Sweetie, You Won't Believe It (2020)

Director: Yernar Nurgaliyev

Screenplay: Zhandos Aibassov, Yernar Nurgaliyev and Daniyar Soltanbayev

Cast: Daniyar Alshinov as Dastan (Das), Asel Kaliyeva as Zhanna, Azamat Marklenov as Arman, Yerlan Primbetov as Murat, Dulyga Akmolda as Tarzan, Almat Sakatov as Kuka, Rustem Zhanyamanov as Petok, Yerkebulan Daiyrov as Kissyk, Bekaris Akhetov as Buzau

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

A horror film from Kazakhstan, Sweetie… is unconventional in that it prioritises itself as a comedy first for all its ghoulishness, presenting the worst day possible for poor Das (Daniyar Alshinov). With a TV in the background of the first scene, talking about the sex lives of chimpanzees and that, contrary to the belief fishing is about booze and gills, it is actually an important bonding ritual between men, the film already establishes its humour in the first scene, which is juvenile at times but done with a lot more sense of glee than laziness to it. It is apt for the tale itself, where Das is established in that scene as a stressed out guy.

Expecting a child, a credit card overdue, and a wife he loves but is the stronger voice of the pair, Das is just a guy drifting along, who just decides one day to run off with friends to fish to help sooth this issue. Despite two of them not knowing how to fish, and the van they travel in full of old school inflatable sex dolls, it will be a calming experience for him, and credit to the film, whilst this may have played up to the henpecked husband stereotype, when things go south for him, one of the reoccurring points is how Das is concerned for his wife and expected child. Despite his friends mocking him for being married, Das is clearly concerned about being there for his soon-to-give-birth wife even if he needed the brief break. Things just happen to go south beforehand.

With its deadpan humour, this feels like a crime comedy instead, as they accidentally bump into debt collectors, mostly related brothers, who were after a man they found hiding in a well. Despite the ominous gas station, with a Lenin poster in the back, which just gives off bad vibes, the immediate concern would be accidentally floating pass an accidental murder. It is embarrassing to have done so when you have improvised a floating vessel, attached to the main boat, using the sex dolls, but that you could be killed to hush up the mistaken murder just adds to the insult. Where this does become a horror film is that, within this premise, director and co-writer Yernar Nurgaliyev drops a Jason Voorhees-like slasher film killer into the midst of all this. He is a guy, with one entirely white eye and disfigured face, who wanders out of nowhere in the midst of the countryside, and introduces himself by doing some improvised optician work with a spike, and re-adjusting the human jaw to make the mouth wider.

With the closest thing to a resistance is one of the friends being a school enforcement officer, who is more likely to bolt it, Das finds himself in a farce between the likelihood of his wife given birth with him absent, and this Voorhees figure picking off the debt collectors one-by-one, leaving him and his friends last to pick off. With the debt collectors presuming they are responsible for the deeds as they are always there at the gristly murder scenes, there is an increased threat as well. Add to this the creepy gas station playing a part, as it involves someone being forced to become a husband and sire grandchildren to a grandfather who likes to watch his new grandson and granddaughter through the bedroom door, and for a film with some gruesome demises, it is played more with a sick sense of humour.

It is also a horror comedy which takes advantage of its resources, such as its wide screen presentation, where there is the great sense of isolation in the first two thirds in the middle of nowhere, contrasted by Yernar Nurgaliyev using some really cool visual flourishes. One of the best for me is a scene which extensively uses the camera attached to the actors, focused on their faces with the world moving around them whilst their panicked expressions are visually clear. The choice of music is also wildly varied, from rap to regional classic pop music, and it is used many times for perfect soundtrack cuts for jokes, like classical pop for an attempted hit and run that fails, or a beautiful use of a dream solo timed for a comedy moment of cowardice. The best way to describe Sweetie, You Won't Believe It is that this is the one slasher (adjacent) horror film where a fart nearly gets someone caught, and far from a moment of rolling your eyes at the childish humour, even the dick jokes and juvenile aspects work for the film. Especially with the one emotional current through this broad humour, this works, as Das has his friends calling him out for being a henpecked husband, to only at one point burst and proudly defend his marriage. This one emotional point in what is a purely comedic piece allows it to also be about older male friendship that just happens to have a body count.

Its director Yernar Nurgaliyev is someone who is prolific as well, which makes me delight in the film greater knowing this is not someone who was never able to make another film. He is someone whose career mostly is likely not getting picked up in the West sadly, as a figure who can juggle comedies and dramas in a clear willingly to make films for their own sake, but the one here which managed to catch attention did deserve it. It is obvious why, as beyond the nice sense of having a horror film from Kazakhstan which I would gladly revisit for its virtues, to add to the pin board of the genre from around the world, it clearly took distributors' interests for its nice plate spinning act of being as goofy as it is, with a distinct take on horror tropes, which everyone clearly did their best to make as good a film they wished it to be.

Visible Secret (2001)

 

Director: Ann Hui

Screenplay: Abe Kwong

Cast: Eason Chan as Peter Wong Choi, Man Kin-fung as young Peter, Shu Qi as June / Wong Siu-kam, Kelly Moo as young June, Anthony Wong as Wong-lin, Sam Lee as Simon, James Wong as Lo Kit, Wayne Lai as Peter's brother, Kara Hui as Siu-kam's mother

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

As a young girl, June (Shu Qi) saw a man is decapitated on rail lines, played by Anthony Wong, and whilst everyone was horrified by the body briefly wandering about headless, she learnt she could see ghosts when she found his head. Just because you can see ghosts however does not mean June has other problems to deal with, like ex-boyfriends, let alone when the karaoke room she wishes to use is haunted. A horror comedy, but with an emotional edge, it is noticeably by Ann Hui, an acclaimed female director whose career was sadly not that wildly available in the United Kingdom considering how well regarded she already was by this film in her long career. Behind such films like Boat People (1982), a sombre drama part of her acclaimed set of films about displaced Vietnamese refugees, she is also evidence of how Hong Kong filmmakers have developed the ability to switch genres with ease. Some legends found niches - John Woo with the heroic bloodshed genre, Wong Kar-Wai with doomed romances - but even those two examples changed tact and even genres occasionally in their careers too. In the case of Visible Secret, Hui is behind the camera for many dramas in her career, but has also made action films, comedies, and already had a film about people being able to see ghosts decades before called The Spooky Bunch (1980). By itself, it is noticeable how Visible Secret feels of its own in terms of mood and tone within a new decade.

