True Crime? The Curious Case of Remy Couture

Remy Couture in his studio. Makes your workspace look tame by comparison.

You may or may not be aware of this case so let me start with a brief recap:

Remy Couture is a special effects artist here in my hometown of Montreal. His speciality is crime and (mostly) gore. Truth be told, he is really, really good at it. So good that he was recently accused of “producing and distributing obscene material” an offense that is usually reserved for “true” events that have been filmed and distributed (such is the case of alleged killer Rocco Magnotta.)

Now, bear with me.

Remy Couture, who has worked on many big budget films, such as Death Race and The Mummy 3, self-produced, filmed, and distributed his own movie titled Inner Depravity. It is a movie for which he also made the special effects: the blood, the gore, the decay. He even acted in it. That was a few years ago and it was intended to be a portfolio piece.

On many accounts, the scenario appeared to be unoriginal. A deranged serial killer kidnaps, tortures, rapes, and kills young women in unsavoury ways that will undoubtedly land him in special hell. (Yes, I’ve been watching Firefly again!)

We have all seen movies that have a similar plot, and serial killers are a very basic element of crime fiction in general. If you are a fan of Asian cinema, as I am, and have seen your share of Takashi Miike movies, there is little left in this world to impress or disgust you. That is not why Inner Depravity’s case is interesting.

What is interesting is why Mr. Couture was arrested in the first place.

The complaint first came from Interpol. An Austrian pathologist filed the international arrest warrant after viewing the movie because he was unable to guarantee that the images filmed were not, in fact, real rapes and murders caught on tape.

In the end, Mr. Couture was found not guilty of the crime. Most of the articles I read on the subject agreed that the case was a dud and that it shouldn’t have been brought to court in the first place. There is a disclaimer at the beginning of Mr. Couture’s film, with a title band and a full generic at the end. It is, and remains, a horror movie like any other. Most analysts and commentators (in Montreal at least) were worried about the case’s repercussions on freedom of speech and the cinema industry in general and I guess everyone was happy about the verdict.

As my knowledge of the law is limited to certain union procedures and labour laws, I know that better qualified people than I will comment on the case and all of its judicial details in ways that I could never do. I am, after all, only a fan of crime fiction, not a lawyer or a judge.

I will allow myself this comment though: Being a fan of horror doesn’t make Remy Couture a distorted, delusional, and disgusting human being. But being able to fool law enforcement into believing that his make-up job was a true-crime, snuff movie, now that makes him a hell of a special effects artist.  

Photo from SupportRemy.com. Click to see more, but be warned…they are very, very realistic!


Ian Truman is a hardcore kid turned writer. He has been straight edge and vegetarian for at least a decade now and hopes to bring the passion, verve, and dedication of hardcore into the art form of the novel. You can find him in Montreal, Quebec, with his wife Mary and daughter Kaori or on his website at iantruman.wordpress.com.

Read all posts by Ian Truman for Criminal Element.

Comments

  1. Alejandra

    Hay mas informacion sobre Rémy Couture?
    me interesa mucho saber que a pasado con el.

    Gracias.

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