In short: The Violent Kind (2010)

After a family birthday party, a few members (most importantly those played by Cory Knauf, Taylor Cole and Bret Roberts, and the associated "little sister who done good" Megan, played by Christina Prousalis) of a multi-generational gang of bikers with a hand in quite a few illegal pots stay behind in the traditional dark house in the woods for the night. Things get interesting when Michelle (Tiffany Shepis), Megan's big sister who had already left for greener pastures, reappears in front of their door covered in blood, and collapses.

Strangely, Michelle's appearance coincides with a sudden unwillingness of the gang's car to start. Of course, that's only the beginning of everyone's trouble, for soon enough, Michelle turns out to be quite possessed (she even does the popular ceiling crawl). A bit later, the dead come back to life - only to pointlessly explode after ten minutes or so, and finally, five badly made-up, incredibly annoying 50s greasers appear to have a bit of fun with the old ultra-violence and open a dimensional gate for their queen from the Outer Dark.

Ever since I saw their The Hamiltons, I've been thinking the Butcher Brothers (Mitchell Altieri and Phil Flores) have at least one very fine horror movie in their future. At least, the project of mixing parts of the sensibilities of US indie drama of the post-Sundance variation with US indie horror that seems to be theirs is one that looks pretty promising to me.

Unfortunately, The Violent Kind still isn't the movie I've been looking for from the duo. What begins decent enough as an Evil Dead variant with more characterization that pretends to have to say something about the violence inside of its characters soon turns into a succession of weird (which is always good) and would-be weird (which is never good) scenes that never come together to form a whole as a movie - it's more a grab-bag of ideas taken from other movies (beside The Evil Dead there's an especially heavy David Lynch influence, something that has never worked for anyone apart from Lynch) that wildly swings from one mood to the next in too distractible a manner to be successful.

I wouldn't complain too loudly if all - or even most - of the film's distractions would actually work, but elements like the undead 50s greasers/outer-dimensional horror cultists - who are probably meant to be bizarrely creepy, but only end up annoying and trying way too hard to be creepy - are built to test even the patience of the more tolerant viewer through the sheer power of bad overacting and conceptual vapidity.

On the positive side, all non-50s greaser acting is pretty good, and the Butcher Brothers belong to a part of the indie horror community that not only knows about the finer points of using a camera and editing, but is also willing and able to apply that knowledge.

That's not enough for a real recommendation (even though the film does have its moments), yet still leaves me with hope for the directors' future films.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,horror,the butcher brothers,cory knauf,taylor cole,tiffany shepis

Bonnie And Clyde vs. Dracula (2008)

The USA during the Great Depression. Bank robbers and psychotic doers of violence Bonnie (Tiffany Shepis) and Clyde (Trent Haaga) have hit a low point in their careers. With no money in their pockets, they're making their way across the Midwest being as psychotic and violent as their job description promises, but their relationship is straining under the yoke of financial deprivation. Business is bad. Fortunately, the couple's old partner Henry (F. Martin Glynn) has a sure-fire plan to steal some moonshine.

At the same time, mad scientist Dr. Loveless (Allen Lowman) has enough of wearing that darn sack over his head and is trying to cure his disfiguring illness in the most obvious way: by reviving the remains of famous party animal/vampire Dracula (Russell Friend), in the hope of a little transfusion of blood of the great man for himself. In his work, Dr. Sackhead, pardon, Loveless is assisted by his mentally six-year-old sister Annabel (Jennifer Friend). Annabel really isn't interested in helping her rather horrible brother, but one of those fine electro-shock collars you can buy in Mad-Science-Mart around her neck doesn't leave her much of a choice.

Once Dracula is revived enough to talk, he shows himself to be quite displeased by Annabel's presence. Turns out she is a "pure innocent", and that vampires are pretty allergic to them.

Given the film's title, it's obvious that Bonnie and Clyde's new money-making attempt will fail and lead them to the territory of Loveless and Dracula. But will all these evil guys and girls truly fight each other?

If there are two things I usually try to avoid in my horror film consumption, then it's contemporary US independent horror and consciously camp movies. The former too often leave me with an unpleasant feeling of hatred for people joyfully trying their best to make movies for no money, because "their best" usually is very, very bad in a very very non-entertaining way, while the latter can't avoid the truth that creating conscious camp is about as possible as being alive and dead at the same time.

Naturally, given these basic facts of my taste and temper, I went into Bonnie And Clyde vs. Dracula less than optimistic, with only the hope of seeing Bonnie and Clyde fight Dracula to keep me upright. (Actually, I went in mumbling stuff like "Why am I doing this to me again? Isn't life too short?"). That hope of the film being true to its title was crushed soon enough. BCvD takes two thirds of its running time until the two plot lines finally meet, and when they do, there's not much exciting happening. Dracula himself isn't even dispatched by our mass-murderin' heroes, but through the sort of accidental death that makes other undignified Dracula deaths like accidentally running into a thorn bush look very dramatic and dignified in comparison. I do realize that the film's writer/director Timothy Friend staged Dracula's death the way he did on purpose to stay true to his theme of innocence versus evil - and Bonnie and Clyde sure aren't innocent - but making the ending of one's film dramatically sound seems just as (possibly even more) important as making it thematically sound.

While the ending, as well as the film's - typical for a production like this - exceedingly slow pacing, are less than satisfying, I still found myself surprisingly entertained by the whole affair. Though the movie's larger structure frankly just does not work, there is much to enjoy if you take many of its scenes as tiny, campy sketches and just ignore the larger ambitions.

If you can do that, you might be as positively surprised as I was. Most of the acting hits the sweet spot where not much of what anyone says or does is meant to be taken too seriously, but where the least serious lines are delivered with only as much overacting as they can carry. The actors - especially Shepis and Haaga - are obviously having a lot of fun with their roles, putting just the right amount of lunacy in. Shepis - veteran of more crap movies than I'd care to see - even manages the feat of playing a blackly humorous crazy character who is still threatening.

Furthermore, many of the movie's jokes were actually pretty funny, particularly when many of them show Friend to be a lover of the telling, ridiculous detail more than of the obvious spoken punch line. It's difficult not to like a film that lets its head-sack-wearing bad guy change from the potato head-sack model to a red satin one for a party. For me, it's moments like this that are a sure sign a lot of love went in Bonnie and Clyde vs. Dracula.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,horror,comedy,reviews,timothy friend,tiffany shepis,trent haaga