You can see that, for a comedy, it plays with a sense of quiet emotion only to puncture it with moments of slapstick, ghoulish humour and bleak humour, where soon-to-be-fired hairdresser Peter (Eason Chan) encounters June during a one night stand together and find them entangled in each others' lives. Emotions are interrupted by how he lost his job, though the boy finds it cool to see blood even if it is his own, or the likes of one's uncle, meant to be in an old folk's home, appearing covered in red paint claiming to be attacked by ghosts and trying to bite someone's nose off. The possession of a single mother by two ghosts, arguing over the body within a spectacle of physical comedy for one of the film's stand out sequences, is contrasted by the sad final discovery after that sequence, and that tonal shifting by screenwriter Abe Kwong plays a huge part to the entire production. The drama is there, and many scenes this absurd humour is contrasted with sudden emotion, as Peter finds himself encountering the world of the supernatural, both learning too late people he has crossed paths with are already dead, or struggling through those many possessions and hauntings he encounters with June by his side. As the pair of slowly falling in love, June herself is not exactly as comfortable with her gift either, able to see the dead through one eye. Shu Qi stands out just in terms of her gothic appearance as the character, and the playfully flighty attitude June has at her happiest, but she also plays a young woman struggling with the sights in general, and is very captivating as the awkward co-lead with Eason Chan.

The world they exist in is also very distinct in terms of aesthetic. Of the early 2000s, with its digital effects and visual look, the film has an appropriately washed out mood to its urban landscapes. Colour is here, vibrant still, but within a Hong Kong city that feels stepped in melancholia and alienated young adults, it feels apt that among its docks and markets there are all the ghosts wandering about with all their stories. Random possession by a female ghost in a toilet, who committed suicide due to being jilted by a lover, makes sense with matter-of-factness in context to this world. Even when it has the least excepted reference to a Toblerone I was expecting to see, which would be unintentionally funny in another context as a Swiss chocolate popular in my home land, that is brought up in a deeply emotional meeting between son and his father that, seen twice in two different ways, is one of the scenes with the most heart in both versions. The comedic tone at times throughout Visible Secrets is clearly being used to emphasis the dramatic weight of its themes of loss and mourning.

In a world of muted green and blue lighting, the obvious theme for a story like this, with the ghosts when they possess people, is all the emotions and rage they dealt with in their lives they cannot get rid of. This is especially in mind to two of them being women spurned by men and heartbroken, and Antony Wong's character, whilst not returning in the full flesh, being a prologue figure important to the latter act but whose gruesome demise is entirely a bad luck of the draw in how it transpired. There is even a charlatan exorcist who finds himself embraced in June's case despite his open scepticism to his work, which just emphasises the tone and mood perfectly of the entire film, where the supernatural passe
s the weird lives of the living like ships passing in the night.

There is the one aspect of the film which may divide viewers thought, and that is the twist ending. To spoil two films at once - [Huge Spoilers] this is the same twist The Sixth Sense (1999) by M. Night Shyamalan had [Spoilers End]. It is on one hand a huge emotional gut punch, if one which has the potential to a) add a greater weight to scenes when revisited in terms of how characters interact, or b) just cause a tangled and confusing mess to rationalise it all. Taking it for what it is, then worry about this, it is the last dose of melancholia, emphasising the humour in Visible Secrets, even its scares, were always taking the backseat to the emotional drive of the film. It is for that reason, if with a caveat depending on the individual viewer's reaction to that twist, mine to the entire production was an admiration of Ann Hui's film in its entirety.  

CO/MA (2004)

 

Director: Mike Figgis (with Steve Hudson, Johnny O'Reilly, Hanna Slak and Jovan Arsenic)

Screenplay: Jovan Arsenic, Mike Figgis, Steve Hudson, Fabian Joest Passamonte, Johnny O'Reilly and Hanna Slak

Cast: Aleksandra Balmazovic as Susi, Aljosa Kovacic as Mickey Dortville, Thekla Reuten as Isabella, Fabian Joest Passamonte as Prof.Kurt, Jesper Christensen as Weissman, Lana Baric as Edwina, Isabella Parkinson as Joanna, Feo Aladag as Ellen, Vladimir Bouchier as Shukov, Doris Schretzmayer as Dorothy

An Abstract Candidate

 

CO/MA is the kind of film which skitters between genres. For starters, it may be credulous, frankly questionable, to call this a "horror" film as I had intended to. For most, there is only the scene of one of the actress in this communal filming project being haunted by a ghost girl, and that is not enough to qualify for the genre. I would argue there are plenty of moments which do fit the tone even if this would be the most disappointing film to watch on Halloween. The rest of CO/MA is just as difficult to pin down, as for a work most would call a "documentary", even that is questionable. What we have instead is a curious tonally shifting chimera that is CO/MA, something truly peculiar and worthy of making excuses of, as tentative for a "horror" review or at any context, for me to get away with covering this during any season.

This belongs to an era I slowly crept into my cineaste hobby, which is growing up in the 2000s as a teenager and, by the time of 2008 when I became a young adult and had fully started to develop into this. This era, from when they were first released in the late nineties but especially the 2000s, is an entire "DVD era" of cinema which will hopefully get its own cult assessment. Despite the calls of its demise, in the streaming era and the existence of better formats for high definition images, DVDs are still being released, but I am creating a term for one specific era. One, even if they got very limited cinema runs, had many titles released on the format along straight-to-video titles which are forgotten and/or represent some of the era's greatest obsessions in terms of pop culture in general. In the case of CO/MA, I can completely understand this being viewed as pretentious if anyone has ever remembered this production exists. I did because, even before I was able to catch up with films like this, I was subscribing to a DVD review magazine. The review was pretty damning from memory, but this still lingered in my mind for decades before I could finally watch it and get rid of it from my mind palace To Get To List. Made in mind to reality television's popularity at the time, the vibes of horror are strong enough to also nod to as its genre, but there is also the comedy segments, the attempts to blur reality and fiction, the soap opera pastiche set in a hospital the commune in the centre which the central project of the production we follow, and other bits and pieces. In the end, CO/MA is neither and all of these.

It is also a Mike Figgis production, which adds a stranger air to all this, an English filmmaker who made films like Internal Affairs (1990) with Richard Gere, and Leaving Las Vegas (1995) where Nicolas Cage won the best acting Oscar. By 2000 however, he slowly started to move entirely away from larger budget films and increasingly experimental productions, both working with more digital filmmaking and also bold experiments like Timecode (2000) and Hotel (2001). Those two mark a turning point, effectively running with the four screen concept Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey developed in Chelsea Girls (1966), having four separate screens showing different films at the same time, with Timecode telling the same film from four different cameras, Hotel entirely different stories running at the same time. With the exception of Cold Creek Manor (2003), Figgis ditched "conventional" filmmaking, openly embracing his interest in digital camera filmmaking and experimentation, and the comment I made earlier about the "DVD era" of cinema has Figgis' name in the unwritten encyclopaedia on the subject. Films like Love Live Long (2008), where he took advantage of filming at a Gumball Rally racing competition to make an improvised erotic drama, are productions most people have no idea of the existence of, lost to time unless an old DVD is found second hand or on streaming. CO/MA is among these, needing this comically long prologue to set off the review because it is the only way to properly explain where CO/MA came to be. It is a project told to us to start in November 2004 at a film studio in Slovakia, where Mike Figgis and a group of actors have started a filmmaking master class with him leading, one where everyone is to collaborate on this project we the viewer are watching.

