Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop  BAG BOY, LOVER BOY – In grimy NYC, hapless hot-dog stand operative Albert dreams of being a world class photographer, but local artiste Ivan exploits his real ‘talents’ and puts him in humiliating sex scenarios down at his studio. Does that give him license to go around strangling people, though? In some ways, BBLB harkens back to well-known examples of NY gutter pulp – ‘Driller Killer’, Maniac’ and the like, which all had a similarly arty edge, though were more flyblown. Here the vibe is contemporary, and no doubt dishes the dirt on the intersection between poverty, wish fulfilment, the art world and its broken-mirror reflection, porn. Maybe it also shares something with recent genre wonkiness such as ‘The Evil Within’ and ‘The Greasy Strangler’, and, come to think of it, ‘Maniac’ (the remake), if only because of the high level of absurdism and the ambiguously placed communication differences of the central character… I should point out that BBLB is a black comedy of sorts, although at times it seems coy about some of the humour it might be aiming for. It’s also less graphically violent and sleazy than I thought it might be. But hey, BBLB is worth checking out because you’re a scumbag and you know it.
TAG – Sion Sono’s latest. It’s a weird one alright, giving us Japanese schoolgirls under attack by supernatural forces in a gory opening bus attack scene that leads on to some twee friendship stuff, then a mad scramble featuring a bit more gore and some multiverse schtick with people running about. “What is reality, after all? Maybe it’s all in our mindddssssss…” Cheers, Sion, that’s quite extraordinary really, hadn’t thought of anything like it since I smoked half a spliff behind a bike shed that time. There’s plenty of imagery and ideas in it that I dug, including a fairly messed up wedding scene with a dude with a pig’s head and a slit throat in a vertical coffin, but… somehow the whole thing didn’t quite gel for me. The randomness all makes sense in the end, kinda, with the proceedings ultimately shoehorned into heavy handed gender critique and explanatory hokum to do with virtual reality (or something), but I found it all a bit meh next to some of the director’s other work, such as the brilliant ‘Exte’. Still worth checking out I suppose.
GIALLO A VENEZIA – The problem with notoriety in cinema is that it usually only centres on one thing. Once that ‘one thing’ (in this case, a close-up of someone being stabbed repeatedly in the vag) is out of the way, the rest either stands up… or it doesn’t. What about GAV? Well, I find gialli hard work at the best of times. This one doesn’t really have much going for it. There’s none of the usual stabs at style, no pop-art set designs and the like, although it does have some charming eccentricities such as the detective who is constantly scoffing boiled eggs. There’s a cheap, tawdry feel to it that could work in its favour in a grotty sub-porno kind of way, but then again there’s too much messing about and idle chat. The nastiness is appropriately sadistic, but too few and far between. The bad sex is just bad sex. And I really loathed the musical score, a kind of seventies Euro-la-la-la that might’ve been deliberately annoying for all I know. Still, good that it’s available, maybe.
THE STRANGERS – Put this on, looking for a nice bit of creepiness. It is that, but I’d forgotten how bleak and nasty it is. ‘The Strangers’ was always mentioned in the same breath as the French film ‘Ils’ from a couple of years before. Whilst the basic premise is identical i.e home invasion focussing on a young couple up against seemingly unknowable assailants, the same could be said of lots of other flicks. ‘Ils’ actually gave an implicit rationale for the attack in the end, whereas ‘The Strangers’ probably has a lot more in common with the horror trends active in the US around the time – ‘torture porn’ and the whole grindhouse throwback thing. Tonally and visually it’s really compelling, definitely atmospheric, and there is something of the seventies horror flick in there. Most of it plays out in a standard cat-and-mouse fashion, but there is a relentlessness to it and it does manage to ratchet up the suspense. Again, I was surprised at the nihilistic, forlorn feel, although admittedly it concentrates at the end, rather than being constant… nothing new for a horror flick, but ‘The Strangers’ was a fairly mainstream effort with some biggish names (Liv Tyler for one) that did well at the box office. Looking back, one of the stronger movies of its time – see it if you haven’t. |