Of all the Motern Media movies I’ve watched, this one hit me the hardest.
Mitch Owens (Matt Farley, who co-wrote the script with director Charles Roxburgh) is back in town from Nashville, but if any of the small towns that Farley and Roxburgh have had an air of menace, Tritown, the setting for Heard She Got Married is outright dangerous; strange women who could be Tara or Tara are soliciting mailmen with old fashioned nude Polaroids, old bandmates are new enemies and hope is fleeting.
Man, this movie is amazing.
Mitch was making it in Music City, but for some reason he’s back home. His old friend Tom Scalzo (Phil Kelnofer) has married his ex-girlfriend, one of the two women named Tara, and only plays the bass to record jingles for her family’s used car lot. The only collaborator he can find is new guy in town Van Hickman (Chris Peterson), the very same mailman who just got an envelope full of nude photos from one of the Taras, even if he never shows Mitch.
Farley has described this movie as a suburban noir and that’s the best description I have as well. It’s just strange, like small town life is, as the people who stayed behind cast off their high school identities and marry anyone else who stayed, while outsiders come back with pre-conceived notions that they can go back to their old life or use their status to rule the town’s music scene, at which point 18 people come see their show at Proctor Farms.
Despite hanging out with him, Mitch suspects that Van is guilty of something. Anything. Even after he brings in his friend Officer Mayo (Jay Mayo) and Al Trevino (Kevin McGee) to discuss the case — and they don’t suspect a thing — he just knows that something bad is going to happen. He broods overlooking the Cathedral, a utility shed where everyone once partied in high school and made out, realizing that if life hasn’t passed him by, it’s certainly fixing to.
My town had a rock that everyone partied on down in the river, painted with the Italian flag, a place where you’d get one sip and the cops would shine their lights and you’d run. I moved to the city, then a smaller city and still go home but don’t feel any pull to remain. The people I graduated with now drink in the same bars their parents drank in, have the same issues their parents did and drive over that bridge and look down on the rock and think the same wistful past nostalgic thoughts and then remember that a few weeks ago, they found that body on the loading dock at the grocery store across the street. And man, they changed the name of it and a corporation bought it and the sausage doesn’t taste the same any more.
The ending of this film and its bleakness as characters walk away and the camera slides away from them just devastated me. Not as much as Matt playing the song that gives this movie its title. As someone who has written songs about people in my life and tried to keep it as obscure as I could, this moment is incredible, then taken down when Tara asks him to no longer sings songs about her.
Eight people who don’t like one another gather to play games while Miller’s Comet flies past the Earth. the lights go out except in one house which has the same eight people, watching the other house. Shot with no script and hardly a crew, this movie needs to be seen.
Directed by Colin West, who was also the cinematographer and co-writer along with producer and star Sylvie Mix, Double Walker presents a unique take on the ghost mythos in that it has A Wonderful Life edited throughout and gives us a world where when young girls die, their ghosts eventually age into young women that hunt and kill predatory men with a spoon and then drink their blood and also try to solve their own murders.
If you put Judy Landers, Sandahl Bergman and Wendi Jo Sperber in a movie, I am going to watch it. Make it a slobs vs. snobs kind of movie? I’ll watch it twice. Maybe ten times.
Happy Birthday to Me arrived in theaters at the height of the slasher boom, but it defies expectations. At times, it’s a giallo. At other times, it’s supernatural. And others, it’s a teen comedy. It’s also crazy that such a directorial talent made it — albeit one who was rumored to spray blood all over the set to make the film even gorier — and Glenn Ford are in a slasher!
Nearly every frame of this film looks like it escaped directly from the pages of one of his books. Of course, it tested horribly, which meant that nine of the musical numbers were cut from the film and never seen again. Plus, subplots were eliminated, new scenes were shot and existing scenes were rearranged. The film that its creator Dr. Seuss intended will probably never be seen. Yet what is there is absolutely mind destroying.