Already it is confusing things when, in the first conversations we see recorded, Figgis raises concerns that he will be marked as the director legally on the film credits, but that is subject in the collaborative production as a truth. He says it might "be crap", and one of the collaborators considers if they might say it is not legal to screen this master class if they ever decide to once they have spent finishing the production. Making explicit reference to The Blair Witch Project (1999), and with reality television in its mind, you can time stamp this to the early 2000s. These extensive conversations are continuous through the film, where people in this collaborative effort are already staying outside in disagreement to the project's trajectory before they have even considered what to make, and it is all playing to the idea of whether this is all real or not. Figgis states onscreen that he wants to blur the lines between what is real and when an actor might be lying, but as the tone and genres start to blur in general, what even the significant point of CO/MA is becomes of debate. You can make the justifiable argument this was not a successful project. For me, fascinated by these out-pourings of human creativity and their emotions, faked or real, it was a compelling piece even if "indulgent" is apt too.

Considering the likes of Timecode, this was inevitable. That and, with the black and white scenes, including those of actors talking the screen to the viewers, Big Brother's influence alongside the reality television shows that came at this time are seen imprinted on this film, what was on the tip of everyone's tongue whether they wanted to admit it or not. A year before this, New Line Cinema took a risk on The Real Cancun (2003), a theatrical reality film which was shot at spring break in Cancún, Mexico. It was a box office bomb, and not a film I remember with fondness beyond just curiosity of its existence, but again "DVD-core", if I am to plague the world with a term to describe this era of filmmaking, is a compelling set of films for a variety of reasons. Their use of digital film cameras, with their aged aesthetics, and their attempts to redefine what a "film" meant are worth prodding, with CO/MA clearly looking for a possible outcome that was not the titillation of The Real Cancun, but a more intellectually based experiment.

It definitely breaks reality from the get-go, not really a documentary, and the first nods to horror are found when we have one of the actresses in a toilet cubicle feeling at ill ease of an unknown presence, beginning the hints of the building being haunted or at least the disconnect to the location even if this plot thread is one of many which feel unfinished. They all decide, in the main drive, as a collective to make a soap opera, in mind to strip anything interesting away on purpose. Alongside the strangeness of this, when one of the actresses complains later about the hollowness of her "soap opera performance" and that they apparently agreed to this project in the first place, the tangled web we get suggests otherwise, like a no-horror version of Lars von Trier's The Kingdom franchise if more absurd and less about the horror of that franchise. There are a couple of scenes in a film-within-a-film, with an actual audience, bored by the likes of cooking shows such as Jamie Oliver's, switching over to "The Clinic", with absurd touches coming in with its plot whiplashes, and over-dramatic music. It is one of the better aspects to CO/MA that most of what we get of this pastiche is just the introductions to each new episode, skipping ahead of entire plot cycles with drastic character shifts. Abrupt amnesia, lovers cheating on doctor to take his job and let the cleaner, studying to be one too, become the head of the hospital, secret half-sisters, fake twins for ones supposed to be dead and unknown leukaemia, all of which is deliberately silly. Add to this that there are two bystanders, a male older alcoholic and a British actress who is playing a pathological liar, watching on as the Greek chorus, and The Clinic as a project could have been something from this era of cinema that might have been a proper film you might find released from this era. This is less strange to consider when Lars von Trier once shot an office set comedy, with the digital camera instructed with artificial intelligence to shot however it wanted, called The Boss of It All (2006).

It feels hypocritical as a result, admittedly, to have a critique of soap operas yet playing one out whose strange presentation is actually interesting, but when the actors are flummoxed why they are doing a "bad soap opera", it is clearly another plot strand that is at play, with Mike Figgis playing his role at times as an odd puppet master. He is never cruel or manipulative, choosing soap operas as it is a genre and the most popular one globally in his words, but it is clearer he is trolling the cast. One of the biggest critiques I can make is that, for how long they had to produce the film, which feels like a short production of pure improvisation, it feels like a more fleshed out series of arches were lost in this and we could have gotten a much more complex yet precise work if it had been longer. It is aiming for something more complex but can merely add hints to these plot strands, such as when we get to one of the actresses being honest that she was comfortable filming Figgis' "porno". Truthfully, when the film uses the term "porn" the use is in mind to the fully improvised production with little script and minimal production crew instead, but there is a nod to the potential issues of lack of professional morals to get the right stories, such as a tale from a crew member who says, to cut costs on a failing soap opera, the script created a plague to bump off actors only for that to get high ratings. Nothing is explicit in CO/MA in terms of sexual content, but it is nodded to, with this actress' character in a relationship with a former patient of hers in The Clinic among other implications of the relationships between characters in the hospital setting. The sole explicit scene is a retake of a phone call between this actress and her former patient where, with only hints, she starts heavily breathing her invitation to the woman to go to a cafe whilst rubbing the mobile phone against herself, which with the ominous music used in the scene feels like they were suddenly trying to be like David Lynch.

Those music cues, and the more overt moments where the cast feel at ill-ease in the studio, are enough to justify the fleck of horror as a genre on this film before we get an actual ghost girl with her multicolour basketball in the costume department scaring one of the actresses. This is a movie with really not clear genre but shades of them in a spectrum. In truth, it is a film which does not really clear trajectory to itself, somewhat befitting the narrative it has where there is growing unrest from the group with Figgis as this goes. Some aspects of its trajectory are missing to fully emphasis the point - that there is a sense of discontent and a sense Figgis is antagonising some of them which should have had more scenes of, especially if CO/MA is playing with the idea of what is "real" and "reel". Even if that could be something difficult to capture in b-roll practically or morally, this especially becomes the case when the film starts talking about a conspiracy about who is who eventually, with paranoia growing, which could have added a greater weight to the production if more time was spend on this.

The sense the film drifts off is when it cuts into other tangents in the last half. The horror tangents feel like they are baked into the tone, set up from the start, but eventually we are looking into the production shooting a take on The Exorcist (1973) having managed to get Max von Sydow for one day, or the Jackass crew of the cult MTV series and Johnny Knoxville are brought up as about to appear in The Clinic. Obviously, these are joke moments, with none of these people about to appear, and instead it is all with a sense that as the production for real went on, the commune started to horse about and became less concerned about a serious meaning to the work. This is felt when we get another of the memorable pieces, a three plus minute comedy sketch where a man conjures up a woman in an abandoned film set, wanting to seduce her but with their collected ability to imagine anything they wish leading to legitimately fun comedic beats in a few perfect minutes. Is it enough to justify the whole film though? I think it is telling, when the ending epilogue text comes up, there is a reference (clearly for some humour) that some Slovakia filmmakers walked out the first ever screening, with the pervading sense that CO/MA was never meant to win over a large crowd, but Mike Figgis with these collaborators experimenting for the sake of it. He would become obscurer as a result of these projects, barring one music documentary or occasional TV episode in a whole, entirely focused in these lower budget productions where he would eventually become the editor and the cinematographer.  In this case, it feels less like a tragedy but more that he willing choose this direction, and to be brutally honest, barring my love for Nicolas Cage and some of the older films with enticing premises, these more obscure titles like CO/MA feel far more compelling to consider from him for their complete lack of compromise regardless if they are successful or not.

