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ROAR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Wildlife Nature Adventure Snuff Film 4 Whole Family

May 4, 2015, 9:01 pm
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REAL LIONS. REAL PEOPLE. REAL MAULING. REAL CRAZY.
Roar (1981)
Dir. Noel Marshall
Starring: Noel Marshall, Tippi Hedren, Melanie Griffith, Kyalo Mativo

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Roar is clearly one of the most insane movies ever made. Oh hell, let's shoot the works and just declare that it is the most insane movie ever made. It stars 150 lions, tigers and other big cats. No animals were harmed during the making of the movie, but 70 people were.

It all began when actress Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie) was in Africa shooting a movie in the mid-60s when she discovered on safari that an entire abandoned mission had been taken over completely by lions.

Ding! Light bulb flashes over Tippi's head! There's a movie in this, she thinks.

Her hubby, producer Noel Marshall agrees. In fact, for a few years, the two of them become wildlife preservation activists and eventually started to rescue lions, tigers and all other manner of big cats and raised them on the grounds of their Beverly Hills mansion. When the menagerie started to get a trifle large, they moved out to Acton, California where they bought up huge tracts of land and set up a wildlife reserve. They kept buying more and more big cats and even elephants - giving them all a safe harbour to live out the rest of their lives peacefully. This is, to my mind, a damn wonderful thing for them to have done, especially given how unscrupulous the wildlife trade has always been (as well as poor animals being exploited in circuses and private zoos).

Maybe not so wonderful is the film they eventually made; not that it's awful - well, actually, it kind of is - but as you're watching the movie, you just keep wondering, "What in the hell am I watching here?" And you know what? That's probably a good thing. So many movies during the past 40-or-so years are such dull, by-the-numbers bore-fests, machine-tooled within an inch of their lives, that anything that forces you to scratch your noggin so hard it starts to bleed has got to have something going for it.

The movie tells the rather insane tale of a guy who runs a huge wild animal preserve. Most of the recipients of his largesse are lions - a ridiculous number of lions (plus tigers, panthers, leopards, cheetahs and the aforementioned elephants). Played by director, co-writer and co-producer Marshall, our hero spends a good deal of screen time wrasslin' his beasts. They are such ornery critters and. BONUS, super cute and loveable. The only problem is, they're lions and tigers for Christ's sake! Marshall's Man Friday and sidekick Mativo, while no Stepin Fetchit, is definitely in Mantan Moreland territory as he goes mega-bug-eyed when the lions and tigers act up - which, during the first half hour of the film is pretty much all the time. (There's even a ludicrous running gag involving Mativo fending off tigers with an umbrella.)

MELANIE GRIFFITH AND LION CAVORT
It turns out that Marshall's family has been away from the compound for some time. Wife Tippi has needed a trial separation from her big-cat-crazy hubby. Now, however, she, their two sons and their mega-hot teenage daughter (Tippi's real-life daughter Melanie Griffith) are due to fly in. Given that the animals are acting up (they even attack and maul some visiting wildlife committee members for the area), Marshall's a tad worried he might be late picking them up at the airport. He and Mativo jump into a boat and go down river. Unfortunately, a couple of tigers jump into the boat and it doesn't take long for it to capsize. This results in a seemingly endless farce involving bicycles and a jeep, all of which break down.

In the meantime, the family has indeed landed and with nobody to greet them, they hope a bus for the wildlife compound. When they arrive, we are treated to one of the most insane, surreal extended sequences ever put on film. The lions and tigers get mighty ornery in Marshall's absence and chase the entire family around the compound, destroying much of the interior of the big house. This feels like it's going to go on forever. Not that it's boring, though. These are real lions and real people.

TIPPI HEDREN IS MAULED BY A CHEETAH,
JAN DE BONT IS MISSING HALF OF HIS SCALP,
A HAPPY-GO-LUCKY WILDERNESS FAMILY REJOICES!!!
Now, seriously, I need to stop for a moment and try to explain how insane this all is? We're basically cross cutting twixt the bumbling Marshall and his bug-eyed Mantan Moreland-wannabe getting into a whole whack o'"fine messes" and a lithe, middle-aged Momma and her brood being chased by lions. At one point, they're even attacked by - I KID YOU NOT - elephants!!! As if these events weren't insane enough, I think it's important to point out that many of the bites, scratches and outright mauling-actions are REAL. The looks of terror on the faces of the actors are not acting, they're real, too.

This is like The Adventures of Wilderness Family as snuff film. During the course of shooting, Marshall got so repeatedly mauled that he almost died from gangrene. Tippi was bitten in the head. The boys were both bitten and Melanie Griffith was so horrifically mauled, that she required major reconstructive surgery.

Cinematographer Jan De Bont (he'd shot many of Paul Verhoeven's Dutch films and directed Speed, Speed 2 and Twister) had pretty much half of his scalp torn right off.

The plot, such as it is, eventually allows the family to get back together in an utterly harrowing climactic sequence. There's also a subplot involving some wildlife committee members who decide they're going to shoot all of Marshall's lions in retaliation for the mauling they received earlier. After shooting a few helpless beasts, the alpha lion attacks them and tears their throats out. Marshall tells Mantan Mativo not to say anything to the wife and kids so as not to ruin their reunification. We're then treated to a ten-or-so-minute-long montage sequence of the happy family and lions with a gentle folk song on the soundtrack.

Roar, from conception to finished product took 11 years. The principal photography alone took 4 years. The budget soared to a reported $17 million, the vast chunk of the money coming from Hedren and Marshall's combined savings, earnings and real estate. (Marshall actually made a small fortune from his royalties on such hit films that he executive-produced like The Exorcist and The Harrad Experiment.) But, really, $17 million??? Look, 17-mill is nothing to sneeze at, even though in today's bucks, it's considered a pittance for most pictures, but by 1981, when Roar was finally completed and released (to zippo boxoffice) this was a HUMUNGOUS amount of money.

Frankly, I don't even know where the film is supposed to take place. There's some odd thank you to the Massai nation at the beginning of the movie and many African actors populate supporting roles. Sometimes it looks like we're in Africa, but most of the time, it looks like we're in Acton, California surrounded by wild beasts from Africa. And guess what? It really doesn't matter. This movie could only be set in the never-never land it appears to take place in.

The film has barely been seen since 1981, but now, thanks to Drafthouse Films, Roar has been restored to its former glory for a theatrical release followed by a huge Blu-Ray/DVD run.

And here's the rub, I can't actually say the picture is awful, nor can I say it's good. I really have no idea what to say other than the fact that it's unlike anything you'll ever see. It's gorgeously shot, some of the suspense and action scenes are definitely hair-raising and most of the acting (when it is acting and not real terror) is pretty good. Tippi Hedren, in particular, makes quite a terrific Perils of Pauline figure as she seems to get into the most ludicrously dangerous animal-dodging gymnastics and little Melanie is just plain mouth-wateringly gorgeous. Director Marshall, however, is a dreadful actor. He's so overwrought you just want to punch him in the face. It won't be necessary, though. He got gangrene for his troubles and egregious ham-boning.

A year after the film flopped, Marshall and Hedren divorced. Wilderness Families only live happily ever after in the movies.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars (though it's really impossible to rate this at all)

Roar is playing in a variety of special engagements. In Toronto, it can be seen in repertory all through the month of May at the Royal Cinema. You really want to see this on a big screen. The bigger the better.
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CRIES AND WHISPERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Cancer, Bergman Style, on Criterion BD

May 10, 2015, 11:35 am
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Cries and Whispers (1972)
Dir. Ingmar Bergman
Starring: Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan,
Ingrid Thulin, Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers is enclosed in a thick, deep red membrane; every frame splashed with a kind of sickeningly putrid menstrual blood which has been expunged from some horrific, barren place of hatred and regret, enveloping the pain of its three sisters Agnes (Harriet Andersson), Karin (Ingrid Thulin) and Maria (Liv Ullmann), never allowing the force of healing and relief to take over completely and allow the characters a greater sense of love and fulfillment.

The film's greatness cannot be denied. It has haunted me for 40+ years and at several points throughout my life, it's been there for me: casting shadows of darkness, revealing depths of despair, exuding feelings of longing and generously displaying its stunning cinematic virtuosity. Much like an old friend who remains just around the corner, or rather, not unlike a monkey upun our collective backs, the film exists to remind us how important it is to grasp whatever sliver-like shards of joy life affords us, lest we become wholly consumed by the sheer misery of it all.

At the film's centre is Anna (Kari Sylwan). She is the heart pumping with lifeblood as opposed to the putrescence of anguish, the expulsion of toxic poison, lying in wait to envelope life and upon discovering there's nothing there, it gushes and sticks to those bereft of kindness and caring.

Agnes has cancer. She's dying. Karin and Maria have come to the family's country estate to preside over the death-watch. Anna is the plump domestic who runs the household and takes care of Agnes. Bergman takes us through the stages of the final agony by deftly providing us with a series of flashbacks which inform the current situation. Childhood for the sisters was sheer joy. They were very close. Their mother (also played by Liv Ullman) is loving, but often seems distracted, if not distant. At one point we see her infused with such utter, quiet sorrow that it seems to inform everything in the film. We learn that Agnes was always the odd, ugly duckling and that she remained unmarried and alone, save for the loyal Anna (whose own child died tragically many years earlier, but to whose picture she examines everyday and prays to with deep devotion).

Karin married a petty diplomat. In spite of wealth and travel, she hates him - so much so, that one night, smelling (no doubt) of the greasy, rancid-looking fish he wolfed down over supper, her husband awaits Karin's conjugal visit, and she privately masturbates with a shard of crystal from a broken wine glass, only to present him with the sight of the blood gushing from between her legs and smearing it all over her almost cruelly lascivious face.

Maria, the most frivolous of the three sisters also married into wealth - a husband with such a weak, spineless demeanour that he seems born to be a cuckold and to be cuckolded. She does what she must and cuckolds him, but unlike his dalliances away from the conjugal bed, she chooses to soil it within their home. Even more sickening is that her primary love interest is the creepy local doctor (Erland Josephson) who coldly presides over Agnes's final days.

Bergman paints a portrait of a family united by blood, but not much else. Whatever love they had for each other in childhood has turned to stone. At one point, Karin lets it all spill out to Maria, who responds blankly to these words tinged with bile:

"Do you realize I hate you and how foolish I find your insipid smile and your idiotic flirtatiousness? How have I managed to tolerate you so long and not say anything? I know of what you're made - with your empty caresses and your false laughter. Can you conceive how anyone can live with so much hate as has been my burden? There's no relief, no charity, no help! There is nothing. Do you understand? Nothing can escape me for I see all!"

Poor Agnes desperately wants her sisters to be with her and touch her in these final hours, but more often than not, they sit immobile in the gorgeous parlour outside her room. What Karin confesses to a Maria who does not bother to challenge the horrendous assertions is enough to prove that the desperate desires of Agnes will not be fulfilled. She'll go to her grave never feeling the love of her siblings.

Finally, it's left to Anna to hold Agnes close to her warm, inviting, motherly bosom. During one unbelievably creepy and nightmarish sequence, after Agnes's final internal combustion of pain followed by her last gurgling croaks of life, she is dead, yet her consciousness remains in her sick room. She asks for her sisters to visit one by one to assist in her spiritual passage to the other side. Here they fail miserably and again, it is up to the servant Anna to offer this solace.

Even Bergman at his most brilliant and despairing, never made a movie like this. Its setting is the most exquisitely furnished and adorned home, yet everything feels untouched, unloved. It's stifling and claustrophobic. The physical beauty of the surroundings are as empty as the hearts of Karin and Maria - both of whom express hatred for each other. Even when they briefly reconcile, it is short-lived.


The pain, the savagery of the cancer ripping the insides of Agnes apart is unrelenting. Bergman lavishes his camera over every detail, the slow movements of Agnes, the rigour she must employ to do the simplest of things like reaching for a glass of water, walking to a window to look at the rays of sun, sitting at a desk to write her memoirs, every stroke of the pen sending jolts of pain into her body and then, in words on the page, describing the pain as well.

Sven Nykvist's cinematography and longtime collaboration with Bergman reaches a pinnacle that could never be matched. We never see outside the windows, only the natural light pouring through them upon the beautiful, but cold and stately physical interior consume our perspective. Worst of all, when the lens attempts to caress the faces of its characters, especially Karin and Maria, all we get is the pain, hatred and regret, ozing from their pores of skin, which we can see in vivid detail.

Some movies are just inextricably linked to your being. Cries and Whispers is such a picture for me. I first saw it at a very young age with my mother. Her sister and my beloved aunt, had experienced a similar death from cancer. The pain we both felt was acute and yet, I remember my mother being affected, not just viscerally, but by Bergman's artistry and the sheer genius of the acting. I lived with the film through repeated viewings over the course of 40+ years. My most recent viewings came during my mother's year-long struggle with stomach cancer and in the weeks after her pain-wracked final weeks and, ultimately, death, I had to see the film even more.

It touches and reminds you of life's fragility and ultimately, the importance of love and forgiveness. In the movie's final moments, we hear a diary entry from Agnes as Bergman takes us out of the dank, sarcophagus-like atmosphere of the blood-red interiors and upon the sumptuous, rolling green lawns of the estate. All three sisters, dressed in white and carrying frilly parasols, gently walk the grounds with the loyal Anna accompanying them. They rush to an old swing, so special in their childhood. They take seats as Anna swings them back and forth. The final words of the film (in a heartfelt homage to Eugene O'Neill's immortal play of familial suffering, acrimony and grief, Long Day's Journey Into Night) have Agnes revealing the following:

"All my aches and pains were gone. The people I am most fond of in all the world were with me. I could hear their chatting around me. I could feel the presence of their bodies, the warmth of their hands. I wanted to hold the moment fast and thought, "Come what may, this is happiness. I cannot wish for anything better. Now, for a few minutes, I can experience perfection. And I feel profoundly grateful to my life, which gives me so much."