The mobsters in this film are the kind of Italian movie bad guys that go from realistic to super villains by the end of the film, moving from robbing banks and taking hostages to hijacking school buses filled with children. John Saxon is one of them.
It may not have Bill Murray, but it does have Misty Row from Hee Haw, John Larroquette, a pre-Pee-Wee Paul Ruebens, Jason Hervey, Elayne Boosler, Tammy Taylor (Don’t Go Near the Park), Blackie Dammit, Donald Gibb, Richard Mulligan, Kim Richards, an alien named Meathead played by Felix Silla and voiced by Archie Hann, who was one of the Juicy Fruits/Beach Bums/Undead in Phantom of the Paradise and it was directed by Ken Wiederhorn (Eyes of a Stranger, Shock Waves and King Frat).
Director Luigi Bazzoni doesn’t have a huge list of films to his credit, but between this film, The Possessed and Footprints on the Moon, his take on the giallo form is unlike anyone else’s. This is more than a murder mystery. It’s a complex take on alienation and isolation at the end of the last century.
Mondo Cane predates and prepares us for the never-ending news cycle that we find ourselves in today. Yet even though it’s nearly sixty years old, it remains a rough testament. It doesn’t just show you the mud and filth, it pushes your face into it and laughs at you as you struggle to maintain your footing in the muck.
Directed by Peter Sasdy (The Lonely Lady, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Hands of the Ripper), this film was a UK/Canadian tax shelter affair. But don’t hold that against it! Five strangers all wake up at the same time and have no memories of who they are, other than that they are all killers. They must travel to a Wild West town called Blood City. I really love this movie and don’t care how bad the transfer is.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mike Justice is the only illegitimate offspring born of a short-lived union between a frustrated English horror movie star and an American film festival groupie. His legacy, therefore, is to obsessively pursue a litany of ill-defined ambitions in the industry (editor, director, actor) while also falling hard and fast for anything with an accent and/or mutton chops. Fortunately, he’s pretty good at distilling his various fizzles, faux pas, and let-downs into uproariously absurd, snarky tales filled with wit, wisdom, and (sometimes) redemption.
Mike is also one of my favorite people and his top ten lists on Facebook deserve to be preserved as much as this digital website can preserve his words. I am so happy that he has allowed them to be reprinted here. You can follow Mike on Facebook.
10. Bad Girls (1994): Remember the one starring Madeleine Stowe, Andie MacDowell, Drew Barrymore, and Mary Stuart Masterson as outlaw prostitutes in 19th-century Colorado who shoot their way out of a whorehouse and then head west to open a sawmill? The #10 spot on My Top 10 Favorite Forgotten (Bad) Films of the 90’s marathon is going straight to Bad Girls (1994), a godforsaken sexy-lady Western that’s actually not that bad. Well, it’s bad. But it’s not boring. In fact, it’s pretty entertaining. It began life as a low-budget, female-scripted drama to be directed by Tamra Davis (Guncrazy). A few weeks into production, 20th Century Fox decided it would be more fun to fire Davis, replace her with Jonathan Kaplan (The Accused), and bring in a half-dozen dudes to re-work the entire project into a big-budget, quasi-feminist Young Guns-with-chicks. I saw it opening night, and felt that what it lacked in authenticity, it made up for in gunfights, jail breaks, and dialogue like, “We sold our bodies, why can’t we sell some wood?” and “Kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass!” Bad Girls was #1 at the box office that weekend. Unfortunately I think it set a record for the lowest-grossing film to ever top the box office.