Abstract Spectrum: Avant-Garde/Metatextual/Stream-of-Consciousness

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Killjoy 3/Killjoy Goes to Hell (2010/2012)

Director: John Lechago

Screenplay: John Lechago (with Carl Washington for Killjoy 3)

Cast: Trent Haaga as Killjoy, Al Burke as Punchy, Tai Chan Ngo as Freakshow, Victoria De Mare as Batty Boop and Jessica Whitaker as Sandy

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Consider it a bonus, bozo!

When Killjoy 3 was produced by Full Moon Pictures, it was as much rebooted at the same time in 2010. The first film of eight years, it frankly ditched the existence of Killjoy 2: Deliverance from Evil (2002), following from the original 2000 film as a reset. Truthfully, the franchise will not be to everyone tastes, especially the first two, but this is an interesting case where the sequels, rather than spinning their wheels, actually begin to expand the simple template of before and become really idiosyncratic. The two sequels covered here, as more came after, are not perfect even for this context, but the step up is admirable and makes this a far more entertaining franchise at this point in its history, to the point they helped me come to enjoy this franchise.

Killjoy 3 is still a low budget film, shot in mainland China and disguised as an American location, set around only two locations, the home of a professor who trapped Killjoy, a homicidal demon clown, in a mirror, and inside the mirror itself. The almost sound-alike of Joan Jett's Bad Reputation, introducing the leads after a party needs to be cleared up at the professor's house, shows at the get-go the lovably homemade nature of these films, including the use of a Puppet Master film for the characters to watch. Aptly like the Puppet Master franchise and others from Full Moon, Killjoy got a posse from this point on, the head of minions trying to figure out how to escape, even if it means trying to figure out the magic mirror's manual, and finding it even has Chinese language translation. That reference also shows that, from this point on, there is clearly an emphasis on more humour from these films on, which helps a lot even if one or two jokes between the films have became un-PC by 2020. It certainly rejuvenates Trent Haaga, who took on the role of the evil demon clown from the second film, able to have more to work with now he can be funny and, by Killjoy Goes to Hell, even pathetic for comedy effect.

Killjoy 3 still has to follow a conventional premise where a young woman Sandy (Jessica Whitaker), at the professor's house, with her boyfriend and friends, have a mirror delivered at the door next morning with the trapped soul of a demonic clown. As a result of this, the tone is still being fleshed out for this new take on the franchises, the cronies Killjoy has in particular not getting as much as they do in the next film. But they stand out aesthetically: one is a hulking if dim-witted clown, a mime sadly underused in Killjoy 3, with a brother sticking out his side, and the most interesting of the trio, a succubus named Batty Boop played by Victoria De Mare.

It is not for the obvious reason, as her design, even for titillation, is inspired by nude body painting which the actress had done on herself for both films, but also because playing the foil to Killjoy, you get a shot in the arm for humour and charisma. Named after the animated character Betty Boop, it is very clear too she is inspired by Harley Quinn, not the version Margot Robbie would bring to life, but the original character created not from the Batman comic books, but originally a figure from Batman: The Animated Series (1992-9) who became so popular, she crossed into being a canon character for the franchise. Specifically it is the original voice actress Arleen Sorkin who was also the inspiration in appearance and personality, as De Mare plays her role as the exasperated girlfriend with a voice like an old Hollywood gangster movie moll which she fully commits too, becoming the best thing with Trent Haaga of these two films.

Killjoy 3 still struggles through issues of lower budget horror and genre films, the plot basic and recreating the original Killjoy premise, but this is a higher budget take so far in the series, and is able to flex its muscles a bit more if stuck having to play to a conventional story to reintroduce these characters. Instead, it is the characters themselves, and where the next film goes, where you see director-writer John Lechago is able to have fun between the movies, with a knowing humour of Killjoy as a sarcastic evil clown. Haaga is allowed to play for yucks as much as there is now gore, coming by the end of this entry with people being served for dinner and a head being crushed by a comedy mallet. That this bothers to nod back to the 2000 Killjoy is to be admired too, as it is not wanting to separate itself from the source, as a prominent character from that original film is important here, whilst with the humour that this story has works, as much stemming from Killjoy being stiffed as a demon of revenge by the person who conjured him.

There is still the problem with a lot of exposition, as much to bring viewers up to date on the previous films, which were bare bones but they may have not seen, and also an issue with genre films in general in being unneeded. However, you are seeing this franchise really attempt to expand this character. And it pays dividends with John Lechago returning as editor-screenwriter-director for Killjoy Goes to Hell, a very unconventional sequel to any horror franchise and the best of all the four that came from the first quartet of this series. A huge reason for this is the premise, making Killjoy himself the actual protagonist, an evil clown demon who is now sympathetic as an anti-hero. Now he has been resurrected in Hell by a witch and unfortunately now has Satan himself putting him on trial for being crap at his job as an evil homicidal clown. With all his demonic names stricken permanently off from existence, he will become nothing unless he can defend himself as being legitimately evil.

This continues the resolution of Killjoy 3 where, huge spoiler, Sandie was committed in an asylum. Here, connecting this to that last film, is the issue of closure, detectives still trying to figure out what happened, especially as she is now permanently in a laughter based psychosis. Even if it is slight next to the main plot, it helps adds more to the plot of what is still a horror comedy, especially as there is some logic to this like the main detective and her psychiatrist, not believing the Killjoy legend, still taking it seriously as a concept that might have influenced the scenario psychologically. Even if with obvious CGI too, this is a really idiosyncratic film in ideas, where Hell is literally a skull faced spaceship with parts of a castle and a factory built on a meteorite, cruising in outer space. The joke of the main character being on trial for incompetence really works, with one of his spurned former lovers the prosecutor, and a former human turned new demon named Skid Mark his bumbling defence attorney with interior motives. There are some jokes and dialogue which has not aged as well, trying to be edgy, but for the most part even with its profane amount of language, this was actually funny for me, over-the-top and with gags like needing a translator of a mime translating a clown speaking carny which did win me. This alongside such sights like custard pie-ing a person so hard their head is crushed to goo on the wall, and this is what I want in my lower budget horror films and horror sequels in general, an attempt at creative imagination.

It still struggles with the limits of the budget, still limited in sets and with an ending involving a demonic clown rebellion involving a group of extras tussling in a room with careful editing, but I have to admire the production. This is a work which is a lot more ambitious with being a sequel than trying to repeat the previous films, something not learnt from far more known horror franchises in general. When jokes land, they are funny, and there is even an abruptly sombre scene as, with an inspired take on Hell being a cosmos in space, Satan shows that the ninth lower circles of Hell is literally a place of nothingness. I see this as an admirable way to try to expand a sequel to any horror film into something idiosyncratic and, more importantly with the exception of the second film, actually make sitting through the others necessary and able to be more appreciated. The franchise continues after this, John Lechago returning for Killjoy's Psycho Circus (2016) with Charles Band having produced all the films beforehand or in a co-producing them. Band is not there for Bunker of Blood 07: Killjoy's Carnage Caravan (2019), with an entirely different director and screenwriter on that production. John Lechago himself, just for the fact I was not expecting Killjoy Goes to Hell to turn out as it did, has gained a respect for me as, honestly, watching the franchise beforehand, they are films I admire for the fact any film production is a challenge to complete, making me sympathetic on any level, but by his involvement in the series, I was enjoying these films regardless of their production values.

