6/1/14 (Part Two): Friends, Zombies, Fellow Men in the Country…

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actor-director, actor-writer, B-movies, backwoods folk, Billy Ray, Buck WIld, chupacabra, cinema, co-writers, Dru Lockwood, dude ranch, dumb films, Edgar Wright, film reviews, films, guys' weekend, horror, horror films, horror movies, horror-comedies, hunting, Isaac Harrison, isolated communities, Jerrod Pistilli, Joe Stevens, Mark Ford, Matthew Albrecht, Meg Cionni, Movies, rednecks, Shaun of the Dead, Tom and Jerry, Tyler Glodt, white trash, writer-director, zombie films, zombie movies, zombies

By this point in world history, plain ol’ “vanilla” zombie films don’t really have much effect anymore. Sure, they may be one of the easiest low-budget productions for fledgling filmmakers to get involved in (Got some friends, a camera and a location? Guess what, Jack: you just got yourself the beginnings of a zombie film!) but that also means that we’ve been drowning in this kind of direct-to-video filler for a good thirty years, at this point. Once the “prosumer” camera revolution occurred, it was even easier for filmmakers to pump out this kind of product and it seems that zombie films have been multiplying like Tribbles within the last decade or so. In order to inject a bit of life into the subgenre, filmmakers have turned to various ways to “spruce” up the ol’ gut-munchers, the most popular of which involves slamming comedy and the zombie film together, chocolate and peanut butter-style, to create an entirely new (well, kind of new) sub-subgenre: the zom-com.

While Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead (2004) definitely wasn’t the first zom-com (I’d give that title to Dan O’Bannon’s outrageous 1985 yuk/yuck-fest The Return of the Living Dead), it’s probably (still) the most popular one, as well as the first to take the “zom-com” tag and run with it. In the decade since Simon Pegg and the lads tried to forestall a zombie invasion of the UK, there have been several fistfuls of zom-coms, ranging in quality from “drop-dead hilarious” to “just drop dead, already.” In a fairly glutted field, I’m managed to see several worthy successors to Shaun of the Dead: Fido (2006) was an ingenious melding of zom-coms with candy-colored 1950’s nostalgia, while Cockneys vs Zombies (2012) managed to overcome a terribly generic title with solidly-paced jokes and thrills. And, of course, who could forget Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg trading quips in Zombieland (2009)? Mixing zombie chills with chuckles isn’t the easiest task but, when done well, the results can be lots of fun. Unfortunately, Buck Wild (2013), the newest feature from the team of Tyler Glodt and Matthew Albrecht, isn’t so much a “big, dumb blast” as a “really dumb film,” only slightly less stupid than the head-smackingly awful ’80s Troma film Redneck Zombies (1989).

Buck Wild starts promisingly, if crudely, with a fairly funny segment involving beleaguered father Clyde (Joe Stevens), his perpetually horny daughter, Candy (Meg Cionni) and her stupid boyfriend. After decking the boyfriend with a wrench (humping his daughter in the garden is one thing, stepping all over the flowers is a whole other bucket of manure), Clyde ends up getting attacked by a chupacabra. Yes, a chucacabra, ladies and gentlemen. We that, we seem to be off to the races, establishing a crude, fun and extremely tongue-in-cheek attitude.

Unfortunately, the good will begins to fade as the movie proper begins, mostly because we get saddled with a pretty obnoxious group of protagonists. Our “hero” is Craig (co-writer Matthew Albrecht), one of those perpetually put-upon, straight-arrow types that exists solely to become irritated by various indignities. His “best friend,” Lance (Isaac Harrison) is a ridiculously metrosexual “ladies’ man” who happens to be boinking Craig’s girlfriend, Carla (Amerlia Meyers), unbeknownst to our “hero.” The little group is rounded out by Tom (Dru Lockwood) and Jerry (Jarrod Pistilli), who seem to serve as a perpetually at-odds odd couple: you know, cuz they’re named Tom and Jerry? Like the cartoons? The ones with the mouse and cat? Yeah, it just ain’t funny no matter how you slice it, is it? Tom is the typical mealy-mouthed, glasses-wearing dork: we’ve seen at least a million iterations of this character in just the last couple years, nevermind the last couple decades. Jerry, however, is the real prize in this Cracker Jack box: bedecked in a ridiculous fedora, given to smoking cigars in small cars and practicing his nunchuks in the nude, Jerry is supposed to be the epitome of the batshit crazy outsider, that one guy who just…does not…give a FUCK, bro! Except he’s a colossal weenie, sort of a gene-splice between Crispin Glover and Bobcat Goldthwait’s award-winning performance in the Police Academy movies. As such, not only is it impossible to buy the scene where he puts the cigar out on his own hand (cuz this guy totally looks like he would start bawling) but it’s almost offensive to believe that this nitwit occupies the “badass” role in the film. When your bar is that low, no good can come of it, mark my words.

The plot, such as it is, involves one of those “guys-only weekends,” this one ostensibly set-up to allow for not only some male bonding but some animal-shooting, as well. The “gang” heads to the Buck Wild Ranch (Hey! That’s the name of the film! Clever!), which just happens to be run by Clyde. Clyde’s not looking too good and if you’ve seen any zombie films besides this one, you’ll know why. Besides being infected by a chupacabra, Clyde’s also kind of a dick: he calls the guys “punks” and “pissants” (put up your dukes!) and tells them to make sure to stay within the borders of the ranch. Turns out that Clyde’s next-door neighbor is a self-proclaimed “badass” named Billy Ray (Mark Ford) and he doesn’t take kindly to trespassers. The guys end up running afoul of Billy Ray (an absolutely, astoundingly terrible creation that seems to be part frat-boy, part John Waters, part lame-ass rockabilly clothes horse and completely, totally unbelievable) and a completely awful park ranger, Officer Shipley (director/co-writer Tyler Glodt), which don’t really expand the narrative so much as pad it out. Ultimately, they also run afoul of zombies: turns out Clyde has been infecting other locals and, soon, our city slickers are up to their haircuts in the redneck dead. Revelations are had, truths are learned, friends turn into the walking dead, Jerry acts like a badass, yadda yadda yadda. If the ultimate destination of this one-legged mule isn’t readily apparent by the end of the first act…I’m guessing you might actually enjoy this. Hmm…

Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat this at all: Buck Wild is a stupid film. Aggressively stupid. Worse yet, it’s a hyperactive, self-aware, tone-deaf kind of stupidity that reminds me more of films like Scary Movie (2000) than Shaun of the Dead. Let me give you a good example of the “humor” on display here. After Officer Shipley pulls the guys over because he’s heard “enough gunshots for Baghdad,” he proceeds to stand outside his car and give them a speech about how if you smell shit, you’re probably standing in it. Officer Shipley, it turns out, smells shit: guess what, he asks them. You’re standing in shit, the others point out. And he is…he really is standing in a big pile of shit. Now, if anything about that was humorous (keep in mind that the “delivery” of said “joke” doesn’t help things), Buck Wild just may be right up your alley. Lest we think that the writers only have one kind of joke up their sleeve, they also show us how hilarious and timely their references are: Tom ends up a captive at Billy Ray’s compound and Jerry goes to save him, in a scene that features an ultra-sleazy brass song, Tom bent over a table wearing only his underwear and Jerry wielding a samurai sword. Yeah, that’s right: it’s a fucking Pulp Fiction reference. Not only that, but it’s a “humorous” reference to the rape scene: now that’s comedy!

Lest it sound like Buck Wild is completely worthless, there are actually three elements of the film that really work. The first element is the cinematography, which is consistently well-done and clear: in low-budget films like this, you’re usually lucky if you get something that looks half-way decent, let alone good. The second element that works (spectacularly well, I might add) are the fake TV shows that we occasionally see. One of them, a public access show called “Fucking Hunting” that features Billy Ray and his motley crew, is an absolute scream, miles away the funniest thing in the film. Hot on its heels, however, is another gem of a fake show, this one called “Living Through the Gray,” a self-help show about dealing with color-blindness. The TV shows are not only the funniest moments in the film, hands down, but they’re actually two of the funniest moments I’ve seen in any film recently: it’s a shame that they’re left to die amid the humorless wasteland that is the rest of the film.

The third element that actually works in Buck Wild is an extremely smart and subversive little commentary on the casual female nudity that inundates most low-mid budget horror films. Unlike similar films that might feature a terrified young starlet running around topless, Buck Wild chooses to make Tom the object of the “male gaze.” For the majority of the film, due to one incident or another, Tom rarely wears more than his underwear and socks: at one point, he fashions a toga out of a garbage bag, only to have a zombie rip it to shreds. Later, he gets to take a shower and emerges, clad in a bathrobe, only to have a passing zombie yank it off, exposing him once again. I’ll be honest: this particular running gag never got old and displayed the kind of invention and thought that I wish the rest of the film possessed. I don’t actually recall any female nudity at all, to be honest, although we get plenty of Tom. In some ways, this seems to be a callback to the Pee Wee character in Porkys (1982), who likewise spends the majority of that film in a constant state of embarrassment, harassment and undress. While the film often seems to be exceptionally mean to Tom, it ends up paying off big dividends, especially during a nicely emotional final setpiece.

Ultimately, however, a few worthy elements don’t a worthy film make. If Buck Wild were just a little less inane and stupid, it would be mighty easy to recommend it as the kind of low-budget romp that it thinks it is. Unfortunately, the film mostly ends up being a showcase of missed opportunities and foul balls, with nary a true home run in the batch (unless we count the TV shows, which really only amount to 2-3 minutes of screen-time, max). While I’m more than willing to give Glodt and Albrecht another chance, there’s no way I would put these guys on my radar: Fool me once, fool me twice and all that jazz.

