Category Archives: 366 Underground

366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: BATTLE AT BEAVER CREEK (2014)

3 Comments

DIRECTED BY: Bryan Taylor

FEATURING: Matt Brown, Sheldon Graham, Corky McMechan

PLOT: In the near future, a volunteer travels to the Yukon border to fight with a militia against unknown invaders.

Still from Battle at Beaver Creek (2014)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s really just a very elaborate home movie, and not a particularly weird one at that.

COMMENTS: Every single person who appeared in Battle at Beaver Creek—every soldier extra glimpsed from a distance for a half-second, every motionless corpse—gets a video credit at the end of the movie, with a closeup  and their name in big letters. It’s both amusing and endearing, and reveals the kind of production this was—a bunch of guys out in a field together, making a movie! And, to their credit, they did make a movie—a coherent one, with a beginning, middle and end, a few nice ideas, and creative effects given the budget. Unfortunately, while that achievement is impressive, that doesn’t mean that you, as a member of the general viewing public, are going to be interested in seeing the result.

This is one of those movies where nothing much really happens, and you still can’t figure out exactly what’s going on. Introductory text explains that we’re 100 years in a pseudo-post-apocalyptic future, and the American government has developed mind control technology known as WEFI. We then see Chinese office workers turn into suicidal zombies for reasons that are never explained. TV tells us that an unknown force, possibly Chechens (?!) are gathering on the Yukon-Alaskan border to invade Canada, and a local militia is forming to oppose them. Our protagonist, who seems to be some sort of retired intelligence officer or something (his backstory is never explained) goes to join them at Beaver Creek, where he encounters mind control warfare.

The movie has a vision of the future that’s fairly plausible, and a few interesting moments (when an omniscient being appears in the sky, delivering lines like “I am your Lord God. You are an American projection”). But the downsides are formidable.  Essentially, as is so often the case for movies funded by credit card, the project’s ambition outstrips its resources. There are no professional actors in the cast; they can’t even find anyone to convincingly play an emotionless zombie. The use of stock footage can be distractingly bad (apparently, one hundred years from now, the U.N. Secretary General will be a dead ringer for former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad). Although the futuristic setting which mixes high cybertechnology with a fossil fuel shortage is rich, the script is still confusing, and it’s difficult to tell what exactly is at stake and at times even who’s who. The dozens of available extras are not enough to create a believable battle scene.

Most of all, there is simply not enough material here to create a feature film. The solution is to pad the film with endless walking scenes. Our hero begins walking to Beaver Creek at the 18-minute mark and does not reach the first plot point until the 27-minute mark. The fact that the Yukon scenery is beautiful and the cameraman experiments with different digital grains and arty dissolves does not change the fact that nothing is happening except a guy walking. And, after he finally does meet another character and they exchange a few minutes of additional exposition, it’s time to start marching again. The eighty-minute runtime seems interminable. Well-intentioned but, unfortunately, flat-out boring, Battle at Beaver Creek cannot be recommended to anyone but other low-budget filmmakers looking to copy the few good ideas here, and avoid the many pitfalls.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…one of those weird, cultish independent films that you may not think you’ll like, but eventually will.”–Amy R. Handler, Film Threat (contemporaneous)

366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: THE LAST ROAD (2012)

1 Comment

DIRECTED BY: John Wheeler

FEATURING: Aaron Long, Simon Sokowlwoski, Laura Marklew

PLOT: A down-on-his-luck fighter with anger issues and a penchant for bringing his dog everywhere with him is killed; instead of going to Heaven or Hell, he is left in a Purgatory that looks like Birmingham and must find his place in a brutal, unforgiving afterlife.

The Last Road

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Every film that has been both excellent and unique enough to make it onto the List of the 366 weirdest films of all time has been guided by a strong sense of purpose, or at least a sense of identity. The Last Road is hopelessly lost on the very road it sets out on; it is the film equivalent of listening to someone decide out loud what they want to eat for dinner.

