Stream-Of-Consciousness Review: Ka-Boom

Title?: Ka-Boom

First or second viewing?: First

Preconceptions:

Gregg Araki is one of those directors I’ve judged for years without seeing his work; titles and brief plot descriptions of early films Totally Fucked Up, The Doom Generation and Nowhere led me to believe that his work was part of the hyper-self-conscious, fashionably nihilistic, post Repo Man teen films of the ’90s. “Not my bag,” I decided fairly early on. But this format of reviewing, I think, lends itself to analyzing my own prejudices about films and their makers as much as the films themselves. And Ka-Boom looks like it has, if nothing else, pretty colors and good-looking naked actors going for it, so why not?

Program Start:

It’s starting off every bit as melodramatic and obvious as I’ve always imagined/dreaded his films would be. I’m trying to focus on the vaguely Suspiria-esque color scheme in order to remain interested.

Disaffected college kids having casual sex and getting off not-quite-witty acerbic one-liners. The Rules Of Attraction, only less funny. Even the gay themes feel like ’90s attempts at controversial hipsterdom. Performances are obnoxiously stylized; characters are as archetypal as any slasher film I’ve seen.

The protagonist’s dormmate attempts to suck his own dick in an absurdly casual, conversational setting. Sorry Gregg, I’ve already seen Shortbus, but thanks anyway.

Protagonist eats a strange cookie at a club; an obvious precursor to the obligatory hallucination scene. Finally!

Meh. Even the hallucination is low-rent and uninspired.

20 minutes in it turns into a “suburban Wicker Man” style horror movie–as in the protagonist and a damsel-in-distress get chased by knife-weilding cultists in animal masks. And one of the secondary characters turns out to be a witch. Araki has named the witch Lorelei, exhibiting even less subtlety than Von Trier or Noe.

The Voodoo nightmare is so ridiculous it had to be intentionally funny, right? But even if it were meant to be funny, it’s not funny in the way in which it was meant to be.

Uh, yeah, this does seem to be going for funny after all. Or at least irreverent and snarky. But it feels like the makers of Scary Movie and all of its ilk decided to make ‘90s Movie. Its vision of hip is as self-congratulatory as a Poppy Brite novel.

Quoth my girlfriend, “It’s like a cell phone commercial with sex.”

You’ll notice how little of the plot I’m describing. That’s how little it matters. Every plot point feels completely arbitrary.

Protagonist’s presumed-dead father turns out to be the leader of the cult. I still have yet to give a fuck.

And now…a five-minute montage–nay, a blitzkrieg–of ridiculous expositional dialogue. The background music sounds like Ulrich Schnauss, so I’m focusing on that in order to maintain interest. I’m blissfully tuning out the dialogue, hearing only every fifth word or so, confident that I’m missing nothing of importance.

“I reserve the right to plug their face-holes. With my cock.”

“What the Jesus are you waiting for?”

I’m having serious Dreamcatcher flashbacks.

It ends with the world blowing up, as Natural Born Killers, SFW and Strange Days probably wanted to, but were afraid it would come off as far too pretentious.

Afterthoughts:

Nothing about the film–not even its ballyhooed “New Queer Cinema” agenda–feels remotely cutting edge. It’s all so 1995. I imagine that Araki felt that, like Cronenberg did with Crash, the plot was intentionally arbitrary, secondary to the sex scenes, which are supposed to be where all the interesting character development takes place. But Araki is no Cronenberg or Lynch.  To his credit, I do hear that Mysterious Skin is quite good, so maybe I’ll visit that next.

Stream-of-Consciousness Review: Hardbodies

Title?: Hardbodies

First or second time viewing?: First

Preconceptions:

One of the ’80s teen sex comedies I didn’t get a chance to catch on late night cable as a kid. I’ve been possessed of an urge to revisit these films, as I now see them as a counterpart to the slasher films of the ’80s.

Program Start:

Neon pink credits, a shitty new wave theme song, suntan-lotion-applying montage. Off to a real good start. Grant Cramer from New Year’s Evil and Killer Klowns From Outer Space is in this, as is somebody with the first name Teal.  Already this is taking me to a wonderful place. Hey–Malachi from Children of the Corn is in this, too!

