There's no joy at the Wop this morning,as I am the bearer of bad tidings.There are certain things those of you that know me could probably bank on me never doing,and if you said "trash a David Hess movie",you'd normally be balls on.Until here and now,unfortunately.Lee Demarbre,of "Jesus Christ,Vampire Hunter" fame(A movie I had no interest in seeing before this,and even less now),sets out to direct a satirical homage to the Godfather of Gore himself,Herschell Gordon Lewis,and with David Hess on board in the comedic lead,you'd expect Krug to add scores more urine soaked trousers to his resume here,but personally,my eyes rolled back into my head more times during this eighty-six minutes than a great white about to bite a harbor seal in half.The whole production reeks of "written in a hour and filmed over a weekend at a horror convention",and after seeing the director,who looks like somebody you'd see queued up with cash in hand in a Clint Howard autograph line at Chiller Theater,you'll have a hard time convincing me otherwise.
Also among the cast of tonight's entry are Ray "Montag the Magnificent" Sager,of Wizard of Gore and Just For The Hell Of It! fame,the Hersh himself in a cameo,Michael Berryman with drawn on eyebrows and an embarrassing wig,and porn star Sasha Grey,in a non-porn role,and as poster candy,as seen above.In fact,Demarbre claims he wanted to take her "right out of the porn genre".After seeing her flex her acting chops here,call me crazy,but I'd rather watch her sing into the pink microphone.Maybe if she took her clothes off once or twice,I'd be less inclined to notice how lifeless her performance is.Hess looks like he had a lot of fun making the movie,turning in a appropriately hammy and over-the-top,scenery-chewing performance as always,but the movie itself pretty much stinks.If you're going in as a horror fanatic,you're bound to be disappointed by the deliberately Herschell-esque hijinks within.If you're showing your ticket stub to the usher expecting to do a lot of laughing,boy,are you in for a rude awakening.
She looks nearly as bored as I was watching her.
Director Able Whitman(Hess) makes horror movies that make M. Night Shyamalan's teenaged backyard movies look like friggin' Spartacus,ferchrissakes.At the screening of his latest ass-pie,Terror Toy,the disgruntled audience members chuck things at the screen and spit hateful vitriol at the director,who's on board in clown-face makeup to bear witness to the backlash,choosing to drown his sorrows at the local boobie bar,The Ass Menagerie(ha) afterwards, where he manages to smoosh one of the clothes-shedders in a drunk driving accident,discovering that her lifeless corpse will provide ultra-realistic gore effects for his next movie,boosting his stock with Farmsworth(Berryman),the studio head,in the process.When he runs out of body parts to use in his low budgeted set pieces,naturally,Whitman descends further into a state of perma-crackers,whacking everyone who ever done him wrong,from overly critical critics(I don't know anybody like that...)to his own sound man,each murder undertaken by Whitman garbed in a different ridiculous costume and character.Meanwhile,April Carson(Grey),a svelte female news personality with the help of her boss,Fred Sandy(H.G.),has hired private dick/man of hammy mystery,Isaac Beaumonde(Jesse Buck)to help her find her boob-shaking sister,who's gone missing,which is tantamount to hiring the less funny,Dollar Saver version of Inspector Clouseau.
...from money shots and DP's to bloody props and low-brow cheese.
The madly artistic director goes crazy ape bonkers,beheading chicks with sharpened clackers,harpooning pompous producers,and while hiding his blood-soaked booty in the film vaults,finds a print of a movie that incited the audience to riot the only time it was ever screened a la John Carpenter's Masters of Horror episode,Cigarette Burns.Outside the strip joint,Reverend Roscoe Boone(Sager)leads the crusade of concerned religious folks against pornography,when he isn't throat-spooging the Menagerie's girls in the back of his limousine.The ridiculously dressed,flamboyant walking stick-wielding Beaumonde convinces Carson to go undercover as an aspiring actress in Whitman's latest production to help him build a case against the director,who he believes is the murderer,which buys the girl an on-camera kiss with her sister's decaying head.There are more jokes,more primitive gore-sprinkled murders,a quality WTF moment where Whitman does some barefoot yoga on a hillside,and an axe vs. walking stick battle between the sleuth and the filmmaker on the set in the lackluster climax.Jeez,is that the time already?I really should be splitting.
April(Grey) decks herself out in the porn Jawa/Phantasm midget-slave look during her recon mission for answers.
What makes a Herschell Gordon Lewis movie unique and entertaining(occasionally) is the fact that the laughs are unintentional yet genuine.Smash Cut seems forced,and its tongue-in-cheek tribute to Lewis chokes on its own smarminess.I smirked twice during the whole screening,and I'm pretty sure both of those were due to Hess' untiring relentlessness to make the picture succeed,and in fact,he's really the only reason to watch tonight's entry since Sasha Grey,whose porn performances are solidly rad btw, has clothes on throughout.I just don't know why anyone would ever think tackling dated Hersh-esque 1960's fare in 2009 was a good idea in the first place.What's next,Johnny Morghen in a tribute to Staten Island's Andy Milligan?Come on now.I can't suggest this one to anyone,save for the hardest core David Hess fans who might be curious to see another side of the actor,the same way I was.It'll be a long time before I pull tonight's review off the shelves for any reason.If ever.One wop.
I doubt anyone's pissing their pants over this one.
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