We sit, in stunned silence, tears pouring from our eyes, our thoughts turning to all those we've loved and continue to love and we are, ourselves, profoundly grateful for everything in life, which has indeed given us so much - and especially, Ingmar Bergman's hallowed gift us, Cries and Whispers.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars

Cries and Whispers is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection. It features a wealth of glories for us to be grateful for, including a 2K digital restoration, an introduction by Bergman, shot in 2001, an all-new interview with Harriet Andersson, conducted by Peter Cowie, a video essay by filmmaker :: kogonada, behind-the-scenes footage with Cowie's commentary, a one-hour-long documentary from 2000 entitled Ingmar Bergman: Reflections on Life, Death, and Love with Erland Josephson (2000), exquisite new translation of the dialogue in English for the subtitles, an optional English-dubbed soundtrack (which helps those who don't speak Swedish to watch repeatedly and concentrate on the visual, an essay by film scholar Emma Wilson in the accompanying booklet and a stunning new cover design by by Sarah Habibi ace Criterion artist Sarah Habibi.
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SPRING - Review By Greg Klymkiw - If "Before Sunrise" w/viscous fluids turns your crank...

May 14, 2015, 5:09 pm
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When the moon hits your eye
Like a big pizza pie, that's amore
When the world seems to shine
Like you've had too much wine, that's amore
Spring (2014)
Dir. Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead
Starring: Lou Taylor Pucci, Nadia Hilker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Spring begins compellingly enough. Evan (Lou Taylor Pucci) is a young chef in a local California watering hole who has been tending to his mother's palliative home care whilst she slowly dies of cancer. Once she passes, the only child (his Dad pre-deceased Mom) is not only consumed with grief, but loneliness to boot. Armed with a backpack and small inheritance, he hops on the first outbound plane which takes him to Rome. He eventually makes his way to a small burgh within the watchful burble and huffing/puffing of the volcanic Mt. Vesuvius.

Lava, however, is not the only thing roiling in these parts.

Bells will ring ting-a-ling-a-ling
Ting-a-ling-a-ling and you'll sing, "Vita bella"
Hearts will play tippy-tippy-tay
Tippy-tippy-tay like a gay tarantella
The young man's loins are a stirring once he lays eyes upon Louise (Nadia Hilker), a babe-o-licious local lassie who also takes a liking to Evan. Given her charm, beauty and eccentricity, we're pretty sure she harbours some kind of secret.

But, no matter. We get to enjoy a fair bit of boinking (including some nice flashes o' flesh) and for all those romantics out there, there's a whole whack o'Before Sunrise-like lovey-dovey-wanderings around the gorgeous terrain.

Evan, however, doesn't get to see what we see. These delights include Louise biting the head off a cat, developing pus-oozing sores and eventually a leisurely sojourn with her pet bunny rabbits leads to a cave wherein she doffs her clothes and scarfs back her cute, furry Leporidae - a kind of Night of the Lepus in reverse.

Yup, something's not quite right in Vesuvius County. Hell is going to break loose.

Will their hearts become one?
Will she eat him well done? That's Amore!
But you know, it really doesn't. We're forced to suffer through a mind-numbing romance twixt attractive twenty-somethings babbling a whole lot of inane dialogue with bouts of viscous ooze exploding Vesuvius-like from the young lady's body and even when she shares her secret (something involving stem cells), young Evan still loves her and keeps moping around, hoping they'll become a real couple someday which, it's revealed, is quite possible, if . . .

"Whatever!" I thought as I kept suffering through this insufferably twee 110 minutes of love. Not once do we feel any real threat to our leading man and those she does kill (aside from cute fur balls) are scumbags anyway, but the only real stakes are whether or not these two will find normal love together.

Someone watching this, I suppose, could care, but not this fella.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two Stars

Spring is now playing theatrically via Raven Banner.
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AVENGED - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Redsploitation Payback Thriller with Babe n' arrows

May 16, 2015, 10:16 pm
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Avenged - aka Savaged - (2013)
Dir. Michael S. Ojeda
Starring: Amanda Adrienne, Tom Ardavany, Rodney Rowland

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Avenged (previously known on the film festival circuits and some foreign markets as Savaged) is an all-new entry in the cinematic lexicon known amongst genre geeks as "Redsploitation".

Compared to the 70s onslaught of "Blaxsploitation" (Shaft, Hell Up In Harlem, Slaughter, the list goes on and on and on), "Redsploitation" is a relatively tiny sub-genre of contemporary B-pictures. They differ from the urban African-American sex-and/or-violence-ridden fantasies in that their scope was limited to the stereotype of noble savages, often in rural (albeit mostly contemporary) locales and always involving the exacting of revenge upon Whitey for his callous treatment of Native Americans.

"Redploitation" always lacked variation in terms of character and plot. African-American characters could certainly have any number of stereotypical roles like gangsters, pimps and dealers, but they could also be cops, rights activists, just plain folk (though facing extraordinary hurdles requiring acts of violence) and in the case of star Pam Grier, she got to be a nurse in Coffy (albeit one who prowled dark corners blowing away pimps and dealers). In fact, women in Blaxploitation could, more often than not, hold their own with the men and not just be victims (the latter being the solitary roles for Native women in Redsploitation).

The grandaddy of the Native American action pictures were Tom Laughlin's hugely popular Billy Jack extravaganzas, but even these male fantasies, initially aimed at drive-ins, grind houses (and now in the days of waning public exhibition venues, DVD and VOD), developed huge mainstream acceptance whereas hardcore"Redsploitation" was linked to independent and/or much smaller distribution/exhibition outlets.

One of the "best" 70s forays into the sub-genre was Johnny Firecloud by William Allen Castleman. Generally better written than most of this fare, it also featured taut direction and a decent, mostly Native American cast. Starring Mexican actor Victor Mohica in the title role, the indignities perpetrated upon Johnny and his people are horrendous, but they pale in comparison to the genuinely satisfying revenge he exacts upon the dimwitted racist White losers: tomahawks, scalping, burying in the ground save for the head exposed to ants and the elements, plus other grim payback delights. Going a few steps further than most films of this ilk like Savege Harvest, Ransom, Thunder Warrior, Scalps and Cry For Me, Billy, Johnny Firecloud doesn't end in an orgy of total mind-numbing violence, but actually veers into the territory of ambiguity and, hence, a bit more reality than the aforementioned.


Avenged, co-produced by the visionary Canadian company Raven Banner with the American auteur Michael S. Ojeda is distinctive for being the most recent entry in "Redsploitation". Its cool blend of kick-ass revenge action with the supernatural and a nice combination of first-rate production values and some genuinely rigorous moviemaking craft, manages to put a whole whack of huger budgeted studio pictures to shame. Director Ojeda seldom favours the ludicrous ADHD-like shooting and cutting which plagues most super-hero and other recent wham-bam effects-laden extravaganzas. His shot selections are smartly considered, efficient and feature a nice variation in focal lengths and point of view choices (as opposed to the reliance upon too many close-ups and few mediums and wides that we see in $200-$300million indulgences). This allows his cuts to be rooted in dramatic action rather than spurred on by empty kinetics.

Narratively, Avenged is fairly straightforward, but with a few oddball deviations which allow us to feel like we're not watching something that's completely run-of-the-mill. Zoe (Amanda Adrienne) is a lithe, babe-o-licious, long-blonde-tressed beauty who decides to drive cross-country to meet up with her African-American boyfriend with the plan of moving in with him. Sounds simple enough, but the cool element Ojeda adds to this mix is that Zoe is challenged with being deaf and partially mute (she can form words, sentences, etc. but they're not always intelligible to those who don't know her). Though her Mother expresses trepidation, her sensitive beau realizes that her trip, as well as the decision to leave home and move into common-law bliss with him, is an important part of her continued journey of empowerment.


As these tales often go, she finds herself in the middle of nowhere (topography similar to John Ford's use of Monument Valley in his westerns) when she's witness to a horrific hit and run murder twixt a truck full of Good Old Boy Whitey Rednecks and a young Native man. Before she can hightail it out of there, she's boxed in and approached by the slavering, inbred White fellas. She's kidnapped and taken to the family's remote "estate" of White Trash decrepitude wherein she's grotesquely tied and affixed to a bed in an old shed with - yuck! - barbed wire.

It should be immediately noted that Ojeda does not sexualize nor salaciously dwell upon Zoe's inevitable gang rape by these scumbags. Thank Heaven for tender mercies. However, plenty of Hell is to follow. She manages to get away, but wrenching oneself from barbed wire bindings is not a pain-free, nor is it a pretty sight. Unfortunately, as she flees into the night, Zoe is mortally wounded with a scatter of buckshot from one of the rednecks and is left for dead in the rocky, sandy hills.


So, you're wondering: Where's the "Redsploitation?"

Oh, ye of little faith, here's the rub. The family of inbreds are descendants of a vicious cavalry commander who wiped out most of the Apaches in the area. Our villains are so proud of this, they worship their great-great-grandpappy's memory with slavish devotion - so much so that they continue butchering Native people whenever they can. Ojeda's narrative then adds the following tasty frisson: Legend has it, that the Chief of the local First Nations people swore eternal revenge upon his killer and all those who followed his family lineage. When a lone medicine man in the middle of the wilderness finds Zoe's battered, bloodied body, he attempts to revive her with some ancient ritual, but in so doing, he revives the spirit of the Apache Chief who melds his soul with Zoe and soon, you've got two spirits in one body that both need to extract revenge.

And believe you me, the vengeance is as sweet as it is stomach churning.


Okay, I've seen a lot of movies in my day and as moronic as the aforementioned spirit-melding may be, I have to admit it's pretty original as far as genre pictures go (though it has a few nods of homage in the direction of The Crow). And, you know, there's also something to be said for the pleasing (albeit ludicrous) image of a hot blonde adorned in feathers and war paint as she hunts down the vicious inbreds one-by-one. This (dubiously authentic) appropriation of Native culture is exploitative, but even as you see the nuts and bolts of this construct, it's perversely entertaining. Still, by using the tragic history of the local Natives is not without more than a few dollops of ethnocentrism if not outright racism, BUT, and this is a BIG "but", the film does go out of its way to utilize and address the stereotypical trappings of civilization and savagery that have been so-long married to Euro-centric notions of superiority as they relate to the inherent "lower order" of Indigenous Peoples. There is a clear awareness on the part of the filmmaker that he's playing with these elements, but in a contemporary context, he's allowing his imagination to run as rampant as all get out, which is certainly a far cry from the naiveté of filmmakers from earlier ages.

In her great book "When the Other is Me", Emma LaRocque provides a detailed analysis of "the dichotomy of civilization versus savagery [which] is the long-held belief that humankind evolved from the primitive to the most advanced, from the savage to the civilized." LaRocque notes that:

"racialized evolutionism has not entirely disappeared from the Western intellectual tradition. In disciplines of anthropology, history, political science, psychology, sociology, religion, and even in earlier Marxist thought, theories on human development were and still are largely premised on patriarchal, Eurocentric and evolutionary ideas about so-called primitive peoples."

Appropriating a tragic history and doing so within the "obviously doctrinaire and self-serving" civ/sav perspective which permeates Avenged, seems somewhat less egregious within the context of a sheer contemporary"entertainment". After all, this is not scholarship, but a piece of pure fiction that is so clearly fantasy, one would hope that even the lowest sub-strata of movie-fandom would assume that the use, or rather, misuse of stereotypical images of Native People is, in fact, ridiculously lacking in veracity.


Then again, our modern world continues to be sadly fraught with ignorance of the lowest order. Given that, even a film like Avenged falls into a strange never-never land of (mis)appropriation. LaRocque's own scholarship presents the interesting findings that "White writers often portrayed 'Indians' as savage creatures who tortured and mutilated White bodies", though clearly, Ojeda's film presents the exact opposite (at least initially). The Whites in his film are the slavering, savage, psychotic violators - not just of a physically challenged woman, but contemporary Native people as an extension of the violent historical genocide of Natives. In this context I'm especially interested in how LaRocque also points out a reversal of "the violation" since "contemporary Native writers also turn the tables on the colonizer to point out White cruelty and contradictions; in effect, to point to White savagery."

I'm not 100% sure of filmmaker Ojeda's heritage, though his surname is certainly rooted in Spanish origin, one which in the South Western (or "Tex-Mex") states can often include Native DNA and cultural roots. Whatever the case may be, he is clearly having his cake and eating it too.

LaRocque admits that prior to being in "any position to critically examine the history and sociology of racism, [she] experienced a sense of shame and alienation from teachers, textbooks, comics, and movies that portrayed Indians as savages." Not surprisingly, her eventual pursuit of 'higher' education revealed how "many university professors and most textbooks presented Native peoples in as distorted and insulting ways" as the aforementioned mediums so that the "racist theme of Western civilization/Indian savagery was ever-present."

Given that Avenged, along with the Redsploitation sub-genre and the litany of literature and cinema over the past century (and then some) have wallowed shamelessly in lies and stereotypes, it's the scholarship which has yielded the most abominable violations of truth. The literature and popular culture of deception has been predominantly American and appallingly buttressed by American academics who support and defend (whilst denying) their racist scholarship within the sickening "star-spangled" flag-waving of "the American expansionist doctrine of Manifest Destiny."

Is it any wonder these stereotypes persist? "The notion" LaRocque argues "of 'civilization' and its antithesis 'savagery' are invariably defined and measured by Euro-White North American standards. It should be needless to point out that such an un-scientific belief is racist because it sets up Whites as superior and non-Whites as inferior."

So how then is (an admittedly) entertaining (albeit blood-spattered) trifle like Avenged dangerous? LaRocque points out that Aboriginal peoples "are still being hounded and haunted by White North America’s image machine, which has persistently portrayed them in extremes as either the grotesque ignoble or noble savage."

Avenged does double duty on this front.


When the "noble savage" medicine man accidentally conjures up the spirit of a revenge-crazed Apache warrior and allows it to morph with the equally violated and angry character of Zoe, she essentially becomes a zombie-like member of the living dead who exacts vengeance that's perhaps even more"savage" than the indignities perpetrated by the White inbred racist rednecks.