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6/1/14 (Part One): Night of the Bumbling Dead

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1980's, airport, alternate title, Cannibal Ferox, Cannibal Holocaust, City of the Walking Dead, exploitation films, fast zombies, Francisco Rabal, horror, horror films, horror movie, Hugo Stiglitz, Italian cinema, Laura Trotter, Maria Rosaria Omaggio, Mel Ferrer, Nightmare City, nuclear power plant, nuclear radiation, Pierangelo Civera, Ruggero Deodato, so-bad-it's-good, Stefania D'Amario, Stelvio Cipriani, twist ending, Ugo Bologna, Umberto Lenzi, Z-movies, zombie movies, zombies, zombies with weapons

A birds’-eye-view of a city, supplemented by a nicely atmospheric, Goblin-esque slowburner of a song, leads to the revelation that there’s been a spill at the local nuclear power plant. Nothing to worry about, since the spill has supposedly been contained, but TV reporter Dean Miller (Hugo Stiglitz) has been sent to cover the story. As he waits at the airport for his contact, Prof. Hagenbach, to get in, an unidentified military transport plan suddenly lands with no warning or radio contact. As the military, police and airport officials, along with Dean and his cameraman, surround the plane, everyone waits for several long, silent, agonizing minutes. Just as the military is preparing to storm the plane, the hatch door opens and we wait, anxiously, to see who (or what) will stumble out. For its first eight or so minutes, Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City (1980) is one tense, restrained live-wire of a film. While the 80 minutes that follow end up being completely laughable and silly, the film manages to succeed as one of those “so-bad-it’s-good” treats, perfect fodder for a drunken party or a lazy weekend of bad films.

Once the plane hatch opens, Dean and company are greeted by some of the shabbiest zombies in memory (I’ve seen more zombie films than are probably healthy for one individual and I can’t recall worse makeup in anything prior to Nightmare City), a shambling horde of fairly normal looking folks with lumpy, gray oatmeal slathered on their faces. Besides being part of a balanced breakfast, the “zombies” are also very fast…and very armed. Yes, folks: this is that notorious zombie film where the flesh-eating creatures spend more time firing machine guns and strangling people than biting them. In fact, as we later learn, the zombies aren’t really “zombies,” at all, but some kind of radiation-mutated, blood-sucking freaks: they’re atomic zompires! As the zompires run riot around the city, Dean tries to find his wife, Anna (Laura Trotter), who’s making a desperate stand at a besieged hospital. Meanwhile, Major Warren Holmes (Francisco Rabal) and Gen. Murchison (Mel Ferrer), two of the most ineffectual military men in the history of cinema, try to contain the zompire threat but only succeed in making everything worse. There are bomber planes on stand-by, however…just in case.

As Dean and Anna try to stave off the zompires, the General’s daughter, Jessica (Stefania D’Amario) and her husband, Bob (Pierangelo Civera) are also running around, trying to stay alive. Eventually, all of these characters will come together in one giant mess of exploding-projectile-television sets, gouged eyeballs, murderous zompire priests and total chaos, culminating in a final showdown in an abandoned amusement park that can best be described as “present and accounted for.” Stay tuned for the “twist” ending, however…or don’t: it really doesn’t change much, in the long run.

Despite how utterly shabby much of Nightmare City ends up being – and we’re talking occasionally Ed Woodian levels of ineptitude here – the film is still consistently enjoyable and quick-paced. I’m still not sold on “fast” zombies (and probably never will be) and feel that arming zombies makes about as much sense as giving The Wolf Man a shotgun but these actually end up being fairly minor quibbles. No one will ever mistake Lenzi’s “opus” has anything more than a Z-grade Italian zombie flick but it’s got energy to burn and is pretty good about not wearing out its welcome. The effects and makeup are consistently awful, although the requisite eye-gouging scene is well-staged and very uncomfortable. The acting is nothing to write home about but Hugo Stiglitz does a decent job as our protagonist and Mel Ferrer gets to act a little agitated as poor, put-upon Gen. Murchison.

Although Umberto Lenzi made a wide-range of films in his career, including various gangster, fantasy and action films, he’ll probably always be best known for his horror films, especially the genuinely disturbing cannibal films The Man From Green River (1972), Eaten Alive (1980) and Cannibal Ferox (1981). Cannibal Ferox, in particular, is a notoriously nasty member of the cannibal subgenre, although it’s slightly eclipsed by Ruggero Deodato’s legendary Cannibal Holocaust (1980). While Lenzi had a fairly wide and deep body of work, he was never the most distinctive director, to be honest, and it’s a bit difficult to differentiate much between his “style” and similar filmmakers like Deodato or Joe D’Amato. He’s practically the definition of “workmanlike,” although his work in Nightmare City definitely ranks in the lower-midrange of his filmography.

If there’s any one aspect of the film that really stands out, it would definitely have to be Stelvio Cipriani’s electronic score. Although it seems to explicitly reference Goblin, at times, the score is always appropriately moody and, frequently, rather thrilling. Cipriani also did the scores for several Mario Bava films, including his classic Bay of Blood (1971), so his roots in Italian exploitation cinema go fairly deep. While nothing here approaches the dizzying heights of Goblin’s work with Dario Argento, it’s all well-done and definitely enhances the overall experience.

Ultimately, your tolerance/enjoyment of Nightmare City will depend almost entirely on your experience with these kind of films. If you go in expecting an actually well-made, well-executed film (or even a well-made B-movie), you’re going to be sorely disappointed. If, however, you go in expecting a silly, gonzo, violent, shabby-as-hell Z-grade exploitation flick, you might be able to navigate these waters with some ease. Nothing can save that awful ending, of course, but what comes before it is just fun enough to make the journey worthwhile…kind of…sort of…

5/31/14 (Part Four): The Boys Are Back in Town

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1960's films, A Fistful of Dollars, bounty hunters, cinema, Clint Eastwood, Col. Douglas Mortimer, cult classic, El Indio, Ennio Morricone, favorite films, film reviews, films, flashbacks, For a Few Dollars More, Gian Maria Volonte, iconic film scores, Italian cinema, James Bond, Klaus Kinski, Lee Van Cleef, Mario Brega, Monco, Movies, Sergio Leone, spaghetti Westerns, The Bad and The Ugly, The Good, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, the Man with No Name, the myth of the Old West, the Wild West, trilogies, Westerns

Crafting a sequel to a successful, popular film is no easy feat. If the followup is too much like its predecessor, it has no individual identity, seeking only to remind audiences of the original material, usually in a watered down manner. If the sequel is nothing like the original film, however, either in content or tone, then filmmakers run the risk of losing their crossover audience: audiences who flocked to see dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (1993) might not have been so eager to see the followup if it featured kittens instead of velociraptors. The key, then, is to make the new film work for the same reasons the old one did: if you can tap back into an audiences’ emotions, you can produce a new film that will be just as successful, in its own way.

In many cases, the most successful sequels that don’t directly continue a larger storyline (The Godfather, etc.) are the ones that make subtle tweaks to the original property, while still maintaining the core feel/vibe. One of the best examples of this is the difference between Ridley Scott’s original Alien (1979) and James Cameron’s sequel, Aliens (1986). Both films are very good at what they do, for very different reasons. Scott’s film is a claustrophobic horror film that is equal parts “haunted house in space” and savage childbirth nightmare, whereas Cameron’s film is a fast-paced, tense and adrenaline-soaked action film about space marines destroying the living shit out of vicious alien foes. Two very different films but each wildly successful, in its own way and for its own reasons. In this spirit, then, we can see For a Few Dollars More (1965), Sergio Leone’s sequel to his iconic A Fistful of Dollars (1964), as being a wildly successful attempt to tweak the formula from the first film. While A Fistful of Dollars was a small film about one man and his interactions with a particularly lethal town, For a Few Dollars More is a much bigger, more epic story, prefiguring the Civil War epic that is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966), Leone’s magnum opus. It also ends up being a surprisingly big-hearted buddy picture, albeit one where Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef end up being the buddies. Huzzah!

The film begins with a nifty opening sequence that features someone on horseback getting gunned down in an extreme long shot, before another classic Ennio Morricone score kicks in. While the opening sequence isn’t quite as dynamic as the black-and-red James Bond nod of the first film, the song, itself, is pure gold, hinting at the titanic awesomeness that would arrive the following year with The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. An inter-title introduces us to the concept of the bounty killer (“Where life had no value, death, sometimes, had its price”) and we’re off to the races. Right off the bat, For a Few Dollars More has a larger, more expansive feel than its predecessor: Leone has a few more things to say, this time around, and he’s going to make damn sure we’re listening.

In short order, we meet Col. Douglas Mortimer (Lee Van Cleef), a man so completely badass that he makes his own railway schedule: “This train doesn’t stop in Tucumcari,” a nervous agent tells Mortimer. “This train’ll stop in Tucumcari,” Mortimer drolls back. And he’s right, of course, because he’s Lee Van Cleef: you try arguing with the dude. We then see Mortimer, as unhurried and cold as the Angel of Death himself, take out a bounty with a specially modified rifle. This guy, we see, is not the kind of fella you want to fuck with. As Mortimer gets a lead on his next bounty, he learns that someone else has been asking after the reward…some guy named Monco…some guy that we’d probably recognize better as…The Man With No Name (Clint Eastwood). And now, kids, we’re really off to the races.

After we see Eastwood handily collect his bounty via well-timed karate chops and a blazingly fast six-gun, we also get to see him practice a little good ol’ fashioned frontier justice. Approaching the worthless sheriff who did nothing to either capture the fugitive outlaw or prevent his gang from attempting to shoot him in the back, Monco looks the guy in the eye and deadpans, “Aren’t you supposed to be courageous and, above all, honest?” Without looking him in the eye, the sheriff responds back in the affirmative. Eastwood then takes the star off the sheriff’s chest, tosses it to a couple of guys hanging around outside, says “You need a new sheriff,” and rides out of town. In a word: badass.

At this point, with our principals firmly established, we meet the third point to this triangle: the vicious, blood-thirsty El Indio (Gian Maria Volonte). El Indio is a monstrous figure, a villain whose modus operandi involves gunning down people after his pocket watch has finished playing its delicate melody. Through a series of flashbacks, we get a gradual sense of the backstory behind the watch, leading to a pretty huge revelation in the final act. Indio is a complex man, equal parts brutish thug, calculating schemer and charming leader. He also has a $10000 bounty on his head, a reward which both Col. Mortimer and Monco have their eyes on.

