I, For One, Welcome Our New Robot Overlords

FILM:

Robot Overlords - 2014
Written by Mark Stay & Jon Wright
Directed by Jon Wright
With Callan McAuliffe, Gillian Anderson & Ben Kingsley


I'm kind of geeking out right now.

Thirteen months ago, I wrote an article about Grabbers; an entertaining horror-comedy film by Jon Wright that, I felt, evoked the adventurous sense of fun represented by classic 80s cinema.  So while I'm certainly geeking out that Robot Overlords is an entertaining sci fi-adventure-comedy, the only thing that geeks love more than finding something new to geek about is, well, something new to bitch about -- but the only thing they love more than that is being proven right.  Doubleplus thanks, Jon Wright!

Once again, the British Isles face an inhuman threat from outer space.  This time, it's mechanical.

Now, let me just say how nice is was to see robots as a menace again.  It's been zombies and supervillains for a while, and unabashedly campy giant robots from outer space came as a breath of fresh air.  I realize that Transformers exist, but they're abashed in their campiness.  There's no wink, no sharing of the joke.  Think real Star Wars versus prequels.

It's funny, when I wrote about Grabbers, I specifically noted how Grabbers seemed to have tapped into that 80s film vibe, while at the same time making a complete end-run around the gang of foul-mouthed kids save the day bit of business.  Here, Jon Wright has come right back with a big fat "Oh YEAH? Well just you watch THIS!"

Eleven years after the robots invaded, humanity is still on house arrest.  The film opens with one man's unceremonious dispatch for "breaking curfew" -- being out of doors without permission -- right in front of his son, Connor.  It's tragic, but with a glint of black comedy.  The local human representative (read: collaborator) of the robot order, Robin Smythe (Ben Kingsley) is able to intervene at the last possible second, to save the son from the same fate, and allow the boy to relocate to the home of Kate (Gillian Anderson), a neighbor who has already taken in a brother and sister pair along with her own son.  Ladies and Gentlemen, meets your rowdy kids.

The robots have only one rule; stay indoors.  They promise that they will leave the Earth in peace once they have completed their research, humanity is assured via regular broadcasts from the Mediator, a super-creepy robot clearly meant to look like a child.  The rest of the robots are function-driven, lacking any sort of personality, not that the Mediator is remotely personable.  He's just human-appearing enough to get his dictates across -- you know, like the automated Ken & Barbies on Fox News.  Filling in for the machines in the menace department, we instead have Ben Kingsley with the vindictiveness and passionately issued threats.  It's a wise distribution of villain duties.

While the mediator represents the robots' best effort to bridge the gap between robots and humans, they've also attempted to bridge humans to robots by implanting each person with a tracking node at the base of their skulls.  This allows the robots to know in an instant if anyone has strayed out of doors.  One night, while dabbling with a little home electronic repair, the kids discover that they can disable their trackers with a little incautious self-electrocution.  Naturally, this is key to evading and resisting the robots, setting them on a course to discover the fate a lost father.  Of course this kind of resistance can't help but to bring them into direct conflict with the entire robot hierarchy.

One thing that really struck me as I was watching Robot Overlords was the story structure.  This is a refreshing change of pace from the standard 21st century action-adventure story formula.  The story has a natural way of unfolding, necessitating the progression from Point A to B because that's the next thing they have to do.  It avoids many of the modern contrivances such as the first big loss followed by a restatement of purpose, and training sequence and ultimate thumping victory.  Our heroes have become too strong in the post-9/11 no-way-can-I-appear-weak era and our hero formula requires an equally overpowered thumping just to check off the "remember folks, he's really human" box.  The kids don't need that.  We know they're no match for the robots, and it's a step-by-step fight for survival for them, with each one getting the opportunity to lend their unique abilities to save the rest at one point or another -- not unlike the Goonies.  Refreshingly, these kids are much less obnoxious than the Goonies.

The story is going to have lots of recognizable pieces, but arranged in its own way.  Tweaked one way or another it might have gone the direction of parody or slavish tribute, but the wit and energy with which Wright pulls it all together manage to evoke many of those sensations of 80s action-adventure-comedy in a welcome, fresh way.  Actually, we never had to call those things "comedy" in the 80s.  It was simply understood that things could be funny as well as being everything else that they were.  Things were just funnier.  Jokes didn't have to be translated into international box office numbers.