The again, I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't admit to gaining a fair degree of satisfaction seeing the White Trash get their comeuppance via bows and arrows, blades and in one pretty spectacular set piece (in terms of filmmaker Ojeda's directorial skill and sheer aplomb), wherein the Apache-warrior-possessed Zoe rips the intestines out of one of the "bad guys" with her own hands, pulling his guts out like a viscous rope that seems to have no end and causing the villain the most horrific (and equally endless) pain.

Thinking upon my own visceral response to this picture in relation to what I acknowledge is "wrong", I still can't help but applaud Ojeda's audacity. He takes us into some very dangerous territory and I'll take that over the commonplace, the fake vibes elicited from "feel-good" entertainments. Avenged dazzles because it yanks us, roller coaster-ride-like, back and forth, this way and that from extreme political, historical and cultural dichotomies.

It's an appalling film, but there is value in its terrible, terrible beauty.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

Avenged (previously known as Savaged) is a Raven Banner production and world-wide release available on home video formats via Anchor Bay Canada. The extra features focusing upon the development and making of the film are especially interesting as they place solid emphasis upon director Michael S. Ojeda's considerable craft in terms of placing a visual emphasis upon his storytelling, but also how he works within the exigencies of modest financial resources to create a piece that feels far more imbued with production value than would normally be ascribed to such exploitation items.
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THE DROWNSMAN - DVD/BLU-RAY Review By Greg Klymkiw - Drowning Babes a Fetish?

May 9, 2015, 8:58 pm
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Available May 12, 2014 on Blu-Ray and DVD from Anchor Bay &
Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada - for Drowning Fetishists ONLY!
No Extras on this at all, just the movie straight-up, nicely transferred.
The Drownsman (2014)
Dir. Chad Archibald
Script. Archibald & Cody Calahan
Starring: Michelle Mylett, Caroline Korycki, Gemma Bird Matheson,
Sydney Kondruss, Clare Bastable, Ry Barrett, JoAnn Nordstrom, Breanne TeBoekhorst

Capsule Review By Greg Klymkiw

A whole whack o' lean, trim, supple and oh-so pert babe-o-licious chickie-poos die at the hands of The Drownsman. He has absolutely no interest in stalking, hacking, raping and/or maiming his nubile victims. His needs are simple. He wishes to drown them. Like the old Commonwealth adage, "No sex, please, we're British,"The Drownsman revels in its colonial roots with, “No bloodletting, please, we're Canadian, though drowning in cottage country north of Toronto will do very nicely with our maple syrup, thanks.” He's a Canadian serial killer, so whaddya expect?

READ THE FULL REVIEW
IN MY TORONTO AFTER DARK
FILM FESTIVAL COVERAGE
BY CLICKING HERE!!!
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CHEATIN' - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Noir Meets Opera Meets Pulp Meets Melodrama

May 18, 2015, 8:59 pm
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Cheatin' (2013)
Dir. Bill Plympton

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A new animated feature film by Bill Plympton is always cause for celebration because nobody, but no-body makes movies like he does. His perverse sense of humour blended with an innate (if not submerged, but always present) sweetness and most of all, his unique visual style, add up to cooler than cool.

Cheatin' might be my favourite Plymptoon yet. It's a deceptively simple romantic comedy: girl meets boy, they fall madly in love, they marry, boy thinks girl is cheating even though she's as loyal as loyal can be, boy doesn't let on that he thinks girl is cheating, boy considers suicide but chooses revolving door infidelity, girl is devastated and doesn't know how to get his love back until she meets a mad circus magician who can transfer her spirit into the myriad of bodies whom the boy is dallying with. Reconciliation seems inevitable. Or is it? Is this mad plan fraught with danger? Yeah, probably.

What Plympton has wrought with this basic (on paper) love story, which then adds an unexpected, but very welcome fantastical twist, is layered with sheer mad inspiration. He blends several shades of genre and storytelling style to render one of the most original films I've seen in many a year. Juxtaposing the seedier elements of middle America like carnivals, roadside gas stations and sleazy motels, with the sun-dappled heaven of green lawns, cozy suburban bungalows, beauty parlours and fancy dress shoppes, Plympton manages to out-Blue-Velvet Blue Velvet by wallowing greedily and happily in the muck of both darkness and light.


Plympton begins his tale with the beautiful, stylish Ella, gorgeously attired in a bright yellow dress and wide-brimmed hat with a long red ribbon wafting across the drooling, enchanted faces of boner-induced men, her face buried deep in a book as she strides forward through the streets and eventually a carnival replete with rides and sideshows. Torso forward, her eyes glued to words on the page seem to naturally propel her. She doesn't at all notice every single man ogling her with eyes popped and fixed upon her with such distraction that they cause all manner of mishaps amongst each other (and raising the ire of their frumpy wives and girlfriends). Barkers try to distract her to partake of their wares and it's only until she is literally hooked and yanked into a bumper car ride does she take her nose out of her book.

Hell, this looks like fun.

She jumps into a vehicle and the bumper madness begins. And here is where love blossoms. Plympton hands us a stereotypical "meet-cute" of such absurd proportions that one wishes every"meet-cute" in every movie could be this insane. Let's not give too much away save for describing the physical elements it involves: a bumper car on its side, a dazed Ella in a pool of water, a snapped electrical cable whipping around and sparking up a storm and Jake, a dreamy hunk who's been unable to keep his eyes off Ella (and she to him) and risks his life to save hers.

It's a meet-cute that yields love gone mad.

This leads to one of the most demented love montages I've ever seen with Jake and Ella crooning the joyous Libiamo Ne' Lieti Calici from "La Traviata" to each other as their bodies whirl about, split apart into various pieces, meld in and out of each other, with gondola rides across massive bathtubs, soaring high in flying roadsters, an entire suburban household coming to life and singing the chorus - items in the refrigerator, slabs of butter, carrots - anything and everything that can morph into a dizzying surrealist melange of cartoon images that leaves both the Fleischer Brothers and Disney's Silly Symphonies way behind like so much dust in the wind.

Seeing Ella spread-eagled and popping out one baby after another into Jake's arms is a fantasy image I suspect I'll take with me to my grave.


Disaster strikes when a jealous dress shop owner snaps an incriminating photo of the innocent Ella and places it in Jake's hands as a means to drive him into her arms. It works. He's so devastated, so heartbroken, that he begins balling Madame Dress-Shoppe and virtually every woman who wants him (and it is a ludicrous number). At one point, a devastated Ella secures the services of a hired killer, but when that goes wrong and the couple's life as lovebirds is doomed to a purgatorial wasteland, she secures the assistance of the grand impresario of magician-ship, El Mertos.

You want unhinged, unbridled, completely preposterous forays into the fantastical? Never fear. Plympton delivers big time since El Mertos has the aforementioned mysterious, dangerous and magical machine that can transport Ella's soul into the bodies of ALL the women Jake is boning in Room 4 of the ultra-sleazy E-Z Motel.


Plympton not only pulls off a miracle of mad romanticism, he does so by blending opera, pulp fiction, film noir and almost Douglas Sirkian-high-melodrama. Not only that, but the entire movie has NO dialogue. It's pure visual storytelling with a knockout soundtrack that includes an astounding original score by Nicole Renaud blended with the previously mentioned piece from "La Traviata" in addition to the heartbreaking Leoncavallo's Vesti la Giubba (sung by Caruso, no less), Ravel's Bolero and King Bennie Nawahi singing the immortal south seas exotica of Muana Keana.

Cheatin' is sheer madness and as joyous an experience as you're likely to have at the movies in these dark days of imagination-bereft cinema. If you live in Toronto, you have just one night, one chance to see it on the big screen.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Cheatin' plays for one night at The Royal Cinema in Toronto on May 20, 2015. It deserves a longer run than that. Hopefully other independent Canadian Exhibitors will play the film. In the meantime, I highly recommend you buy the DVD from E.D. Distribution in France. They not only released the film properly/theatrically, but now have it on their very distinctive label. Cheatin' is known in France as Les Amants électriques. Order directly from their website. While you're visiting it, you'll notice they have a shitload of Bill Plympton titles. They're gorgeous packages/transfers. I know. I've got 'em all. Browse the site. They have the coolest, most eclectic catalogue of titles one could ever imagine. They're not only the best distributor of wacko art in France, but one of the best in the world. I know. They distribute a bunch of my crazy-ass film productions. Visit the website by clicking HERE.
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HOT DOCS 2015: THE AMINA PROFILE - Review By Greg Klymkiw ****

April 21, 2015, 9:01 pm
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The Amina Profile (2015)
Dir. Sophie Deraspe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Set against the turbulent backdrop of war-and-revolution in contemporary Syria we meet one hot French-Canadian babe in Montreal (Sandra Bagaria) and one hot Syrian-American babe in Damascus (Amina Arraf).

They meet online. They're young. They're in love.

They're lesbians.

Okay. That's it. Go see the movie.

Review over.


Oh, that's not fair. Here's a bit more to, uh, chew on:

Yesiree-bob, they're lesbians and they're totally into each other, wholly - in mind (what's some nice sapphic eroticism without a few healthy dollops of intellectual discourse) and in, oh yeah, baby, BODY. And let me tell ya', quicker than you can say "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?", l'action de yum yum gets going and it's guaranteed to be hot and heavy.

'Nuff said.

No? Okay, check this out:

The rub, so to speak, is that they're separated by continents, culture and physical proximity, so they must create virtual worlds via text messaging and avatars to become one. Yes, it's cybersex, but no matter. This is a movie, so, via the film's director, we have mega-potential for lots of imagined, recreated hot caresses, tongue action, rug cleaning and soft, lithe, supple flesh against flesh to demonstrate for us, the unbridled passion unfurling in their respective loins - I mean, minds. Better yet, as the film progresses, they can well imagine what the real fireworks are going to be like when they finally meet.

So can we.

Yowza! Yowza! Yowza! Do I really need to keep writing?

I do? Well, okay. Don't mind if I do. Just thought you'd want to dispense with reading this review and just go see the movie (with a handy raincoat to place over your lap for any discrete digital manipulations you might wish to indulge in as the picture unspools).

So, where was I? Oh yes, so our two femmes are tres exotique and maybe, just maybe, the virtual will become a reality. There's danger, though. Sandra lives a fairly normal, comfy life in La Belle Province whilst Amina is surrounded by violence and political unrest during the Syrian uprising as its being quashed by the ruling patriarchy. Oh, and lest we forget, those of the LGBT persuasion are on the top of most Syrians' extermination lists which ups the suspense ante when brave Amina launches a blog entitled "A Gay Girl in Damascus" - a delicious blend of news, politics and ground zero reportage of the Syrian conflicts. The blog goes through the roof - journalists and news agencies from all over the world look to the "Gay Girl" for their news, until, the worst happens.

Amina tells Sandra that the secret police are on to her. It's scary stuff. She aspires to be a novelist and her blog posts and emails to her cyber-love are plenty evocative. She walks the streets of Damascus, attends rallies and protests, and at times, finds herself alone in the shadows of tiny labyrinthian walkways. All the while, she's convinced she's being followed. (The filmmaker delivers a whole lot of hazy dramatic recreations for us - a total bonus). Eventually, Amina informs Sandra that she needs to go further underground and that their communications will be sporadic and brief.

Then, nothing.

Amina completely disappears. The world is watching. Where is the Gay Girl in Damascus? Word travels through various underground and cyber channels that Amina has been kidnapped by the Syrian authorities and languishes in prison. Sandra is desperate. She launches an intense campaign to find and rescue Amina. With the help of Western activists and even American diplomatic channels (Amina is, after all, a dual American citizen), a tense, multilevelled investigation is underway. Mystery upon mystery begins to exponentially pile up and soon Sandra (and by extension, we, the audience) are ripped away like a Harlequin Romance heroine's bodice from a sex-drenched love story and plunged into a superbly complex thriller that keeps us wanting to know more.

And the more we (and Sandra know), the more we become afraid.

Very afraid.

And guess what? We're only a third of the way into the film. There's a lot more thrills and intrigue to enjoy.

AND it's all true.

Aside from the deftly directed dramatic recreations, skillfully edited with a myriad of other characters/subjects and interviews, The Amina Profile is never less than jangling, compulsive viewing. Where it goes, you'll never know until you see it. Once you do see it, as the suspenseful pieces of the puzzle slowly, creepily and shockingly fall into place, you'll find yourself registering surprise at every turn of every corner. You'll be confronted with the deep, dark mysteries of international intrigue amidst violent revolution as well as the strange, dark corners of cyberspace.

The picture's a corker. In fact, The Amina Profile might be one of the most vital contemporary films to examine how loneliness coupled with activism yields a Knossos-like journey to a shocking reality of what all of us face in parallel worlds - those in which we question and alternately, those we do not.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

The Amina Profile will have its Toronto Premiere at HOT DOCS 2015. For schedule and tickets, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.
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HELLMOUTH - Interview twixt Greg Klymkiw andScreenwriter-Extraordinaire Tony Burgess AND a BLU-RAY/DVD Review byGreg Klymkiw of the Raven Banner presentation of the Anchor BayEntertainment Canada release of the John Geddes film HELLMOUTH

May 20, 2015, 4:54 pm
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INTERVIEW
twixt GREG KLYMKIW and
HELLMOUTH writer TONY BURGESS

PREFACE:

Foresight Features, an independent south-western Ontario film production company headed by Jesse T. Cook, John Geddes and Matthew Wiele has, in a few short years, ascended to the throne of genre film supremacy in the land of beaver, maple syrup and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the leader of Canada's Nazi Party. These three 30-year-old gents who love horror movies as much, if not more than life itself, have an unholy alliance as filmmakers with writer Tony Burgess. Foresight's three latest insanely imaginative and scary genre pictures have tantalized genre fans the world over during the course of a short year-and-a-half period.

Hellmouth, Septic Man and Ejecta, all spring from the diseased brain of Tony Burgess, one of Canada’s most celebrated science fiction and horror novelists and screenwriters. He also wrote the source material and screenplay for Bruce McDonald's scary-ass Pontypool.

