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The Sound and the Fury

The Sound and the Fury
The Sound and the Fury

Director: James Franco

Writer: Matt Rager

Based on the novel by: William Faulkner

Cast: James Franco, Seth Rogen, Joey King, Scott Haze

USA 2014

101 mins

**** out of *****

Last year, James Franco plunged his lead actor Scott Haze into the unenviable position of having to go ‘full retard’ as a psychotic half-wit in Child of God, the genuinely great film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s shocking book. The real detriment of going ‘full retard’, however, was not scoring an Oscar, but the fact that Haze played a character who takes a crap on screen, wipes his poopy-butt with a stick, watches young lovers get it on in the back seat of their car whilst he jerks off, murders a host of honey-pies, has sex with corpses and then dons their clothing when he goes on a mad transvestite-like killing rampage against a whole passel of lawmen.

Here we are, one year later, and Franco hands the brilliant Haze the role of Jason Compson, easily one of the most reprehensible figures in American literature. Haze is probably thanking Franco for this one, though, since Franco reserves the ‘retard’ challenge all for his lonesome, playing Jason’s ‘tetched in the head’ little brother Benjy. Replete with ludicrous buck-toothed prosthetics, plenty eyeball rolling, grunting and drooling, Franco goes further on the ‘full retard’ front than any actor in film history.

This is Franco’s second stab at William Faulkner in so many years, and it far outdoes his shot at As I Lay Dying. Faulkner – to my mind – is completely unsuitable a literary source for film adaptation. God knows many have tried and failed miserably, but Franco just keeps on giving the gift that keeps on giving.

Here’s my bias. I love James Franco as a director. He spits in the face of everything and everybody, does what he damn well pleases and makes movies like nobody else in contemporary America.

Here he tackles the meandering tale of the once-rich-and-powerful Compson family dynasty of the Deep South and infuses it with the most delectably over-the-top melodrama imaginable. He divides his film into three chapters, primarily focusing upon the Compson brothers: simpleton Benjy, scumbag Jason and the doomed Quentin (Jacob Leob). In the mix we’ve got ‘fallen’ sister Caddy (Ahna O’Reilly), her ‘bastard’ child Miss Quentin (Joey King), loyal housekeeper Dilsey (Loretta Divine) and even hockey star Wayne Gretzky’s wife, Janet Jones, as the deluded Compson matriarch. The family basically snipes at each other, loses all their land, while foul Jason steals, lies, vents, abuses and bullies his way through his pathetic life.

And what of Benjy, our ‘full retard’? Well shucks, he’s a mite jealous when his beloved sister starts a-rollin’ in the hay with eager male suitors, so he begins a-stalkin’ some local gals and does somethin’ he shouldn’t ougtha be doin’.

This is pure, delicious Southern Gothic at its most insane. It even indulges in some delightful Terence Malick Tree of Life shenanigans, which play like parody of the highest order. Some might believe Faulkner would be spinning in his grave over this one, but I doubt it. I think even he might have himself as rip-roaring a good time as I did.

Greg Klymkiw

This review is part of our TIFF 2014 coverage.
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Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films

Electric Boogaloo
Electric Boogaloo

Format: Cinema

Release date: 5 June 2015

Distributor: Metrodome

Director: Mark Hartley

Australia 2014

107 mins

Australian exploitation fan boy par excellence, Mark Hartley (Not Quite Hollywood, Machete Maidens Unleashed!) wraps his schlock doc trilogy with this suitably energetic ride through the highs and lows of Israeli film moguls Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus’s career – otherwise known as the bold, brash forces of nature behind infamous B-movie studio Cannon Films in the 1980s.

The pair – already the subject of Hilla Medalia’s Cannes-feted and officially sanctioned doc The Go-Go Boys – are notable in their absence from Hartley’s film (Globus and the late Golan reportedly wished to torpedo his efforts with Medalia’s project), and appear only in archive material (much of it drawn from the BBC). But Hartley rises to the challenge admirably. Talking heads – of which there are a staggering 80 in total – fire off anecdotes and sound bites with increasingly gleeful abandon, in an enjoyable ride through one of Hollywood’s more bizarre eras.