COMMENTS: It wasn’t that long ago that when people said the words “independent picture” in conversation, the image brought to mind was of a navel-gazing, impenetrable vanity project from someone who hadn’t had the career or life experience to demand a moviegoer’s attention span. With the explosion of pop culture indie-centrism in the early ’00s and the digital camera revolution, indies have come a long way since then, but a stigma still remains in the public consciousness from decades of snoozers like Smilla’s Sense of Snow and twee-fests like Garden State. The Last Road is an ambitious independent feature from first-time writer/director/key grip John Wheeler about life after life, and while it is obvious that the spirit here is willing, the body, unfortunately, is weak.

Set in the arsehole of Britannia, which will henceforth be referred to as Trainspotting-ham, it chronicles the misadventures of Toby, the angriest bloke who ever bloked. This guy is the worst; imagine an unemployed Morrissey with short hair who binge-watches MMA bouts and thinks he looks good in tank tops. He is a fighter with a nasty temper, a temper that is affecting his relationships at home and in the ring. His ill mother is subject to one of his tantrums and has a pint of milk dumped on her head as a result, and when his anger gets the better of him while talking to his shady underworld boss, it leads to his dog being viciously killed in front of his eyes (!!!). This sets him up for an (ultimately final) outburst in the ring, whereby his overwhelming explosion of violence leads his opponent, in desperation, to slash Toby’s throat with a nearby broken beer bottle and end his life. This is only the beginning of the story, however, as we are taken to the afterlife, where Toby is confronted with his poor life decisions by a shrewish blonde angel driving a Mini. She tells him that he has to find his own way to salvation, otherwise he can never be redeemed in the eyes of God. So Toby wanders the wastes of Limbo, meeting new friends, inciting bitter rivalries, and reuniting with familiar faces from his previous life.

…at least, I think so. The Last Road is really very noncommittal about what it wants to say or do. Or perhaps it is covering up a lack of narrative with visuals, strange set pieces, and maudlin introspection. Whatever the case may be, there is not enough happening (truly happening, not just tiresome flashbacks and unappealing static shots) to justify a 90 minute feature. Which is quite a setback, considering this is a 123 minute-long movie! That means lots of time taken up by the INNER TURMOIL of our hero, without context in the story or reasonable explanation.

And this is the most contentious aspect of the whole affair, because Toby’s struggle, the entire impetus of the film and the reason both he and the moviegoer set out on the sojourn that is The Last Road, is an informed attribute. We are not given an ounce of exposition as to why things are so difficult for him, why he is suffering on the inside, or what his motivations are for doing any of the seemingly arbitrary things he ends up doing. He is just an angry guy with a mission to redeem himself. But why? Who is this person? Why does he want to be redeemed in God’s eyes? Why does he need to be redeemed at all? Instead of answers, or something resembling an answer, we are treated to indulgent, laconic moments of on-screen anguish, as if Toby, in a wrestling ring on the seedy side of Trainspotting-ham, had died for our sins.

The Last Road is an independent feature that, while admittedly unique, lives up to that grand old indie tradition of being very difficult to watch. It is a shame, because it exhibits a wealth of potential from a first-time director: the shots are carefully composed, the sound design is remarkable, and the sets are eerie and full of nihilistic expression. But the delivery of these qualities in the form of unlikable characters trudging through a banal narrative ends up feeling confused at best and emotionally manipulative at worst (i.e. anything involving the damn dog). A similar-yet-better experience would be turning on What Dreams May Come with the brightness level on the television adjusted down 50%.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Trying to figure out what the film was getting at with certain characters and situations allows you to run with the narrative in a number of directions beyond the obvious, and that offers an extra level of engagement. It all comes down to whether you find the ideas presented interesting enough to ponder, of course, but I think the film delivers enough variety to avoid becoming too stale.”–Mark Bell, Film Threat (DVD)

366 Underground, Capsules

366 UNDERGROUND: BAD CHICKEN (2013)

3 Comments

DIRECTED BY: Carter Mays

FEATURING: Isabelle Gardo, Michael Palaniuk, voice of David Schweizer

PLOT: A chicken convinces a beautiful woman to participate in a fake reality TV show, hoping to seduce her.