The last time Mr. Burgess and I met was to discuss Ejecta.

Now, the matter at hand is Hellmouth.





PULL, MEAT DRAW and PINCOCKS

During our Ejecta chat, my fantasia included Burgess treating me to some fine pull from a still near Collingwood when I went down to the ass-end of the Bruce Peninsula to meet with him in Stayner. Pull is, of course, the key ingredient in the creative collaborative process between Burgess, Cook, Geddes and Wiele. This time, my deepest imaginings, spurred on by my frequent semi-comatose blood sugar crashes, have me suggesting that Tony haul hissef the fuck up to the northern-most tip of the Bruce where I hang my shingles. I want Burgess to have a taste of some great pull from these parts, but to also join me at the Meat Draw in our local Royal Canadian Legion. Burgess would, in this hallucinatory miasma within my cerebral cortex, query me on the matter and I would explain thusly:

"We purchase several raffle tickets at $1.00 per ticket. We want to get to the draw at least two hours in advance and space the ticket purchases out prior to the drawing of the lucky numbers. This allows for a decent spread of lucky numbers, ensuring at least one win and ideally, more than one."

Here Burgess will require clarification to the following query. Are we doing the interview sometime within this two hour period prior to the draw at the Legion or will we be saving it for when we visit Ma Pincock and her boys for some pull in the bush? I would, of course, affirm that pre-meat-draw was indeed a good time to do the interview as we'd be able to consume vast quantities of cheap Rye in the company of malcontent veterans who'd quietly gaze into whatever jar of liquor sat before them and mutter: "Well, what can you do?" This fantasia of mine also has Tony holding a barbecue the next day and wondering if he'll be able to win what he needs instead of having to buy it, wherein I'd explain:

"Spread upon the pool tables will be a wide array of meats - everything from prime rib roasts to a package of wieners, and in between there will be steaks and briskets of every imaginable grade and cut. Sometimes there will even be exotic fare like headcheese, tongue, hoof and all manner of juicy viscous innards. The animal of choice is cow, but there will, on occasion be pig, lamb, buffalo, horse, black bear, deer, peacock, emu and chicken. We will have, during the preceding two hours, an opportunity to peruse the offerings and make detailed lists of our favourites in the order which best reflects our individual and/or collective meatly desires. Ideally, we want our lucky number to be called as early in the proceedings as possible. It will allow us first pickins from the pool tables. Most people in this hallowed spot will immediately snatch up the prime rib roast. As the numbers are called, the most prime choices are secured by the happy winners until all that's left are the dregs. As for the pull, it's gonna follow in the bush with the Pincock brothers and their Ma who works the still and generates the mother's milk from a very old family recipe. Ma is practically a Rhodes Scholar of shine preparation, but the boys weren't blessed with her smarts."

I'll mention that we'll meet the boys at the Meat Draw because they purchase their tickets as a team quite early-on in the proceedings. "Don't sweat it," I can assure Tony. "We usually breathe a sigh of relief when the Pincocks are selected early on. They're not going to choose any prime rib or steaks. They always go for the fucking wieners."

I furthermore recount an especially salient example of the Pincock brothers' collective lack of grey matter. One time, during a job burning off a huge pile of brush, they decide not to wait for a raging wind storm to die down. During the gale force tempest, Curly, the eldest Pincock brother, gets a might impatient as he's right afeared they'll be late for the Meat Draw. Fetching a plastic milk jug full of gasoline from the back of their half ton, Curly pops the cap to toss a spray of fuel in the direction of the smouldering fire just as a huge breeze blows in his direction. As the first splashes of gasoline hit the fire, the wind carries a blast of flame back into Curly's face. Grasping the still-half-full plastic milk carton of gasoline, it explodes in his hands. Whilst his younger brothers, Enoch and Harold also go up in flames, Curly gets it the worst, running back to the half-ton, burning to a crisp and screaming - not an especially good idea as there were several milk jugs full of gasoline in the back of the pickup, a full tank of gas in the truck itself and several barrels of Ma Pincock's fine home brew.

As Tony will, no doubt, beg me to stop, I add, "Have I mentioned the box of dynamite in the back of their half-ton? The Pincock boys use it when they go fishing as it's much easier to set charges in hand-crafted waterproof containers that explode in the clear blue of Lake Huron, allowing for hundreds of stunned fish to float to the surface, so the Pincocks can just handily scoop them up into their boat." I add gravely, "It's a miracle Curly Pincock and his brothers lived to tell the tale.We're all thankful they survived, though. Someone has to choose the package of wieners at the Meat Draw and better the Pincocks than any of us. Besides, their inbreeding guarantees their early departure from the Legion once they win so as they can hit the backwoods for a weenie-roast. And you know what? If the Pincocks win tonight, we'll settle in with those boys in the bush, guzzle back Ma's pull and maybe even have some hot dogs with 'em."


THE INTERVIEW

Klymkiw: Hellmouth is replete with cool graveyards. One of my favourites was this old graveyard south of Winnipeg where tucked in a little grove behind an abandoned church was a kiddie graveyard with weathered headstones that had stone carvings of lambs and pudgy babies with wings. What is your favourite graveyard and why?

Burgess: There's a graveyard on a little dirt road hidden on Rainbow Valley Road north of Edenvale. Tiny white church, more of a shack on the grounds. It is maintained by the Clearview gravedigger known locally as Crackerjack. I had to do an author photo for an article in The Walrus [Magazine] so i got Crackerjack to find me a freshly dug grave to stand in. He obliged.

Where the fuck did the idea of Hellmouth come from?

Now that's a good question. It's not really an idea - more like a bizarre wishlist that director John Geddes asked me to realize. He had very specific story elements and environs that looked at first like an angry clog of random irreconcilables. I was quickly charmed by his conviction and so executed, to the best of my ability, his peculiar vision. John approaches story quite unlike anyone...wide and passionate, without cynicism or irony, but self aware - he often mentioned Ed Wood, not as a joke we could make, but as a film maker with no distance from his own material - Ed Wood as a way of believing in things. It felt to me like we could make something original and truly outsider.

I loved Ed Wood's movies as a kid. Even then they seemed distinctive to me. When people started making fun of him the the 80s, it kind of pissed me off. Can you describe the writing process on Hellmouth?

It involved a lot of cognitive dissonance and pure story telling - a bit like a tunnel vision - which fit perfectly with John's idea of a parallel world made of whole plastic. Everything behaves in a figurative landscape, a busy meaning-making sketch, that reaches in an authentic way to an honest nothing.

Was pull involved in the creative process?

Always.

Does evil seek out those who are lonely or is evil a natural manifestation born out of loneliness?

I have no idea.

Sorry for the eggheadedness, but Stephen McHattie's character in Hellmouth is alone, lonely and eventually he's facing hell. In Taxi Driver, Travis says: "Loneliness has followed me my whole life. I'm God's lonely man." For some reason I could not get this out of my head while watching Hellmouth. Why? Is that MY sick shit or yours or a combination of the two?

Well, this is as much [director] John Geddes as me or you. He was looking at Richard Matheson and one of the great films about isolation - The Incredible Shrinking Man. There was an experience we were chasing: not so much the films of Ed Wood, Richard Matheson or Hitchcock, but the person watching them. In the middle of a Saturday afternoon or the wee hours of Sunday morning, the viewer is alone and completely open, perhaps not even knowing the name of the film. When it reaches out to say something or do something, the lone viewer experiences a kind of belief they couldn't have acheived sitting beside someone. It falls outside. It is a movie you started watching half way through and maybe you fall asleep before the end, but for the rest of your life it has this unprocessed life in your memory. If it meant anything it was probably that it was real, like a dream is, and you didn't see it - it happened to you.

What was it like collaborating with Geddes? How does he differ from the other Foresight sickos?

They are all different and very respectful of that. The most striking thing about making Hellmouth was the way John lived the post production day and night. An ENORMOUS amount of work went into how it looks. John had to become a religious madman for two years. I mean, no one has made a film in the way this one was made, and no one ever will again. Ever.

I loved the weird-ass cool look of Hellmouth - dare I say it? Post-modern? Is this something that was part of the writing or is it strictly the sick shit of Geddes in translating your words to the screen?

We had the look in mind from the beginning. Early on I was trying to gauge how far I could go with the visuals and there was simply no limit. Can I have a demon lick the door open? Yep. Can we giant hellmouth swallow Julian Richings? Yep. And on and on. We watched lots of films to get a sense of how this would look and really, it was about using CG effects as if they were cheap practicals from Ed Wood's studio backlot.

I love being plunged into a world of horror that is hugely influenced by the post-war ennui of film noir. Was this a conscious approach on your part?

Oh yes, absolutely. That and shamed, smudgy modernism, and its loss of noise.

Stephen McHattie. How present was his visage and bountiful talents in your mind during the writing of the screenplay?

Oh he was always there, for sure. In fact, when we were trying to figure out how to construct the Barda at the end (CG? Big latex? A robot? An actor?) Stephen said `lemme me do it' and he was amazing, injecting a whole other layer of smoke to the story. Stephen has the incredible ability to occupy illogical spaces between what should make sense.

The gaping maw of hell as envisaged in medieval art and literature seems a natural bedfellow for the kind of ennui that plagues McHattie's character and the world of the film. Why? Is this a natural bedfellow for you? For all of us?

I have always loved the Hellmouth. Especially as a big creaking stage machine on the Elizabethan stage. So heavy and noisy for a figure. The hellmouth as stage prop is the perfect object for what we were doing: the thereness of practical effects combined with the not thereness of generated image.

I can envisage franchise potential for all the stuff you write for Foresight. Further exploration of the Septic Man, Richings in Ejecta and McHattie in Hellmouth, all seems natural to me. Any thoughts or discussion with you and Foresight on this?

We have talked about that, yes. In fact, me and Ari Millen wanna make a TV show based on our characters [from Hellmouth] Harry and Tips. Kinda Lenny and Squiggy as directed by Buster Keaton.

Shit, the Pincock Boys are here. Let's go look at the meat with them. I'll introduce you.

Sounds good.

HELLMOUTH - THE REVIEW

Stephen McHattie, a babe-o-licious ghost,
creepy graveyards, the jaws of hell itself,
Bruce McDonald & Julian Richings in tow,
plus super-cool retro imagery fill the drawers of
HELLMOUTH
Hellmouth (2014)
Dir. John Geddes
Scr. Tony Burgess
Starring: Stephen McHattie, Siobhan Murphy, Boyd Banks,
Julian Richings, Bruce McDonald, Ari Millen, Tony Burgess

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To both the living and perhaps even the dead, old graveyards are as comforting as they are creepy. Screenwriter Tony Burgess seems to understand this better than most and with Hellmouth, he's crafted one of the most deliciously insane horror treats of the new millennium. Superbly and imaginatively directed by John Geddes and delivered to us by Foresight Features, the visionary company of (mad)men from Collingwood, Ontario, this is a first-rate mind-penetrator designed to plunge us deeply into the hallucinogenic properties inherent in Hell itself.

When I was a (relative) kid in the late 70s and early 80s, I programmed a movie theatre devoted almost exclusively to cult and genre films and Hellmouth is exactly the kind of picture I'd have been playing during midnight shows in the 70-year-old 600-seat former-neighbourhood-cinema-turned-Porn-emporium-turned-arthouse in the waste-end of Winnipeg (just round the corner from famed cult director Guy Maddin's boyhood home and his Aunt Lil's beauty salon which eventually became the studio for his first bonafide hit film, Tales from the Gimli Hospital). It's this very personal observation which proves to me, beyond a shadow of any doubt, just how universal Hellmouth is. The narrative is rooted in a strange amalgam of 40s film noir and the controversial early-to-mid-50s William Gaines period of the late, lamented and utterly demented E.C. Comics. In this sense, the madness that is Hellmouth yields a classic horror movie for now and forever.

And lemme tell ya, this ain't nothing to sneeze globs of bloodied snot at.

Charlie Baker (Stephen McHattie) is a tired, old grave-keeper living out his last days before retirement in a long-forgotten graveyard still maintained by a rural municipality with a certain pride in its historical legacy. As the film progresses, however, the legacy goes well beyond its commemorative value. Mr. Whinny (Boyd Banks) is a slimy, local bureaucrat who demands Charlie curtail his retirement plans to preside over an even older graveyard a few miles away. Charlie reminds Whinny that his own days are numbered due to a rare, degenerative brain disease, but the cruel, taunting administrator will have none of it and threatens to fire Charlie if he doesn't do his bidding (and thus flushing the retirement package down the toilet). Bureaucrats are just like that, especially if they work for Satan.

Alas, poor Charlie has little choice in the matter and is forced to make an odyssey across the dark and stormy landscape of this rectum-of-the-world township where he meets the mysterious babe-o-licious Faye (Siobhan Murphy). Swathed in form-fitting white, dark shades and blood-red lipstick, Faye hooks Charlie immediately into her plight and he becomes the unlikeliest knight in shining armour.

Grave-keeper Charlie Baker will, you see, soon do battle with a formidable foe at the very jaws of Hell itself.

Burgess's writing here is not only infused with imagination, but the archetypal characters, hard-boiled dialogue and unexpected turns taken by the tale create a solid coat hanger upon which director Geddes can display the stylish adornments of cool retro-visuals as well as all the eye-popping special visual effects splattering across the screen like so many ocular taste buds.

The mise-en-scene is not unlike the Frank Miller/Robert Rodriguez approach to the world of Sin City, but here, the rich monochrome, dappled occasionally with garish colours, seems even more suited to the genre of horror rather than neo-noir. Geddes guides his superb cast through the minefields of a gothic nightmare with the assured hand of a master, eliciting performances that play the more lurid properties of the characters blessedly straight (McHattie, Banks and Murphy), thus allowing occasional explosions of over-the-top, though never tongue-in-cheek thespian gymnastics from Julian Richings and legendary director Bruce McDonald.