Oddly, there is scant mention (or analysis) of the cousins prior to their film association in Israel, nor does Roger Corman (whom Golan briefly worked with) appear to warrant a nod. The trash traders’ about-turn later in Cannon’s life, chasing credibility by pursuing the likes of John Cassavetes, Peter Bogdanovich and even Jean-Luc Godard, is also frustratingly not explored beyond a quick, cursory glance.

But what Hartley’s film does do, it does rather well. The absurdity of Cannon’s low-brow, worry-about-the-plot later mentality, its shameless pre-sales for so-called star-led vehicles that existed in poster form only, its Gargantuan output (up to 50 films a year) and appetite (buying up over 40 per cent of Britain’s film exhibition in one fell swoop) allowed its uncouth stars to shine briefly but brightly. Although few mourned the loss of the pair’s studio – brought down by box-office bombs such as Superman IV and Masters of the Universe, amidst reports of false accounting – many of those interviewed clearly look back with bemused fondness at what went on.

Cannon, as several note in the film, evidently provided a blueprint of sorts for the likes of Miramax (and for recent bone-head franchises like The Expendables) to flourish. It made a star out of Chuck Norris (who is not interviewed), discovered Jean-Claude Van Damme and set a precedent with Sylvester Stallone (both of whom are also absent), with the latter scoring an absurdly inflated pay cheque, in excess of $US10million, for the doomed arm-wrestling romp Over the Top. At one point, Cannon even owned the rights to Spider-Man, Superman and the Captain America franchises, despite its shocking appetite for sexual violence (brazenly on show notably in Michael Winner’s Death Wish sequels).

Golan and Globus’s eventual falling out (and subsequent reconciliation) is less effectively visualized here (see Medalia’s film for that). But otherwise, Hartley’s geek-fuelled journey down memory lane (with its generous serving of clips in tow) delivers a vibrant, often frenetic look at a remarkable pair of film-fawning men who were – if nothing else – determined to take on Hollywood at its own game. That they ultimately failed (or were, at least, kept firmly on the periphery) only adds to the fascinating nature of their screen story. Some detail may be lacking (and the story is hardly ‘untold’), but a ‘wild’ ride it most certainly is. Cinephiles and Cannon obsessives should form a line here.

Ed Gibbs

This review is part of our TIFF 2014 coverage.
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Beyond the Reach

The Reach
The Reach

Format: Cinema

Release date: 31 July 2015

Distributor: Curzon Film World

Director: Jean-Baptise Léonetti

Writer: Stephen Susco

Based on the novel Deathwatch by: Robb White

Cast: Michael Douglas, Jeremy Irvine, Ronny Cox, Hanna Mangan Lawrence

USA 2014

90 mins

***1/2 out of *****

Beyond the Reach offers up happy corroboration that filmmaker Jean-Baptiste Léonetti’s astonishing dystopian science fiction masterpiece Carré Blanc was no first feature fluke. Léonetti is the real thing and he can direct rings round most contemporary genre helmers. Instead of all the tin-eyed boneheads who keep directing any number of visually challenged studio abominations, Léonetti has ‘go-to guy’ written all over him.

Read Greg Klymkiw’s alalysis of the soundtrack of Carré Blanc.

Based on Deathwatch, a hugely popular boys’ adventure novel written by the prolific author Robb White (who also toiled as William Castle’s screenwriter on such exploitation delights as The House on Haunted Hill, 13 Ghosts, The Tingler, Macabre and Homicidal), it was competently adapted by Stephen Susco. Updating the late 60s setting of the book, the script invests it with the right amount of macho existentialism, ultra-violence, hilariously nasty black humour and up-to-the-minute social commentary involving the haves and have-nots of the world.