Jon Wright is a magnificently skilled director.  He knows what he's doing and he delivers taut and energetic cinematic experiences.  Give this guy a real budget and creative control, and suddenly JJ Abrams will be looking like the overrated story-agnostic hack that he is.  Wright can do more with less, and still have a story that makes sense.  I may come to regret this if he ever DOES get a budget, and becomes beholden to the corporate interests that come with it.  By not designing his film as a collection of action set-pieces and by using not-totally-cutting-edge computer graphics, Wright is still capable of telling a story well without having to make those kind of lowest-common-denominator capitulations.

The performances were all good if not better.  Kingsley brought a restrained complexity to the character we knew was going to be "bad," but didn't have to be one-dimensionally so.  Smythe was allowed to be tragic and flawed, but still undeniably a bad guy worthy of comeuppance.  Gillan Anderson was perfectly fine in an essentially thankless "mom" role.  The kids all ended up being much better than expected.  There were a lot of surprisingly likable characters in this film, and that really makes the difference when separating the one-watchers from the repeated-viewers.

There's been a suggestion that one of the robot machines bears some resemblance to the squiddy aliens from Grabbers, and I like the idea that they may be parts of a bigger story.  They certainly share a feeling, and have firmly established Jon Wright as a director with his priorities in the right place... even if that place is 1983.

Gimme Those Funky Horns

FILM:


Horns - 2014
Written by Keith Bunin
from the Book by Joe Hill
Directed by Alexandre Aja

Horns is bound to anger the internet rage-nerds (but then what isn't?) with its resistance to simple classification and expectation-defying insistence on being completely itself.  The core structure is that of a murder mystery, but in its greater context it's also a love story and a dark parable that steps outside naturalistic conventions.  While I had some doubts about whether its primary conceit was strictly "horror," the final scene convinced me that, while it was certainly horror, why should it need to be strict about it?

The rage-nerds love to throw out the debate between Siskel & Ebert over Full Metal Jacket and Benji the Hunted as an attempt to discredit Roger Ebert, but it really only demonstrates that the rage-nerds don't understand art.  Ebert gave thumbs down to FMJ and up to Benji in the same episode, and Siskel tried to shame him with the specious suggestion that he was saying Benji was better than FMJ.  What's often omitted from this example, however, is that Roger called Gene out for his false equivalency, explaining (as Siskel damned well should have known) that the rating of a single movie is not inherently a comparison to all other movies, but an indication of how successfully that movie achieves its own purpose.  Art is not a sport, and the pathetic need to score it for so many emotionally and intellectually undeveloped males per their demands and expectations is deeply unhealthy for the art form.  In Ebert's opinion, FMJ was not entirely successful as a war movie, or an anti-war war movie, or a Kubrick movie, and I can see his point without necessarily having strong feelings about it one way or another.  Separately, he saw Benji the Hunted as a very successfully executed Benji movie.  While having no personal interest IN a Benji movie, I can see how one might be well made per its own intentions.  While you and/or I may feel that he misjudged FMJ, Benji had absolutely nothing to do with it.  In other words, they're not in competition with each other -- not one human soul went to the theater in 1987 and said, "Hm, do I feel like seeing a bleak vision of the Vietnam War, or a cute children's story about a fluffy dog?!" -- they're in competition with themselves.  I bring this up because A) I consider Ebert to have been pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to film review, and 2) the absolute failure of the majority of internet loudmouths to grasp this concept has become toxic to the media arts.

Approaching Horns as a film that is what it means to be, it's a complete success.  Approaching it as a film with tho obligation of meeting the expectations of angry young boy-men, it's a magnet for scorn.  And the moral of this story (like so many stories) is "Don't read Comments on the Internet."

But I digress...

Horns stars Daniel Radcliffe in what I believe is his best performance to date.  Radcliffe plays Ig Perrish, a young radio DJ from near Seattle who is accused of murder.  The murder of which he is accused is of the love of his life, Merrin (the ethereal Juno Temple), his girlfriend since childhood.  The whole town hates Ig and wants him to burn.  Even his parents' phrasings betray their own doubts about his innocence.  Universally despised, but legally bound not to leave, Ig is in a living Hell.