Crypt-Keepers and Grave-Keepers have long been a staple of horror, but usually, they're not treated as characters, but as "hosts" to deliver anthology-styled tales of terror (not unlike the classic Amicus production from the 70s such as Tales from the Crypt). As a feature film, Hellmouth gets to have its cake and eat it too. However, given that Charlie Baker is a living, breathing character, Foresight Features might actually have a property here worth revisiting - either in feature-length prequels, sequels and/or standalone "presents" tales of other grave-keepers. Better yet, there might even be a terrific continuing anthology series for the likes of Starz with Charlie involved week-to-week as an actual participant and storyteller. God knows the creative above-the-liners are more than skilled and up-to-the-challenge and Stephen McHattie, one of the best character actors in the world would be the ideal star.

Just a thought from a middle-aged old exhibitor, film buyer and movie producer . . .

Getting back to my personal rumination of those halcyon days when I programmed cult movies, it's with all respect that I reveal now that Hellmouth is the kind of picture we used to fondly refer to as a "head film". Like the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo), Slava Tsukerman (Liquid Sky), David Lynch (Eraserhead) and so many others during the "Golden" Age of cult cinema, Hellmouth is ideal viewing for those who wish to ingest copious amounts of hallucinogens prior to and during their viewings of the film. That said, like all terrific "head films", the movie itself is plenty hallucinogenic and ultimately requires no added stimulants.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Hellmouth is being distributed by Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada in a gorgeously transferred DVD and BLU-RAY combo pack. The photography, sound and effects in this film are so astonishing that both formats have been worked to the outer limits of their capabilities to render a first-rate product. My only disappointment is the lack of extras on the discs, however, it does include trailers for Foresight's Septic Man and Ejecta.
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THE VATICAN EXORCISMS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - MockDoc a Smelly Crock o' Poo

May 18, 2015, 9:02 pm
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The Vatican Exorcisms (2013)
Dir. Joe Marino
Starring: Joe Marino, Piero Maggio

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is a mock-doc that really wants us to think it's a doc and not a mock-doc, but as either, it's so unmitigatedly awful, that it really doesn't matter what the purported filmmakers want us to believe because the only thing that keeps us watching is to see just how awful a movie can get.

I'll admit the title hooked me. Hell, I'm always happy to watch anything involving exorcism at least once and the notion of Vatican exorcisms had me chomping at the bit. I'll also admit I never judge a DVD by its cover, but when I got the screening copy, my eyes bugged out with anticipation when I saw the deliciously disgusting image of an albino-like demon with shrivelled skin, sores and other viscous details.

Anchor Bay will, no doubt, sell a crapload of DVDs at Wal-Mart based on the cover alone. I'm hoping that "People of Walmart.com" will have some choice shots of some real toothless doozies showing too much ass-crack from their pants falling down as they gaze intently at the cover artwork. Kudos to the Anchor Bay marketing team, but Jesus, this movie stinks.

Joe, a "filmmaker" informs us he's making a documentary about exorcism. In fact, he informs us about everything. He tells us he's going to meet his crew. A few seconds later, he does. Standing in front of a church, he informs us he will be going inside and, guess what? He does. He tells us he's going to be interviewing a real live exorcist from the Vatican. Wouldn't you know it, he does.

At one point during the aforementioned interview, the priest asks Joe what he wants of him. (It appears the priest isn't too smart.) Joe replies that he wants to meet the Devil.

"And so you shall," answers the priest.

If I'd been in a charitable mood, that moment would at least have elicited a few unintentional guffaws on my part, but by then, the picture had been so rank, I was compelled to do little but stare slack-jawed at my TV set. (Apologies for not thinking to take a selfie of that moment for your edification.)

The rest of the film includes endless scenes of Joe talking to the camera in his hotel room, always telling us what we just saw, in case, uh, I guess, we didn't see it, in spite of the fact that we did. (Sometimes, when he's in his hotel room, he makes a point of telling us that's precisely where he is.)

He also talks into the camera about what he's going to do the next day or in the next shot. Lo and behold, it happens and then he can talk to the camera again to describe what we just saw.

And what do we see? Not much - just several tediously lame exorcisms which supposedly increase in intensity (but don't) and, no surprise, Joe gets possessed by Satan. And yes, he tells us all about it.

Then he disappears.

His wife helpfully tells us he has, in fact, disappeared, though we already know this. Then the movie ends and we wonder who actually finished the film. His wife? Or Satan?

I'd normally put my money on Satan, but chances are, he's a pretty sharp dude and would never make a movie so utterly godawful. If you've already bought the movie, you will, at least, have a nice coaster to place drink-poos upon. If you haven't made the purchase, don't bother, unless you're desperate for a new coaster.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE - For a full explanation and history of this rating, click HERE.

The Vatican Exorcisms is available on Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada DVD. The film is so poorly shot, the transfer can't help. The only extras are a trailer and a laughable Photo Gallery which appears to be comprised of 4 screen captures from the digital tape source.
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TAB HUNTER CONFIDENTIAL: 25th Anniversary Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival 2015 - Review By Greg Klymkiw

May 17, 2015, 8:58 pm
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Tab Hunter Confidential (2015)
Dir. Jeffrey Schwarz

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Jeffrey Schwarz is one of America's stellar documentary filmmakers. He's contributed an important body of work on cinema as well as gay pop culture. With a solid career generating superb specialty product for television and added value materials for home entertainment releases, he's become especially notable for his slickly produced feature documentaries Vito (a profoundly moving portrait of gay cinema historian Vito Russo) and I Am Divine (the lovely, entertaining biographical portrait of everyone's favourite 300 lb. transvestite and John Waters muse).

Based on the hugely successful and insightful autobiographical book Tab Hunter Confidential, Schwarz has another winner to add to his canon of essential work.


Tab Hunter was one of the biggest movie heartthrobs of the 50s, a huge music recording star and a damn fine actor to boot who was groomed by Warner Bros. to make them a lot of money, but seldom allowing him the opportunity to grow as an actor. Gorgeous, blonde, kind-hearted and affable in real life as he appeared on screen, Hunter was, like so many gay actors, forced to keep his sexuality deep in the closet in order to maintain his spot at the top of the box-office.

When he eventually changed agents to assist him with getting more challenging roles, his first talent rep released information to the scandal press about Hunter's brief brush with the law (which had been repressed quite ably) wherein he'd been found in the (gasp!) company of homosexuals. Hunter was so beloved by his studio - Jack Warner in particular - because of the oodles of substantial grosses he pulled in, that even this was reasonably covered over by the powerful studio so he could keep making them money.

Unfortunately, Hunter extricated himself from his Warner's contract to become independent so he could more ably dictate better roles for himself. Without the protection and regular cheques from the studio, he quickly became persona non grata in the industry and was relegated to working in even more slight product than ever before. He eventually stopped working altogether in the movies and became a stalwart on the dinner theatre circuit. It brought in steady money, but was also drudgery in terms of both the travel and non-stop demand of daily live performance in front of thousands of audiences slurping back globs of grotesque comestibles at the all-you-can-eat troughs of this horrendous circuit used to capitalize on actors who were "past their prime".

Eventually, Hunter was back on top as a film cult personality thanks to his great work in John Waters's Polyester and the gay-tinged spaghetti western spoof Lust in the Dust. Again though, he faced obscurity after this brief resurgence and Hunter turned to his first love, horses, and became a master of equestrian competition - something he continues with to this very day.

It's a great story and Schwarz juggles all the balls (as it were) at his disposal to create a significant document of the studio period in Hollywood and the burgeoning years of independent cinema. Perhaps even more meaningful is the frank look at what it meant to be gay in America and Hollywood when homosexuality was not merely frowned upon, but considered criminal deviant activity.

Using a star studded cast of interviewees and the best selection of film clips and archival materials money can buy, Schwarz is also granted unfettered access to Hunter himself. In a series of penetrating interviews, we learn about Hunter's abusive father, loving mother, his devotion to God and the Church, his heartbreaking experience with the nasty repression of Catholicism and, of course, his often scintillating, but secret love life.

On the surface, he was paired up by the studio with the gorgeous Natalie Wood and the two of them were "lovers" in the eyes of the world, accompanying each other to a myriad of events, parties, premieres and pretty much anywhere paparazzi were present to grab fodder for fan magazines. Hunter's recollection of these dates with Wood and other female stars provide deeply loving relationships, albeit of the purely platonic kind (though there is one "straight" story that offers us much in the way of genuine tears).

As for the fellas, we're privy to Hunter's secret relationships with other gay men in the industry, most notably Anthony Perkins; as intense and deep a love relationship one could imagine twixt anyone and yet one which crashed and burned when Hunter was betrayed professionally by Perkins.

Tab Hunter Confidential has anything any movie lover could want, but at the end of the day, it also offers an extremely crucial history of gay life from the 1950s and beyond. It's also worth noting that all the interviews with the celebrity experts are beautifully rendered by Schwarz and deliver a lineup of people who are both entertaining and magnanimous.

The one exception, however, is an interview with Clint Eastwood. I've always admired him as an actor and director, but frankly, he comes across as a complete asshole - at least that was my feeling. Schwarz only keeps this one bit with Eastwood in the film which, suggests to me that Eastwood must have been an even bigger asshole in material that found its way to the cutting room floor.

Then again, some might find Eastwood's remarks funny and the real reason he's represented as such. I don't know. You can be the judge. The movie was so moving, that Eastwood's bit just stuck out like a sore thumb to me.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Tab Hunter Confidential is playing at the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.
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EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO: 25th Anniversary Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival 2015 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Greenaway dallies with biopic like some Ken Russell wannabe.

May 20, 2015, 9:01 pm
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Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)
Dir. Peter Greenaway
Starring: Elmer Bäck, Luis Alberti

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This cellar-dwelling Ken Russell wannabe biopic of Sergei Eisenstein, the famed Soviet filmmaking genius and chief cinematic propagandist for Communist and Stalinist totalitarianism is replete with a wide variety of stunning visuals, but really does nothing to cast a light upon either its subject's work, career and sexuality.

How much of this dull, overwrought Greenaway nonsense you can take will mostly be determined by just how much Peter Greenaway you can hack. All others can stay at home and rent some Ken Russell movies instead.

No matter how outrageously rife with historical deviations (and nutty visuals) Russell's biopics were, I always loved how he plunged to the very roots of his subjects' artistry and not only captured the spirit of the work, but did so by presenting how the said work inspired him. Russell's films were as personal as they were cheekily respectful, not as oxymoronic as you might think, since his delightfully perverse sense of humour added the necessary frissons to reinterpret and/or re-imagine the artists' work.

It was a delicate balance and one Russell didn't always successfully achieve, but his best films were genuinely insightful, thought-provoking and yes, outrageous. For example, I always loved Russell's interpretation of Gustav Mahler's conversion from Judaism to Christianity in Mahler when he created the astonishing set piece of the title character leaping through flaming hoops adorned with the Star of David as Cosima Wagner in pseudo Nazi regalia, complete with what appear to be chrome hot pants, cracks a circus whip like some Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Valkyrie.

A close second to this pantheon of Russell's loving insanity is, for me, the sequence in The Music Lovers when Richard (Dr. Kildare) Chamberlain as Tchaikovsky, explodes the heads off everyone in his life with cannon balls with the 1812 Overture raging on the soundtrack.

I will accept all this heartily.

Alas, Greenaway delivers the equivalent of a few wet farts in this tradition.


Nothing so inspired occurs in Eisenstein in Guanajuato. Greenaway chooses to focus on the time Eisenstein spent in Mexico and essentially squandered his opportunity to make an epic feature film which Stalin himself gave his blessings to. Most of the film is devoted to Elmer Bäck's mildly entertaining nutty performance as he spouts endless bits of florid dialogue, discovers the joys of shoeshines, the heavenly experience of showering (as he cocks his buttocks saucily and swings his dinky about with abandon) and, of course, sodomy.

Yes, Greenaway does not disappoint here. Sergei's anal deflowering is genuinely worth the price of admission. Alas this delicious set piece is buffeted by far too much flouncing about, presented with triple-paned homages to both Eisenstein and Abel Gance until our mad hero is tossed out of Mexico, but not before donning a death masque and racing into the infinite behind the wheel of a roadster.

Heavy, man.

I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from any of this movie in terms of what made Eisenstein tick nor, frankly, what Greenaway himself admires about one of the true masters of film art. All I really know is that Greenaway continues to make "purty pitchers" and has it in him to craft one lollapalooza of a sodomy scene.

Well, maybe that's enough.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** 2 Stars for the movie, **** for the sodomy

Eisenstein in Guanajuato is playing at the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.
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The 25th Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival 2015 - Two Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - WHAT WE HAVE (Ce qu'on a) ****, FOURTH MAN OUT ***

May 21, 2015, 9:02 pm
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Visiting and/ or living away from major cosmopolitan centres and seeking out or simply being born and existing within small towns or even mid-sized cities is so often a great combination of escape, solitude, natural beauty and the kind of simplicity of pace which offers considerable solace, allowing for growth and exploration that might not be possible in places like New York, Toronto, Paris, London and/or other similarly sized metropolises.
On the flip side, however, such seemingly bucolic environs can also be rife with small-mindedness, repression, ignorance and mind-numbing boredom. Two films playing during the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival have such worlds as their backdrops. Here are two reviews of gay-themed pictures set against backdrops of the smaller kind.
What We Have aka Ce qu'on a (2015)
Dir. Maxime Desmons
Starring: Maxime Desmons, Alex Ozerov, Jean-Michel Le Gal,
Roberta Maxwell, Kristen Thomson, Marie-Eve Perron, Johnathan Sousa

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Talk about a change of pace. Maurice (played by writer-director Maxime Desmons) has left Paris to live the expatriate life in, uh, North Bay, Ontario. There's some gorgeous bush up there, but the town itself is a major shit hole. Canadians will know it as the hometown constituency of Mike Harris, one of the country's biggest right-wing scum buckets, a former ski instructor and golf course manager turned politician who, with his fascist "Common Sense Revolution" did a fine job dismantling much of the social welfare, education, health and cultural life of the country's biggest province and in particular, due to a forced amalgamation, the city of Toronto. Harris's constituents comprised some of his most avid supporters. Great place to live, eh.