The Nostril Picker (1993/1988)

 

Director: Mark Nowicki

Screenplay: Steven Hodge

Cast: Carl Zschering as Joe Bukowski; Edward Tanner as Vince Armstrong; Laura Cummings as Armstrong; Gail Didia as Crisi Stroud; Heidi M. Gregg as Tracy Harper; Aimee Molinaro as Brenda Kearn; Ann Flood as Jo Bukowski; Clyde Surrell as Ed Simpson

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

I think the best way to introduce a film with that title, though this will be a more balanced and fair review, is an old review I made when I once viewed this as one of the worst films I had ever seen:

Once upon a time when I was just an adolescent, I was with my parents in a DVD rental shop when we saw this on the shelf, with a picture of a man with a finger up his nose and a knife in his other hand on the front cover. It fascinated all of us what it was about. Years later, at sixteen or seventeen, I rented this from an online DVD rental site, and turned it off in the first quarter of the running time. Forcing myself through the whole film later that night, I realized the only good thing about this was the title. There is not even gratuitous nostril picking in the film when all is said and done. Mike will tell you all there needs to be known about how terrible this is.

Barring the weird third person switch as if I have sudden turned into Gollum from the Lord of the Rings, the story is funny to reflect on. In Britain, we had Blockbuster Video, which was less the American store with a questionable nostalgia, with censored releases and exclusive Nintendo 64 rental games that now cost thousands second hand, but just a rental store that eventually disappeared from existence, argubly lasting longer than the American original did. It was the place, with a discount section of new DVDs, and second hand copies of them and videogames, where I was introduced to Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris (1972) (though on a DVD where the disc did not properly work) and Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989), as extreme as you can get in juxtaposition. Blockbuster was not the local video rental store however to my family, as this was in the city and at the time of the DVD boom in the early 2000s, as our family used Global Video for new releases. Among their new blockbusters there was, if you looked at certain shelves, the trend of then-modern softcore films where the likes of Misty Mundae (a.k.a. Erin Brown) became a name for a generation of young men, alongside the lurid titles of VIPCO. Originating in the late seventies, and a distributor of titles which would get on the Video Nasties list like The Driller Killer (1979), VIPCO (Video Instant Picture Company) returned in the early 1990s¹, releasing Video Nasties even butchered in the VHS days alongside a slew of titles usually in the horror genre. Their black covers with just the titles in gold letters from the DVD era, part of the "Vipco's Vault of Horror", are still iconic even if the releases were cut or sometimes VHS rips. They will be missed, even if I am glad nowadays pristine releases of the likes of The Mutilator (1984) are available from the likes of Arrow Video. Least for my family, The Nostril Picker is the most notorious just from the cover, and that it was one of the exceptions you found in the rental store with more than the gold text, with that image of the lead Joe Bukowski (Carl Zschering) staring down the potential renter with a knife drawn and with the other hand a finger proudly up his nostril.

The Nostril Picker, without anyone of us watching the film until I decided to track it down, was a legitimate in-joke for the family from seeing it on the Global Video shelves. Back then, when watching it, I can attest to hating the film and even turning it off when I first tried to watch it, mustering up the early days of being a completionist to finish it. So much has changed over the years in my taste that, yes, this is a strange curiosity in terms of an independently made film shot in Michigan, one I see as gleefully ridiculous if a mess. The opening is how I remembered it, a creepy guy stalking a young woman but with the issue for Joe Bukowski, he sticks out like a sore thumb as a creepy guy on the street and thus will be pulled over by cops for being suspicious to the young women of Milford, Michigan. A bearded homeless man in a hat soon after approaches him and suggests a technique, picked up from his service in the Vietnam War, that allows one to change his body if he says an ancient chant, even into that of a young high school girl. Set to London Bridge is Falling Down, and Joe is now a dangerous man, especially as overdoing the change causes mental instability, worse when he is already sociopathic. Before then however this is set up as if a sex comedy about body swapping without sex in the first half of the film, including a montage set to a "schoolin'" song, revealing this had its tongue in its cheek.

That was something I never picked up when I was younger, and with his only film as a director, Mark Nowichi's movie was originally The Changer (1988), and was never released in the United States². Its infamous name comes from its British release with VIPCO in a perversely funny touch³, and likely helped it develop some notoriety for it alone and the tag line they gave the film ("He Chose His Weapons... He Selected His Victims... He Picked His Nose..."). With a now seventeen year old Jo(e) unable to buy dirty mags for a fictitious father, the sense of humour is clearly here from the get-go even without that inspired name change. Throughout the film tonally is a mess as it implies far more disturbing ideas about Joe the killer, trying to touch into the luridness of serial killers real and fictionalised, but humour is a constant here even when inappropriate to have been.

Before one asks, I highly double gender politics and Trans politics ever came to mind here, especially as one character, given a lot of screen time in a positive way, is still a comedy character only known as "Transvestite" meant to be funny in their person's existence. It neither really gets scuzzy in terms of the body transfer concept either, as even if Jo(e) wanders into the girls' shower, when she is just inducted into the nearest school without question, it is never with any real sexual content. Beyond Joe's later victims, when they are killed, haunting him in his apartment in lingerie covered head to toe in blood like an alt-girl photo spread from the past, it really has not a lot of onscreen shock value barring some gore, and the rest implied sleaze. There is only one scene of nostril picking prominently in the film as well, as we see the school days montage from Joe in his real form doing vulgar things in the perceived body as a young woman, so that will disappoint some too.

The film, after playing like a dated sex comedy with little sex at all, eventually starts to mould into its intended genre when Joe first goes kill crazy, the tone changing with some flying fingers and a little bit of gore, still nowhere near Herschell Gordon Lewis and its own tonal issues as it tries to be a lot more sleazier and even disturbing. It is blatant, if all off screen, how Joe's victims suffer implied rape and cannibalism, so bare this in mind. This is worth cautioning upon both as even referring to it may put people off the film, and because the film tonally despite its attempt at this bleaker tone, including Joe's troubled upbringing being brought in, is too goofy on purpose and accidental to make this work. The film as well shows its weaknesses, like some of the acting wavering in quality at times, which undercuts any attempt at seriousness, especially when a subplot involves a trans sex worker being the person who gets the police on Joe's tracks, all because he tried molesting her with a dildo that squirts fake semen and rightly got his lights knocked out.

