Broken Movie

Image included in PirateBay.org download.

Opening Title

The Broken Movie was a short film made in 1993 to promote the Broken EP, released in 1992. It is presented as a snuff film, about 20 minutes in length, interspersed with Broken’s four music videos and includes its own video for the song "Gave Up" as its conclusion. The movie was filmed and directed by Peter Christopherson.

The video involves a young man being kidnapped and made to watch Nine Inch Nails videos while being tortured. Trent Reznor once said that the Broken Movie "...makes 'Happiness in Slavery' look like a Disney movie". Much of the cast, save Bob Flanagan in "Happiness in Slavery" and the band itself in "Wish", is unknown.

Video Listing

"Pinion" (Directed by Eric Goode & Serge Becker)
"Wish" (Directed by Peter Christopherson)
"Help Me I Am In Hell" (Directed by Eric Goode & Serge Becker)
"Happiness In Slavery" (Directed by Jon Reiss)
"Gave Up" * (Directed by Peter Christopherson)

* This version is different than the one included on Closure.

Synopsis

For info on the actual music videos, see the individual song pages.

The film opens with the aggressor walking along a platform until he stops on a trap door, the camera shows a noose around his neck and shows an eerie expression on the man’s face as the trap door opens and he begins to fall. The camera then cuts to views of a neighbourhood passing by as it is filmed from a car window until it slows down when a man (the victim) is caught on camera. The next is image is that of the victim tied to a chair and sat in front of a television, where he is forced to watch NIN videos.

Pinion

Following the Pinion video, the film cuts back to the amateur video where the killer, wearing some kind of leather mask, violently drags back the victim’s head and forces him to drink some sort of liquid from a petrol can, mimicking the person in the music video who is forced to drink waste.

Wish

The middle of the music video is interrupted by the amateur footage with the victim chained to a big table with a large wad of dark substance on his face. As the killer can immediately be seen putting his pants on, it can be assumed that it's feces. The music video then commences and finishes; the killer then repeatedly rewinds it to the part where Reznor screams “fist fuck” and begins to rub his fist.

Help Me I Am In Hell

At this point in the film, the victim is shown still tied to the table as the killer proceeds to rip his victim’s teeth out, reflecting the man in the music video shown eating. In the most prominent VHS leak, this part was blacked out, probably as a way for Reznor to tell whose copy of the film had been leaked.

Happiness in Slavery

It can be noted that in "Happiness In Slavery", a person is tortured and killed, foreshadowing what happens in "Gave Up" where the victim is tortured and dismembered.

Gave Up

The film ends with a video for "Gave Up", different to the one on Closure, with the music simply dubbed over the storyline of the movie. At this point in the film, the victim is suspended from the ceiling and is repeatedly attacked by the perpetrator with a blade, and then with a blowtorch; the killer then slices off the victim's penis with a razor. The camera-work at this part closely resembles that of an amateur snuff film, while there is interspersed footage of the police searching through the basement and finding remains of previous victims. (At one point, a sign that reads "TRESPASSERS WILL BE EATEN" is shown.) Finally, the film cuts back to the victim strapped on the table, as the murderer hacks his limbs off with a chainsaw, proceeds to presumably rape him, and ultimately slices his chest open to consume his heart.

The movie then cuts back to the execution scene shown at the beginning of the film, where the killer is being dropped through the trap door, falling through a seemingly immensely long tunnel, until the rope tightens suddenly. The movie ends with the inverted version of the ‘’Broken’’ album cover, with the background black, and a mirrored "n" character filled with the original orange background texture. After roughly a minute of silence and a black screen, the severed head of the killer is shown flying across the screen.

Release

Due to its extremely graphic content, the Broken Movie has never seen an "official" release. A copy was leaked in the 1990s and traded for years, resulting in many poor-quality, high-generation copies, and was later encoded and distributed through P2P networks. However, on December 30 2006, someone leaked a high-quality DVD image on The Pirate Bay; it includes the video for "Help Me I Am In Hell," which none of the fan-made compilations did, because the first leak had the video dropped out. It was leaked online by the same user who uploaded the leaked DVD version of Closure and there is speculation that this version of the movie has been sourced directly from the master tapes and that Reznor himself is the source of the leaks, as implied by a post on his blog on The Spiral: "12/21/06 : Happy Holidays! This one is a guilt-free download. (shhhh - I didn't say that out loud). If you know what I'm talking about, cool."