After dancing around each other for a bit, Mortimer and Monco gradually settle into an uneasy partnership, one defined by an almost student/teacher relationship: Mortimer is the old-guard and Monco is the upstart young guy who will, eventually, take his place in the history books. There’s a genuine depth to Mortimer and Monco’s relationship that pays off in some surprisingly emotional ways throughout the film, while still allowing the titanic actors behind the performances to have their respective field days. It’s like a spaghetti Western version of Godzilla vs Monster Zero (1965), with Eastwood and Van Cleef subbing in for Godzilla and Rodan.

After Monco is “convinced” to infiltrate Indio’s gang (“One of us will have to join Indio’s band.” “Why are you looking at me when you say ‘one of us’?”), the two come up with a plan to take down Indio and his gang, including Klaus Kinski as a notoriously bad-tempered hunchback named Juan Wild. Things don’t go according to plan, of course, and Mortimer and Monco end things the way they began them: with steel reserve, a sneer and a whole lot of hot lead.

Right off the bat, For a Few Dollars More exists in a much more expansive universe than the first film. For one thing, we actually get to travel around a bit and see more of the Wild West than the dusty town of San Miguel. As Mortimer, Monco and El Indio continue their deadly game, audiences get to experience a much fuller dose of Leone’s vision of the West, a vision that’s every bit as interesting as John Ford’s, as far as I’m concerned. Leone’s vision is a romantic, fantastical one, informed as much by tall-tales and campfire stories as it is by actual historical precedent. At one point, as we get our first glimpse of the “impenetrable” El Paso bank, I found myself wondering if actual Old West banks bore any resemblance to the eye-popping, baroque edifice that Leone portrays in the film. I’m pretty sure they didn’t but I sure do like Leone’s idea better.

While A Fistful of Dollars was full of great one-liners and some truly ironic moments, For a Few Dollars More is a much more intentionally funny, “good-natured” film. At one point, a young boy tries to entice Monco into staying at a particular hotel by telling him that an attractive landlady runs the place. When Monco asks if she’s married, the boy shrugs and says, “Yeah, but she don’t care.” The initially throwaway bit pays off, later, when we see the landlady swooning over Monco. “He’s tall,” she says dreamily, which produces a nice moment when her husband storms off, in a huff, revealing him to be exceptionally short. It’s a pretty great gag and seamlessly integrated into the film. There’s another truly funny scene where Mortimer and Monco try to exert authority over each other by shooting their respective hats down the street: the two titans are so evenly matched that they eventually give up and just go have a drink. If only all conflicts could be resolved this way, eh?

Like the first film, For a Few Dollars more looks and sounds beautiful: the wide-open vistas are as stunning as ever and Morricone’s score is phenomenal, leaps and bounds above the already notable Fistful of Dollars score. Leone uses the score to much greater effect in the followup, culminating in one of the greatest scenes ever committed to celluloid. When Indio is broken out of jail, he gets revenge on the man who ratted him out by having his wife and baby killed right before his eyes. As is usual for Indio, he offers the poor guy a “chance” to fight him: when the music from his pocket watch stops, they can both come out blazing. In a fantastic use of sound, the music from the watch starts off as tinny and diegetic before becoming part of the score, where the music warps into a massive, Gothic processional, drenched in church organs, before returning to tinny and diegetic as the music stops and El Indio blasts his victim straight to Hell. It’s a massively impressive scene, one that didn’t really have any precedents in A Fistful of Dollars but will have plenty of competition in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Acting-wise, this is another home-run, featuring typically iconic performances from Eastwood and Van Cleef and another great turn from Volonte. Whereas Volonte’s Ramon Rojo, in A Fistful of Dollars, was akin to a rabid dog, his performance as El Indio is much fuller and more subtle. In many ways, Indio comes across as a really good Bond villain, sort of an Old West Blofeld. In fact, the James Bond parallels from the first film really come home to roost in this one, especially during the bit where Indio and his second-in-command, Nino (Mario Brega) prepare to doublecross their own gang. There’s one moment where Indio says, “It’s done now: prepare to get out of here” where I fully expected to see SPECTRE baddies running around while their lair collapsed. If this sounds like some kind of faint praise, believe me: it’s not.

Ultimately, For a Few Dollars More is that rare sequel that actually manages to expand on and improve on its predecessor. While I’ll always love the smaller, more intimate feel of A Fistful of Dollars, there no way I can deny how much fun it is to see Leone playing in a larger sandbox. The second film in the trilogy leads us perfectly into the last, where everything becomes much bigger, more epic and more badass. While there’s an undeniable joy in seeing Eastwood and Van Cleef face-off in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, there’s something just as cool about seeing them team-up to administer a little good, ol’ fashioned ass-kicking. You can keep The Expendables (2010): who needs a whole team when you have the two biggest badasses in the universe?

5/31/14 (Part Three): Better Make it Three Coffins

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1960's films, A Fistful of Dollars, Akira Kurosawa, cinema, Clint Eastwood, cult films, Eastwood, Ennio Morricone, favorite films, feuding families, film reviews, films, foreign films, Gian Maria Volonte, gunfighters, iconic film scores, Italian cinema, James Bond, John Wayne, Marianne Koch, Movies, Ramon Rojo, Sergio Leone, Shakespearean, spaghetti Westerns, the Man with No Name, the myth of the Old West, the Wild West, trilogies, Westerns, Wolfgang Lukschy, Yojimbo

As a kid, I was raised on a pretty steady diet of movies…I can’t really recall a time when we were at home and not watching something, to be honest. My parents had fairly wide-ranging tastes, although certain things were pretty sacrosanct: Westerns, musicals and crime films always ruled the roost in our little castle. In particular, my parents loved John Wayne and Clint Eastwood films. Growing up, I was never particularly into Wayne: I’d seen almost all of his films by the time I was a teenager, I believe, but very few aside from El Dorado (1966) and North to Alaska (1960) ever stuck out for me. As I get older, I find myself with a little more appreciation for his body of work, although he’ll never be close to my favorite Western star. Eastwood, however…Eastwood was a different story.

To not put too fine a point on it, I absolutely idolized Clint Eastwood growing up. Not just enjoyed his films, mind you, but voraciously devoured them, sometimes watching the same movies over and over again to the point of rote memorization. There was a certain inherent badassness to Eastwood that always hit me right in the primal center of my brain: I didn’t just love his movies…I wanted to be this dude! It didn’t matter what the films were…Westerns, war movies, cop thrillers, chimpanzee road movies…I loved ’em all, man. The Dirty Harry series will always have a special place in my heart but, for my money, Eastwood was the most unstoppable during his classic run of mid-’60s-’70s Westerns. To this day, I can watch any or all of these at the drop of a hat: A Fistful of Dollars (1964); For a Few Dollars More (1965); The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966); Hang ‘Em High (1968); Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970); Joe Kidd (1972); High Plains Drifter (1973); and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). For this decade+ timeframe, beginning with Sergio Leone’s unbeatable Dollars trilogy, Eastwood, as far as I’m concerned, was the single greatest action star in the world. But it all began with a humble little spaghetti Western called A Fistful of Dollars.

The setup for A Fistful of Dollars is almost Shakespearean in its simplicity: a mysterious, nameless man (Clint Eastwood) wanders into a lawless town and ends up in the middle of a seemingly eternal struggle between two feuding families. In this case, the town is San Miguel and the families are the Baxters and Rojos and each one controls a vital aspect of the town – the Baxters run all of the guns and the Rojos take care of the liquor. As The Man With No Name knows, any town with liquor and guns has got money…and he wants in on the action. Soon, the stranger is pulling strings every which way, inching both clans towards a fiery Armageddon that will see him sop up the remains like soup from the bottom of a bowl. Caught between Sheriff John Baxter (Wolfgang Lukschy) on one end and the feral Ramon Rojo (Gian Maria Volonte) on the other, the stranger is able to find a friend in the enigmatic saloon-keeper, Silvanito (Jose Calvo)…always a good thing when you need someone to watch your back. He even finds a cause, in a way, as the stranger seeks to reunite Ramon’s captive Marisol (Marianne Koch) with her husband and young son. It’s just business as usual in San Miguel, where a man can either get rich…or dead.

Right off the bat, astute viewers will note that the plot of A Fistful of Dollars bears a striking resemblance to Akira Kurosawa’s iconic Yojimbo (1961). While this is pretty obvious, I’ll go a little further out on the branch and suggest another possible influence: the James Bond films, which began with Dr. No (1962). While this may seem a bit odd, think about it for a minute. Consider the highly stylized credit sequence, which features stark red and black silhouettes. Compare The Man with No Name’s offhand, cool demeanor and way with a (subtle) wisecrack to Sean Connery’s portrayal of the British super-spy. Think about the effortless way in which the stranger executes highly complex plans, sort of like Rube Goldberg devices minus the bowling balls. While the James Bond similarities will really come to the forefront in the followup, For a Few Dollars More, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point them out in this one. Truth be told, I’ve been a gonzo fan of both the original Bond films and the Dollars Trilogy for so long, by this point, that I’m a little surprised I didn’t make the connection earlier.

New revelation aside, my biggest takeaway from yet another viewing of A Fistful of Dollars is how really unbeatable the film is. In fact, the only Western that might be better than this is For a Few Dollars More. And, of course, the only one better than that would have to be The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (RIP Mr. Wallach), which looks down on most films from a godly height, Western or otherwise. There isn’t really any aspect of Leone’s classic film that doesn’t work splendidly well, as far as I’m concerned. Eastwood is the perfect hero/anti-hero (although his actions to help Marisol and her family seem to tip him more in the “hero” direction for this outing). The story is streamlined and quick-paced, full of lots of natural wit and some truly funny moments, much of it thanks to Eastwood’s spot-on delivery of some pretty classic quips. The cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, full of the huge, wide-open vistas that would make The Good, The Bad and The Ugly such an epic film. And that score…yeesh, who could ever forget about Ennio Morricone? Although he’ll always be best known for the iconic score for the final Dollars film (wah wah….wa wa waaaah…), the threads are here and they’re pretty damn glorious.