Still from Bad Chicken (2013)
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: It’s got a sociopathic chicken, which is something you don’t see everyday, but it doesn’t have enough weird huevos to crack the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies ever made.

COMMENTS: Bad Chicken sets me to wondering about the dilemma of low-budget filmmaking. What can you do to set yourself apart from big-budget pictures? Bad Chicken is well-shot, well-lit, well-edited, with a good score (by Schweitzer, who also voices the main chicken) and an accomplished credits sequence; technically, it’s television show-quality affair (thankfully, it doesn’t stoop to mimicking the handheld production values of the reality shows it mocks). I could imagine some steroid-fed variation on this idea playing in theaters, with 3-D CGI chickens and a second-tier comedian like Kevin James voicing the bird.

A comedy about cute puppets engaging in politically incorrect bad behavior would have been an underground outrage in 1989, but in the 2010s, after Seth McFarlane’s Ted, it’s straight cineplex stuff. With bad taste mainstreamed in the post “South Park” world, there’s less and less the underground can give us that Hollywood isn’t be willing to supply, only with bigger names and higher production values. Bad Chicken has a decent enough gimmick and it makes for a watchable enough comedy, but it doesn’t push the outrageousness meter to the lengths it would have to go to get noticed. Sure, there’s a (non-explicit) montage of Charlie Chicken picking up hookers for hotel room trysts, and a scene of two chickens dueling with dildos, but there’s nothing here you couldn’t see done better on a cutting edge TV-14 sketch comedy show. The situation is absurd, but the big punchlines never arrive (there are no poultry-based puns, which seems like a gamble in a chicken comedy).

On the plus side, starlet Isabelle Gardo (not pictured) ruffles some feathers with her satirical turn as a shallow, celebrity-obsessed bimbo; she appears to have a minor orgasm from reading an email announcing that she has been selected as a reality show contestant. Her performance, however, is mainly impressive in the sense that it makes you hope to see her in something a little bigger. This is the dilemma low-budget independent films find themselves in: it’s not enough to be just as good as regular entertainment. They have to be better, weirder, or at least make your blood boil when you watch them. They have to have zero restraint, they can’t leave any bad taste on the table. Bad Chicken isn’t a bad watch—it’s a painless way to kill ninety minutes—but it works better as an advertisement for its makers’ potential to move up the production ladder than it does as on its own as a wicked cult item.

Bad Chicken was picked up for distribution by Gravitas Ventures, which specializes in video-on-demand distribution. The film can be screened digitally through Amazon, Itunes, etc., and can be rented on a number of American cable networks. DVDs can be purchased directly from the makers at the official site.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…part media satire and part hallucinogenic weirdo comedy.”–Graeme Clark, The Spinning Image (contemporaneous)

366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: SAVAGE WITCHES (2012)

2 Comments

DIRECTED BY: Daniel Fawcett, Clara Pais

FEATURING: Christina Wood, Victoria Smith

Still from Savage Witches (2012)

PLOT: Two teenage girls, Gretchen and Margarita (Wood & Smith), want nothing more than to play games, dress themselves up and have all kinds of adventures, but they constantly find themselves in conflict with the world around them. So they set out to transform it and break free…

COMMENTS:  With a title like that and two teenage girls in the main roles, you might be expecting another grindhouse gem to assert itself onto the film scene. Not in this universe, however—in fact, Savage Witches is best served by throwing out all expectations and just going with the flow of images and sounds in this “motion picture exploration,” as it bills itself.  Savage Witches hearkens back to earlier days of experimental film—the makers cite the works of the Kuchar brothers and  as influences, and the film itself is a direct homage to the Czech film classic Daisies by , which also is about the adventures of two young women who decide to break out of their roles and have adventures by ‘being bad.’

Where Daisies was seen as an overt attack on society by the ‘bad’ behavior of its lead characters, Savage Witches is far less political, but it is still an aesthetic attack on the audience’s expectations of film as entertainment. There are no character arcs and not much in terms of action driving the plot forward. In fact, there’s only the barest hint of any sort of plot… instead, the action is mainly abstract, with the film changing from live action, to photo collage, to storyboards, to Super-8 as Gretchen & Margarita explore their freedom; although the real liberty is the freedom of cinema from the strictures that we commonly bring to it.