I have to admit, however, that I originally went into the picture knowing only that it was Léonetti’s sophomore feature starring Michael Douglas, and it was only while watching the movie that I realized its literary pedigree. That it was based on one of many White books I read as a kid (and still proudly own some 40-plus years later) turned out to be extra layers of icing on this very rich cake. (Pathetically, I even remembered seeing the fine ABC Movie of the Week entitled Savages, which starred Andy Griffith and Sam Bottoms in the lead roles.)

This stirring mano a mano variant on The Most Dangerous Game faithfully sticks to the original main characters of White’s book, and for good reason – you can’t beat a winning formula. Madec (Douglas) is a disgustingly rich cell-phone-tied dealmaker who hires the impoverished Ben (hunky Jeremy Irvine of War Horse fame) to be his guide in the deadly Mojave Desert so he can bag a new hunting trophy (he boasts having many), the rare bighorn sheep. The two men are clearly oil and water, but their time together eventually yields a father-son-like bond. Alas, Madec accidentally shoots something he shouldn’t. When it’s clear Ben won’t go for a whopping bribe, the sportsman in Madec sends Ben into the desert so he can hunt him down, but also gives the lad a fighting chance. Ben proves to be a formidable adversary. This fuels Madec even further.

Léonetti keeps the suspense taut, the action blistering and his exquisite eye for placing man against imposing backdrops has not at all wavered since Carré Blanc. His delightfully grim sense of humour is also set to overdrive, especially since Michael Douglas is remarkably game to chew the scenery and spit out one nasty line after the other.

The only place L&#233:onetti is let down by Susco’s otherwise fine script is during the climactic moments, which feel like a perverse bargain basement Fatal Attraction. Given Michael Douglas’s involvement in that film, this could have been a cool borderline post-modernist touch, but the action is rendered far too straight up and oddly, and one can feel Léonetti not quite at ease. You can’t blame him. He’s handed gold, then when it counts the most, his producer (Douglas) and screenwriter toss him a smelly bighorn sheep turd.

Luckily for us, we don’t have to smell it for too long and its aroma doesn’t overpower the rest of the film’s smells of victory.

This review is part of our TIFF 2014 coverage.

Greg Klymkiw

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Ned Rifle

Ned Rifle
Ned Rifle

Director: Hal Hartley

Writer: Hal Hartley

Cast: Liam Aiken, Aubrey Plaza, Parker Posey

USA 2014

85 mins

** out of *****

How much you respond to Ned Rifle will probably depend upon how much you can stomach the twee neo-noir quirkiness of director Hal Hartley, and most of all, how positively you might have responded to the first two films (Henry Fool and Fay Grim respectively) in this fairly tiresome trilogy.

The funniest and most engaging parts of the new picture occur in its opening 20-or-so minutes wherein we’re introduced to young Ned (played throughout the series by Liam Aiken) who hits his 18th birthday as a foster child in a witness protection program. You might remember from the dreadful Fay Grim that the title character, Ned’s Mom (Parker Posey), was in pursuit of hubby Henry (Thomas Jay Ryan) and became idiotically embroiled in some naughty terrorist activities. She’s now serving life in federal stir and her son’s foster family are batty evangelical Christians led by Rev. Gardner (Martin Donovan). Their kindness and religious fervour have paid off in spades since Ned’s become quite the devout follower of Jesus, but of course, with a twist.

Maintaining his devotion to Christ, but using Old Testament justification of the ‘eye for an eye’ kind, he’s convinced himself to embark upon an odyssey to track down his father and murder him. His reasoning is rooted in some perverse King James Version of restoring his Mom’s honour after it’s been sullied by the evil influence of Henry. Fair enough, I guess. Leaving behind the sun-dappled small-town America and the family who now love him (including a mouth-wateringly gorgeous foster sister), Henry tracks down his nutty ex-poet-laureate uncle Simon (James Urbaniak) to find Dad. Add to the mix a hot babe in the form of sexy academic Susan (Aubrey Plaza) who’s written her thesis on Simon, but who also (not too surprisingly) shares a connection to Henry.