When all of the elements come together (that amazingly vibrant cinematography, the stirring score, the sight of Clint squinting, cheroot in mouth, finger itching to pull the trigger), they create a sensation that I can best describe as a purely cinematic experience. My adrenaline starts to pump, I mutter things at the screen and, before long, I’m throwing my fists in the air like it was an Iron Maiden concert: I’ve had the same, basic experience when watching these films for the best 30 or so years, without fail. Unlike other beloved films from my childhood that currently have as much relevance as month-old milk (I’m thinking specifically of Clerks (1994), which I can’t even sit through nowadays), my opinion on A Fistful of Dollars (and the Trilogy, in general) has never changed. I loved the film back then and I still love it now. Although I’m able to articulate my feelings a little more eloquently these days (“Clint Eastwood kicks ass!” has been replaced by examinations of the cinematography, dialogue and musical score), I still arrive at the same conclusion: this film kicks ass.

While it’s impossible to completely quantify what works so well about A Fistful of Dollars, I’ll close with one of my favorite moments in the film. Towards the end, as we near the final shootout, Silvanito has been taken hostage by the Rojos and severely beaten. There’s little hope of rescue for him: after all, it’s not like him and the stranger are comrades…they’re just a couple of guys who don’t have any reason to kill each other. Silvanito has no reason to believe the stranger will come to save him, even though he’s kept his mouth shut and given the Rojos nothing regarding the Man with No Name. Suddenly, the stranger appears in the street, stepping from behind a plume of dynamite smoke. Eastwood stands there, wearing that classic serape and hat, a cheroot between his teeth and steel flint in his eyes. Silvanito looks up, just then, squinting to see through swollen eyes. He sees Eastwood and a small smile creases his weary face: help has arrived after all…all hope is not lost. As Eastwood strides forward, my heart soars, like it always does. There is about to be a stomping and it’s going to be an especially righteous one.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what movies are all about. You could argue, of course, but you would be wrong. So very, very wrong.

5/31/14 (Part Two): The Children Suffer

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abused children, Aharon Keshales, Ami Weinberg, bad cops, Big Bad Wolves, black comedies, child killing, cinema, co-directors, co-writers, cops, cops behaving badly, Doval'e Glickman, Dror, fairy tales, film reviews, films, gallows' humor, Gidi, irony, Israeli films, Kalevet, Lior Ashkenazi, Menashe Noy, Micki, missing child, Movies, Nati Kluger, Navot Papushado, Prisoners, Rabies, revenge, Rotem Keinan, torture, Tzahi Grad, vengeance, writer-director

While we’d all like to think that we’re above primal emotions like hate and fear, the reality is actually a lot less black-and-white. The human animal may try to distance itself from its more feral, four-legged “cousins,” casting its eyes (and aspirations) to the cosmos, suppressing more earthy, “unpleasant” instincts. It may do this to its heart’s content but one overwhelming fact cannot be denied: the wild, untamed brutality of the animal kingdom always lurks just below the serene, civilized facade of humanity. At any given moment, we all walk the razor’s edge, careful not to give ourselves over too completely to the darkness.

This delicate balancing act becomes a lifelong task, then, just one other facet of life to navigate. We’re always perfectly balanced, the necessary combination of light and dark to survive in a dangerous world…until we aren’t. When we allow powerful, devastating primal urges like hate, fear and vengeance to take the controls, we tempt the fates, throw off the natural order of things. Too little of the “animal instinct” and we’re gingerbread figures, empty haircuts that mean as much to the natural order as plankton do to whales. Too much of the “old ways,” however, and we become something much different from human…much more dangerous. When the hearts of men and women become overstuffed with hate and vengeance, when we cast aside all other notions of humanity in service of stoking the indignant fire in our guts, we become wolves, ourselves. As we see in Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado’s extraordinary, incendiary new film, Big Bad Wolves (2013), even the desire for justice can become something ugly in the blast furnace of hate, leading us to do all of the right things for all of the most terribly wrong reasons.

Our protagonist, Micki (Lior Ashkenazi), is a charismatic Israeli police detective with a huge problem: there’s a psychopath kidnapping, raping, torturing and killing young girls. Micki’s a good guy, at heart, but he’s also one of those movie cops who operates best outside the polite constraints of the law. Along with his by-the-book partner, Rami (Menashe Noy), and a couple of eager young cops nicknamed “Beavis and Butthead,” Micki takes the chief suspect in the case, Dror (Rotem Keinan), to an abandoned factory for a little good old-fashioned “questioning questioning.” Dror, a religious studies teacher, is a particularly pathetic figure, resembling nothing so much as one of those shaggy dogs that gets wet and ends up looking like a drowned rat. During the course of the “interrogation,” Micki and the perpetually giggling moron brothers put quite the smack-down on Dror (including actually smacking him repeatedly with a phone book), all in the hope of getting him to cop to the heinous crimes. When the factory ends up being less than abandoned, footage of the entire incident is uploaded to YouTube: Micki becomes an instant celebrity and is rewarded with being busted down to traffic cop, while Dror is summarily released into a community that has pretty much already convicted him. Not the best situation for a school teacher, it turns out, and Dror is quickly asked to take a little “vacation” by the principal (Ami Weinberg): he’s welcome to come back once everyone’s “got over it,” presumably sometime between “the distant future” and “never.”

Despite being summarily chewed out by his superior, Tsvika (Dvir Benedek), Micki is still positive that Dror is guilty and intends on continuing to push him until he cracks. With a knowing look, Tsvika tells him that he can do whatever he likes, since he’s no longer working the case…as long as he doesn’t get caught, of course. But Micki does end up getting caught, right at the key moment when he has spirited Dror away to an isolated forest locale and made the terrified man dig his own grave. Far from an agent of law enforcement, however, Dror’s “guardian angel” ends up being a devil in disguise: Gidi (Tzahi Grad), the vengeful father of one of the dead girls. Like Micki, he’s also convinced that Dror is guilty but his ultimate intention is a bit different from Micki’s: he intends to torture Dror until he reveals the location of his daughter’s missing head. By inflicting all of the torture onto Dror that he suspects the schoolteacher of inflicting on the girls, Gidi hopes to achieve a kind of perverted justice. If Dror talks, he gets a merciful bullet to the brain. If he doesn’t, he’ll get the hammers…and the pliers…and the blowtorch.

As the three men interact within the isolated, soundproofed house that Gidi has set-up expressly for this occasion, allegiances are formed and torn asunder. Micki alternates between being Gidi’s captive and his accomplish, depending on how far down the rabbit-hole he’s willing to go. Dror tries to appeal to Micki’s basic humanity, as well as their shared connection as fathers: both Dror and Micki have young daughters and difficult relationships with their respective wives. Complications arise when Gidi’s pushy father, Yoram (Doval’e Glickman), drops by to bring him some soup. Upon seeing the situation, Yoram gently chides Gidi but offers to help: he’s ex-military, after all, and knows a thing or two about getting men to talk. As the situation for Dror (and Micki) becomes more dire, new revelations threaten to spin the entire mess off the rails. When men become angry, desperate and frightened, they become dangerous: they become big, bad wolves.

One of the first things that becomes clear in Big, Bad Wolves is that there’s a strong, consistent dose of gallows’ humor that runs throughout the entire film. In fact, right up until the gut-punch final image (which manages to be as terrifyingly bleak as the final scene in Darabont’s The Mist (2007)), the film is actually quite funny. Bleak, violent, savage and hopeless? Absolutely. The dark subject matter is leavened considerably, however, by a script that manages to be not only subtly clever but also broadly comedic, when called for. One of the best scenes in the film is the one where Tsvika calls Micki into his office. It’s “Bring Your Son to Work Day” and Tsvika has brought his son with him: in a classic scene that works on a number of levels, Tsvika and his son engage in some tandem ball-busting that’s pretty damn funny. “This is the yellow card conversation,” Tsvika tells his son, at one point. “Like in soccer, dad?” “Just like in soccer, son,” Tsvika says proudly, mussing his son’s hair while staring Micki down with a glare that would melt Medusa.

Keshales and Papushado (whose debut film, Kalevet (2010), bears the distinction of being Israel’s first-ever horror film) use this scene of humor is some truly surprising, disarming ways, none more so than the scenes where Gidi tortures Dror. There’s never anything funny about torture but the filmmakers manage to wring a surprising amount of genuine laughs out of these scenes. As Gidi sets about on his path of vengeance, he’s constantly interrupted by reminders of the “polite” world. As Gidi is about to begin breaking Dror’s fingers, one by one, his cellphone rings: it’s Gidi’s mom and he’d better take the call, lest she go “crazy.” Gidi and Micki flip a coin to see who gets the first go at Dror, only to have the coin dramatically roll away. Micki tries to stall the inevitable mayhem by telling Gidi that they should drug Dror first, if they really wanted to do everything to him that he did to the kids: Gidi matter-of-factly tells him that Dror also violated the girls sexually but they’ve both decided to pass on that punishment…there are always compromises.

In many ways, Big, Bad Wolves plays as a sardonic counterpart to the much more po-faced Prisoners (2013). While the Jake Gyllenahaal-starring Oscar nominee had a portentous, serious tone that practically demanded it be taken seriously, its Israeli “cousin” is much more loose and easy-going. For one thing, Ashkenazi is a ridiculously charismatic lead, sort of a Middle Eastern take on George Clooney: he does more acting with his eyes and the corner of his mouth than most actors do with the entire script. In a particularly knockout moment, Micki stares incredulously as Dror stops to help an old woman cross a busy street. The look of surprise and disbelief is obvious, but there’s an undercurrent of amusement and, dare I say, approval, that comes through just as loud and clear. Micki is a complex, engaging character with a truly heartbreaking arc and one of the most interesting cinematic creations in some time.

The real revelation of the film, however, is the towering, absolutely astounding performance of Tzahi Grad as Gidi. By the time we’re introduced to him, Gidi is already “past” the actual murder of his daughter and is moving on to the closure that he wants: there’s very little outward “sadness” to the character and no moping or chest-beating whatsoever. Gidi is a practical, cold and successful man who has been dealt a terrible blow and now must make it all “right,” just as he’s always done. As additional details about Gidi’s character creep in, we begin to see a more fully formed vision of the man, making his actions that much more difficult to fully condone (or condemn, if we’re being honest). There is nothing stereotypical about Gidi or his actions. Frequently, I would find myself genuinely shocked by something he does (the film does not wallow in gore and violence but what there is tends to be extremely sudden, extremely brutal and rather unforgettable) but I never lost my connection to him as a character. While the writing in Big, Bad Wolves is pretty flawless, a lot of the credit for this must go to Grad: it’s not easy to make a potentially monstrous character “human,” but Gidi manages to be not only massively human but completely relateable and likable, as well. He feels like a real person, not a film construct.