So maybe it shouldn't be entirely surprising when he starts to sprout horns from his forehead.  Devil's horns.  People react very differently to Ig's new appearance.  Some see it as representative of what they already think he is.  Others don't see them as anything terribly unusual, and some don't see them at all.  This becomes part of the mystery.  Along with the new fashion statement, Ig's other statements take on a new gravity as well.  People immediately start sharing their shameful secrets, asking him whether they should go ahead and act on them.  We all have our hidden impulses, but we like having the Devil around to blame.

Initially horrified, Ig comes to embrace these changes almost like super powers, enabling him to uncover layers of the mysteries surrounding him.

Well, I just enjoyed the hell out of this film.  What was more-or-less a mystery gained all kinds of richness through its characters and their secrets, and through the utterly surreal story device of Ig's horns and abilities.  It's filled with genuine humor, never resorting to cheap jokes, and darkness that never resorts to bleakness.  The way the story reveals personal histories creates characters worth caring about and hoping for  Even when a plot point came up that hinted pretty strongly at the mystery's solution, I was still fascinated to find out how it all fit together.  This is just plain good storytelling, in the true spirit of fable craft.


OPENS TOMORROW

TELEVISION:


Constantine: Pilot Episode - 2014
based on the Hellblazer comics by first written by Jamie Delano,
based on the John Constantine character originally created by Alan Moore

I don't know if John Constantine has actually become "wildly popular" over the years since I walked away from comics, or if that's merely the hyperbole of the lazy and triflin' entertainment press.  The movie with Keanu Reeves was... okay ...but felt wrong, primarily because the character known to readers is a smart-mouthed demon fighter from the north of England and Keanu Reeves is, well, Keanu Reeves.  It was with extreme skepticism that I approached the new NBC series.  It just didn't (and I'm still skeptical about this) seem possible that a network TV show could have the brutal darkness and grit of the comic books I knew.  It was announced that Constantine wouldn't be shown smoking, which is not only a defining character affectation but a MAJOR plot point.  And the actor, Matt Ryan, still doesn't look quite right -- his clothes look too fresh and his dye job or wig still strikes me as costumey.

So it came as a significant surprise to me that I was intrigued and entertained for the entire pilot episode.

The story was instantly familiar to a reader of the original series like me, even if it's been transposed from England to the United States.  At least Constantine is English, as he always should have been.  The character was created by Alan Moore during his run on the Swamp Thing, and always had the quality of bringing that gloomy, rainy, Jack-the-Rippery steak-and-kidney flavor of the macabre to DC Comics' supernatural world.  Alan would probably get his ire up for me saying this (then again Alan hardly needs an excuse anymore), but I always took John Constantine to be the character most like Alan himself (prior to Promethea anyway), albeit wrapped in Sting's body.  Constantine is something of a paranormal investigator, magician (the real stuff) and "Master of the Dark Arts" towing doom in his wake.

The series opens with him in a mental hospital (per his choosing) trying to leave behind the idea that demons and ghosts and whatnot are real.  This is a man with a past of which he wishes to be unburdened, and it's not going to be as simple as disbelieving it away.

The first episode was actually a lot more fun than I remembered the comics to be, but it's hard to complain about that when you're having fun.  The episode did a fantastic job of establishing the series as well as completing a single-episode story.  It was overflowing with tone and texture, hinting at things to come without being overburdened by them, and sneaking in one hell of a tease without dwelling on all the "Guess who THIS is! Guess who THAT is!" that we got from Gotham.

You can seldom know for sure what you're going to get in the long run based on a pilot episode, but in terms of promise, Constantine's got it in spades.  Let's just hope he doesn't let us down like all those dead people he used to know.

Bridge Over Troubled Daughters

FILM:


Maria, Leonora, Theresa - 2014
Written by Keiko Aquino
Directed by Wenn V Deramas

I doubt I'd ever think to call myself a "foreign movie buff" because I don't feel that the preconceptions of what that means necessarily apply to me, but I do greatly enjoy experiencing other cultures through their pop culture.  There's just a whole layer of textures that you can't possibly get through travel and cooking shows, no matter how well-intended.  On that note, I'm happy to have added the Philippines to my United Nations of cinematic experiences with Maria, Leonora Theresa.

I was pretty nervous as the scene was being established.  It seemed might bright and manic at first as it established the characters of the three young schoolgirls (see title) and the families that loved them.  Then a ghost boy starts popping up, similar to a lot of Asian horror... and then the girls all die in a bus crash.  It's fair to say that things get a lot darker after that.

