There is a Vertigo comic book called “The Filth,” and it deals with the world’s diseased places, mental insanity and some twisted sex. “Bandage-man” would be right at home in its pages.
Bandage-man (Jason Killalee) is a superhero … or so he thinks. In reality he’s a disturbed man who takes it upon himself to rid the world of “degenerates” while wearing a gauze bandage around his head. (That entire concept and “costume” would also fit in “The Authority” comic book, but that series was never this bent.) Our hero is having a problem, though. He thinks he’s becoming that which he fights against (shades of Nietzsche), and he links that back to a previous encounter with one of his victims.
Bandage-man’s spiral into garbage kicked into full meltdown mode when he picked up a young homosexual in a public park. The guy had a habit of finding used condoms and sucking them dry, and Bandage-man kills him for it. Unfortunately, Bandage-man then develops the same habit and one day gorges himself on fifteen used condoms, one of which had blood in it. Now he has to fix what he’s become, and that’s why I love this film.
“Bandage-man” is all about dealing with monsters in one form or another … including the one that stares back at you in the mirror every day; we’re all a little sick in the head. (And who among us hasn’t sucked a discarded condom dry?) Bandage-man finds a solution to the problem, though, and takes care of things the way they should be dealt with. Let’s just pray the rest of us are as brave when we see what we’ve become.