Big, Bad Wolves ends up being filled with the kind of subtle details and moments that practically demand repeat viewings. A throwaway line of dialogue becomes an important bit of foreshadowing…a “random” encounter with a mysterious, nomadic horseman (Kais Nashif) becomes an opportunity for an incisive point about Arab/Israeli relations. The whole film is full of fairy-tale imagery, from the opening title sequence to the trail of “breadcrumbs” that lead to the dead girls to the title of the film, itself. Far from being an all-too obvious bit of symbolism, the fairy-tale aspect is completely organic, seamlessly interwoven into the film and providing a rich depth missing from the straight-laced, nuts-and-bolts construction that was Prisoners.

Despite being an exceptionally difficult film to watch, at times, Big, Bad Wolves is the furthest thing possible from “torture porn” like Hostel (2005) and Seven Days (2010). Unlike more shallow genre exercises, the torture and violence in Big, Bad Wolves is not intended to be fodder for gorehounds: there is real pain and suffering to be found here, not just from the battered, bloody man receiving the violence but from the emotionally scarred men distributing it. Similar to Winner’s original Death Wish (1974), Keshales and Papushado’s film goes to great lengths to explore the actual concept of vengeance: inflicting pain on someone will never bring back a loved one. In a way, it’s just another death: the death of the soul and the death of essential humanity.

Ultimately, Big, Bad Wolves is a fierce, ferocious and utterly alive film. It practically bursts from the screen, thanks to a combination of exceptionally skilled filmmaking (the script and cinematography, alone, are two of the very best of 2013) and raw, vital acting. If Keshales and Papushado marked themselves as filmmakers to watch with their debut, they’ve cemented their reputations with its follow-up. Undoubtedly, there will be some who can’t stomach the audacious mixture of soul-crushing violence and humor that the film offers and that’s quite alright: the real world, the terribly unfair, brutal and beautiful orb that we stand on, is the same mixture of violence and comedy and many can’t deal with that, either. As the most cutting, intuitive writers have always known, however, comedy and tragedy always go hand-in-hand…it’s quite impossible to live without experiencing more than your fair share of both. It may seem wrong to laugh as it all comes collapsing to the ground but it’s also necessary. After all, without a sense of humor, aren’t we really all just wolves?

 

5/31/14 (Part One): Suffer the Children

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abused children, Adrian Garcia Bogliano, Alan Martinez, auteur theory, Barbara Perrin Rivemar, child abuse, cinema, Cold Sweat, David Arturo Cabezud, demons, doppelgängers, Ernesto Herrera, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, foreign films, Francisco Barreiro, Giancarlo Ruiz, Here Comes the Devil, horror, horror films, killer children, Laura Caro, Mexican films, Michele Garcia, Movies, mysterious cave, Penumbra, possession, sexuality, Tijuana, writer-director

It should go without saying that one of the prime directives of parenthood is to protect your children, at all costs. I say “should,” of course, since the world rarely works in ideal ways. In truth, the winding path of adolescence can be just as hazardous and filled with hidden malice as the most dangerous military expedition. The “bad guys” don’t always look drastically different from the “good guys” and, frequently, can be two halves of the same person. Caught between a menagerie of predators, on one hand, and a cultural imperative to “grow up fast,” modern kids truly are stuck between two unpleasant extremes. Children should never have to navigate this labyrinth alone but, increasingly, it seems like they do. Even with the best of intentions, it may be difficult for parents to completely shield their children from all the evil that the world has to offer. When parents behave in less than ideal, selfish ways, however, it makes it all that much easier for the “bad guys” to creep out of the darkness. Spanish auteur Adrian Garcia Bogliano’s newest film, Here Comes the Devil (2013), quite ably explores the intersection between “parental sacrifice” and “selfish desire,” finding a shadow world where innocence is fleeting and evil can wear many different faces.

After a dynamic opening that introduces us to the diabolic forces at work, Here Comes the Devil settles down with our main protagonists: husband-and-wife Felix (Fracisco Barreiro) and Sol (Laura Caro) and their two young kids, Adolfo (Alan Martinez) and Sara (Michele Garcia). The family is on a vacation in Tijuana, a relaxing little day-trip that involves kicking back on sand dunes and exploring the nearby hills and their honeycombs of interconnecting caves. When young Sara gets her first period (a situation that causes Adolfo no small amount of distress: “Sara is bleeding! And I didn’t even touch her!”), Sol takes her to a public restroom to get cleaned up, assuring her that this is the furthest thing from a big deal: this happens to every woman and is nothing to be afraid of. Afterwards, Adolfo and Sara decide to go explore a hill that they noticed earlier, which gives Felix and Sol the opportunity for a little “alone time.” When a little fooling around turns into a hot and heavy session, however, the parents lose all track of time…and their own kids.

When Sara and Adolfo don’t return, Sol and Felix get righteously freaked out and frantically try to find them: Felix goes out to search the darkening landscape while Sol hangs around the nearby gas station, just in case they should return. As Sol waits, despondent, the gas station attendant (Enrique Saint-Martin) informs her that the local hills are cursed: no one goes up there because “creatures” live there who consider humans “nothing more than shells.” This kind of revelation doesn’t usually set worried parents’ minds to ease and, sure enough, Sol is beside herself: she blames the whole thing on her husband, who never wants to spend time with the family and had to be practically forced to take them on this excursion. If he was a better father, perhaps they would have gone to a better, “safer” place: if she was a better mother, she would have been watching her kids, instead of getting off. It’s a vicious back-and-forth that bleeds into the next morning, when the search is supposed to begin properly.

As they prepare to head out, however, Felix and Sol have a bit of a surprise: Sgt. Flores (Giancarlo Ruiz) is waiting for them, with Sara and Adolfo in tow. The kids look frightened but none the worse for wear. According to them, they got lost in a cave and couldn’t find their way out. Regardless of the reason, the family is happily reunited and go on to live happily ever after. Only, of course, they don’t. Cracks and fissures begin to appear in the kids’ story and their personalities seem different: Sol is certain that something is going on when Sara’s bloody panties from that day are nowhere to be found. Even stranger, Sara’s period appears to be over. Concerned, Sol takes her daughter to the doctor and gets the terrible diagnosis: while the doctor can’t be certain, there does appear to be signs of sexual trauma.

As Felix and Sol face the horrible implications, they launch their own “investigation” into the incident and come up with a possible suspect: Lucio (David Arturo Cabezud), a local weirdo who lives in a little trailer and has a predilection for stealing underwear. In a quest to “avenge” their children, Felix and Sol make a terrible decision, a decision that begins to rob them of their basic humanity. Even worse, however, is the nagging suspicion that they may have been wrong. As Sara and Adolfo begin to act odder and odder, culminating in a truly perverse, jaw-dropping incident with their unfortunate babysitter, Marcia (Barbara Perrin Rivemar), Felix and Sol are forced to confront the unthinkable: the innocent-looking kids who came back to them might not be so innocent, after all.

Writer-director Bogliano has become quite the go-to guy for Latin American horror films as of late, being responsible for three of the finest in recent memory: 36 Pasos (2006), Cold Sweat (2010) and Penumbra (2011), as well as one of the most effective, unsettling stories in the ABCs of Death (2012) anthology with “B is for Bigfoot.” Bogliano’s films tend to be hyper-sexual, gritty and very kinetic, flirting with a truly bracing combination of supernatural mythology, real-world horror and gallows humor. While Here Comes the Devil is nowhere near as purposefully “funny” as Penumbra (which often felt like a subtle satire of similar Satanic-themed films), there is plenty of humor to be found here, albeit mixed with elements that drain the laughs out like air from a leaking balloon. Bogliano is a masterful writer, capable of dropping hints, when necessary, but just as content to let his audience blunder their way through to the resolution. Unlike many modern horror filmmakers, Bogliano doesn’t hold hands: if the audience isn’t paying attention, he fully expects them to tap out and there’s nothing wrong with that. Truth be told, I wish more filmmakers dealt with the kind of intelligent, high-concept genre fare that Bogliano routinely does: Bogliano will have his English-language debut with Late Phases later this year, so let’s hope that he doesn’t “dumb down” his style for less discerning American audiences.

The things that work in the film work exceptionally well: the performances are all authentic, the cinematography (by frequent Bogliano collaborator Ernesto Herrera) is usually beautiful and the sound design is pretty great. Unlike many films that feature bickering parents (particularly horror films), the emotions and actions behind Felix and Sol seem to be more authentic than plot-driven. In addition, Here Comes the Devil is absolutely sodden with Gothic atmosphere, which works wonders in establishing a truly claustrophobic environment for the characters to get lost in. The film isn’t gore-drenched, by any definition of the term, but what’s there is unpleasant, in-your-face and pretty hard to forget: one Grand Guignol scene seemed to work on a “tiered” system which had me reacting, in ever escalating disgust, to each new development. By the time we get an up-close and personal meeting with someone’s trachea, the scene had pretty much cemented its place in the Hall of Fame. The effects work seems to be practical, for the most part, and is exceptionally realistic.

While Here Comes the Devil is an exceptionally well-made, powerful film, it’s certainly not without its faults. Despite being just shy of an hour and forty minutes long, the film still manages to seem at least 10 minutes too long. I can chalk this up to some repetition (necessary to explain plot points but rather cumbersome, all the same) but there are plenty of instances when scenes (and shots) seem to be held for just a little longer than necessary. This was also a bit of an issue in Penumbra, although the film’s (relatively) complex plot made this “stretching out” more welcome than intrusive. The biggest issue with the film (and one of my personal pet peeves, in general) is the rather obnoxious use of zooms to set-up foreshadowing. One of Bogliano’s favorite tricks in the film is to execute a sudden zoom (usually to eyes or items) as a manner of saying “Hey, pay attention to this!” We get zooms on wristwatches (to show that they’ve stopped), zooms on hand-holding (to highlight relationships), zooms into the landscape (to show us something), close-up zooms (to show us small details)…Here Comes the Devil is so zoom-happy that one could fashion a pretty vicious drinking game out of it: take a drink every time there’s a zoom and be ready to die by the half-way point.