9. Final Analysis (1992): Kim Basinger plays a gangster’s wife with a medical condition called “Pathological Intoxication” that causes her to murder people whenever she drinks wine or NyQuil—and Richard Gere is the moody psychiatrist who loves her. This is a San Francisco-set Hitchcock “homage” featuring killer blondes, double-crosses, twists, turns, the requisite cable car chase, Kim Basinger in crazy bitch mode, and a very young Uma Thurman as Basinger’s sexually repressed sister who keeps dreaming about vagina-shaped flowers. It’s like if the director of Three O’Clock High got together with the writer of Arachnophobia to remake Double Idemnity while slavishly ripping off Vertigo because, well, that’s exactly what it is. But Hitchcock never had his leading lady brain Eric Roberts with a dumbbell. For that reason alone, this film makes the list.
8. A Stranger Among Us (1992): Melanie Griffith is a tough-as-nails homicide detective who goes undercover in the Hasidic community to catch a killer. This was maverick filmmaker Sidney Lumet’s stab at helming a crime drama/murder mystery/fish-out-of-water romance in the style of Peter Weir’s Oscar-winning Witness—except with Melanie Griffith and Jews. A “Vitness,” if you will. Someone’s knocking off Hasidic diamond cutters, so “untouchable shiksa” Griffith convincingly infiltrates their ranks by dying her hair two shades darker. Then she moves into the Rebbe’s house and starts throwing herself at his son. Romance, suspense, culture shock, and scenes of Melanie Griffith fucking up Hasidic customs ensue. But among the Ultra Orthodox, she discovers the true meaning of friendship and self-sacrifice. Or something. If I were a nineties-era Joel Siegel, my blurb on the poster would read: “Great cinematography, some decent action, and lots of fun scenes of Melanie Griffith’s character embarrassing herself make this a winner!”
7. Used People (1992): A Borscht Belt Moonstruck ripoff where Shirley MacLaine is a cantankerous Jewish widow living in 1960’s Queens who can’t get Marcello Mastroianni to stop trying to seduce her, Used People is a Neil Simon-esque cranky-family comedy that’s crafted with all the subtlety and finesse one can count on from the director of To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995). If you crave bad accents, mean-spirited one-liners, a bouncy, tuba-heavy Rachel Portman score, and a parade of smart-assed grotesques masquerading as fleshed-out characters (as I do), then this is your jam. It’s basically To Wong Foo with Jews instead of drag queens. Critics’ main gripe was that, for a heartwarming romantic fable, the characters weren’t lovable. In fact, they were spiteful. And hateful. Well, I grew up in a family of hateful, endlessly bitching women, so I can attest to the authenticity. As for whether you should spend two hours with these slobs, ask yourself how you’d feel if John Waters remade Hannah and Her Sisters. If that sounds appealing, give this a go.
6. The Quick and the Dead(1995): Sharon Stone had some great roles in the 90s: icepick killer, frigid book editor, Vegas whore. But my favorite is her vengeful gunslinger dying to shoot Gene Hackman in the face in Sam Raimi’s Revisionist Western The Quick and the Dead. Hackman is the sadistic mayor of a frontier town called “Redemption” who treats the residents like crap, beats up Russell Crowe, and mocks son Leonardo DiCaprio for having farmer’s hands. Naturally, everyone wants to kill him. Enter mysterious stranger Sharon Stone who signs up for Hackman’s quick-draw contest and starts blowing away every sweaty, dust-covered dude in town to get to him. Stone plays her part as Clint Eastwood, and it’s basically a flamboyant B-Movie; a two-hour Spaghetti Western homage with tons of visual flourish. Rolling Stone said, “Despite director Sam Raimi’s hyper-stylized efforts to whip up action and laughs, The Quick and the Dead is deeply shallow and damned silly.” And?