Is it un-pc? More than likely, and truthfully, even when these films are a mess they fascinate me now, which is something my younger self could have never appreciated. The times where the film struggles are where some of the compelling eccentric touches come in, and when the film does succeed, it is interesting to, such as setting one murder through snap photos on a baseball field at night in stills, more nastier as a result despite little actual violence in the still images. The film, wavering between its clear designs for a greater depth, such as hallucinations of the victims commenting to Joe, to its humour does make it a weird experience, right down to the downbeat twist ending. Truthfully, I can see why many others and I would hate the film, a peculiar beast that never quite knows what it is meant to be. For its director Mark Nowichi however, he would go on to be a colourist including for directors' cuts like Cop Land (1997), to remasters for the likes of Evil Dead II (1987), so he thankfully would continue in filmmaking in an important way. Screenwriter and co-producer Steven Hodge never returned to cinema after this, and neither did lead Carl Zschering sadly. The story though of The Nostril Picker, thanks to VIPCO, has helped the film gain a cult for those who remember the name, even finally getting a release in the United States in 2014 from Massacre Video⁴. The film is, like a few regional genre films, a very acquired taste, but it is one which I return to with a lot more I can take from it. The story too, that for my family and many in Britain this title in the DVD era likely led to amused comments seeing it on rental and purchase shelves, even if never rented/bought, is one worth remembering as it added to its legacy from the humour in that title alone.

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1) Grindhouse Database's index section on VIPCO (Video Instant Picture Company).

2) The Nostril Picker - DVD Review, written by Dennis Capicik and published for Unpopped Cinema on October 18th 2014.

3) The Nostril Picker review from The Bloody Pit of Horror, published on October 18th 2020.

4) Massacre Video unleashes The Nostril Picker (aka The Changer) on US DVD 14th October 2014, taken from Cave of Cult and including the promo leaflet.

Wild Zero (1999)

Director: Tetsuro Takeuchi

Screenplay: Satoshi Takagi

Cast: Seiji as himself / Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf as himself, Drum Wolf as himself, Masashi Endō as Ace, Kwancharu Shitichai as Tobio, Yōko Asada as the voice of Tobio, Nakajo Haruka as Yamazaki, Kazuko Yanaga as the voice of Yamazaki, Taneko as Hanako, Yoshiyuki Morishita as Toshi, Masao as Masao, Fusamori Tawaki as Mori, Murata Akihiko as Toshio, Shiro Namiki as Kondo

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Love has no borders, nationalities, or genders!

[Update: This review was written before the announcement of Wild Zero 2, which was revealed with a trailer in early 2024 to at least be a film intended to be finished and released.]

Dismissed in my youth, the older self sees how much of an idiot I was back then with my opinion on Wild Zero, though I see the aspect which likely caused such a negative reaction, that this is more of a film enjoy its wacky premise than fully executing it in an elaborate way. In Britain, you would have to have the Beatles make as weird a film like Magical Mystery Tour (1967) or Yellow Submarine (1968) because of their reputation, The Monkees in the United States making the ill-fated decision at the time to make Head (1968) to rise above their reputation as a manufactured band, and in this case, Guitar Wolf as a cult rock band having the advantage instead of the vibrant Japanese genre film industry between V-Cinema and straight-to-video productions to theatrical. That and your director Tetsuro Takeuchi being the man behind your music videos, as a figure you can trust, and shooting this film in Thailand¹.

This particular film, before they in general became a pop culture concept in the mainstream fully, is an early example of taking the legacy of George Romero's zombie films, and the concept of zombies, and returning to them even as here in a playful way of fans of the films. Already in a film like this you have characters bring up Night of the Living Dead (1968) and whether each one in the moment has seen it or wants to in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. There are probably too many characters in general in Wild Zero too, but the personality is there, set around what is actually closer to the premise of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), where aliens only seen in gold UFOS are resurrecting the dead, leaving a motley series of characters to cope with this transpiring. Ace (Masashi Endō) is our proxy, a Guitar Wolf fan who earns the respect of their titular leader Guitar Wolf (Seiji), and can literally whistle them from a town away if in danger. Guitar Wolf the band, starting in 1987, have been continuing over the decades, even after the tragically young passing of Bass Wolf ("Billy") in 2005 at only thirty eight², and here they live the rock n roll music ideal of being outlaw enough to shot people but with a personal morality; Seiji himself is the leader who can appear, figuratively as much as in the flesh ,as the Obi-Wan Kenobi to guide Ace to act as a rock hero should whilst Bass and Drum Wolf offer back up. Tobio (Kwancharu Shitichai, with Yōko Asada as their voice) is the female lead and potential love interest for Ace, and there are also two lovable thieves who botch a convenience store robbery when we met them, male and female, and a female arms dealer whose business with the yakuza was halted by the zombies. The later, standing out as a side character physically, especially shows a moral ambivalence that, even in this silly premise, emphasises figures that can be on the fringes of society, and even in her case more interested in survival and money, but not be the villainess. The villain in this world is a shady club owner, who wears wigs and rocks stylish sets of hot pants, who has a casting car seat for female singers, deals with drugs, and wants revenge on Guitar Wolf and their lead singer in particular for fingers shot off during a standoff.

On the type of urban/country landscape, the luminal space and the wasteland, I find compelling in Japanese pop culture between cult films and anime, even factoring in that this is actually Thailand standing in for its setting, you get a pot pourri of scenes between guitar picks as throwing weapons, matching grenade launchers with said hot pants to go out on a night of the town for revenge, and the equivalent of throwing the kitchen sink in a cult film with abrupt eye lasers. There is also the least expected story of love and overcoming bias to someone you could ever see appear in a cult film, as this has a trans female lead in Tobia. Some of how it is dealt with not aged well and clearly played in the same wackiness as when the digitally added golden UFOs are spliced over famous world landmarks, but in the end, it becomes actually beautiful in how it plays out and progressive with hindsight. Of all the films to deal with this subject, the least expect where someone like Ace has the horrible reaction he initially has, only to feel remorse, realise his true love for her, and have the Guitar Wolf of the band be the one who tells him love exists beyond boundaries and nationalities, is spectacular more now time has passed. It is not something you find in cinema dealt with enough decades after this film was released, let alone dealt with, in an applaudable way, in a film where the military female character has to put on a plaid one piece due to zombies ripping her cloths up out of spite. It is as punk rock in the truest sense as a major subplot just placed within this tale with a happy conclusion.

A lot of this message fits the entire ethos the film has in terms of rock n roll music. Ace's introduction in his room shows the history of music, including Western bands, on posters on his wall, and it goes back to the likes of Burst City (1982) by Gakuryū "Sogo" Ishii in films showing the underdogs in their own world, in these bands or their fans. This ethos is one you can even find in other mediums within Japanese pop culture, such as with Daisuke Ishiwatari, the mind behind the Guilty Gear video game franchise. A creator of a fighting game franchise which references rock and heavy metal even in character names, he has also went out of his way to point out a character he created named Bridget was always meant to be a transgender female character, regardless of fans' attitudes and previous translations of the games in the past³, and depicting characters who straddle moral ambivalences who are still heroic or just badasses.