The girls' families are all in abject mourning, each coping in their own ways, some more poorly than others.  That's when a psychologist working on an experiment in loss shows up with a life-size doll of each girl, promoting the theory that these items will decrease the sense of loss.  Maria and Theresa's mothers are mortified at first, but when they see how it's helped Leonora's father (he's gay and has no other family) to feel less alone, they gradually decide to give it a try.  Now, this definitely takes a certain suspension of disbelief because it's obviously A HORRIBLE IDEA.  Nevermind how creepy the dolls are; it's just completely terrible psychology and the absolute opposite direction from the real path to healing, but okay, just hold on to that discomfiting creep factor, because there's good cause for it.

At first, the mothers and father start to feel better; comforted and more aware of the presence of their late beloveds.  But others around them are (appropriately) creeped the eff out.  The dolls start popping up in areas of their houses other than where they were left and so on.  It's not long before those who threaten them start turning up dead.  The process of figuring out what's going on, and accepting who, or what is responsible takes a little longer than it should, and in the meantime, the psychologist who was so keen to do this "experiment" is nowhere to be seen.  This all leads into the third act uncovering of the greater mystery and what it has to do with the ghost boy from the beginning.

I ended up really liking the story, balks at the psychological explanations notwithstanding.  Sure, the production values are middling and the performances aren't particularly naturalistic, but that's some of that cultural texture that you pretty much have to accept at the buy-in level.  Despite its senselessness, the doll conceit works to serve the story's recurring themes of managing loss.  Also the creepy.  SO creepy.

Maria, Leonora, Theresa combines elements that are familiar to horror with aspects unique to Philippine spiritual beliefs, thus adding some completely fresh ingredients to a favorite recipe.  Yum!

Orphan - 2009
Written by David Johnson & Alex Mace
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

The family in Orphan is also dealing with loss.  In their case, they lost their daughter before she was born through miscarriage.  Determined to share that love, they decide to adopt another daughter to bring into the fold that already includes a son and daughter.

Going into this movie, I initially expected to be offended by the taint that it would put on the concept of adoption, which I hold to be a value.  Kids need loving parents, and there just don't seem to be enough to go around.  Fortunately, Orphan distances itself so completely from reality with such a far-fetched club sandwich of improbabilities that anyone it might discourage from adopting probably isn't mentally cut out for it in the first place.

When John & Kate head on down to the good ol' fashioned Catholic orphanage (do they even make those anymore?), naturally they skip right past all the jolly and sociable young girls clambering for attention and head right for the "different" girl who prefers to hide up in the classroom painting.  In less than five minutes they've made up their minds and begin the process of adopting the clever little girl from Russia, Esther.

Esther is intelligent and creative, displaying a facility for learning, a wisdom beyond her years and her own peculiar style preferences with include a dollish fashion sense and ubiquitous ribbons around her wrists and neck.  She's really rather charming and I'd probably adopt her myself, in the early stages.  But it's not long after they get her home that she starts to reveal some odd tendencies.  She's a bit of a lurker, not terribly forthcoming about her past, and soon demonstrates a matchstick temper and a cold pragmatism toward life and death.

When another little girl's leg is broken in a playground incident (Esther's doing, but not provable), Kate snaps into suspicion and accusation mode rather quickly.  She's given plenty of fuel for her suspicions, and Esther is rather quick to escalate matters.  Things ramp up with increasing rapidity, but John is unwilling or unable to see it, and the other kids have been intimidated into silence.  So just what IS Esther's deal and will Kate be able to uncover it before it's too late?

A thriller called "Orphan" really doesn't leave a lot of mystery about who the bad guy is going to be and in which direction the mysteries lay.  I didn't find it terribly surprising, although there's a twist or... nah, there's just the one twist that others may not see coming.  Nevertheless, the film packs considerable tension, even if it's just to find out who's going to survive it all.  Isabelle Fuhrman, the girl who plays Esther is extraordinary in the role and really sells the entire premise.  She's both charming and alarming, with stops in between.