5. The Associate (1996): Whoopi Goldberg is a crackshot investment banker who can’t get ahead on Wall Street, so she gets some drag queen to dress her up as an old white man and hilarity ensues? If you loved Mrs. Doubtfire, then you’ll probably like The Associate. One reviewer said Whoopi’s titular getup looks like “a cross between Marlon Brando and the guy on the Quaker Oats box.” That’s pretty accurate, but it shouldn’t stop you from enjoying this flick. It’s no Sister Act. It’s not even Jumpin’ Jack Flash, but as directed by Donald Petrie (Mystic Pizza, Grumpy Old Men), it’s still a bright, fairly edgy big-budget farce in the mold of something Bette Midler would’ve headlined in the1980’s. Speaking of, it came out exactly one month after another female-driven, New York-set comedy with a similar “Don’t get mad, get even!” philosophy: The First Wives Club (1996). Unfortunately, The Associate grossed about 6% of what that film made, and was promptly consigned to oblivion. Perhaps rightfully so, but anything with Dianne Wiest, Lainie Kazan, Bebe Neuwirth, and Tim Daly under one roof deserves another look.
4. French Kiss (1995): Meg Ryan plays a neurotic Canadian who trails her cheating fiancee to Paris and then falls in love with Kevin Klein doing an Inspector Clouseau accent in maverick filmmaker Lawrence Kasdan’s first and only foray into rom-coms. There were many mediocre Meg Ryan vehicles in the 90’s, but this is the best of them (and funniest); Kline’s mustachioed dirtbag Frenchman with a heart of gold is as sleazy-hot awesome as you’d expect, and Ryan is refreshingly more in Innerspace/Joe vs. the Volcano mode here. Equal parts slapstick, screwball, and Yank-in-Europe adventure, there’s even a magical trip to the South of France, and a cops-vs-robbers subplot because God forbid Hollywood set a movie in Europe during this era and not have anyone get chased. Not to be confused with Forget Paris (1995) starring Billy Crystal and Debra Winger that opened two weeks later to equally mixed reviews and grossed the exact same amount. That movie makes my ass twitch.
3. The Net(1995): Remember the one where Sandra Bullock orders pizza on the internet? I love this movie. It’s The Pelican Brief meets North By Northwest meets Hackers; a summer action thriller for nerds. Bullock is a reclusive freelance analyst who stumbles onto an international cyberterrorism conspiracy and is targeted by bad guys who erase her identity and frame her for murder. Now she’s forced to fight back and save the day with nothing but her extensive knowledge of computer systems and a virus on a floppy disk. Although it aims for John Grisham-meets-Hitchcock with its falsely accused hero and cloak and dagger chases, The Net truly succeeds as a techno-thriller, somehow managing to turn escape keys, IP searches, and file upload progress bars into instruments of nerve-wracking suspense. It’s also nostalgia on a stick; I still want to grow up to be Angela Bennett, chillin’ in my Venice craftsman, listening to Annie Lennox while I chat online with “Cyberbob.” Brad Duncan on Letterboxd put it best when he said: “I miss when dumb, mid-budget trash like this was actually watchable and not boring sludge that gets dumped to Netflix and forgotten about immediately. The 90’s really was a theatrical Golden Age.”
2. Mars Attacks!(1996): Remember that all-star alien invasion spectacle where martians blow up the White House? But not that insufferable dumpster fire with Will Smith? Mars Attacks! (1996) might be the least-forgotten forgotten film so far, but it’s still criminally unappreciated. I usually hate star-studded CGI extravaganzas, but I love Mars Attacks!—probably because it was such an unfashionable train wreck. In 1996, the highest grosser in the U.S. was Independence Day—a bloated, overhyped, flag-waving suckfest aimed straight at the lowest common denominator. That Christmas, Warner Bros released Tim Burton’s similarly plotted, albeit far more schlocky and surreal sci-fi epic. Of the two, I obviously preferred Burton’s theremin-heavy Irwin Allen throwback to what Jason Bailey of Flavorwire calls “a loathsome, soulless husk of a garbage movie” (sorry, I just really hate Independence Day). Only seven years earlier, Batman (1989) was the most popular film stateside. It’s interesting to note how, by 1996, Tim Burton’s zany retro campiness was falling on deaf ears in an America hungry for jingoistic horseshit. Whatever. Mars Attacks! has Martin Short and Pam Grier. It wins.