Up to this point, things amble along in a pleasant enough fashion, but all along the way it’s impossible to remove Hartley’s tongue that’s burrowed far too deeply in his cheek. If anything, he manages to jam his tongue even deeper and it explodes through the flesh, allowing the film to careen off the rails into even more offensively twee territory. If you can hack the clipped (to a fault) deadpan deliveries of Hartley’s self-consciously clever dialogue and the constant, machine-tooled twists and turns of the silly plot, then I suppose you’ll be in for a rollickingly jolly ride.

The rest of us, though, can stay home. We’re the plebeian curmudgeons who have come to detest the American Indie genre force-feeding at the hands of Hartley, the poster boy for the predictable sameness of so much independent cinema spewed forth from the jolly maw of Uncle Sam.

This review is part of our TIFF 2014 coverage.

Greg Klymkiw

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Starry Eyes

Starry Eyes
Starry Eyes

Format: DVD

Release date: 16 March 2015

Distributor: Metrodome

Directors: Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer

Writers: Kevin Kolsch, Dennis Widmyer

Cast: Alex Essoe, Amanda Fuller, Noah Segan

USA 2014

96 mins

The question is as old as cinema itself: what would you do for stardom? Sarah is an aspiring actress rotting in a two-bit job surrounded by dead-end pretentious hipster friends. But she is different – she knows she will make it no matter what. So when Astraeus Pictures offers her the lead in their latest production, ‘Silent Scream’, she grasps the opportunity with both hands. However, Astraeus Pictures is a strange company and Sarah will be plunged into uncharted depths of darkness before she can become the star she believes herself to be.

Like a head-on collision between Rosermary’s Baby and Day of the Locust, Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch’s brilliant Starry Eyes is a cautionary tale like no other: set among the dregs behind the glamour of LA, the film paints the portrait of a woman metamorphosing both literally and figuratively. Boasting eye-popping special effects and a killer synth score, Starry Eyes harks back to the Hollywood cinema of a bygone era: smart, frightening and terrifically acted, this is the sort of filmmaking that the genre deserves to see more often.

The directing duo handle the mood with aplomb: LA feels like a sun-drenched nightmare, and as Alex starts to lose her grip on reality, her surroundings change accordingly. The music plays an important role: evocative of Carpenter et al., its synth edges go some way towards creating a vision of LA in which things are askew – the sense that something is wrong not just with Sarah but everyone occupying the city is an idea that gets reiterated at every turn.

It is to the credit of the directors that in Astraeus Pictures they create a wholly believable organization that offers Sarah a Faustian pact: by keeping their presence largely confined to the shadows, only ever feeding enough information to keep the viewer intrigued, Dennis Widmyer and Kevin Kolsch ensure the threat that they present remains uncertain and terrifying throughout.

On a side note, it is a joy to see Pat Healy in the film, however small his role, and special mention must go to Sarah’s group of friends, who seem to combine the worst qualities of young filmmakers in a way that is never too over the top.

Starry Eyes builds to an eye-gouging, head-spinning climax without ever losing track of its aim and it is this singularity of vision that made it a favourite at Film4 FrightFest and one of the clear winners of this year’s genre offerings.

This review is part of our Film4 FrightFest 2014 coverage.

Evrim Ersoy

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Alleluia

Alleluia 1
Alleluia

Format: DVD

Release date: 22 December 2014

Distributor: Studiocanal

Director: Fabrice du Welz

Writers: Fabrice du Welz, Romain Protat, Vincent Tavier

Cast: Lola Dueñas, Laurent Lucas, Héléna Noguerra

Belgium, France 2014

93 mins

One of the most talked-about films on the horror and fantasy film festival circuit had its UK premiere at Film4 FrightFest in August. Fabrice du Welz’s Alleluia is based on the real-life story of the ‘Lonely Hearts Killers’: in 1940s America, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck would find their victims through ‘lonely-hearts’ ads and murder them after Raymond married the victim. The case has been the subject of films before: the wonderful and underrated The Honeymoon Killers, directed by Leonard Kastle in 1969, and the magnificent, color-sated Deep Crimson, made in Mexico in 1996.