Paradise on the beach is disrupted by a gang of bullies and their woman-raping dog. Scotty, the protagonist–played by Cramer– steers the bullies into the path of a biker gang in a particularly unfunny and un-clever way.

A trio of lecherous 40-somethings arrive on the scene to rent a swank beach house and try to pick up teen-and-twenty-something townie chicks. This one’s taking a lot more risks with genuine sexual inappropriateness than I remember many of these films doing.

“I don’t fuck fossils for free.” Damn good line.

One of the lechers lets Scotty “detail” his convertible, inexplicably gives him the keys. If I had caught this flick on cable in my less-discerning youth, I think I still would’ve yelled “Plot hole!” at this.

The lechers hire Scotty to school them in the finer points of trolling for townies, offer to make him their houseboy. Slightly reminds me of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, except the protagonists are completely unlikable. Scotty coerces Malachi into cross-dressing so the lechers can practice hitting on him.

Kathleen Kinmont! One of my most beloved imaginary girlfriends from the ’80s!

Scotty has catchphrases like “dialog-ing” and “bigger and better deal” that seem to have predated the recent reality show The Pickup Artist. I wonder if “Mystery” from that show watched this film as a kid?

Best waterbed ever at the half-hour mark. Gives Dudley Moore’s round bed in Foul Play a run for its money.

A tacky lecher costume change montage. Reminds me of the fast-motion tuxedo shopping spree in Carrie. Should a sex comedy remind me of Carrie if it’s doing its job as a comedy?

The forgotten band Vixen makes a pre-fifteen-minutes-of-fame appearance as the “we couldn’t afford the Go-Gos” girl group. Scotty becomes their “manager,” hires them to play the lechers’ date-rape house party. He’s like a really dark Ferris Bueller.

And now the movie takes an even darker turn as the lechers pretend to be modelling agents. This movie is one Roofie away from becoming The Accused.

Scotty’s love interest takes issue with his and the lechers’ behavior. Now we as an audience are encouraged to veer identification away from the amoral protagonists. It’s an admitted relief, but to its detriment, the movie is now judging everything we have been asked to accept as comedy until this point.

The cowboy lecher learns that chasing young pussy is tiring. I wouldn’t be surprised if the script killed him with a heart attack.

Scotty makes plans to sell Vixen to a mafioso aerobics instructor.

The sky is consistently gray on this beach. And now it’s raining. Adds another layer of genuine darkness to the movie. I’m now suspicious the writer wrote this script as genuine subliminal Christian propaganda, as many critcs once accused the slasher films of doing. The script is everybit as cynical towards its primary characters as Aaranofsky or von Trier.

A song plays over a party montage: “I Did It And I’m Glad!” Immediately followed by the cowboy lecher singing a ballad: “I Don’t Fuck Fossils For Free.” Wow.

One of the lechers officially crosses the line and molests the local girl who teases and won’t put out. Scotty defends her honor, but it’s too late for him to regain my empathy or identification. It’s all getting really weird now; I can’t see this movie regaining my trust as a comedy.

The bullies show up again, blasting .45 Grave on their boom box. Jesus, this whole town should just be nuked already.

A low speed jet-ski chase winds up sending a wheelchair-bound fisherman sailing off a pier, presumably to a horrible death by drowning. LOL!

The molester turns Scotty’s love interest against him, tries to take his place as the pickup guru, turn it into a business. Scotty and the townie girls get revenge in a lame, lukewarm slapstick mayhem climax. They really should have gone further with it.

Oh hey, look at that–Kane Hodder and Darcy DeMoss were in this. Lot of horror alumni. The end credits were the most interesting thing about the movie.

Afterthoughts:

I totally have blue balls now.

Interview with Brother D up at Mail Order Zombie

Derek picked my brain about film music, Shadow Play, Horror Holocaust Radio and more on Monthly Munchies, a supplement of the mail Order Zombie podcast.  Check it out here: http://www.mailorderzombie.com/2011/06/moz-presents-monthly-munchies-episode.html, then check out the rest of Derek and Bren’s MOZ shows; they’re one of the best niche horror podcasts in the NW.

