Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

I wonder if Blackhawks fans are rejoicing in the streets the way Leafs fans did when Harold Ballard kicked the proverbial bucket.

Maybe they’ll get to see games on local tv now.

I believe God has given us a vision and it’s very clear and now we’re seeing that vision fulfilled before our very eyes… If you ask me, this was the message of Christ — it was to dream big…

I wanna do something like the Titanic. Either it sinks, and it’s the biggest flop you’ve ever seen in your life, or it sails and it just blows everybody’s mind.

- Pastor Richard Gazowsky

I sit and ponder… is this a joke? Is this serious? This can’t be real. I mean, could somebody (hell, so many somebodies!) be this delusional and not be under a doctor’s care?

Did you see Lost in La Mancha? (If not, you should.) This looks like a smaller scale disaster of the same sort. I doubt I will feel as much empathy for the travails of the director of the film within this film as I did for Terry Gilliam in Lost in La Mancha because Gilliam is, at least, an artist. This subject of this documentary, on the other hand, is obviously a loooooooooooooooooooon. If you know me, you gotta know that this film will be at the top of my list of films I hope to see at After Dark!

From a SXSW ‘07 interview that Eric Snider did with the documentary’s director, Michael Jacobs:

Snider: How did this film get rolling at the beginning? Give us a brief history from writing to production to post….
Jacobs: I read an article in a local publication about a Pastor who had a church production company, and was going to make a biblical science fiction movie that would redefine the Hollywood epic. So I went to church like a good Jew and found myself sucked right into this bizarre yet addictive world of Pentecostal filmmaking. I was granted access to record their world and I never looked back. Until I had to edit 130 hours of material. 18 months, 4 test screenings, 6 arguments with my editor, and 100 really bad nights of sleep later and I had an 88 minute documentary that reflected the vision I had for the doc on my first day at church.

Apparently Pastor Richard Gazowsky received a message from God (not this one). And God told Rich to make a biblical science fiction film. Huh. Go figger. I must confess that it never even occurred to me that God might be a movie buff. I wonder what God’s favourite movie is. Use the comments section if you have any ideas…

I was looking through the Toronto After Dark Film Festival site and found the trailers for half the features (the other half will be announced next week, apparently). I saw a few that intrigued me. Mulberry Street is one of ‘em.

I have tried to skip the meat of the early reviews because I don’t want to inadvertently run across any plot-spoilers. As I have said previously, I prefer to go into horror films as “blind” as possible. (My friends already know my other “rules” when it comes to this genre: best to watch a horror film alone, after dark. I am serious about wanting to be scared by these things.) So I can’t tellya much about this. Looks like it’s an allegorical story about some kinda fearsome infection spread by rats in New York City that turns humans into something, er, less than…

Sounds promising to me. I’ve seen a lifetime of these films–enough of them to know that it is a rare horror film that actually delivers on its promise. But when you’re a fan, you’re willing to take the chance ‘cause when a film delivers, it totally obliterates the bad taste left in your mouth by the last dozen that didn’t. There are very few things in this life that I am optimistic about, but this is certainly one of ‘em.

It is the opening night gala screening at the festival. I hope to be there for it!

No, it doesn’t feel any better than it looks.

From the sublime to the ridiculous…

Such a promising combination–the twin horrors of z!o!m!b!i!e!s and c!l!o!w!n!s–and such bitter disappointment.

This thing is execrable.

The script is nil–hell, it’s practically a silent film–and what dialogue there is is mixed so low that you can barely hear it over the sound effects and the wretched score. There’s just enough to convey the background of the story (circus train knocked off its tracks and into the drink by a drunken tugboat captain who hits the bridge it’s crossing in the middle of a hurricane 50 years ago–all clown souls on board perish).

And it’s prolly just as well, since nobody in this film can act his or her way out of a paper bag.

We don’t get to know any of the characters well enough to even give a shit when Bozo the Zombie or Oopsy the Undead shows up on their doorstep with a ticket to the Big Top In The Sky.

You’d think that if somebody were writing a film about undead clowns that the script’s tone might be one of a rather satiric bent. Alas, not this time. It’s basically a revenge story as the clowns come back to wreak vengence on the town that never bothered to bring their bodies up from the bottom of the bay where they died, constructed out of a series of set-pieces–all of them roughly the same… Clarabell the Walking Corpse shows up and dispatches Hapless Victim. Hapless Victim, weirdly, doesn’t really try very hard to get away/is lousy at hide-and-seek/doesn’t fucking scream when s/he catches sight of a dripping, drooling, putrefying zombie clown shuffling towards ‘em.

It obviously had a miniscule budget (the stock footage is obvious, the sets are spare, the sound is awful, and the zombie makeup is laughable), but there’s nothing wrong with that. Lotsa cool films are made on small budgets. This just ain’t one of ‘em.

There is potential here. If somebody would take the film in a different direction, this could be quite good. I mean, there are ground-level shots of the clowns advancing on their victims: ground-level shots of big floppy shoes. Now, picture that. In a film that is out to make you laugh as much as scream, that could be a real money-shot, couldn’t it? I mean, it could be fuggin’ hilarious! But not here. Sadly, this thing is without wit and without scares and I actually fell asleep before the end. Good grief.

The trailer’s more fun than the movie…

At least I was awake for the shout-out to Lucio Fulci’s classic of the zombie genre, Zombi 2, when–in extreme close-up–one of the characters gets very slowly poked in the eye with a very sharp stick.

Which is roughly the same treatment this film gives its viewers.

(Incidentally, while we’re on the subject, here’s a t-shirt for you, ZombieKillah.)

Wheeeeeeeeeee, count me in!!

I’ll tellya more about it later… In the meantime, check out the Toronto After Dark website.