I tend to hate the “revealing zoom” because it’s such an obvious filmmaking trick but there’s a bigger reason to dislike its overuse in Here Comes the Devil: the frequent zooms completely change the tone of the films, making it see-saw between somber atmosphere and giddy “action beats.” Used in moderation, I could get behind the technique (although I still find it highly unnecessary) but Bogliano (or Herrera, take your pick) absolutely beat it into the ground, rendering it meaningless. It may seem like an awfully silly quibble but keep this in mind: the obnoxious zooming turned this from an “excellent” film, in my book, to a “very good” one, which is testament to exactly how intrusive it is.

Nonetheless, the high points in Here Comes the Devil are very nearly enough to wash away the low ones. When the film is firing on all cylinders, it’s a lean, mean, angry, berserk little piece of insanity: there are no happy endings here whatsoever, nor are there any pulled punches. While the ultimate resolution may be a touch vague, there’s nothing open-ended about it: the only thing up for debate is just what, exactly, the family is dealing with. Bogliano has staked himself out a nice piece of land in the current horror real estate explosion, placing one foot firmly in the horrors of the “real world,” while the other tromps ground on the “supernatural” side of town. If he can make the transition to English-language films as surely as Del Toro did, our favorite over-extended director might just get a run for his money. Now, if we could only get these guys in the same room together…

 

5/30/14 (Part Two): Sex = Death

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Alice Macdonald, body horror, Caroline Williams, Charley Koontz, cinema, Contracted, Deadgirl, decomposing, drug abuse, dysfunctional family, Eric England, film reviews, films, homosexuality, horror film, horror films, horror movie, independent film, indie dramas, Katie Stegeman, Matt Mercer, Movies, Najarra Townsend, necrophilia, rape, self-abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, Simon Barrett, special effects, writer-director-producer, zombies

It’s no secret that sex and death have always been intrinsically intertwined in horror films, although some films have made it more of a context than a subtext. The figure of Count Dracula, after all, is an explicitly sexual one, as are Clive Barker’s Cenobites. Slasher films have always been focused on sex: we could fill up pages discussing the various phallic symbols in everything from Halloween (1978) to Friday the 13th (1980) to Maniac (1980) but it would be just as easy to point out that the quickest way to get killed in any given slasher is to have sex. As soon as ol’ Jason or Michael Myers get a hint that horny teens are in the vicinity, we can assume that the bloodletting will follow. Some films even manage to flip the script on the whole “have sex and die” philosophy: Andy Warhol’s Blood for Dracula (1974) features a hunky gardener who attempts to deflower virgins as fast as the toothy Count can identify them, while Cherry Falls (2000) features a serial killer who only targets virgins. Fastest way to survive in those instances? Toss on some Barry White, cuz things are about to get romantic in here.

While sex and death have always shared a connection in horror films (after all, haven’t the French always referred to the orgasm as “the little death”?), most of the connections have revolved along the lines of “Have sex and die.” As our modern era keeps chugging along, many of the familiar tropes and archetypes of horror have, likewise, been in a state of near constant flux. As “traditional” slasher films have fallen largely by the wayside (especially when compared to their late-’70s-mid-’80s heyday), examinations of the natural connection between sex and death have changed from “maintaining purity at all costs” to the grimmer, more bleak realization that “sex kills.” With the “free-love” era well in our rearview mirrors by this point, the threat of sexually transmitted disease and sexual violence have taken the spotlight. In the old days, the kids looked like they were having fun…at least until the inevitable spear or machete, of course. In these modern times, however, no one is having much fun. Writer-director Eric England’s most recent film, Contracted (2013), makes the explicit point that not only can sex kill but it can turn one into a killer. If the final destination on this trip ends up being a familiar and largely cliched one, the journey itself is unpleasant, tense and just disquieting enough to make the whole thing worthwhile.

We first meet our protagonist, Sam (Najarra Townsend), as she makes an entrance at one of those ubiquitous “indie-movie-parties” where everyone drinks out of red cups and stands around chilling underneath assorted backyard Christmas lights. She’s rolling stag to the party, since her girlfriend, Nikki (Katie Stegeman), has to work late. We get a hint of some conflict here, since Nikki never answers Sam’s repeated calls and Sam seems to get progressively drunker and more unhappy as the night continues. We also meet her “best friend,” Alice (Alice MacDonald), a thoroughly unpleasant, loud-mouthed troublemaker who pressures Sam to get wasted (despite her continual protests) and makes a public mockery of Riley (Matt Mercer), a stereotypical “nice guy” who pines in not-so-secret for Sam, even though Alice’s boyfriend, Zain (Charley Koontz), tells him that it’s no use, since Sam doesn’t “swing their way anymore.”

While at the party, Sam is approached by a creepy guy named B.J. (Simon Barrett) who hands her an obviously drugged drink. We can assume this pretty decisively, since the opening of the film strongly insinuates that B.J., who works at a morgue, has just had his way with a corpse. Obviously, we’re dealing with a pretty sick individual and these fears are confirmed once we witness B.J. raping Sam. The very next scene begins with a “Day One” intertitle and we’re off to the races. As we follow Sam around, we gradually get to know a little more about her: she’s an expert floral arranger and has entered some kind of prestigious competition; there are conflicts with her mother (Caroline Williams) who seems to disapprove of Sam’s “choice” of lifestyle, as well as her previous inclination to hurt herself; her girlfriend, Nikki, is a cold, manipulative and possessive person who seems to care little for Sam and dislikes straight men with a passion; and Riley has been stuck on Sam for quite some time, to the point where he’s a regular at the restaurant where she serves. We also notice that Sam is looking worn-down and tired. By the time Day Two rolls around and Sam wakes up in a bloody bed with strange, prominent blue veins popping out on her body, we have a good idea that this won’t end well.

As Sam’s condition gradually worsens, no one seems to be able (or willing to help her): her doctor is baffled, considering this to be some sort of cross between a sexually transmitted disease (Sam tells him that she’s only had sex with one guy in quite some time but can’t recall if they used protection) and “female troubles.” He prescribes moisturizer to help with the dead skin that he notices while examining her but seems genuinely confused. Sam’s mom thinks she’s either back on drugs, hurting herself again or both, while Alice comes to believe much the same thing. Sam knows that somethings wrong, even if everyone else doubts her. And she’s right, of course, but the realization will do nothing to help her or her loved ones. In the world of Contracted, there is no such thing as love: there’s only the face of Death, whether grinning or solemn.

For most of its run-time, Contracted is a fairly unpleasant but bracingly original film about a young woman who is, literally, falling apart. Propelled by an outstanding performance from Townsend, the movie wrings a tremendous amount of pathos out of her struggle. Unlike more generic characters in horror films, Sam is dealing with an almost overwhelming amount of baggage: she’s an ex-junkie/cutter who’s just been raped at a party, is in a loveless relationship and faces constant condemnation from her own mother over her sexuality. At one point, Sam’s mother is about to say something and Sam fills in the blank with “dyke”: it’s obviously not the first time she’s heard the slur coming from her mother. She’s being stalked by a male acquaintance and her only “friend” appears to have nothing but ulterior motives. In any “normal” film, this would be enough to crush a character. Toss a degenerative disease into the mix that can best be described as a female-centric form of leprosy and Sam suddenly resembles that fabled sad-sack Job.

Unfortunately, writer-director England ends up taking a fairly unique, female-centric viewpoint on horror and ends up at a thoroughly predictable location. Like similar films such as Deadgirl (2008) or The Woman (2011), Contracted works elements of feminism into its central framework but, unlike the aforementioned films, the feminist angle ends up being largely a MacGuffin. By the time we get to the finale, we end up seeing Sam’s “condition” from a wider perspective and it’s one that any horror fan should be more than familiar with, by the point in film history. It’s a shame, too, because Contracted seems to have quite a few interesting tricks up its sleeve, yet we end up with a film that is, more or less, just a zombie movie. Compared with Deadgirl, which actually featured real zombies yet used them as “props” to discuss the poisonous nature of rape culture and patriarchy, Contracted ends up feeling unnecessarily slight. It’s the classic case of a strong film which peters out by the end, limping into the finish line. Although Contracted’s most nauseating moment is its penultimate one and fairly original (If you’ve ever seen Cabin Fever (2002), this will seem familiar) , what follows is the most basic, by-the-book ending possible.

For the most part, Contracted looks great. Early on, particularly at the party, the cinematography is actually quite beautiful and evocative. There’s a slow-paced elegance to the first half of the film that comes across like a rather unholy melding of the aforementioned Deadgirl and American Beauty (1999): even the necrophilia scene that opens the movie is shot in a way that speaks more to brittle beauty than to in-your-face exploitation. As Sam’s condition progresses, the look of the film gradually changes: the vibrant colors from the beginning and Day One fade in intensity until we get to the ugly, green-tinged look of the final day. It’s a smart, simple effect and one of the strongest in the film. Likewise, the sound design is exceptional and does wonders to make the film, by turns, feel both overwhelmingly lonely and overly kinetic.

The acting is pretty strong across the board, with Townsend being a near revelation as Sam. I wasn’t as taken Katie Stegeman’s offhand, bored portrayal of Nikki: there’s a big difference between acting bored and “being” bored and it doesn’t seem that Stegeman lands on the proper side of that equation. In particular, the scene where she rebuffs one of Sam’s would-be male suitors is extremely awkward and tone-deaf. Although his part isn’t more than a cameo, genre writer Simon Barrett (the scribe behind Dead Birds (2004), A Horrible Way to Die (2009) and You’re Next (2011)) does a superb job as B.J., the terrible human being who kickstarts the whole bloody mess.

Effects-wise, Contracted is pretty exemplary: weak stomachs or those averse to the sight of blood are advised to stay far, far away. While this isn’t the same kind of “melting person” film as The Incredible Melting Man (1977), it’s a much more realistic, biology-based approach and pretty strong stuff. In particular, the penultimate scene is a real corker, even though it’s noticeably less explicit than previous scenes in the films: sometimes, the idea is worse than the image (actually, all the time).

