a Serbian’s, there just seems to be too much money on the screen for films with such a small hope of ever truly being profitable. It is entirely possible that I am underestimating the thirst people may have for content this extreme. Certainly the minute you say “extreme,” “banned,” or “controversial” to the right horror fan, their eyes light up like Christmas. But I can’t stop thinking that both of these films in particular but especially Serbian have potential budgets far in excess of their ability to make them back. I would kill for a feature-length documentary on all of this because the story has to be more interesting than the films.

So why have these shadowy people remained anonymous all these years later? The literal only piece of information I’ve found really on the funding of A Serbian Film is that it was “independently funded” which tells us almost nothing. It appears what this may mean is that Srdjan Spasojevic funded the film entirely himself through a company called Contra Film based in Belgrade, but again I’m butting up against the amount of money this director might’ve had to put up to get his film made. Contra Film and another company called Jinga Films may be the culprits for Serbian’s budget, with American company Unearthed Films certainly involved somehow, but the data isn’t very clear to me (I did find however that the exact documentary I wanted appears to be in progress, so there’s that.) Does a company as tiny as Unearthed, which specializes in “extreme” content and seems to possibly be run by Stephen Biro and almost no one else really have enough money when combined with these other two potential companies to fund an at least likely fairly-expensive movie? Now when it comes to Human Centipede II, IFC Midnight appears to have been distributor and they are a much bigger company so my questions about that film may have ceased for now. Wikipedia also says Centipede was a co-production between the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, with a UK distributor listed as Eureka Entertainment so there’s more money in the coffer for that one although it was also partially shot in London with a British cast, which again seems like money. It was also apparently only released in America for midnight showings, again reducing its potential box-office revenue. Monster Pictures, a decently-sized distributor, picked the film up for Australian dates. All this talk about distributors though somewhat masks the fact that the true origins of A Serbian Film in particular’s cash flow are mired in a certain amount of obscurity.

Frankly, I don’t know why I want to know so much other than I guess it’s because it makes no sense to me, and if it makes no sense there certainly must be a story of some sort. So can anyone here take a crack at this one? Who funded two of the most extreme horror films of the 21st century and why?