1. 200 Cigarettes (1999): My favorite subgenre may be “The Ensemble Comedy Underscored by a Stream of Jukebox Hits that Unfolds Over the Course of One Night,” so it makes sense that this movie is my #1 Forgotten (Bad) Film of the 90’s. I consider it a minor classic, though despite its Rogue’s Gallery of hip indie darlings (Paul Rudd, Courtney Love, Dave Chappelle, Christina Ricci, Ben Affleck, Kate Hudson, Janeane Garafalo, Martha Plimpton) it’s definitely more Midnight Madness than Dazed and Confused. Think Love, Actually but written and produced by casting agents. The plot is simple: hipsters, yuppies, punks, and bridge-and-tunnel floozies drink, flirt, and yap their way through the East Village on New Years Eve 1981 (more like 11 or 12 comic subplots—some better than others—that converge at the end). For me, it’s an endlessly quotable comfort film, but for others they’ll need to dust off their DVD players because it’s one of the toughest movies from that era to stream (I’ve heard the soundtrack is a deal-structure nightmare nobody wants to touch). It’s interesting that, when first released, it was merely a period comedy about 80’s New York—but now it pulls double duty as a nostalgic time capsule of late 90’s Hollywood. It’s also weird to think this movie is older now than 1981 was in 1999.
Directed by John Peyser, who mostly worked in TV, and written by Bob Peete (who wrote for Good Times, What’s Happening Now and Amen) and Arthur Marks (Bonnie’s Kids, Friday Foster), this is the story of Clement Dunne (Andrew Prine), a man who hates nude women in magazine, cutting off their heads in print and then in real life.
This is broken up into three stories. In the first, Jackie (Jaime Lyn Bauer, who was on 1,556 episodes of The Young and the Restless and 523 of Days of Our Lives) is menaced by nearly everyone she meets, like the hippies who break into her house, cover her in makeup and try to assault her. She runs to a motel where she has to deal with the strange owners (Aldo Ray and Paula Shaw) before finding her way into the not so loving embrace of Dunne.
Next, Melissa (Francine York, who was Marilyn Monroe in the Night Train to Terror spinoff Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars) is in the midst of a photo shoot at a seaside hotel when Dunne arrives. Ruthy Ross, who plays Glory in this scene, was actually the June 1973 Playboy Playmate of the Month. The caretaker in this is Mike Mazurki, who came to America from the Ukraine, graduated from college to be an attorney and ended up being a pro wrestler, Mae West’s bodyguard and a tough guy in plenty of movies; he’s the bodyguard who knocks out Rod Stewart when he stalks Kay Lenz in the “Infatuation” video).
In the last story, Vera (Tiffany Bolling, Wicked, Wicked) is stalked by Dunne over the phone and he kills her roommate thinking it’s her. She goes on the run and gets assaulted by two sailors before finding herself as the final girl all alone in a burned out forest facing off against the black suit-wearing Dunne.
Prine had the idea to have his character dress in all black and live in an all white house, essentially seeing things only as black and white. He’s creepy beyond belief, sitting there listening to old 78 records and collecting the shows of the women he’s cleansed from this existence. Then, he starts phone stalking his next target.
This movie is scummy, but I think if you made it this far, you’re probably going to watch it.
A return to pure horror, Curse of Chucky finds a Good Guy doll delivered to the wheelchair-bound Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif, yes, the daughter of the voice of Chucky) and within one night, her painter mother has killed herself. Or at least she’s stabbed, so…you can figure it out, right?
Nica is visited by her sister Barb (Danielle Bisutti) and her husband Ian (Brennan Elliott), their daughter Alice (Summer H. Howell), nanny Jill (Chantal Quesnel) and Father Fran (A Martinez), but don’t get to know any of them too well. How do I know? Look, when you watch a family movie where Charles lee Ray randomly shows up and a little kid says that the Chucky doll keeps coming in her room at night and telling her she’s going to die, bad things are all over the place.