On the whole, Contracted is a really well-done, intriguing and surprisingly female-centric take on the body horror subgenre. If I wish that the destination had been as original as the journey, I suppose that’s a small price to pay. Ultimately, Contracted ends up being “feel-bad” horror at it’s (almost) best: put this on a double-bill with The Incredible Melted Man and bid those unwanted house guests farewell!

5/30/14 (Part One): Beware the Melty Man

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'70s films, '70s-era, 1970's cinema, Alex Rebar, All Buy Mice Elf Film Festival, astronauts, B-movies, body horror, Burr DeBenning, cannibalism, cinema, drive-in fare, film reviews, films, horror, horror films, horror movie, Jonathan Demme, melting people, Movies, Myron Healey, Rick Baker, sci-fi, science-fiction, special effects, special-effects extravaganza, Steve West, Ted Nelson, The Incredible Melting Man, William Sachs, writer-director

While iconic villains are a vital component to horror films (particularly franchises), they’re also one of the most difficult aspects of a film to nail. Despite the exponential increase in the sheer number of horror films, we haven’t really added many “classic” villains to the roster since the ’80s: while characters like Laid to Rest’s (2009) ChromeSkull and Hatchet’s (2006) Victor Crowley have been in a few films, by this point, they’ve yet to achieve any sort of cultural resonance. One could argue that Leprechaun’s (1993) titular character counts, since he’s now been featured in seven different films (after all, Freddy only had a total of 9 films, including the recent reboot). As with ChromeSkull and Crowley, however, the Leprechaun never really made it to Buzz Bin status: he’s working-class but no hero. There have been many attempts to spawn a new horror icon, over the years, but very few ever end up taking off. One of the strangest of these attempts to craft a bit of zeitgeist came about in 1977 with The Incredible Melting Man, a B-movie with pretensions to immortality.

Despite some pretty impressive makeup effects by a young Rick Baker and a tagline that explicitly announced the filmmakers’ intentions (“The first new horror creature”), The Incredible Melting Man did not go on to spawn a franchise…or even a sequel, as it were. Whether audiences had a hard time associating with the gloopy titular monster or whether the (decidedly rough) production-quality put them off makes little difference. As it stands, The Incredible Melting Man is a complete failure at creating a lasting legacy but pretty successful as a goofy, gory popcorn film.

Astronaut Steve West (Alex Rebar) is part of an expedition to fly through the rings of Saturn when something goes wrong: his nose begins to bleed, things get fuzzy and he wakes up in a hospital. After removing his facial bandages, Steve notices something: he doesn’t look too hot. In fact, he seems to be rotting. This kinda ticks him off (wouldn’t it bother you?) and he pounds the table, apeman-style, before trashing the examination room. A nurse returns in time to get chased by Steve in a scene filmed with the kind of gauzy slo-mo that usually ended ’70s horror films, not began them. She crashes through a glass door (saved a second on opening it, I suppose), Steve’s right there and it’s “Good night, nurse!”

We now meet Dr. Ted Nelson (Burr DeBenning) and Dr. Loring (Lisle Wilson) as they examine the nurse’s body. Ted knows a little about this situation, since he was Steve’s friend and was involved with the Saturn mission. He’s also the most laid-back, unflappable, milquetoast “hero” of all time: the scene where he describes to Dr. Loring how his wife, Judy (Ann Sweeny), is pregnant with their third child, after two previous miscarriages, has all of the emotional impact of a colonoscopy. Any “clues” he turns up along the way will be greeted with the mild distaste that one might express when finding caterpillars on the cabbages: Ted Nelson may be the “hero” in The Incredible Melting Man but the guy would be a zero just about anywhere else.

As poor Steve stomps around the countryside, leaving gloopy handprints here, a bit of his ear there (“Oh God…it’s his ear,” exclaims Ted, in a way that practically screams “Could I possibly have a refill on my glass of water, please, if it’s not too much of a bother?”) and dead bodies everywhere, Ted is forced to get General Perry (Myron Healey) involved. Together, Ted and the General set out to stop Steve’s killing spree, albeit for different reasons: the General wants all traces of this disaster dead and gone, while Ted only wants to help out his soupy buddy. It all comes to a head at some kind of a factory, where Ted’s friendship will be stretched to the limit and Steve will have to try, if only for a moment, to regain his basic humanity.

When The Incredible Melting Man is rough, it’s really rough. The acting is rudimentary, at best, with some performances being so howlingly terrible that they achieve a kind of gonzo spectacle. Alex Rebar, in particular, is awful: were he to stay “normal” throughout the film, the movie would actually be unwatchable, although getting buried in the melting man makeup restricts his performance to strictly physical, which works wonders. While Burr DeBenning is nowhere near as terrible, he manages to possess as much energy and life as a department-store mannequin (and not the ’80s kind, either). In the world of the over-actors, the under-actor is king and DeBenning rules his roost from a godly height. The musical score is also pretty ludicrous: the final pursuit in the factory is scored by some of the cheesiest wah-wah guitar possible, along with a pathetic rip-off of John Williams Jaws theme.

Among the shoddier filmmaking aspects are some genuinely “so-bad-it’s-great” moments. My personal favorite has to be the one where Steve steps on the fisherman’s sandwich. It’s the oddest, most awkward and just plain confounding scene in the entire film (which is saying a lot): for some reason, we get a close-up of a plastic “monster” foot (think Gwar) stomping awkwardly on a sandwich, as if the “actor” accidentally tripped and was immortalized on film. Another forehead-slapper would have to be Judy’s ridiculously horny mother and step-father, who stop for a little hanky-panky and orange picking in the middle of the night and get a nasty Steve-sized surprise: not only are the actors terrible (bested only by their avatar, Alex Rebar) but the situation makes no sense whatsoever.

Far from being a complete waste of film and time, however, The Incredible Melting Man is actually quite charming, believe it or not. It will never be accused of being a good film, mind you, but it’s a pretty great B-movie. The movie is definitely cheesy (and very, very soupy) but it’s also got a surprising amount of pathos wrapped up within the idiocy. Steve West, when he’s not talking, is a tremendously sympathetic creature and not so far removed from Frankenstein’s Monster or The Wolf Man. He’s a normal man, with normal friends and a normal life, who is completely destroyed by forces outside his command. He’s turned into a monster, hunted by the very government who facilitated his transformation and has his waning sense of humanity constantly appealed to by his former best friend. Steve West is no sadistic Freddy or Wishmaster: rather, he’s a pitiable creature who seems to take no joy in his mayhem. There’s one moment that perfectly illustrates the two halves of this character: after he’s turned into a completely horrifying, shambling mess, Steve looks down into a water-filled barrel, right at his reflection. As he stares, a drop of pus, like a tear, falls into the water, rippling the image. Say what you want but it’s a powerful, subtle moment that manages to perfectly blend pathos and ick factor: in other words, it’s a picture-perfect horror movie moment.

Too much can’t be said about Rick Baker’s phenomenal special effects, which really give the film a sense of identity. While the makeup starts off a tad bit rough, we’re in glorious hardcore mode once Steve really gets to rottin’. At first, I was wondering whether the version of the film I recently watched was censored: an early shot of the dead nurse seems surprisingly tame and cut-off and there’s some weird editing going on. Once we get to the shot of the fisherman’s body, however, complete with ripped-open ribcage and a severed head, it’s pretty clear that not much hit the cutting room floor. Truth be told, The Incredible Melting Man, as befits its moniker, gets severely goopy, so much so that it begins to resemble one of those extended Family Guy vomiting scenes. If your stomach isn’t fairly cast-iron, chances are that Steve’s melted-wax look is really going to rumble your guts: make it through enough of the film, however, and it kind of fades into the background, sort of like all the nudity in Showgirls (1995). For my part, some of the most stomach-churning stuff came from scenes like the one where an unsuspecting young girl puts her hand into a nice, sticky bit of Steve slop: the thought, alone, is undeniably gross but the practical effects make it even worse. Ditto for the final melting scene, which would be echoed a decade later in the gross-out classic Street Trash (1987). While Street Trash would plumb it for laughs, The Incredible Melting Man goes straight for the heart-strings, reminding us that the disgusting pile of wet, red something on the ground used to be a pretty average (if terribly hammy) dude.

While The Incredible Melting Man may not have succeeded in adding another indelible villain to the collective conscience, it ended up being a more than worthy B-movie. It’s not hard to imagine couples going to see this at the drive-in, covering their eyes whenever Steve shambles up into the camera-eye. For folks who grew up on this kind of sensational, B-movie fare, The Incredible Melting Man should more than fit the bill for a night of nostalgia. Just be sure to keep this one away from the dinner hour: for once, this is all about truth in advertising.

The Semi-Annual All Buy Mice Elf Film Festival (5/30-6/14)

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All Buy Mice Elf Film Festival, personal film festivals

Whenever I find myself alone for any length of time, as I was recently while my wife was on vacation, I find myself programming film festivals. Not for anyone in particular, mind you, but for myself. During these times, I like to not only cram as many films into the viewing day as possible but I also like to set up themes, of sorts, for my screenings. In many cases, these double (or triple) features aren’t anything particularly clever (a film and its sequel, for example) but I try to work more subtle groupings in there, as well. While I haven’t always been successful with my pairings, there have been times where the films have complimented each other perfectly, like pairing the right wine with the right protein.

As a rule, my impromptu festivals tend to be horror-oriented: while my wife enjoys and tolerates quite a bit, film-wise, there are certain movies that tend to be completely off her radar. In particular, she’s not a big fan of gore or zombie films, so I usually have to wait to watch anything too extreme in those areas. She’s also not a fan of the super-brutal foreign films, such as Martyrs (2008) or I Saw the Devil (2010), that I tend to indulge in. I’ll usually keep a running list, adding films as they come up, for just such an occasion. The end result? Why, the current edition of the All Buy Mice Elf Film Festival, of course!

For this particular edition, I managed to watch 32 films over the course of sixteen days. While I originally planned each day to have at least a double-feature, it didn’t always work out that way: there were three days with only one film apiece and another instance when I ended up splitting the double-feature over two days. That being said, I was still able to take quite a few films off my list, rewatch some old favorites and find a few new favorites. Here’s the list of what went down: full reviews for all, of course, will follow as usual.