Plopping the character of a gay man with a mysterious past and an undetermined future into this miasma of pettiness and intolerance would almost be enough to let rip in a dramatic paint-by-numbers fashion. Luckily for us, though, the film succeeds well beyond those trappings. This deeply moving, compelling and complex movie places the thematic concerns of identity in isolation - one which is self-imposed on an emotional level and yet another within the realm of physically being isolated in a world lacking most of the comforts and conveniences of a cosmopolitan existence.

Maurice decides to offer his services as a personal French-language teacher/tutor and one of his first customers is the mother (Kristen Thomson) of the sensitive teenage boy Alain (Alex Ozerov). This older man and young lad hit it off as friends almost immediately. Alain's britches are obviously going to be too big for the popcorn stand of North Bay and Maurice has clearly been around the block a few times. It's a relationship which offers both of them what they need. Maurice discovers someone who needs him, while at the same time, allows him to exercise his natural (though submerged) proclivity towards helping those who need it the most.

There's a strong sense that Maurice sees himself in Alain while the boy sees a gifted teacher, friend, father-figure and just the right kind of individual to crack his shell of potential. There is a problem, here. Teacher and student begin to develop an admiration for each other which could possibly veer into dangerous territory, especially since Alain is on the cusp of discovering his burgeoning sexuality. Maurice, of course, attempts to engage in sexual relations with the few closeted members of North Bay's gay community, but they want more, they want love. Maurice has a lot of love to give, but he's clearly suppressing it and of course, where he needs to keep it in check is in his relationship with Alain.

There are clearly very kind and intelligent people who live in this community of repression, but a community bound in constraint already carries serious baggage. Maurice himself already has his own "baggage" to deal with. At one point, Maurice gets involved with the local community theatre company and he wins the title role of Harpagon in Molière's immortal satire "The Miser". Given the complex relationship in the play twixt a father and son as well as the obsessive nature of both (though to completely opposite ends), writer-director Desmons subtly parallels the play with his relationship with Alain. In so doing, he fashions a labyrinthine series of layers below the simple outward shell of the story which yields a deeply rewarding experience.

He also elicits tremendous performances from his cast (including himself in a gorgeously restrained turn). Alex Ozerov handles his role as the young man with sensitivity and maturity, but is most of all blessed with the considerable talent to allow an audience to connect with his character while also displaying natural gifts as a screen actor. The camera loves him and with the sure hand of director Desmons, Ozerov is clearly well on his way to commanding the sort of attention reserved for only the very best.

Jean-Michel Le Gal as the theatre company's stage manager produces a healthy balance between yearning and the capacity for deep love. Kristen Thomson is especially piquant as Alain's mother - she manages to capture that perverse small town blend of naiveté, repression and openness. As someone who's lived in his fair share of small towns and big old small towns masquerading as cities, I'd say I found her performance so spot-on that it bordered on scary. In this small, but vital role, Thomson exudes the qualities of every doyenne of small town mediocrity that I've ever had the personal displeasure to encounter.

This is all as much an attribute of the film and filmmaker's powers of observation as anything. He carefully places his subjects on slides, clips them within an inch of their lives to the mount and sharpens his lens so that we not only see and experience what he does, but are given enough opportunity to formulate our own perspective. At least he lets us believe that which, of course, is what great filmmaking is really all about.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

What We Have (Ce qu'on a) is playing at the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.


Fourth Man Out (2015)
Dir. Andrew Nackman
Scr. Aaron Dancik
Starring: Parker Young, Evan Todd, Jon Gabrus,
Chord Overstreet, Kate Flannery, Jennifer Damiano, Jordan Lane Price

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Shot in and around Albany, though set in a somewhat more generic version of a small burgh in upstate New York, Fourth Man Out proves to be a solid bromantic comedy about four longtime twenty-something pals of the working class persuasion who've spent their many years together doing what bros do: watching ballgames on TV, playing poker and hitting the local watering holes to nail babes.

They're all on the cusp of potentially needing to grow up, but there's the pull of why grow up when there's way too much fun to be had? Then again, they might even realize that growing up doesn't mean giving up their manly fun and games. Like most straight buds in small towns or big-old-small-towns-pretending-to-be-cities, these guys would, in more enlightened ancient cultures be fucking each other, but closets these days are deep in these contemporary environs and like the Chester See song says: "Brrrrrroooooooooo-mance, nothing really gay about it."

So what happens when one of the buds has been hiding his gay lifestyle from both his family and his buds? Furthermore, what's going to happen if he comes out? Well, as it turns out, nothing too serious, really. All the usual stuff in comedies like this make their familiar, comfortable appearance: the buds seem cool, make loads of ass-fuck-dick-suck jokes, until the time comes when they need to learn everything possible about being gay so they can accept their bud and grow up in the meantime. The straight pals actually become walking, talking, living, breathing expounders of all that's gay, albeit from their well meaning, but still stereotypical standpoint.

Yup, this is basically a situation comedy in feature length form and though it's rife with cliches, the whole thing is damn well played, often extremely gosh-darn-low-brow funny and even has a major sweet tooth going on. The movie doesn't have a sophisticated bone in its body (though its indie veneer suggests it has plenty), but its heart is in the right place and in spite of the picture's slightly machine-tooled quality, most audiences will enjoy a pretty fun and sparkling night at the movies.

Besides, I've not seen sausage fellatio in a movie in sometime. All the more reason to recommend it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

Fourth Man Out is playing at the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.
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3 Movies playing at the 25th Anniversary Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival 2015 that I saw at other film festivals - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw of THE AMINA PROFILE ****, GUIDANCE *** and A SINNER IN MECCA ****

May 22, 2015, 9:02 pm
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The Amina Profile (2015)
Dir. Sophie Deraspe

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Set against the turbulent backdrop of war-and-revolution in contemporary Syria we meet Sandra Bagaria, one hot French-Canadian babe in Montreal and Amina Arraf, one hot Syrian-American babe in Damascus. They meet online. They're young. They're in love. They're lesbians. Okay. That's it. Go see the movie.

READ THE FULL REVIEW of The Amina Profile from Hot Docs 2015 HERE

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

The Amina Profile is playing at the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.


A Sinner in Mecca (2015)
Dir. Parvez Sharma

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I think filmmaker Parvez Sharma (A Jihad for Love) wins the grand prize, hands-down, for making one of the bravest films of this or any other year. Sharma is a deeply devout Muslim and required, as all able-bodied Muslims are, to make the pilgrimage to Mecca (The Hajj) in Saudi Arabia at least once in his life. The time for him is now. He needs to affirm his faith by making this Holy journey, but he also needs to address a deeply personal conundrum of conscience. Has he been a good Muslim? Is he a good Muslim? Can he continue to be a good Muslim? Sharma, you see, is gay.

READ THE FULL REVIEW of A Sinner in Mecca from Hot Docs 2015 HERE

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

A Sinner in Mecca is playing at the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

Guidance (2014)
Dir. Pat Mills
Starring: Pat Mills, Zahra Bentham,
Laytrel McMullen, Alex Ozerov, Kevin Hanchard, Tracey Hoyt

Review By Greg Klymkiw

David Gold (Pat Mills) is a loser. He's a former child star reduced to taking non-union voice gigs, the latest of which he gets fired from because of his haughty, petulant, pretentious attitude. This is bad news because he's way behind on his share of the rent and on the verge of being turfed. He's got serious drug and alcohol problems and he's so deeply in the closet he won't even admit to himself that he's gay. Oh yeah, he's been diagnosed with late-stage skin cancer. None of this phases our hero. For us, the audience, it's one hell of a good deal because Guidance (the feature debut of writer, director and star Pat Mills) is all about David's hilarious decision to bamboozle his way into a job he's not qualified for, but thinks will be perfect for him. Cribbing from a child psychologist YouTube guru, David lands a cushy dream job that will not only pay well, but give him a chance to help teenagers which, for utterly insane reasons, he believes he'll be good at. He becomes the new Guidance Counsellor of Grusin High.

READ THE FULL REVIEW of Guidance from TIFF 2014 HERE

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Guidance is playing at the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.
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The 25th Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival 2015 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - An Absolute Must-See of the Festival: LIMITED PARTNERSHIP ****

May 25, 2015, 11:30 pm
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Limited Partnership (2014)
Dir. Thomas G. Miller

Review By Greg Klymkiw

For a married couple to live in fear of being torn apart by fascist government officials, 24 hours a day, everyday, for over 40 years is absolutely unfathomable to me, but Limited Partnership, Thomas G. Miller's powerful, gut-wrenching portrait of love under attack comes about as close as any film could to putting one in the shoes of those innocents who experienced prejudice, hatred and cold, calculated castigation.

This is not some Third World country (though these days, that's open to debate) or blood-thirsty dictatorship (though these days, that's open to debate) or, say, Russia (never open to debate). What we experience in this film happened within a democracy (though these days, that's open to debate), the leading world power (though these days, that's open to debate), the land of the free (though these days, that's open to debate), the home of the brave (though these days, that's open to debate), the United States of America (never open to debate, but the country hides its hatreds a teensy-weensy bit better than Russia).

It's a beautifully crafted documentary with a superbly edited narrative arc. If it were a drama, screenwriting gurus like Syd Field and Robert McKee would be slavering over it. Ultimately though, it happily wanders enough off the beaten path that one never feels the picture is, in any way, shape or form a run-of-the-mill exercise. In fact, the movie slowly takes you surprise with its tone and structure. At first, you're following along, feeling like you're watching a decent "journalistic" style TV doc about an interesting subject, but all that dissipates as director Miller plunges you into the thick of his deftness and artistry as a filmmaker and soon enough, you're torn apart and dazzled - in equal parts - by his eventually "silent" filmmaking which leads you on the journey of its subjects to the point where you're so involved that you feel their emotional roller coaster ride to the very end.

Most people will have a cursory knowledge of the tale; two men, one American, one Australian, meet in the early 70s within a happening L.A. gay bar, fall madly in love and later, hightail it to the glorious "Centennial State" of Colorado (with the coolest flag in all America).


A forward-thinking clerk in Boulder, is issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and our couple, the quiet, gorgeous, smoothly textured Filipino-born, American-raised Richard Adams and hunky, square-jawed, flamboyantly erudite Australian Tony Sullivan (Adams reminds me of 90s HK superstar Simon Yan whilst Sullivan seems a perfect cross between Russ-Meyer-Roger-Corman stalwart Charles Napier with healthy dashes of Richard Harris) get hitched - legally.

Like, Hello! This is over 40 years ago.

However, when the couple applies to make Aussie Sullivan a naturalized U.S. citizen, they are denied - OFFICIALLY - on the grounds that they "have failed to establish that a bona fide marital relationship can exist between two faggots."

So in spite of being legally married, the federal government refuses to recognize it and thus begins a harrowing 40+ years battle which, under the helmsmanship of director Miller, plays out as both a tremendously moving love story and an edge-of-the-seat political thriller.

This is an important film and an absolute must-see for its subject matter as well as its filmmaking prowess. It's also worth noting that films like this would not exist without the very brave support of American public television genuinely independent voice [ITVS] and its [i]ndependent lens series. A few things in America are good.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Limited Partnership is playing at the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.
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MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Now's My Time to Weigh-in on This

May 24, 2015, 9:02 pm
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Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Dir. George Miller
Starring: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron,
Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's no need at this point to make much of the perfectly-wrought slender plot of George Miller's spectacular ode to the glories of cinema via its wham-bam ultra-violence, save for the fact that Tom Hardy's Max Rockatansky, the immortal road warrior of the three movies starring Mel Gibson, hooks up with the hot, head-shaved, one-armed Imperator Furiosa (the hot, head-shaved, not-really-one-armed Charlize Theron) to make her way back to the paradise of her childhood homeland whilst rescuing a clutch of gorgeous babes held as breeders by the post-apocalyptic mutants who've carved out a massive kingdom of slavery and brutal repression.

The most interesting aspect of the tale is that our hero is initially captured by the mutants, forced to become a perpetual blood donor and then secured to the front of warrior Nux's (Nicholas Hoult) car as a "blood bag" (to explode in a shower of crimson if and when the roadster slams into something). For at least 30 of the film's 120 minutes, its hero is forced to wear a mask and trussed into complete immobility. He does, however, have a perfect view of the mad chase and carnage that ensues, happily giving us, the loyal audience, more than a few delectable points of view.

Then for another 30 of the film's 120 minutes, Max plays second fiddle to Furiosa until the final 60 of 120 minutes whereupon he's finally able to fully engage in the heroics Mel Gibson was allowed to indulge in during Mad Max and The Road Warrior.

The first hour of the film contains some of the most stunning, nail-biting chase sequences ever committed to the edification of action fans since the very dawn of cinema as well as imagery in the mutant kingdom which is so eye-poppingly grotesque that it rivals that of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, which director George Miller is clearly indebted to. At 72-years-old, director George Miller manages to easily take several huge dumps of superiority upon every other younger director in recent years who've purported to direct action blockbusters. This includes, but is not limited to the execrable Sam Mendes, J.J. Abrams, Bryan Singer, Joss Whedon and Christopher "One Idea" Nolan.

Miller's mise-en-scene is thankfully sans herky-jerky camera moves, ludicrously endless closeups, picture cutting that's almost solely dependent upon sound cues rather than visual dramatic action, an over-reliance upon digital effects and tin-eyed spatiality. His eye for action and his sense of rhythm is impeccable, his eye for the grotesque (the mutant villains, the earth-mother breast-milk slaves, the mohawk hairdos, body piercings, tattoos and the grandly retro mechanisms in the fortress) has seldom been paralleled, his commitment to driving everything dramatically because he's wisely utilized a simple narrative coat hanger to add all the necessary layers; all this and more points to his innate genius as a REAL filmmaker as opposed to most of the poseurs making blockbusters in contemporary Hollywood.