That Wild Zero itself is merely playing at its premise with humour will be something that will annoy some, as I found when I was younger, but that in itself befits this ethos. Considering you have a soundtrack where inexplicably Bikini Kill's Rebel Girl blasts in out of nowhere, you should see Wild Zero as a film made by fans of this type of music and movie making what they think is cool, and managing to actually make it stand out in many great ways such as its moments of showing this music truly meaning its progressive, anti-authoritarian nature even when being goofy. Even a joke about lovers meeting again as zombies and having their own happy ending, played off as actually sweet as much as funny, fits this tone perfectly. The plot becomes less a priority, the zombies merely cannon fodder and your aliens only depicted as those UFOs, and instead it is the ride that stands out. Sadly its director Tetsuro Takeuchi, barring work with Guitar Wolf and musical groups, has not directed much in terms of cinema, whilst Wild Zero itself feels like it is ready for a proper revival as a cult film, i.e. not on old DVDs being the way to see this, and allowed to be seen in a pristine restoration with the possibility of learning how the film came to be. Even if learnt to be a fun improvisation throwing caution to the wind, it would be a pleasure in itself to learn how this ride came to be.

 

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1) Wild Zero review by Ken Eisner, published for Variety on November 5th 2000. [Some of this has aged of the past even if slight.]

2) Guitar Wolf Biography by Mark Deming for All Music.com.

3) Guilty Gear Creator Clarifies Once Again That, Yes, Bridget is Trans by Kenneth Shepard, published for Fanbyte on September 14th 2022.

Eldorado (2012)

 

Director: Richard Driscoll

Screenplay: Richard Driscoll

Cast: Darren Morgan as Stan Rosenblum, Richard Driscoll as Ollie Rosenblum, Daryl Hannah as The Stranger, David Carradine as The Spirit Guide, Peter O'Toole as The Narrator, Jeff Fahey as "Doc" Martin, Michael Madsen as Ted, Patrick Bergin as Roy, Brigitte Nielsen as Angel, Steve Guttenberg as J.J., Kerry Washington as Tamara, Rik Mayall as Chef Mario, Sylvester McCoy as General Zwick, Caroline Munro as Lilly, Robin Askwith as Mick, Tyrese Gibson as David, Bill Moseley as Lemma, Robert Llewellyn as "Meat", Buster Bloodvessel as the Sheriff

Ephemeral Waves

 

Opening Eldorado, the late Peter O'Toole literally has to appear onscreen, as the narrator, to explain that he is hired to clarify the events of the film we will be seeing, which will be a first for me to witness in any production. Eldorado is not very well known, and my prior knowledge of British filmmaker Richard Driscoll is entirely based on The Comic (1985), his very odd little debut which got dug up by Arrow Films for Blu Ray restoration and release, the kind of cool trait of theirs to rediscover some oddball films like that particular one. His career at some point beyond this transformed into what Eldorado became, the curious results of when known actors from Hollywood and British television, when older and stepped out of the limelight, are offered some work, the era of 2010s cinema where production design like computer effects are more freely available, and a true sense of this particular film entirely existing because this is what Richard Driscoll wanted to make for himself, with absolutely not a wink of cutting any of the tangents out of this. It is also, infamously, one of his films used as evidence for his arrest and jail sentence for a £1.5m VAT fraud, when investigators from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) investigated the production and found he had falsified invoices¹. This included how a purported production and promotion budget of £12 million was around about £750,000 instead², or the fees for the stars in this film, including late comedian Rik Mayall's supposed £44,350 for four days’ filming was revealed as 6,000 for two days².

He is definitely one of those one-offs in cinema, whatever you think of the films, certainly a man gifted with the gab as, not including other films before and after, only here is where you can get a credit list including O'Toole, Daryl Hannah, Mayall, Michael Madsen, Brigitte Nielsen, Steve Guttenberg, former Doctor Who Sylvester McCoy and others, including David Carradine even if likely here in outtakes. He also really wanted to remake The Blues Brothers (1980), which ultimate sets up why I really could not even appreciate the film in terms of a piece of delirium, that being for all its parts, its tantalising strange juxtaposing of actors from American cinema against British pop culture, its desire to indulge in areas I find not that interesting to see as a viewer instead transpired. There are aspects to the film which raise uncomfortable parts of Driscoll himself, but most of my experience of this comes from the one viewer who would have defended this for all the cheapest of CGI, the most random of tangents and the sense of self-indulgence, only to feel instead it did not progress to anything even if really an interesting form of self-indulgence. Remaking the John Landis film and paying tribute to others, in his own curious way, dragged Richard Driscoll's film down when one was envisioning stranger and more interesting ways to connect the disparate pieces altogether. This managed to get an article, written by Chris Bell and published in The Telegraph called Eldorado: the bizarre story of the worst movie ever made³, but I cannot even say my disinterest in the film is a vehement hate, but a long period of attrition where it loses me.

The set up is The Blue Brothers, only now following the Jews Brothers (director-writer Driscoll  and Darren Morgan), two Jewish musicians who are introduced having made the ill advised decision to perform for Neo-Nazis, leading to a tribute to the car chase from the John Landis movie with former Dr. Who Sylvester McCoy as a substitute Henry Gibson. Their name is an obvious if tasteless joke, but a pastiche to the original Saturday Night Live characters by way of musical numbers dubbed over the actors would have least been something, especially if this played to the lo-fi remake energy or even touched upon Yiddish music by way of local pub karaoke night. Their manager J.J. (Steve Guttenberg), in a room full of CGI flies in one of his only scenes, sets them up with a new gig, unfortunately this time for cannibals, explicitly getting into the premise of Two Thousand Maniacs by Herschell Gordon Lewis, of a group of people accidentally setting forth in a group of Southern Confederate ghosts. I suspect, rather than the original 1964, the version of the story nodded to is the 2005 remake as cult actor Bill Moseley is among these ones too as a cannibal southerner. It also shows how disquietingly easy it was, even in the early 2010s, to find Southern Confederate flags in the United Kingdom, as portions of the film were shot in Cornwall³, but cinema as well as other medium has referenced and even crossed paths with other productions and works from the past. The most obvious example to me, whilst not one of Wim Wenders' widely praised works in the slightest, is Palermo Shooting (2008), in which an acclaimed German director of highly regarded films effectively paid tribute to the filmmakers Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni, when they passed away, by crossing Blow-Up (1966) with The Seventh Seal (1957), and if an art house director as Wenders will pay tribute like this whilst creating new stories, there is nothing wrong in a lurid genre film here for Driscoll to do the same. Quentin Tarantino, he who is paid tribute to and recreated in Eldorado a lot, has done this himself so many times, but notable, even when overtly referencing images and dialogue from other films, he placed them in different contexts, which begins a concern with Eldorado itself.

This begins remaking the Blues Brothers with same songs used and lip synched by the cast throughout, as this is also a musical. This is then bolted onto 2001 Maniacs, as a horror-musical pastiche which is blasphemous to the former film but tantalising as a perverse crossover within itself, alongside the fact this was originally supposed to be seen in 3D as well at a time when the format returned in mainstream cinema into the early 2010s. Then there are all the other tributes which instead come off as if they are meant to be laughed at for getting the references, but not sewn into the context so they work without this in-joke. The opening of Reservoir Dogs (1992), with the George Baker Selection song Little Green Bag, is recreated with southern cannibals, there is a briefcase with glowing contents like Pulp Fiction (1994), and the Jew Brothers are confused as the Soggy Bottom Boys in reference to O, Brother Where Art Thou (2000). There is even an actor cast to play Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, just to have an actor who clearly plays Captain Jack Sparrow in his regular career as an impersonator there, in a random back story involving a lower budget CGI kraken. It all amounts to the film focuses on referencing and recreating other films other than its own ideas. Or, if to continue this, to subvert them as one would presume.