It’s no surprise that the case has fascinated filmmakers for so long. The story of two very odd and clearly unhinged personalities who carve a murderous path across America contains everything that frightens and attracts us all: love, money, sex, lust, anger. And in du Welz’s film they all meld together to create an explosive mélange of emotions that will leave no one indifferent.

Lola Dueñas is Gloria, a lonely woman working in a morgue and living a life uncomplicated by men after leaving her husband. At the insistence of her friend she signs up for a dating site and in her first encounter meets Michel (a brilliant, heart-stopping Laurent Lucas), who claims to be a shoe salesman.

It’s lust at first sight as Gloria falls head-over-heels in love with Michel, not knowing that he is, in fact, a small-time crook who makes a living by seducing and conning lonely women such as Gloria out of their money. When she discovers Michel’s true nature, Gloria finds herself unable to walk away: the two hatch a plan whereby Gloria will help Michel with his schemes, posing as his sister. But the plan goes badly wrong when in a frenzied fit of anger Gloria attacks Michel’s prey.

Powered by incredible performances from the entire cast, Alleluia is a force of nature: it’s a thunderstorm that will stun the audience again and again, a tempest that sweeps in the viewer and won’t let go. Violent, funny, unexpected and unexpectedly touching, the story of Michel and Gloria is told in episodic encounters, each of which furthers our understanding of their true nature. Shot in glorious 16mm, the frame is as alive as the players occupying it, and each scene is staged carefully to create a sense of heightened reality, which is both captivating and unnerving.

Not only one of the best film of 2014 but also a bona fide all-time gem, Alleluia is a shocking, bold film from one of today’s most exciting filmmakers. A must-see.

This review is part of our Film4 FrightFest 2014 coverage.

Evrim Ersoy

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Wetlands

wetlands
Wetlands

Director: David Wnendt

Writers: Claus Falkenberg, David Wnendt, Sabine Pochhammer

Based on the novel by: Charlotte Roche

Cast: Carla Juri, Christoph Letkowski, Marlen Kruse

Original title: Feuchtgebiete

Germany 2013

105 mins

This adaptation of Charlotte Roche’s notorious erotic-comic novel was hands down the funniest, punkiest film at this year’s Etrange Festival. Merrily life-affirming, with life in this case meaning spunk, shit and blood, it stars the spirited Carla Juri as a wonderfully individual 18-year-old girl with a particular affection for grime, sex and bodily secretions.

While she is being treated for an anal fissure in hospital, an occasion she is naïvely trying to use to reunite her divorced parents, she reminisces about various episodes of her past, from her dysfunctional childhood to her various experimentations with sex and drugs. Her candid lack of inhibitions both startles and fascinates the male nurse looking after her, Robin, and they begin to grow closer.

The film possesses the same charm as its heroine: the gross-out comedy – from the initial toilet scene (which recalls Trainspotting with a female twist), to the pizza masturbation or the menstrual blood oath – is irresistible, because it is all done with such wide-eyed innocence and childlike matter-of-factness. Nothing about the body repels Helen, and even though there shouldn’t be anything shocking about that, in our sanitized culture the presentation on screen of a female character’s slimy adventures was enough to trigger initially slightly stunned, then boisterous laughter in the Etrange Festival crowd.

Helen is a truly great creation, as embodied by Carla Juri. Playing the character with bold abandon and spontaneity, Juri is utterly convincing, naturally inhabiting the role. Endearingly full of contradictions, Helen is strong and vulnerable, dirty and innocent, tender and selfish, brave and irresponsible, poignantly poised between childhood and adulthood. But above all else she is irreducibly herself, and as such is immune to the pressures of social norms and rules, which makes spending 105 minutes in her company heartily invigorating.

