HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN – Fun movie starring Rutger Hauer as a homeless dude with a trench coat and a shotgun. This time he's a good guy of sorts, trying to get by in a slimy, derelict cityscape run by corrupt cops and gangsters. He tangles with the wrong side of the mob and ends up having to blast his way to freedom. Made at the height of all that neo-grindhouse hokum, HWAS doesn't take itself seriously and just packs as much violence and craziness into its run time as it can, although the lack of anything to hold on to apart from Hauer doing the same thing again and again means it threatens to get a bit tiresome towards the end. Still, there are some really great, obnoxious highlights such as a school bus torching, and the film itself generally looks great, a homage to eighties neon garishness. Good stuff, worth checking out. I think Hauer is a great actor, and no-one is more suited to doing the whole long coat / shotgun avenger type thing than him, but here his presence feels a bit faint for some reason.
THE DARK BACKWARD – A failing comic finds that the growth on his back has transformed into a third arm. Spurred on by his friend, a maniacal garbage man, he tries for the big time by rebranding himself as a novelty act and, well, doesn't really make it. 'The Dark Backward' is a pretty fried movie. I'm surprised I've only just seen it for the first time, as it's fairly well known still and I do tend to seek these things out. Part of the strangeness in this instance lies in seeing the likes of Judd Nelson and James Caan in such warped surrounds, and in fact the whole enterprise, despite being obviously deliberate in it's attempt to seem 'out-there', certainly came from the mainstream at least in terms of production values – we're not talking about a microbudget underground flick here. Aesthetically, the film pitches itself somewhere between a David Lynch nightmare and a Terry Gilliam dystopia – those references aren't arbitrary, there are very clear nods to both directors, particularly Lynch when you think about the incessant Splet style soundtrack and the obsession with freaks and communication dysfunction. Somehow though, 'The Dark Backward' taps into its own vibe. Perhaps that's because, beneath the weirdness, there's kind of an old fashioned morality play thing going on with it, something about staying true to who you actually are when pursuing whatever dreams of creative fame. That said, most viewers will likely tune in more for scenes such as the one where Bill Paxton (RIP, Bill) licks a corpse in a landfill site, or that bit in the talent scout's office where a Viking lady plays a 'human xylophone' made up of dwarves. I liked 'The Dark Backward', and recommend you check it out. Parts of it really stayed with me – seeing Nelson do a slow, shuffling pirouette on stage after his lead balloon one liners just to show his third arm to the audience was quite unnerving, high pathos and low freakiness in one soiled combo.
BRIDE OF REANIMATOR – I watched this for the first time in years the other day – can't remember what I made of it 'back then', although I suspect I felt a bit underwhelmed as I never thought 'Re-animator' was total dynamite anyway. Seeing it now, well... it has some good things going for it, number one of these being Herbert West himself, J Combes. I mean, I can watch him any day of the week really, and no-one does arch-dweeb narcissist (homicidal variant) like him. Needless to say, he's in his element here. David Gale is great in it, too. There's a craziness to the proceedings that works well in places, although there's not enough of it. The climax, with all that mad mutant shit happening in West's basement, was enough to leave me feeling disappointed that Yuzna et al hadn't gone for the jugular throughout, despite the presence of a few conspicuous Screaming Mad Georgisms. But the problem with it for me was that it just didn't flow. Maybe it was the editing or something to do with the dynamics, or perhaps it was just my mood on the day, but I never really hooked in. Oh well, ask me in another twenty years and maybe I'll say something a bit different.
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