This is one of the few Chucky films where he pretty much wins. He wipes out nearly the entire cast before revealing that he stabbed Nica’s mom in the stomach and caused her to be born without the use of her legs. And somehow, he’s able to create a crime scene that has the cops blame her for every murder.
And then! Then! Fan service gone wild! Tiffany shows up to take Chucky to his next target: Andy Barclay and it’s really Alex Vincent, who plays dumb and just when Chucky sneaks up on him, he blows him away with a shotgun!
While a straight to video entry, I really dug this one. It has some nasty kills, it’s mean-spirited and has a great little bit at the end with Andy.
6. A Horror Film That Takes Place In One Room (No CUBEs)
Eight people — Em (Emily Foxler), Kevin (Maury Sterling), Mike (Nicholas Brendon), Lee (Lorene Scafaria), Hugh (Hugo Armstrong), Beth (Elizabeth Gracen), Amir (Alex Manugian) and Laurie (Lauren Maher) — gather for a dinner part on the night Miller’s Comet passes. Em and Kevin are dating but she’s unsure. Amir has brought Laurie, who used to date Kevin. Beth and Laurie hate one another, yet Laurie is being really tough on Em.
Then things get really weird.
As the lights go out in the entire neighborhood, they realize that everyone in their dining room has exact duplicates in another dining room one house over. Basically, the movie takes place all inside one house, along with another house that has another group of eight people.
Did I say one house? By the end of this movie, every choice has made another reality and some of those are bleeding into one another.
Directed and written by James Ward Byrkit from a story by Manugian, this movie didn’t have a script as much as getting their own unique paragraph which had their goal for the day. This allowed for the story to unfold naturally as the movie shot over five days, which is why so many of the reactions seem so real. Manugian also was on set as Amir to guide any scenes that went too far off the story.
I have to go back and watch this again, as Wikipedia reports that the movie “…cuts to black at 0:02, 0:03, 0:05, 0:05, 0:07, 0:09, 0:19, 0:27, 0:32, 0:34, 1:06, 1:18, 1:22, and 1:23.” Bykirt says that there’s a meaning there but won’t say what it is. He also said that this movie was an attempt “to strip down a film set to the bare minimum: getting rid of the script, getting rid of the crew.”
This movie should be discussed way more than it is and I can’t believe that it took me so long to find it.
DAY 6. BEE AFRAID, BEE VERY AFRAID: Buzz through a bee picture, there’s a whole swarm to choose from.
Based on Arthur Herzog’s novel, this is from a time when our greatest fear was bees. Killer bees. So many bees that there was movie after movie reminding young me that I was going to be killed by bees. It was not a fun time to be a neurotic child.
Dr. Bradford Crane (Michael Caine) is our only defense from the black mass that is formed by tons of enraged African bees. He has help from the military, which doesn’t believe the danger posed by bees, and another scientist, Helena Anderson (Katherine Ross). The bees that have taken over the military base have spread to a small town in the middle of a summer festival, which means that the bees are about to sting everyone to death.
This is the kind of movie where bees swarm into a nuclear reaction and wipe out an entire town, including scientists Dr. Hubbard (Richard Chamberlain) and Dr. Andrews (Jose Ferrer). Where Dr. Walter Krim (Henry Fonda) injects anti-bee serum into his bloodstream and instantly dies. A place that has Lee Grant, Olivia de Havilland, Ben Johnson (also in The Savage Bees), Patty Duke, Slim Pickins, Bradford Dillman, Fred McMurray and yes, Cameron Mitchell all up against those little stingers.