The only minor disappointment is a simplistic rose-coloured ending that is at odds with, and somewhat undermines, the radical singularity of the character. Admittedly the film follows – and subverts – the conventions of romantic comedy, but Helen’s perspective on sex, love and femininity is so mordantly fresh that it is a shame she is forced to fit into a standard, predictable conclusion. This, however, does not detract from the overall effect of the film, which is a big blast of filthy energy.

This review is part of our Etrange Festival 2014 coverage.

Virginie Sélavy

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The Tribe

The Tribe
The Tribe

Format: Cinema

Release date: 15 May 2015

DVD release date:
14 September 2015

Distributor: Metrodome

Director: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy

Writer: Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy

Cast: Yana Novikova, Grigoriy Fesenko, Rosa Babiy

Original title: Plemya

Ukraine 2014

130 mins

***** out of *****

One of the most appalling legacies of Russian colonisation/dictatorship of Ukraine has, in recent years, been the sexual exploitation of women (often children and teenagers). Add all the poverty and violence coursing through the nation’s soul, much of it attributable to Mother Russia’s tentacles of corruption, organized crime and twisted notions of law, order and government, and it’s not rocket science to realise how threatening the Russian regime is, not only to Ukraine, but the rest of Eastern Europe and possibly beyond. Being a Ukrainian-Canadian who has spent a lot of time in Ukraine, especially in the beleaguered Eastern regions, I’ve witnessed first-hand the horrible corruption and exploitation. (Ask me sometime about the Russian pimps who wait outside Ukrainian orphanages for days when teenage girls are released penniless into the world, only to be coerced into rust-bucket vans and dispatched to brothels.)

The Tribe is a homespun indigenous Ukrainian film that is a sad, shocking and undeniably harrowing dramatic reflection of Ukraine with the searing truthful lens of a stylistic documentary treatment (at times similar to that of Austrian auteur Ulrich Seidl).

Focusing upon children, the most vulnerable victims of Russia’s aforementioned oppression, this is a film that you’ll simply never forget. Set in a special boarding school, it paints an evocative portrait of students living within a tribal societal structure (literally as per the title) where adult supervision is minimal at best and even culpable in the desecration of youth. Living in an insular world, carved out by years of developing survival skills in this institutional environment, the kids have a long-established criminal gang culture and they engage in all manner of nefarious activities including, but not limited to, thieving, black market racketeering and pimping.

Writer-director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy’s mise en scène includes long, superbly composed shots and a stately, but never dull pace. This allows the film’s audience to contemplate – in tandem with the narrative’s forward movement – both the almost matter-of-fact horrors its young protagonists accept, live with and even excel at while also getting a profound sense of the ebbs and flows of life in this drab, dingy institutional setting. In a sense, the movie evokes life as it actually unfolds (or, at least, seems to).

The violence is often brutal and the film never shies away from explicit sexual frankness. We watch the beautiful teenage girls being pimped out at overnight truck stops, engaging in degrading acts of wham-bam without protection, perpetrated against their various orifices by truckers who shell out cash for the privilege. Even more harrowing is when we follow the literal results of this constant sexual activity and witness a protracted unsanitary and painful abortion.

While there are occasional moments of tenderness, especially in a romance that blossoms between one young boy and girl, there’s virtually no sense of hope that any of these children will ever escape the cycles of abuse, aberrant behaviour and debasement that rule their lives. The performances elicited by Slaboshpytskiy are so astonishing, you’re constantly in amazement over how naturalistic and reflective of life these young actors are, conveying no false notes with the kind of skill and honesty one expects from far more seasoned players.

The special circumstances these children are afflicted with also allows Slaboshpytskiy to bravely and brilliantly tell his story completely though the purest of cinematic approaches. Visuals and actions are what drive the film and ultimately prove to be far more powerful than words ever could be. Chances are very good that you’ll ultimately sit there, mouth agape as you realize that what you’re seeing on screen is unlike anything you have ever seen before. The Tribe evokes a world of silence and suffering that is also perversely borderline romantic, a world where connections and communication are key elements to add some variation to a youth culture that is as entrenched as it is ultimately constant and, frankly, inescapable.