Stream-Of-Consciousness Review: Un Chien Andalou

Title: Un Chien Andalou

First or second time seeing: Second

Preconceptions:

Haven’t watched it since high school. I’m currently outlining a book about post-surrealist cinema of the subconscious, but I need to do more research into the source, and Chien is pretty much as synonymous with surrealist cinema as “Persistence Of Memory” is with surrealist art.

According to Bunuel, “No idea or image that might lend itself to a rational explanation of any kind would be accepted.” So I’m curious to see what happens as I revisit this one in the stream-of-consciousness format, having a lot more experience with cinema, life and hallucinogens than I did then.

Though the eyeball slicing scene has become a logo in outre  pop culture, and the “ants in the hand wound” scene is not far behind it, I remember none of the other images.

Program Start:

Art deco credits. Reminds me of the Marx Bros. Man sharpens razor, smokes cigarette. Freudian field day. The woman is a spectator, passive, watching the moon (feminine symbol). She is us, the viewers. Dali and Bunuel slice our eyes open with Freud, to let out what has been repressed until now. Viewer will never again see any images outside of her mind’s eye. Passive spectator is dead; the viewer must now meet art halfway.

8 years later. A guy in a pilgrim outfit rides a bike down the street. On his handlebars: locked box with diagonal stripes. Did Lynch reference this in Mulholland Drive?

A woman reads alone in her room. Active spectator: she meets the words halfway with her own images. Pilgrim stops outside; she seems shocked to see him. Or maybe it’s just a silent movie and she’s over-gesticulating.

Pilgrim falls over; she goes out to help. She unlocks his box (her animus fucks his anima?), pulls out neckties. Lays his clothes on the bed, seemingly trying to will him into them. Meet the image halfway.

The bicyclist (?) is outside the bedroom door, staring at a wound in his hand, which is crawling with ants. Turning a phallic limb with phallic appendages into a vagina via the stigmata. His subconscious is expressing itself through the wound.

Was that a sea anemone that just flashed on the screen? My first mental association was that it looked like a hairy testicle; there, I said it.

Crowd scene. An androgynous girl pokes a severed hand with her cane. Eyes and hands rendered useless=loss of control, metaphor for sleep paralysis leading to the dream state.

The androgynous girl is sizzlin’ hot. Cop takes the hand away: censorship of dark art, super-ego.

She has a box like the bicyclist’s. Now she’s in the middle of the street. I just flashed to a nightmare I described in Shadow Play about my mother. O Freud, thank God you’re not alive to analyze this essay. She gets run over.

Bicyclist makes a bunch of Dwight Frye faces. Makes sinister advances on the girl, cops a feel. Goes all zombie-like. Rolls his eyes back and imagines her naked via his sense of touch-exercising the mind’s eye (shades of Blind Beast). He gets really creative and imagines her breasts are buttocks. They have a Benny Hill chase around the room; he corners her and hauls a piano, a dead cow and two other pilgrim-looking fellows across the floor while she cowers in the corner. Trying to impress her, I guess. The surrealists sure like their dead cows.

She slams his hand in a door, and suddenly it’s all crawly and ant-y again. And now the bicyclist’s doppelganger has fully materialized on the bed, filling out the clothes.

Doorbell rings; bicyclist visualizes two hands shaking a cocktail shaker. Again, loss of sight enables visualization.

She lets in a businessman who berates and shakes the bicyclist, takes off his frilly accessories. Boss? Father? Makes him stand in the corner, holding two books. Cyclist turns the books into guns with his mind. Shoots the guy.

The girl stares at a death’s head moth. Cyclist makes his mouth disappear (another active ability lost); reminds me of dreams about teeth falling out. He “shows” her an image of a hairy armpit in the space where his mouth should be, rather than “telling” her with words. They exit to a beach exterior, walk along the rocky shore (edge of subconscious), the footing is rough. They find the striped box in ruins, kick it to pieces. Reminds me of the end of Eraserhead; Henry eloping with the girl in his radiator.

They end up dead and half-buried.

Afterthoughts:

Magic happens when we are deprived of our senses, and have to compensate.