Press Play

FILM:


V/H/S: Viral - 2014
see link for writing & directing credits

The V/H/S series combines two of the riskiest elements of horror -- found footage and anthology -- to what has generally added up to a more successful sum than one could reasonably expect.  The hungry young bucks of low-budget scares have by-and-large broken away from the hammy, winky traditions of EC Comics influenced shorts, and make a genuine effort to present their pieces with a certain amount of realism -- at least until they go completely batshit-outta-Hell.  The first two V/H/S films are kind of like an online personality test for horror fans.  Different shorts appeal to different fans, well, differently.  I, personally, didn't really care at all for the one in V/H/S 2 that was most lauded by the most self-righteous of horror fans

I, again personally, feel that this third installment is actually the best one yet, although I'm sure that won't be a unanimous opinion.  The narratives are better developed over all.  The visions are more unique.  And after the virtually cut-and-pasted framing device in V/H/S 2, the mythology finally evolves a little, in scope if not in clarity.  This V/H/S seems like it might actually be trying to say something.

The first film (not counting the framing story, to which I will return) is Dante The Great from director Gregg Bishop.  It's presented documentary-style, but plays fast and loose with the found footage premise when the action picks up.  The story is about a not-so-great wannabe magician who discovers a fabled cape capable of empowering real magic.  He rises rapidly through the ranks with tricks that no one else can fathom, but as his private collection of videos shows, there is a price to pay for that power.

Of all the segments in Viral, this is the one most capable of expansion into a full-length feature, and I imagine that Bishop must have considered it for that at one time.  Dante's career arc is glossed over, as is his relationship with Scarlett, his most recent assistant and potential rival.  Their battle for the cape is cool as hell and I easily could have watched 10 more minutes of that alone.  If Marvel Films hadn't already hired a director for Dr. Strange, this would be a stunning audition tape.  It really isn't scary, but then so little is.  It's clever and fun and showed me new things.  That's all I'm askin' for.

The next film is by far the strangest.  Parallel Monsters by Nacho Vigalondo is the video record of one man's secret experiments with a gateway intended to reach a parallel universe.  On this, his third effort, the gateway opens into a mirror image of his own basement laboratory.  Peeking through, he discovers a mirror image of himself.  They're both delighted by this breakthrough.  Neither one can restrain his curiosity, and they agree ("I was thinking the same thing!") to trade places for 15 minutes to see how the other side lives.

As it turns out, there are more differences than everything being a reflection.  Their cultures have some radically different bases, and then there's... that other thing.  After creeping along for a while, then getting weird and uncomfortable, this one suddenly stomps on the gas to get things over with in a way that didn't quite make sense and could have been much better paced.  However, once the Hell breaks loose, the viewer is more concerned with "WTF?!!" than the finer points of narrative pacing.  It's definitely a concept that could be expanded in another context, if it hadn't gotten into such a hurry to tie things up in a bloody little bow at the end.  There are definitely some surprises here, and I like the way it didn't feel obligated to answer every question it raised, simply allowing things to remain texture in the alternate dimension.

The third segment is the least developed and most over-long, which isn't to say that there's nothing to like about it.  Bonestorm by Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead is made of footage shot for a couple of skateboarders intent on becoming the next internet sensation, so much of it comes from GoPro cameras on their boards and helmets.  Between you and me, that isn't the best place for them.  A big chunk of the segment simply involves them falling off their boards, bitching at their videographer and getting chased out of public places.  Eventually they decide to head down to Tijuana to skate a drainage ditch (because they don't have drainage ditches in California?), so then we get footage of them wandering around TJ and finally finding a ditch to ride.  This ditch just happens to have all kinds of freaky witchcraft symbols and totems all over it.

Soon enough, one of the skaters spills a little blood on the symbol and as soon as it starts to smoke, the cultists show up and attack.  The skaters spend an awful lot of time killing cultists that might better have been spent getting the hell outta Dodge, but the cultists aren't done with them yet.  There really wasn't anything I'd strictly call a story here, just a series of events and a lot of filler.  There's some fun to be found in the skater dudes' characters and the final bouts of violence, but those both become as tiresome as the rest of it.  The thing I appreciated most about it was the way that its themes of internet fame and unearned ambition tied in with the wraparound story's.

Now, about that wraparound story; Vicious Circles directed by Marcel Sarmiento.  The first two V/H/S films essentially had the same framing device, where someone broke into a seemingly empty house and watched a series of weird videotapes (thus the name) about horrific stuff happening, then being eliminated one by one by unknown persons or dark powers.  Viral does evolve this concept, starting out with a modern internet-savvy couple who feel obligated to record far too much of their lives.  When a big ol' LA police chase hits their neighborhood, the guy heads out to try and get some footage of it, and in the process, his girlfriend disappears, evidently scooped up by the speeding ice cream truck leading the police in circles.