This review is part of our TIFF 2014 coverage.

Greg Klymkiw

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Crime Wave

Crime Wave
Crime Wave

Director: John Paizs

Writer: John Paizs

Cast: Eva Kovacs, John Paizs, Neil Lawrie, Darrell Baran

Canada 1985

80 mins

***** out of *****

Not including the spectacular 4K restoration by the TIFF Cinematheque unveiled at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve seen Crime Wave.

Has it been 40, 50, 60 times? Have I seen it 100 times, perhaps, even more? Whatever the final tally actually is, the fact remains that each and every time I see the film, I’m not only howling with laughter as hard as I did when I first saw it, but absolutely floored by how astoundingly brilliant and original it is.

This is a movie that has not dated and will probably never date.

It’s a film that has inspired filmmakers all over the world and not only is it the crown jewel in the ‘prairie post-modernist’ crown – coined and bestowed upon it by film critic Geoff Pevere – it’s paved the way for Guy Maddin, Bruce McDonald, Reg Harkema, Lynne Stopkewich, Don McKellar, Astron-6 and virtually any other Canadian filmmaker who went on to blow the world away with their unique, indigenous cinematic visions of a world that could only have been borne upon celluloid from a country as insanely staid and repressed as Canada.

Borrowing from his favourite childhood films – sleazy, garish crime pictures, Technicolor science fiction epics, film noir, weird-ass training/educational films, Roger Corman, Terence Fisher, Kenneth Anger, the Kuchar Brothers, Elia Kazan, Orson Welles, Walt Disney, Frank Tashlin, Douglas Sirk, John Ford (!!!) and yes, even National Film Board of Canada documentaries – John Paizs made one of the most sought after, coveted and beloved cult movies of the past 30 years. For everything it pays homage to, the picture is ultimately 110% ALL John Paizs. There’s nothing like it.

Taking on the lead role of Steven Penny, Paizs created a character who is hell-bent upon writing the greatest ‘colour crime movie’ of all time. He rooms in the attic above a garage owned by a family of psychotically normal Winnipeg suburbanites whose little girl Kim (Eva Kovacs) befriends the reclusive young man. Every morning, she rifles through the garbage where Penny has disposed of his writings and as she reads them, we get to see gloriously lurid snippets of celluloid from the fevered brain of this young writer.

These sequences are dappled with colours bordering on fluorescent and narrated with searing Walter Winchell-like stabs of verbal blade-thrusts.

Contrasting this, we also get Kim’s gentle, natural, non-colour-crime-movie narration. She innocently describes Penny not unlike serial killers upon whom have been bestowed, après-capture, fond reminiscences like: ‘Gee whiz, he was a really nice guy.’ Indeed, Steven Penny inhabits Kim’s words like a glove: ‘He was a quiet man,’ she says sweetly.

As Crime Wave progresses, Penny’s creative blockages become dire. As he locks himself up for weeks, his room, so foul and fetid, invites rats to scurry upon his immobile depression-infused carcass. Kim finds salvation in a back page ad of Penny’s Bible-like magazine Colour Crime Quarterly. It seems that one Dr Jolly (Neil Lawrie), a script doctor, exists in Sails, Kansas. Kim insists, that HE is what Steven needs. Dr Jolly provides comfort to burgeoning young screenwriters. What they really need is the one important thing he can provide:

TWISTS!!!

Unbeknownst to anyone, Dr Jolly is a serial killer who lures young screenwriters into his den of depravity to sodomize and murder them. Dr Jolly’s goal is to truly show young men the meaning of the word:

TWISTS!!!

As a filmmaker, Paizs eventually leads us on an even more insane journey than we’ve already been on board for, and during the dizzyingly final 20 minutes of the film, he delivers one of the most brilliant, hallucinogenic and piss-your-pants funny extended montages you’ll ever experience. John Paizs then teaches us the meaning of the word:

TWISTS!!!

Twists indeed.

