KILLER NERD – A Troma film / pick-up starring “genuine nerd” Toby Radloff, who some may know as Harvey Pekar’s buddy from various ‘comix’ back in the day. Radloff plays, well, pretty much himself going by his overall ‘media aesthetic’, although I imagine he stops short of murder IRL. Yes, Toby is a downtrodden nerd who gets angry, then gets even in this early nineties probably-shot-on-video exercise in deliberate bad taste. It’s no John Waters flick, but it may win some over with its smart-dumb overstylised woodenness, which has all the blank allure of a badly made industrial training video. There’s a good bit where Toby dresses as a baby, then ties up and tortures his mother! I liked it, even though I think ninety percent of comedy horror sucks.
TERROR – NJ Warren doing a Suspiria rip and coming up a bit short, maybe. It’s still pretty good. I’ve seen it two or three times in the past, and liked it better on previous viewings. Dunno what to say about the ‘plot’ – there’s a house with a curse involving a 17th cent witch, a latter day film director and a bunch of stuff happening that doesn’t really join up. A challenging stripper does her act in a bar that looks like the kind of place where people just sit around eating fish and chips until they go home (i.e it's not particularly edgy or sleazy), things go a bit ‘horror’ when a window semi-decapitates someone whilst things move around in the background, and over in the studio some softcore porn people introduce a vibe of ‘Confessions Of…’ era Britain. In fact, ‘Terror’ probably works best now as exactly that kind of nostalgia piece, as its tawdry seventies Englishness is unforced, true and drably loveable, whereas the tendency towards coloured lighting doesn’t really elevate it to the heights of Euro-goth.
BRAIN DAMAGE – BD grows on me every time I see it. It’s always been a fave, but I see it now as a mini-masterpiece that splices together so many of the things that fascinate and captivate me – stylised depictions of NYC shittiness 70s / 80s, movie psychedelia, that whole carny / exploitation vibe of flicks twenty or thirty years older than it, Zarcherle, brain eating parasites, threesomes with suckers… so many great scenes, I mean how inspired do you have to be to conceive of a blow-job lobotomy at a Swimming Pool Q’s gig? And Elmer / Aylmar totally makes it. Just great, really - nothing more to add beyond “come back, Frank!"
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