Though a part of me would have preferred if Miller had continued using the great Mel Gibson in the role of Max and added the layer of age to the character's bitterness, guilt and weariness, I'm happy enough with his selection of the strange stalwart intensity of Tom Hardy and the fine actor's chemistry (thankfully non-romantic or even vaguely sexual) with Charlize Theron's tough-as-nails-exterior masking her long-ago lost innocence of childhood.

And yes, though another part of me wished Miller had tried to bring his film's running time down to the 90-95-minutes of Mad Max and The Road Warrior, I was never bored during the 120 minutes of Fury Road, only occasionally fatigued by its relentlessness.


I love the first two Mad Max films so much that I'm grateful to Miller for not abandoning the spirit of them and using his previous work as a natural springboard into both the familiar and the fresh.

That the villain Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) is equally foul to such previous villains as The Toe Cutter and Humungous makes me very happy. Even happier to me is that Hugh Keays-Byrne played Toe Cutter AND Immortan Joe.

That the movie, by including a kick-ass female lead who is not just a woman pretending to be a macho Rambolina figure, but a woman driven to fight for the rights of fellow women and lay claim to a part of her that she lost, is what allows Miller to take his place as a genuine artist who heartily grasps the comfort of the familiar whilst building upon that and allowing it to blossom into a wholly new hybrid of insanely magnificent splendour.

That Miller has attempted a different approach to colour with Fury Road is also pleasing. I'll admit to always loving the occasional dapples of almost fluorescent colours amidst the sandy, dusty Australian outback, but I also love the high contrasts Miller employs here with varying shades to lighten or darken the proceedings when necessary.

That the movie uses real souped-up cars, trucks and motorcycles which are really driven by real stunt drivers and really smashed-up-real-good is the biggest bonus of all. (Porcupine-like killer cars, a big-wheeled monstrosity outfitted with banks of speakers and a heavy metal guitarist whose guitar shoots out flames and the terrifying gas tanker commandeered by Furiosa and Max are but a few of the vehicular delights on display.)

Finally, though, I do wish the film had had far more dystopian 70s-style melancholy infused into its a-bit-too-hopeful ending, especially since there's a sense of Max's final look to Furiosa, and to us, resembling the final looks of Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) in John Ford's The Searchers.

But, really now, who am I trying to kid?

I fucking loved this movie.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Mad Max: Fury Road is in wide-mega-release all over the world via Warner Bros. It is presented in 3-D. I refuse to see it in that format as it annoys me. I've only watched it in normal 2-D and was quite satisfied with that, though I'll admit the 3-D might be less egregious to me than it normally is, given Miller's superb direction.
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The 25th Inside Out Toronto LGBT Film Festival 2015 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Stirring Noam Gonick Documentary on the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics - TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE ****

May 27, 2015, 8:58 pm
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Let Gorgeous Johnny Weir guide you through the highs, lows, hatred, love, heartache and triumphs of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in Totalitarian Russia.

To Russia With Love (2015)
Dir. Noam Gonick

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To Russia With Love (recently honoured as a nominee in the prestigious GLAAD Media Awards in New York) is a gripping feature documentary which casts an indelible eye upon both LGBT participation in sports and the repressive dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. In fact, it's not surprising at all that filmmaker Noam Gonick would be the one to fashion of one of the best, if not, frankly, the best of all documentaries dealing with human rights issues affecting the LGBT community in Russia during the 2014 Olympics in Sochi. First and foremost, Gonick is one of the more stellar leading lights of the Prairie-Post-Modernist Wave of cinema in Winnipeg; one that includes the likes of John Paizs, Guy Maddin, Deco Dawson and Matthew Rankin.

He brings his unique outsider perspective to anything he puts his mitts on; especially such seminal (as it were) works as 1919 (the brilliant re-imagining of the famed Winnipeg General Strike with a fantasia upon the late-lamented Wong's Steam Bath and Bill Sciak's legendary barber shop in Winnipeg's Chinatown), his intensely diverse feature films Hey Happy! and Stryker, plus his astonishing post-modern documentary Hirsch on the late, great pioneer of regional theatre as well as the saviour of the Stratford Theatre Festival and CBC Drama.

What's thrilling about Gonick's helmsmanship in this new film is just how skilfully he juggles several vital narrative threads revolving around Sochi and how he deftly creates several sub-arcs within the overall arc of the film's compelling narrative (and vitally important political, social and cultural issues). This is not mere "journalism" documentary, but genuine storytelling with a voice (one which he shares so much with his more "out-there" works as well as his more "straight"-up television work and his brilliant doc on Guy Maddin, Waiting For Twilight).

The film follows several Canadian LGBT athletes during the buildup, then participation and finally, the aftermath of the 2014 Sochi Olympics. He weaves these stories (which include insights into the openness and acceptance of the athletes' families) with three central narratives.

RUSSIA's LGBT community under ATTACK!
Perhaps the central non-fiction tale involves the stunningly beautiful and handsome former Olympic skater Johnny Weir who will be covering the proceedings for broadcast television. Weir in not only charming, funny and erudite, but he's delectably flamboyant and a lifelong Russophile (which makes the country's "legal" castigation of the LGBT community especially painful for him).

Weir uses his position as a behind-the-scenes activist and spokesperson whilst brilliantly adhering to the Olympic Committee's moronic demands that all Sochi participants (athletes, broadcasters, administrators, etc.) maintain complete silence about "political" issues. Christ, since when have the Olympics not been political (as Gonick superbly touches upon)?

Weir's narrative melds with two important story strands; one involving an all-LGBT sporting competition to occur in Sochi just after the Olympics and the other, perhaps the most moving of all the stories, Vladislav Slavskiya, a teenage gay man who lives in Sochi and who has experienced the most horrendous verbal, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of homophobic students and teachers in his high school and longs for an opportunity to find a place in the world where he can be proud and accepted for whom and what he is. (There's even an unbelievably moving development which occurs during his plight with the famously-out Billie Jean King.)

Overall, Gonick wrenches us this way and that, as all great filmmakers should. He makes superb use of the many ups, downs, happiness and melancholy that the entire Sochi experience is infused with to deliver a film that's entertaining, informative and finally, must-see viewing for all audiences, gay or straight, all over the free (and not-so-free) world.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

To Russia With Love is playing at the Inside Out 2015 Toronto LGBT Film Festival. For further info, please visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

Full Disclosure: During the early 90s in Winnipeg, my film production office shared the same floor as the artist apartment in the old Plug-Inn Gallery space above U.N. Luggage. Noam Gonick lived there for a time and we'd often catch occasional (mostly attired) glimpses of each other. I only shared Noam's bed when I was visiting as it was the most comfortable place to sit. I also never shared a bubble bath with him as filmmaker Deco Dawson (above left) clearly did. Noam has, however, fed me brisket, for which I am eternally grateful.
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It's TEA TIME with THOMAS TOLES, The Film Corner's All New Columnist:Draw up thine comfy chairs for some High Tea at Oxford University, asRhodes Scholar, young Master Thomas Toles gives BREAKING BAD a jollygood thrashing.

June 2, 2015, 7:36 am
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If you require a better view of Thomas and his illustrious credentials, please click on the friendly masthead just above.

Walter White Privilege: Facile Empathy in Breaking Bad

By Film Corner Tea Time Columnist THOMAS TOLES

Given that Better Call Saul, the spin-off of Vince Gilligan’s universally acclaimed Breaking Bad has placed its first record-breaking season six-feet-under (in slavering anticipation of the second season, ordered by AMC before Season One even aired), it’s high time for a critical reexamination of the series that started it all, a show that pretends to test the limits of our empathy while rewarding its viewers for lazily aligning with a singular, dominant perspective.

Let us examine what is broken and bad with Breaking Bad.

"Let's just blow EVERYBODY the fuck away!"

Walter White (Bryan Cranston), an overqualified chemistry teacher with an ego, is driven to meth dealing and murder by the onset of lung cancer. He hopes to earn enough to cover his exorbitant treatment costs and posthumously bequeath a large sum for his family. The apparent premise of the show is: to what extent can this ordinary man justify his increasingly immoral behaviour with ostensibly compassionate motives? How long will the viewer’s allegiance to Walt last before siding with him becomes impossible?

Breaking Bad’s great fault, however, is that it creates a warped world in which there is effectively no human alternative to Walt. He is the cleverest, coolest, most compelling person in the show, unquestionably a better meth cook than any Hispanic cartel member who preceded him. The genius middle-class white man with crazed ambition (the American dream!) is glorified in his corruption while the devastating effects of meth addiction on impoverished communities are only shown once or twice in the entire series. Walter White is “Whiteman,” America’s presiding figure--a superhero of narcissistic greed.

The emotional consequences of Walt’s actions on his family and other major characters are deceptively insubstantial. The wronged family includes his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), a character so unsympathetic to most fans that desperately cheating on her lying drug-dealer husband was widely deemed unforgivable. Then there are his children: Walt Jr. (RJ MItte), whose primary arc consists of driving lessons and breakfast consumption, and Holly (Elanor Anne Wenrich), a baby forgotten as frequently by the show’s writers as Maggie is by Homer Simpson.

Skyler is a controversial case because, as Erin Gloria Ryan (writer and managing editor of JEZEBEL) argued, fan hatred for her was due to misogyny, despite the show’s loud assertions of her blamelessness. I counter that her blamelessness reflects Gilligan’s inability to imagine a rich inner life for the character. Skyler’s existence separate from Walt’s endeavours, and her pain, become increasingly vague as the show takes Walt’s continuing survival as its central concern. Walt also causes anguish for Jesse (Aaron Paul), his partner-in-crime, but Walt’s final sacrifice for Jesse allows the older man’s manipulations to be overshadowed by the real villains of the show.

Breaking Bad ends by establishing a ludicrous dichotomy between Walt (a human with flaws--like us) and the fantasy of truly evil people (neo-Nazis) who, unlike saintly Walt, don’t have their reasons. Walt confesses his selfishness (self-awareness achieved!) and redeems himself by vanquishing actual, uncomplicated evil and rescuing Jesse.

Walter White and Edward Hyde: Happy Bedfellows!

For the show’s legions of viewers, Walt has been a surrogate Mr. Hyde, allowing us to tacitly revel in his immorality from the safety of our couches. Breaking Bad relies on the seductive illusion that our dark sides can be outsourced to Walt, vicariously embraced, and then neutralized with Walt’s death and his accompanying self-awareness (that we are invited to share).

Gilligan expresses his desire to redeem Walt and provide a satisfying, palatable ending in his comments on a possible alternate ending in which Walt shoots up a jail to free Jesse:
“[W]e kept asking ourselves, ‘Well, how bad is Walt going to be at the end here? Is he going to kill a bunch of upstanding, law-abiding jail guards? What the hell kind of ending is that?’”
Gilligan wants closure and gratification for his audience; he does not want to leave them frustrated or confused. Walt’s redemption purges the viewer’s guilt for fetishizing him, tying up the show’s loose ends on a chilling note of admiration.

Fiction has the power to vividly portray disorder and ambiguity, in ways that may help us reach a wider, more empathetic outlook. Yet Breaking Bad rewards its viewers for lionizing its slick, troubled protagonist, not challenging us to peer at the peripheral figures beyond him.

Countless Americans are indifferent to the commonplace killings of unarmed people of colour by police officers—proclaiming that Mike Brown, Miriam Carey, Eric Garner, and many others just shouldn’t have broken the law. Undoubtedly, many of these same Americans readily accepted Walt’s violent criminality.

Breaking Bad dangerously inhibits empathy for real-life abuses of power because it predominantly asks its viewers to identify with the one character with both authority and explicit motives. Walt is a complex figure surrounded by stereotypes like Tuco’s homicidal cousins, whose non-existent personalities are only justified by their brutish foreignness.

Breaking Bad encourages empathy for yet another white authority figure (who kills, like Darren Wilson or George Zimmerman, when he “fears for his life”), while disregarding the humanity of those less powerful than he.

A narrow vision, indeed.

Breaking Badis available in Canada by clicking HEREand in the United States of America by clicking HEREand in the Jolly Old United Kingdom by clicking HERE The first 10 episodes of Season One of Better Call Saul premiered on AMC on February 8, 2015.

All photo collages by GJK
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LET US PREY - BLU-RAY/DVD Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hot Babe Cop KicksDemonic Ass

June 3, 2015, 8:58 pm
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Let Us Prey (2014)
Dir. Brian O'Malley
Scr. David Cairns, Fiona Watson
Starring: Pollyanna McIntosh, Liam Cunningham,
Douglas Russell, Bryan Larkin, Hanna Stanbridge, Niall Greig Fulton

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Brian O'Malley's Let Us Prey, is a rip-snortingly scary, utterly demented supernatural take on John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, which, for added kick, is liberally sprinkled with plenty of Irish Whiskey and smothered with globs of bloody haggis (as its Irish-Scottish co-pro roots demand).

If you've seen Lucky McKee's delectably vile The Woman, you already know what a great actress (and babe) Pollyanna McIntosh is. Well, praise be to Jesus and Lucifer, Let Us Prey serves up McIntosh's va-va-va-voom frame of womanhood stuffed into the tasty sausage sack of a form-fitting cop's uniform. Unlike McKee's picture, though, this plucky lassie is not about to be hung up nude in a barn and used for sexual gratification, but likeThe Woman, she more than admirably gets to exact major-league ultra-violent payback upon a fine selection of despicable scumbags.

Using the taut, imaginative screenplay by David Cairns and Fiona Watson as his blueprint for madness, helmer O'Malley skillfully leads us into the fiery pits of the first official night on the job for a newbie female cop in a Bonny Scottish police station located in the most remote locale imaginable (which, is pretty much all of Scotland, so there's always going to be weird stuff going on in that blessed country).

As you already know it's a variation on the great John Carpenter station-house-under-siege picture, it's best not to spoil things with too many details. All you need to understand before going in is that an event occurs which spirals out of control as the cop shop is besieged by evil filth of the highest order and, of course, MUST be dispatched -- with, of course, extreme prejudice.