There were approximately 22 million bees in this movie, 800,000 of them surgically altered to not be able to sting. There was so much talent making this, like Jerry Goldsmith scoring (the score uses the notes B-E-E), Sterling Silliphant scripting (how does one man go from In the Heat of the Night to Village of the Damned, The Towering Inferno to Over the Top?) and disaster king Irwin Allen directing. All for a really dumb and kinda way too long movie about bees. This was such a disaster at the box office that it ended disaster movies. But let me tell you that six-year-old me couldn’t even watch the trailers for this, as I was convinced that the bees would fly out of the TV and murder me.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks to Craig Edwards for reminding me this was Irwin Allen and not Bert I. Gordon.
Man, Ross Hagen got into directing and made some movies that just sleaze it up. The Glove, B.O.R.N. and this one hit just right for me and Hagen directed this with John Stewart, who directed Action U.S.A. and wrote it with David Chute and David Reskin, who also wrote Skinheads, Dark Future and Hidden Obsession, another John Stewart directed movie that pairs up Jan-Michael Vincent and Heather Thomas. Hoke Howell also wrote the script, which was based on a story by Carol Lynn and Stewart.
These are the kinds of things that get me way excited about a movie.
Like how it took six people to write a movie about women getting naked and getting sexual with guns.
Hagen is also Jack, a photographer of nude women. Calendar girls. He also likes them to be, as Perry once sang, to be involved in scenes where their sex is violent. The girls are Cindy (Keely Sims), Juliette Cummins, Susan Jennifer Sullivan and Dona Speir, who is above all others thanks to her appearances in so many Andy Sidaris movies.
It’s not the most exciting movie — it does have a transgender killer so there is that — but it looks nice because Gary Graver was making sure the cameras got the best looking images of, well, sex and murder. He knew what sold.
Don Mancini has written every Child’s Play except for the reboot. He also directed this one in which we meet Glen, the good guy — literally — doll son of Chucky and Tiffany. He’s found a living working as a dummy for an abusive ventriloquist, but when he sees a preview of Jennifer Tilly’s new horror film Chucky Goes Psycho and sees Chucky and Tiffany rebuilt from their original remains, he realizes who he really is. He uses the Heart of Damballa to bring them both back to life. The killing starts almost from the first second they are awake.
This is a strange world that is Hollywood but a bit removed from our own, a reality in which Jennifer Tilly attempts to seduce Redman as he prepares to make a movie about the Virgin Mary, where John Waters plays a paparazzi who gets killed with acid (unlike Dawn Davenport, he does not survive), where Glen has an evil twin who can possess him and why wouldn’t she be called Glenda?
Universal Pictures, which produced the previous three films, wanted a more conventional slasher film. They rejected the script with the note “This is too gay.” 2004 was not all that long ago. It was finalldistributeded by Rogue Pictures.
Director and writer Amanda Kramer (Ladyworld, Please Baby Please) has created this exploration of the first ever television special for Sissy St. Claire (Sophie von Haselberg. It’s an evening full of music and laughter, glamour and entertainment, as the ad copy goes, but Sissy’s live event quickly begins to become a nightmare thanks to a mysterious masked man.
Sissy is determined to make it no matter the cost and in the past world of entertainment, let’s say late 70s to mid 80s, that meant getting your own variety special on TV. Well, she sure does, but as each song plays, the lighting gets stranger, the mood gets more ominous, the hair gets just a bit more out of control.
This was the world where performers could compare themselves to God’s favorite Son — where’s Bobby Bittman, Sammy Maudlin and William B. Williams to hype her show? — and say things like, “I’m just dying to be known.” Her psychic guest refuses to even make physical contact with her, claiming that she’s demonic. Yet through it all, the video effects distorting the screen, the masked man silently judging and just Sissy all alone on stage, even doing a two-woman sketch all by herself, she remains what they call a trooper.
The only downside I can say of this is that I wished it stuck to the format of TV shows and was under an hour — with commercials trimmed — and not as long as it is. The idea comes through early, the rest feels like endless riffing on the same notes. But what it does play is strange and wonderful enough to keep you watching.
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