04_burning_0791_smallThe film begins with a myriad of colors across the screen, and a voice inviting the audience to join in on an exploration—a dream—through which the voice informs the audience, “we can go anywhere, see anything”. The colors coalesce into two faces, Gretchen and Margarita, and from here on they function as guides/proxies for the audience, as they move forward into adventure: an adventure of form and format, rather than any sort of plot or story that has to be followed in the service of ‘business’ or whatever. That is the only ‘savagery’ exhibited by these pair of “savage witches”: the refusal to conform to the typical structure of what we expect when we sit down to watch a film. It is perhaps for this reason that the “savage witches” are burned at the end (besides the fact it provides an exciting ending), and our last glimpse of them is of them resting in state, but even then, they continue to flout our expectations… in contrast to the heroines of Daisies, who are definitely punished at the end for their bad behavior. Of course the attack that the protagonists of the Czech film lead against their society is far more pointed and nastier than Savage Witches. Also, the girls of Witches are not as sexualized as the women in Daisies, who use their erotic appeal as a battle tactic.

For a 70 minute experimental feature film, Savage Witches is highly entertaining, which may come as a surprise to audiences in the U.S., whose exposure to experimental film is usually in short form and viewed as something to be endured, like a visit to the dentist. It doesn’t really qualify as weird, except perhaps to someone who has never viewed any sort of film that didn’t have a linear narrative, but that probably qualifies it as a good gateway for people to get into experimental films – its ‘weird’ factor isn’t quite high enough to alienate the General Viewer, but it’s just strange enough to be engaging to fans of weird film.  It’s also helped by the music of Fiona Bevan and sound design of Simon Keep, and the engaging performances of Christina Wood and Victoria Smith as the lead characters.

Savage Witches should continue to screen in film festivals in 2013, and DVDs should be available directly from the filmmakers from their website within a month or so. UPDATE 7/5/2013: Limited edition DVD’s now available through this link.

Savage Witches Facebook

DISCLAIMER: A copy of this film was provided by the production company for review.

366 Underground

366 UNDERGROUND: DEAR GOD, NO! (2011)

Leave a comment

DIRECTED BY: James Anthony Bickart

FEATURING: Jett Bryant, Madeline Brumby, Paul McComiskey, Olivia LaCroix, John Collins, Shane Morton, Nick Morgan, Rusty Stache, Nick Hood, Jim Sligh, Rachelle Lynn, Jim Stacy

PLOT: The Impalers are a vicious motorcycle gang rampaging across the land indulging in drug trafficking and other antisocial behavior, like rape and nun killing. After a shoot-out in a strip club, they top off the party with a home invasion, whereupon their paths cross with a mad scientist, his daughter and associate. They plan a night of fun, with humiliation, rape and murder on the menu… but the scientist has something unexpected in the basement. Meanwhile, there’s something in the woods that’s killing animals and quickly working its way up the food chain…

Still from Dear God No! (2011)

COMMENTS: Dear God, No! (official site) is another throwback to the grindhouse flicks of the 1970’s, when political correctness didn’t exist. It goes balls to the wall with the 5 B’s of Exploitation Movies – Bikers, Bullets, Boobs, Blood, Beer – all of which are in ample supply… and adds another ‘B’ to the party – Bigfoot. Like most of the neo-grindhouse films, there’s lots of loving homage on display, and most of it is done very well. Unfortunately, DGN! falls into the same trap as most other trash throwback films do, that of overkill… everything is intentionally over the top, way too much to take really seriously or to really get offended by. There’s no real sense of transgression, which most of the actual 70’s grindhouse features actually had; and, most of the comedy and acting here is really labored. That said, on the technical side of things it’s good, solid low-budget work. It’s a fun ride, and it looks like the real thing—arrested adolescents will bow down in praise, feeling ‘bad’ and ‘dirty’ for over an hour. Afterwards, they’ll be wanting something a bit more substantial. So will you, probably.