We get an alcoholic thug, a mass murderer, a self-flagellating killer of buff, young fellas and amongst some garden variety corrupt, murderous cops, there's a child-raping kidnapper who may or may not be a demon from the utter depths of Hell itself. Of all nights, this is one in which our plucky heroine might have wished she'd been home washing her hair and eating bonbons in front of the telly.

But such is not to be the case.

Violence must be done by a hot babe and we, the audience, are all the better for it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3-and-a-half-stars

Let Us Prey is now available on a gorgeously transferred BluRay and DVD combo pack via Raven Banner Entertainment and Anchor Bay Canada.
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Canuck Horror and Canuck Comedy offer up distinctive shrieks- Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - BERKSHIRE COUNTY ****, MANGIACAKE ***

June 4, 2015, 10:00 am
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In the middle of nowhere, on All Hallows Eve:
THERE WILL BE PIGS!!!
Berkshire County (2014)
Dir. Audrey Cummings
Starring: Alysa King, Madison Ferguson, Cristophe Gallander,
Samora Smallwood, Bart Rochon, Aaron Chartrand, Leo Pady, Robert Nolan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Pigs get a bad rap. They're gentle, friendly and intelligent creatures. Alas, in the parlance of western culture, since time immemorial, really, the pig has been synonymous with a variety of grotesqueries such as filth, greed, gluttony, violence, corruption and most decidedly, just plain uncouth behaviour. With that rather unfair but common understanding of piggishness, it seems only appropriate that the damnable porkers abound malevolently in Berkshire County, the dazzling first feature by Canadian filmmaker Audrey Cummings. On the surface and at its most basic level, it could be seen as a simple, straight-up babysitter-in-peril-during-a-home-invasion thriller.

Sure, it most certainly is that, especially if that's all you're looking for. However, it's not quite as straight up as one might suspect. The reason it works so superbly is that the simple premise is successfully mined to yield several levels of complexity which add to the picture's richness. Most notably, there's the matter of the movie's virtuosity. Cummings directs the picture with the kind of within-an-inch-of-her-life urgency and stratospheric level of craft that, with the whiz-bang cutting of editor Michael P. Mason and Michael Jari Davidson's evocative lensing, yield a horror suspense thriller that infuses you with creepy-crawly dread and one astounding scare set-piece after another.

That, frankly, would be enough to spew laudatory ejaculate right in the face of the whole affair, but on a deeper thematic level, Cummings and screenwriter Chris Gamble offer up a delectably sumptuous and varied buffet for an audience to gobble up with the ferocity of snuffling hogs at the trough. Berkshire County is an intense, topical, nasty, darkly funny and even politically-charged feminist horror picture in the tradition of other leading Canadian female genre directors like the Soska Sisters, Karen Lam and Jovanka Vuckovic.

It's proof positive, once again, that Canadian WOMEN are leading the charge of terrifying, edge-of-your-seat horror-fests that are as effectively drawer-filling as they are provocative and politically astute. It's unabashed exploitation injected with discerning observational power.

The film begins during a Halloween party in the rural enclave of the film's title. The gorgeous teenage girl-next-door Kylie Winters (Alysa King) arrives adorned in the sexiest Little Red Riding Hood costume imaginable. Heads swivel in her general direction, but none more so than that of the handsome Marcus (Aaron Chartrand), a hunky stud-horse-man-boy from the local high school. He, like the other small town, small-minded fellas is swine (of the male chauvinist variety) incarnate.

In what's possibly one of the more disturbing acts committed in any genre picture of recent memory, Kylie is plied with booze, coerced - essentially date-raped - into blowing Marcus. Unbeknownst to her, she's captured on his smart phone movie camera which he promptly uploads to cyber space for all to see.

Though the film has previously opened with a creepy Kubrickian traveling overhead shot of the county's forested, isolated topography (a la The Shining), Cummings and Gamble plunge us into very unexpected territory. Initially, the horror is neither supernatural nor of the psychopathic variety, but a monstrous act of sexual abuse, followed by the insidious cyber-dissemination of pornographic images of said abuse and then the teasing, bullying and shame experienced by Kylie who was the target of the abuse and subsequent derision levelled at her by peers.

Ripped from the headlines of a veritable myriad of similar cases involving tragic sexual abuse, we are privy to one of the more abominable aspects of contemporary teen culture. In Canada, the most horrific example is that of Nova Scotia teen Rehtaeh Parsons who, plied with booze and gang raped on camera, committed suicide when the images went viral. What faces Kylie is so debilitatingly nasty that she's the one made to feel like a pariah - as if she were to blame. Even Kylie's repressed dough-headed mother blames Kylie for bringing scandal upon the family.

To add insult to injury, Kylie is further estranged from those who should be offering support when she is practically forced by her mother to take a Halloween night babysitting gig at an isolated mansion on the outskirts of the community. That said, Kylie seems to welcome the peace and isolation the job might afford, far away from the piggish behaviour of her abuser, his stupid friends, her idiot mother and everyone else who teases and/or affixes blame upon her. A gorgeous mansion with all the amenities and two sweet kids has Heaven on Earth written all over it. Or so she (and we) think. She (and we) are wrong about that.

Pigs, you see, are lurking in the woods. Not just any pigs, mind you, but a family of travelling serial killers adorned in horrifying pig masks. And these sick fuckers mean business. Happily, Cummings and Gamble have fashioned a terrific female empowerment tale within the context of the horror genre. By focusing, in the first third, upon the teen culture of abuse and bullying and then tossing their lead character into a nail-bitingly terrifying maze of sheer horror, they, as filmmakers and we, as an audience, get to have the whole cake and eat it too. The final two-thirds cleverly and relentlessly presents one seemingly impossible challenge after another and we're front-row passengers on a roller coaster ride of mostly unpredictable chills and thrills until we're eyeballs-glued-to-the-screen during some deliciously repellent violence and, of course, a bit of the old feminist-infused empowerment.

Joining a fine tradition of home invasion movies like The Strangers and You're Next, it's a film that, in its own special way exceeds the aims of those seminal works because it places the horror in a context of the kind of horror which has become all too real in contemporary society. In a sense, the film's target audience, teens and young 20-somethings (and middle-aged horror geeks who've never grown up) will get everything they want out of the picture - and then some.

And just so we're not feeling too warm and fuzzy after the film's harrowing climax, Cummings spews a blood-spattered shocker upon us - one that horror fans have seen a million times before, but when it's served up right, we're always happy to see it again. So take a trip to Berkshire County. It's a fork in the road (and blade in the gut) worth choosing.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Berkshire County, winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the esteemed Shriekfest Film Festival in Los Angeles will be released in Canada via A-71 and is being sold to the rest of the world by the visionary Canadian sales agency Raven Banner. Playdates so far are as follows:

OPENS Theatrically – JUNE 5, 2015
TORONTO – Carlton Cinema, 20 Carlton St.
OTTAWA – Landmark Kanata, 801 Kanata Ave
WHITBY – Landmark Cinemas 24 Whitby, 75 Consumers Drive

More cities to follow


Mangiacake (2015)
Dir. Nate Estabrooks
Scr. Christina Cuffari & Estabrooks
Starring: Melanie Scrofano, Christina Cuffari, Jocelyne Zucco, Paula McPherson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Mangiacake takes the cake for being one of the most perversely entertaining ethnic family comedies I've seen in quite some time. It's not perfect; the film's ultra-low budget sometimes betrays it in the production-value department with spotty sound, flat lighting and spartan production design, BUT, if you can overlook those elements, then you'll probably have a good time.

Two early-20-something Italian sisters (Melanie Scrofano, Christina Cuffari) move back home with their mother and grandmother. They're major-league squabblers and sparks fly right from the beginning.

One sister has suffered a massive concussion and suffers from memory loss, an especially inconvenient state of affairs since she's studying for finals in traditional Chinese medicine. (There are a couple of knee-slappers involving acupuncture needles and fresh produce.) The other sister, a not-too-successful actress is fleeing responsibility, auditioning for roles she'll probably never get and embroiled in a very odd text-only romantic relationship.

Mom (Paula McPherson), unprepared for being assailed by the squabbling sisters is hitting the sauce a bit too heavily and Grandma (Jocelyne Zucco), devoted to Jesus and the Virgin Mary, attempts to broker peace with her endless looks of displeasure and nonsensical old world sayings.


A good chunk of the movie is devoted to the bickering twixt the sisters. This is pretty easy to take since both actresses are easy on the eyes and acquit themselves especially well -- they've got to spit out lines at each other faster than a gatling gun and often, at the top of their considerable Italian lungs. In fact, this is what I found especially insane -- the movie is an almost non-stop screamfest with plenty of good insults hurled back and forth and eventually building to a chaotic everything but the kitchen sink climax of madness and not without hilarity.

Watching two young, hot Italian babes screaming at each other and engaging occasionally in cat fights is probably what I responded to most of all. At times I couldn't believe how intense their jousting got, but the bigger it got, the more I thoroughly appreciated it.

At times, the pace of the dialogue (courtesy of the oddball screenplay) is a kind of Speedy Gonzalez version of Howard-Hawksian back and forth (courtesy of direction, cutting and performances) and that, almost in and of itself offers considerable pleasure. The writing feels like it comes from a real place, even though much of it is overwrought -- it's overwrought in ways I've witnessed in many ethnic family dynamics.

Estabrooks' coverage as a director, is usually spot on. He shoots simply for the laughs, and production value aside, it's nicely directed. A dinner table scene is especially well done and, believe it or not, scenes around tables can often be the most difficult things to properly do. Hell, they can sometimes be more challenging than a bloody car chase. Happily, it and a number of other comedy set-pices are nicely covered and cut. Oh, and yeah, the dinner table scene is especially grotesquely funny (as is much of the movie).

I'll admit to spitting up my Chinotto on more than one occasion.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Mangiacake is in limited theatrical release across Canada and also available via VOD. It opens July 19 at the Magic Lantern Rainbow Carlton Cinemas in Toronto.
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THE NIGHTMARE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Room 237 Director yields soil-your-pants Doc

May 31, 2015, 8:58 pm
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The Nightmare (2015)
Dir. Rodney Ascher

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I'm not sure what's scarier -- seeing this movie if you've never experienced sleep paralysis, or if you have. Either way, Room 237 director Rodney Ascher has knocked one right out of the park with this chilling documentary focusing upon one of the most horrific experiences anyone can have in one's sleep (or anytime for that matter) and, of course, the terror one experiences during the light of day, dreading sleep itself. He chose well to make The Nightmare his sophomore feature. Happily, there's absolutely nothing self-indulgent or navel-gazing about it, even though the picture represents a deeply personal endeavour for him to explore experiences people have had with sleep paralysis that were similar to his own bouts with this most unenviable of all night terrors.

His magnificent debut feature, an exploration of those mad obsessives and their theories behind purported hidden symbols in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, now seems like a mere appetizer to the main course of his new picture. Herein, he interviews eight subjects who've experienced lifetimes of sheer terror, sometimes appearing onscreen himself in conversation with them (and certainly within the context of his own experience), Ascher recreates their"nightmares" with the assured touch of a true master of suspense.

The Nightmare is a documentary designed to curdle the blood and its director pulls it off with piercing, unsettling aplomb.


Sleep paralysis is a genuine physiological/psychological experience -- it usually occurs in those strange periods just before settling into REM or on the tail end of a deep sleep. I experienced it quite relentlessly in the early 80s and it's something I've never forgotten, but luckily, in the past two decades I've not been assaulted by it. I hope it never, ever happens again.

What happens during sleep paralysis is simple -- you're awake in your mind, but not in your body and experience a living nightmare that's seemingly impossible to wake from. You become completely immobile, weighted down as if you've lost all power to move. Often you feel like someone or something is holding you in a vicelike grip -- physically pinning you to your bed.

A number of the participants in the film describe the inability to move, but eventually, Ascher structures his interviews so that a number of them reveal and then describe the pain inflicted by creepy visitors to their respective psyches. People all over the world have seen similar figures, three dimensional shadows: some resembling humans, but many bearing the physical properties of living beings that are decidedly not human.


The film delves into a variety of areas surrounding this horrible phenomenon, the numerous hows, whys, wheres, whens and whats, but most phenomenally, delivering several compelling real-life dramatic arcs - everything from acceptance to full-on battle with whatever sleep paralysis really is. Far too many physicians look upon it as a mental illness or as the severest form of sleep apnea. The MDs and specialists try, unsuccessfully, to treat it as such.

Those who do beat sleep paralysis, often find ways to do it all on their own, succumbing intentionally into experiencing the terror, allowing themselves, in their dream states to open themselves up to the experiences of sleep paralysis to the absolute fullest of their abilities to do so. Such confrontations can prove so cathartic that they can literally be healing forces. In other instances, they don't go away, but can be managed. Sadly, in others, though, the song (as it were) remains the same.

For me, I love that one of the film's participants acknowledges the great physicist Michio Kaku (I'm a huge fan of his writing). Kaku's theories regarding the notion that the universe and its inhabitants live within several dimensions at once, but most often not being aware of it and that in all waves of being, entities, including ourselves, wander unwittingly into other reaches, other planes of reality. (Most sickeningly, though, is the thought that some do it quite willingly.)

Whatever the real reasons for sleep paralysis, though, I'm delighted a serious, artistically stellar documentary has finally been made to address it.

As a filmmaker, Ascher's also proven here to be no one-trick pony after his uniquely compelling first feature. His eye is impeccable and he's layered this film with one of the creepiest soundscapes in many a picture. Ascher's the real thing and then some.

As such, The Nightmare is, in and of itself, the real thing and then some -- a great documentary and one of the scariest pictures of the year.

Prepare to soil yourself.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

The Nightmare is playing theatrically in Toronto at the Royal Cinema -- a great venue to experience some of the most dazzling displays of picture and sound in the country, especially with this visually and aurally rich film. I understand the management of the Royal will provide Depend Adult Diapers to those who fear they might unload in, uh, fear. This will hopefully save the plush, comfortable seats of the cinema from the, uh, shall we say, leakages.
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