Between the other segments, the chase continues, reflected in footage from other sources where other incidents occur.  It seems that the truck is spreading madness in addition to mayhem.  While the narrative is distinctly less clear that the frame has been in the past, and the relationship to the segments more vague, I found it to be more artistically creative, and I believe it was actually trying to say something about the toxic power of our ubiquitous fame-chasing internet culture.  It certainly evolved the concept, taking the dark powers mobile, spreading the doom rather than merely luring others to it.

The VHS conceit had been beaten and abused in the past, given that many of the films acknowledged a digital recording context, but as Viral makes so much more of being digital and the nature of digital media, the VHS textures seem even more out of place.  I don't suppose a lot of people will notice or care, because those are much spookier textures that speak to something out of the past, but the talents involved in the next V/H/S would do themselves a favor to look at the way that a film like ETXR makes use of digital textures as they move forward.  The V/H/S title may become anachronistic, but that doesn't mean the film needs to be.  Perhaps the series becomes "Viral" from this point on.

And despite the internet nerd rage, I really hope that the series DOES go on.  This is a great format for letting a younger generation of low-budget horror directors try a few things out and stretch their wings.  I'm really curious to find out more about the entity behind the videos; certainly more than I ever have been about some mere franchised serial killer.  I think each entry shows the next round of directors places where they can challenge themselves and what kind of things just aren't cutting it like they were following Blair Witch.  As our cultural relationship with homemade video evolves, it makes sense that our cultural response to that should evolve as well.


Currently on Video On-Demand.  Opens in select theaters November 21.

Press Eject

The Houses October Built - 2014
see link for writing team
Directed by Bobby Roe

In 2011, Bobby Roe made a documentary about the changing face of Halloween scare houses in the (mostly Southern) United States.  This year, he turned that concept into a found footage film about pretty much the same thing.  He and his friends visit a series of haunted house attractions looking for "real" scares.  This has an additional fictional storyline about them seeking out an underground horror house that turns out to be a little TOO real for them.  Essentially, it's Blair Witch all over again, but with the South instead of the woods, annoying bickering and whining leading up to an unsurprising doom included.  When people say "Ugh, another found footage horror movie" this is what they're talking about.

Creatures of the Night

The primary linking element between these two movies should be instantly apparent, but it turns out that they have more in common than the titular professions involved...

FILM:


Dead Hooker in a Trunk - 2009
Written & Directed by Jen & Sylvia Soska

After the brilliance of the Soska sisters' American Mary and the crime against humanity that was See No Evil 2, I wanted to check out their ultra-low budget debut to see if I could figure out more of the equation.

One of the last lines in the movie is "I can't believe there aren't any repercussions for all the things we did."  That goes a long way toward describing what kind of movie Dead Hooker in a Trunk is.

While it's classified as "Horror" on IMDb, it struck me as much more of a dark comedy crime thriller, but that's essentially semantic.  Rather than making their movie despite a $2500 budget, they embraced the low budget, squeezing every penny out of it, and more.  Dead Hooker in a Trunk is all about DIY, both as an aesthetic and a value.  It is exactly the punk rock exploitation flick that it set out to be.

In addition to writing, directing and probably making sandwiches, Jen & Sylvia star as Geek & Badass, respectively.  That's not me calling characters by their type, as I am wont to do, but the Soskas naming all their main characters according to type.  While running errands with their friends Goody Two-Shoes & Junkie (after another hard night of partying for Badass and Junkie, natch) they all discover -- you guessed it -- a dead hooker in the trunk of their car.

The ordinary logic of human behavior does not apply in this film.  Badass refuses to go to the police because, frankly, she and Junkie can't remember much of the night before.  Even less logically, everyone else goes along with this, albeit some more begrudgingly than others.  What follows is a spastic black comedy of (t)errors.