5/30          The Incredible Melting Man / Contracted

(The body corrupted)

5/31          Here Comes the Devil / Big Bad Wolves

(The destruction of innocence)

A Fistful of Dollars / For a Few Dollars More

(The Man with No Name)

6/1           Nightmare City / Buck Wild

(Zombies)

6/2           Death Wish / Death Wish 3

(Death Wish series)

6/3           Son of a Lion

(n/a)

6/4           The Guard Post

(n/a)

6/5           Night of the Creeps / Maximum Overdrive

(At the drive-in)

6/6           Wake in Fright / The Grey

(Man vs nature & self)

6/7           Wishmaster 2, 3 and 4

(Wishmaster series)

6/8           Godzilla vs Mothra / Godzilla vs Monster Zero

(Godzilla films)

Candyman / Candyman 2

(Candyman series)

6/9           Dragonslayer

(Dragons)

Birth of the Dead

(Horror docs)

6/10         Nightmare Factory

(Horror docs)

Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon

(Dragons)

6/11         The Last Rites of Joe May

(n/a)

6/12         Good Guys Wear Black / The Octagon

(Chuck Norris films)

6/14         El Dorado / The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence

(The myth and death of the Wild West)

5/29/14: Lost in the Valley of Dweebs

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Adam Chambers, Amber Stevens, bad films, Baron Vaughn, Bryan Greenberg, Catherine Reitman, cinema, comedies, Dreama Walker, film reviews, films, friends, independent film, indie comedies, Ishai Setton, Jim Beggarly, Laura Prepon, Matt Bush, Movies, one-location, Pepper Binkley, Revenge of the Nerds, Tate Ellington, terrible films, The Kitchen

By their very nature, films involving only one location can be problematic. On the one hand, restricting a film shoot to one location is a pretty terrific way to save shooting time and, therefore, money: you can never have too much extra time (or spare cash) on an independent film shoot. On the other hand, however, if you’re only going to be utilizing one location, it had better be a pretty interesting one. Hitchcock was pretty great at this (among many other things): he set Lifeboat (1944) in a claustrophobic dinghy and Rope (1948) in a living room, with the results speaking for themselves. Buried (2010) took place solely in a coffin, managing to be both highly claustrophobic and genuinely tense, even if we got stuck with Ryan Reynolds for an entire film. When done right, a one-location film can be a thing of beauty, a nearly perfect synthesis between the stage and the screen. Ishai Setton’s The Kitchen makes the masterful, bold move of setting an entire film in what appears to be a crew/cast member’s house, with most action taking place in the titular kitchen. When you’re setting an entire film in a kitchen, it better be one absolutely fascinating, space-age kitchen. This one is just a kitchen, unfortunately, and a pretty bland one, at that.

For Jennifer (Laura Prepon), this hasn’t been a particularly great day: she’s just found out that her boyfriend, Paul (Bryan Greenberg), cheated on her (with one of her own friends, no less), she’s turning thirty and her obnoxious “friend,” Stan (Matt Bush), is going to throw her a big birthday bash, whether she wants it or not. She doesn’t, of course, but no one listens to her. This includes her cynical sister, Penny (Dreama Walker), ditzy best friend, Pam (Catherine Reitman) and any of the anonymous “friends” who filter into and out of her house that evening. Jennifer just wants to be left alone but everyone thinks they know what’s best for her. When one of Jennifer’s “friends,” Kim (Pepper Binkley), reveals that she was the one who slept with Paul, things get really heated. When Paul actually shows up at the party, however, things are going to get…well…slightly more heated, I guess. Revelations abound, secret crushes are revealed, “nice guys” act like assholes, assholes get blasted with fire extinguishers, someone misspells Jennifer’s name on the cake (…the horror…the…horror…) and one dumbass thinks he got someone pregnant by kissing them (not even in this wonderland of inanity, Charlie Brown). This all plays out against a “wild” backdrop of twenty/thirty-year-olds standing around in someone’s house, drinking out of red cups and listening to music.

Right off the bat, The Kitchen has the feel, atmosphere and production quality of a particularly low-quality student film. The action all takes place in one exceptionally bland location (whoever had a free house to shoot in); the actors, with the exception of Laura Prepon, seem decidedly amateurish (whoever was available to help); the script is trite and tone-deaf (whoever was available to write); and there’s no craft to any of the camera shots or cinematography (whoever was available to shoot). There’s no point in the film where it ever transcends those limitations: I kept waiting for the movie to lose its “student film” quality and it never did.

Aside from looking amateurish, The Kitchen features some of the most unpleasant, obnoxious and entitled characters to clog up an indie comedy in some time. Prepon’s Jennifer makes out the best, although her performance always comes across as slightly off and fake. Compared to many of her castmastes, however, Prepon is exceptional. Coming in a close second would have to be Dreama Walker’s sarcastic but (relatively) grounded take on Penny. When Prepon and Walker can rise above the terrible script (which doesn’t happen often), there’s a genuine sense of honesty to their characters that actually resembles real people. There are at least two (but probably not more) scenes where the sisters just sit and talk: these are the most subtle, powerful moments in the film, which makes them the equivalent of a poo-smeared TV in a monkey-cage showing scenes from On Golden Pond (1981).

Amber Steven’s shrill, obnoxious take on Amanda helps makes her one of the most horribly entitled, awful characters to march across a screen in some time. The scene where she lets Paul “sweet-talk” her into getting finger-banged, through an open window, in the middle of a party, is just about as low as you think it could possibly get until you get to her self-righteous temper tantrum about how Jennifer and Penny think they own the world. Oh, do you possibly mean because…gee, I dunno…you were getting fingered by the birthday girl’s boyfriend at her own party? So much of the justifications and characterizations in The Kitchen marked it as a pure fantasy but this bit of idiocy was straight out of some lame Revenge of the Nerds (1984) rip-off. Just as bad, in her own right, is Pepper Binkley’s Kim. For most of the film, poor Kim gets to run around and apologize to Jennifer for sleeping with her scuzzy boyfriend. For the rest of the time, she gets to run around after Paul, following him like a puppy dog and blindly following every request/directive like a cult member. It’s a pretty disturbing character, to be honest: an empty shell that gets to be, by turns, docile and horn-dog wild.

If The Kitchen doesn’t seem to have much regard for its female characters, than it has absolutely no regard whatsoever for the walking penises that populate the film. Paul, obviously, is set up as a thoroughly disgusting, despicable character: he’s never less than a douchebag but he also fits the bill as “bad guy,” in a way, so that’s not surprising. More surprising and unfortunate, however, is how equally obnoxious and odious the rest of the guys are, especially the “nice guys.” For the most parts, the “nice guys” in The Kitchen are actually passive-aggressive jerks who wear their female “targets” down by sheer dogged persistence, insinuating themselves into their lives whether they want them or not. Exhibit A would obviously have to be Stan, Jennifer “best friend.” He spends the entire movie rushing around, trying to make everything perfect and over-the-top, despite Jennifer’s constant protests and requests to just be left alone. He frets about the tiniest detail, all the while dropping not-so-subtle hints that he’s in love with Jennifer and only wants to treat her like a queen. When she’s not interested, however, the worm turns immediately, becoming an acid-tongued, nasty little troglodyte who verbally assaults and disparages both Jennifer and her sister. What a fucking great guy!

Penny’s stuck with Kenny, a dweeb who kissed her, once, and now thinks he’s the father of her baby. Despite Penny’s constant (albeit sarcastic) requests for him to get lost, Kenny flat-out tells her that he has no intention of going anywhere and will be there for her forever, whether she wants it or not. When the film ends with the “happy” revelation that Penny and Kenny have become a couple (“We’re having a baby!” he blurts out, to Jennifer), it doesn’t sound like “happily ever after” so much as the beginning of a lifelong prison sentence. As set up in the film, Penny has no choice over her relationship whatsoever: the guy wants it, so there it is. He’s a “nice guy,” however, and he obviously adores her, so everything’s totally cool. Obviously. Because nothing about this sounds anything like stalking. At all.

I’m not meaning to imply that The Kitchen has some kind of hidden, misogynist agenda but I am plainly stating that it has a sloppy, lazy script, which certainly doesn’t help matters. Everything in the film is tone-deaf, especially the dialogue (with the exception of those aforementioned Jennifer/Penny scenes), but certain elements are particularly cringe-worthy. A running joke about an unknown Iraq war veteran starts off innocuously enough (Stan doesn’t want pot around because war vets are “pretty much cops”…I’ll admit to laughing) until it becomes painful when Stan mistakes the only black guy at the party, Andre (Baron Vaughn), as the vet. He has to be, you know, because all douchy white people think that all black people serve in the military. It’s hilarious…aren’t you laughing, yet? For balance, however, the script gives Andre the immortal line, “This is the whitest party I’ve ever seen: it’s all beer and Arcade Fire.” You know…because only white people drink beer and listen to indie rock. What a hoot! Wait…you’re still not laughing?

Perhaps you’ll find the scene where Penny blasts Amanda and Paul with a fire extinguisher to be more up your alley? How about the edge-of-your-seat moment where Jennifer and Penny try to make the birthday cake fall on the floor, just because. Do you laugh when dweebs get made because the hosts picked Coral Reef to play the party instead of their totally ass-kicking band? Get ready to hold yer guts: there’s plenty of all that here! We also get a lovable weirdo/stoner roommate who’s seldom seen but just might be responsible for the baby in Penny’s belly. Cuz he’s quirky and stuff, you dig? He’s got crazy, ruffled hair and eats cereal whenever he feels like it…what girl wouldn’t fall madly in love with that?

Despite genuinely trying to give the movie a chance, The Kitchen lost me somewhere between the awful characters and the wooden dialogue. While I do admit some pleasure from seeing Paul get blasted with a fire extinguisher and kicked in the nuts (he really is an awful, terrible human being: any worse and his sensei would be telling him to “sweep the leg”), the rest of the film alternates between boring, pretentious “Indie-Film-101” clichés and outrageously stupid scenarios. I kept wanting to root for Jennifer but even she disappears from the film for a time: when the guest of honor doesn’t even want to be at the party, it might be time to call it a night.