It is also very English, attempting to hide itself as an American set film despite actors who are wavering in accents, and literally a Las Vegas set diner scene which is shot in someone's kitchen. The later however offered something beautiful as a film, a remake or tribute to these films with this literal homemade look, with the waitress having the exact accent for an American diner, and the kind of ornaments I would find in a Hollywood themed cafe for a seaside. This idea of recreating the US films in English rooms and kitchens on a low budget is something I could get into for a surreal spin on proceedings, imagining the way this could go in pastiching films in a curious hybrid and allowing the odd crossovers this has. Where I find myself as a film viewer feeling exhausted and disinterested one hour into a two hour film is that the things that interest Richard Driscoll do not match anything of this in context, as we get the Aretha Franklin scene from Blues Brothers in that cafe among others recreated with no sense of interesting for this particular viewer, only bemusement as they feel not properly tethered into the world. You can be pretentious and/or random in your films, but as long as they feel they match the beats of the moment, they least make sense even if it is up to the individual viewer to either appreciate or hate the moments as a whole, but Eldorado's biggest problem is that the scenes are fragments which do not seem to even connect together in their own logic.

There is also an uncomfortable streak of violence, in language and gore, against female characters which cannot be ignored, one of the moments where the indulgences of the film do reveal something negative in the director-writer. The risk of any personal creation is that it reveals your worse side if you yourself are guilty of anything in your thoughts that should be rightly damned, which is more prominent as a danger both in auteurs and even in micro-to-lower budget genre cinema where the creators have more leeway to create how they want, but can shoot themselves in the foot metaphorically by opening up their worldviews far more to the public in letting them see their neuroses, obsessions and/or their worse sides. Here, if by accident or an uncomfortable axe to grind, Richard Driscoll does end up with horror scenes having this misogynistic streak, or even dialogue between male characters arguing that they should date strippers but never marry them, and other such moments which feel pointedly spiteful for no reason. This is content which should be warned of for any viewer who is still morbidly curious about the film. Everything else beyond this, where these moments jut out with distaste, is entirely tame with their issues. Even when they involve prurient nudity and blood, the issue becomes that, even in terms of unconventional cinema, it really does not qualify in terms of "weird" accept for me in terms of awkward. For me a film like this should be the world where Robert Llewellyn, the actor I grew up with as Kryten in the cult sci-fi comedy TV series Red Dwarf, should have crossed paths onscreen with Moseley from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986) even if Driscoll had only a day's time with one of them, just to see how two actors from wildly different spectrums could have interacted and contrasted in performances, something sadly though we were never going to get in the presentation of the film we got.

This is where Daryl Hannah, even if she is still playing the ancillary angelic figure reciting Edgar Allen Poe poetry, where the Eldorado reference comes from, intervenes in a story which brings us Moseley and Jeff Fahey attempting to recreate the trailer battle she herself was in for Kill Bill Vol. 2 (2004). What we get is like when the bean eating scene from Blazing Saddles (1974) is recreated in this film; what in the original context was undercutting a classical Western shot with fart gags, this nods to it without the set up to the punch line, which is felt with a lot of the moments here, punch lines without the set up to really make the film something which, on paper, should have been one of the most gleefully strange and ambitious genre films to exist even just in terms of cast.

David Carradine is in footage recorded at another time in a random ghost fight with a woman with no context to the story, with no ties to the entire production as an actor who passed at the time it was being made, and one actress, a stripper accidentally sent the Bar Mitzvah the musical brothers were meant to in the opening, is immediately never seen again despite being established in a long topless conversation scene over the phone with Steve Guttenberg, an entire segment lost because the actress never returned. The director was even dating the main female lead, Rebecca Linley, only to break up mid-production and force him to re-cut the entire film³, which is a case of unfortunate bad luck out of his hands, but there are times where this neither works as a full story, as pieces are undercutting into each other, or even as a symbolic and/or random piece of filmic brain fever because it still wants to try to be regularly plotted film. It has the cannibals and the musical leads, but also the cheated-on wife of a strip club owner stealing a glowing briefcase, prompting him and Michael Madsen after her, yet it undercuts itself by having characters quietly disposed of messily or off-screen, and even the ending is abruptly ended, not with an ironic middle finger against expectations but a sense the film just hastily ended without thinking how to.

Within this, you find yourself stumbling over moments that, in another context, would be memorable for whether emotional response, an abrupt scene of Brigitte Nielsen in a sing-along of the song Respect with strippers, or Jeff Fahey's random Vietnam War flashback with green screen. Sometimes there were moments which did actually win me over, showing how the film could have been special, Rik Mayall as Chef Mario, as a cannibal cook, briefly appearing lip-synching gamely to a rock guitar version of Verdi’s La Traviata, or Fahey himself as a dentist without a license working on teeth in his trailer to a reggae version of Groove Me. However, most of the film does not stick in the mind, or is drowning in all the material this has over nearly two hours length. For all this film's odd cameos, luridness, and unexpected musical choices (like a cover of Born to Be Wild by Steppenwolf), nothing here ever reaches anything I myself as a viewer would find intentionally or unintentionally memorable. It feels not even with a real sense of the dreamlike or strange in the surreal sense. Despite everything about its production being shot between Cornwall and the United States, including the Wild West tourist attraction near Padstow The Spirit of the West for the cannibal's hometown of Eldorado, which could have really played this homemade tone to its advantage, it never wants this either. Even when it presents the bizarre sight of Michael Madsen lip-synching So Glad We Made It by Steve Winwood next to pole dancers, naked expect for Mexican lucha libre masks, it slipped out of the mind in the time after because the film continues on and on aimlessly. By the time of Fahey's Vietnam flashback, that was the moment too I learnt it had been fifty one minutes into Eldorado, and it already felt like I had wondered on for far too long. Eventually the film literally ends, without closure, with Daryl Hannah having her one single direct interaction with the main story, and even when Heaven is involved, which always symbolises a grand conclusion even if merely depicted with clouds here, there is not even the sense of a real conclusion. I write this review with no sense I am out to get Richard Driscoll but merely shrugging my shoulders wanting to know why the film, with all its interesting pieces, never got anywhere. All it feels like we got was, unfortunately, a group of what-ifs and jail time.

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1) Film producer Richard Driscoll jailed for three years for VAT fraud, written for BBC News and published on July 1st 2013.

2) How the ‘worst film-maker in the UK’ used Hollywood stars in huge Cornwall tax fraud, written by Lee Trewhela and published for the Cornwall Live on February 3rd 2019.

3) Eldorado: the bizarre story of the worst movie ever made, written by Chris Bell and published by The Telegraph on January 23rd 2017.