The girls and guy (Goody Two-Shoes is a guy, just a really wussy, religiously inhibited one) have to evade horny cops, a perverted hotel manager, various drug dealers, a cowboy pimp and the real killer while they try to figure out what happened and what to do about it.  Geek loses an eye, Junkie loses an arm (stitched back on, it's surprisingly resilient), Goody Two-Shoes loses his lunch (repeatedly) and Badass loses her clothes.  Considering her role in making things much, much worse, Badass gets off pretty easy.  Despite discovering that they didn't kill the hooker (the first time anyway) they do kill several people, only most of whom tried to kill them first.  All things considered, there were very few repercussions for all the things that they did.  As Badass says after surprising everyone by being alive after a run-in with the real real killer, "Death can't kill me!"

I cannot in good conscience recommend Dead Hooker in a Trunk in a general sort of way, but I liked it for what it was.  This is very definitely niche viewing for fans of exploitation film.  It's a bleakly funny, no-budget wail of pure street fighting adrenaline.  Like a first live gig for a punk rock garage band, they probably could play it again the same way if they wanted to, but they played even the flat notes with total commitment.

Despite my disappointment with See No Evil 2 (if a dry-heaving sense of loathing can be classified as "disappointment"), DHIAT gives me hope that they will indeed redeem themselves one day.  It really highlights the importance of them writing their own material.  No amount of glitter could gild the turd that was the SNE2 script, and no absence of budget could still the primal scream that was Dead Hooker in a Trunk.

Call Girl of Cthulhu - 2014
Written by Jimmy George & Chris LaMartina
Directed by Chris LaMartina

If Dead Hooker in a Trunk was a no-budget homage to the grindhouse cinema of the 70s, then Call Girl of Cthulhu is a low-budget homage to the splatter features of the mid-80s that you'd never really hear about until you saw them at the VHS rental.  If you want to be negative about it, you could say that it's crude and gruesome, but if you want to have fun, you could say that it's hilarious and raunchy with a bounty of the things that you rented videos (or stayed up late watching cable) for in the 80s.

The film is remarkably generous in most everything that it has to offer.  It combines Lovecraft mythology with raunchy sex comedy and splatterrific practical effects, often at the same time.  It's filled with inside jokes for Lovecraft fans.  My personal favorite is the condom brand, Deep Ones, but real fans are apt to catch more than I did.  The humor is silly and will make your inner 12-year-old-staying-up-late giggle until your parents tell you guys to tone it down in there.  Where so many movies from back in the day had to be stingy with their effects budgets until the finale, Call Girl of Cthulhu is able to keep 'em coming at a furious pace, and it's packed with silly, gross and raunchy creatures and mutations.

The premise is that our protagonist, Carter is a 20-something artist so socially inept that he can barely even talk to the women he knows, much less make of the lovin' to one.  Then one day he runs into call girl Riley (R'lyeh to you, nerds) on the street and is instantly smitten.  He decides to hire her for a little help with a certain matter.  Meanwhile, a Cthulhu cult is searching for a prostitute with a very particular birthmark and killing off the ones who leave them disappointed.  I'll give you one guess who has the birthmark.

Meanwhile that same meanwhile, a small group is working to prevent the cult from getting exactly what they want, and they steal the sacred Necronomicon from the cultists.  Seeing Carter's work in the weekly indy paper, they go to him to copy the book so they can give a powerless decoy back to the cultists.

Carter is so timid that he can't seal the deal with Riley, and she, moved by his vulnerability and contrast to her usual customers, takes a shine to him as well.  They start dating, but once the cult catches up with her, she pushes him away to protect him from the terrible thing inside of her.  She doesn't push away her regular clients, and all sorts of horrors befall them.  Riley has become one big walking STD from Hell -- more or less literally.

Of course the big climax involves the birth of Cthulhu and the opening of a portal to wherever it is that portals open to in Lovecraft's world; Tentacle City, evidently.  It's gory and hideous and triumphant and doomed and NEVER NOT FUN.  Except for the one part that's a total bummer, but that's kind of what you sign up for with Lovecraft.

Cheesy?  Sure.  Corny?  What else?  Light on characterization?  Not as much as you might think.  Poorly acted?  Only where it's funnier that way.  Tacky?  Look, there are boob-eel monsters AND a mutant dick creature.  If you can't enjoy that, that's on you, my friend.

Between these two prostitute-themed low-budget throwbacks, I definitely preferred Call Girl of Cthulhu.  It's still a case of taste whether this is something you can be open to enjoying, but buy-in is much lower and the reward much higher for the willing viewer.  Unlike poor Riley, it delivers something you won't want to kill as soon as it wriggles free.