You’ll see nothing like them in any film. Crime Wave is one of the most ravishingly original films ever made. If you haven’t seen it, you must.

If you have seen it, see the picture again and again and again and yet again.

That’s why they call them cult films.

This review is part of our TIFF 2014 coverage.

Greg Klymkiw

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The Editor

The Editor
The Editor

Directors: Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy

Writers: Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney

Cast: Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Paz de le Huerta, Udo Kier, Laurence R. Harvey

Canada 2014

102 mins

***** out of *****

The Editor is not Italian, it is Canadian, the Empire’s Dominion of Official Multi-Culturalism. Better yet, it’s from Winnipeg and produced by the crazed post-modernist prairie collective Astron-6 (Manborg, Father’s Day). Here’s a film in which you’ll relive, beyond your wildest dreams, those works that scorched silver screens the world over during those lazy, hazy, summer days of giallo.

But, be prepared! The Editor is no mere copycat, homage and/or parody – well, it is all three, but more than that, directors Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy have done the impossible by creating a film that holds its own with the greatest gialli of all time. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, grotesquely gory and viciously violent. Though it draws inspiration from Argento, Fulci, Bava, et al, the movie is so original, you’ll be weeping buckets of joy because finally someone has managed to mix-master the giallo elements and serve up a delicious platter of post-modern pasta du cinema that harkens back to simpler, bloodier and nastier times in a contemporary package.

Bear witness to the following exchange:

BLONDE STUD: So where were you on the night of the murder?

BLONDE BABE: I was at home washing my hair and shaving my pussy.

This should be enough to rest my case, but read on.

The picture’s deceptively simple plot involves Rey Ciso (Adam Brooks, with the greatest Franco Nero moustache since Franco Nero), a once prominent film editor who accidentally chopped four fingers off and is now forced to cut with one hand. Working on a giallo, our title hero becomes the prime suspect in a series of brutal murders perpetrated upon the film’s cast wherein all the victims have had four of their fingers chopped off. To complicate matters, Rey has fallen head over heels for his beautiful, young assistant editor whilst locked into an unhappy marriage with a sexy, but spiteful has-been actress (Paz de le Huerta), a harping shrew openly cuckolding Rey. When she admits to having eyes for one of the lead actors in the film Rey is editing, our hero quips, ‘What would you do if he died?’ Wifey is outraged and responds:

‘I would cry. I would cry. I would cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry, cry,’ and then adds, ‘I would cry. I would. I would never, ever, ever stop crying, you stupid cripple!’

Again, this should be enough to rest my case, but read on.

Detective Peter Porfiry (Matthew Kennedy, also sporting a Nero ‘stache) is hell-bent on finding the killer. He’s a lusty swordsman with a penchant for slapping his eager women on the face when they talk back. He dogs poor Rey at every step, which is not the ideal situation since he has to keep editing around all the actors who keep getting murdered. As bodies pile up, Porfiry slaps together a brilliant undercover idea and gets his junior detective (Brent Neale, star of Guy Maddin’s Careful) onto the film as the editor. Hapless Rey is replaced by an Italian version of The Beverly Hillbillies’ Jethro Beaudine. The producer tries to let Rey go graciously. ‘Honestly Ray,’ he says, ‘I thought it would be fun to have a cripple around, but I was dead wrong.’

The Editor has all the makings of a horror classic. The writing is delightfully mordant, the cinematography captures all the near-fluorescent colours of gialli, the special effects are outstanding (and wonderfully over-the-top), and the musical score is a marvel of aurally rapturous 70s/80s-styled sleaze. Amongst a great cast of astonishing thespians delivering spot-on work (including the gorgeous Tristan Risk from American Mary), Udo Kier pops in for a hilarious ‘howdy-doo’ as a demented psychiatrist.

The Editor is probably the coolest film you’ll see this year and one you’ll want to partake of again and again and yet again. Cult classics never die. They just get better and better.

This review is part of our TIFF 2014 coverage.

Greg Klymkiw

Watch the trailer: