Capsules

CAPSULE: THE CASSEROLE MASTERS (200?)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: J. William Carter (Billy Carter?)

FEATURING: Billy Carter, Larry McKellen, Bobby Cilantro, Stevie Dawson, Jimmy Howitzer

PLOT: None.

Still from The Casserole Masters

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST It’s certainly weird enough, but, although some of the animated sequences show talent, the live-action sequences are too amateurish, and more annoying than bizarre.

COMMENTS: I’m going to resist the temptation to start out this review with quips at the expense of the makers of The Casserole Masters, and instead give you some useful advice (for a change). Load up the movie (embedded below) and immediately skip to 24:30 for a short lecture by “Molcok the Owl” on the afterlife. It sounds like footage from a Scientology question and answer session, as the mild-mannered, mystical bird describes his visit to the interstellar Hall of Mirrors, a journey illustrated with swirling psychedelic patterns and egg-shaped spacecraft and sausages. If you enjoyed that, and maybe even if you didn’t, skip forward again to 52:05 (you’ll know you’re at the right spot when you see the proscenium floating in a blood red sky) for the strangest video Christmas card ever filmed, scored to “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and featuring a silent snowy forest, kaleidoscopic peppermint colored backgrounds, festive mushrooms, and a vintage Santa who bleeds from his eyes. These two short worthwhile segments, both animated, rescue The Casserole Masters from the “beware” rating it would otherwise earn. If I had tried to watch Masters from the beginning, without being obliged to review it, I would have given up within five minutes, because the rest of  the movie looks like home video of some Dadaist frat boys noodling around on a Saturday afternoon. Recurring characters include a guy with a magic-marker mustache, Burger King crown, and a lobotomized smile, and another character who repeatedly babbles about being Batman; they stand in a room and giggle stupidly and howl abuse at each other. All voices are electronically speeded up or slowed down to maximize the irritation factor. The largest role goes to a sheriff with a shaving cream beard who delivers monologues praising religion and denouncing drugs, and plays a “knife game” with a tied-up prostitute in pasties and plastic trash-bag panties. An authority figure preaching virtue while practicing depravity: yawn. For the climax we learn the casserole recipe, which involves tentacles in oil and a wiener. The live-action segments look like footage Harmony Korine rejected for Trash Humpers as too repetitive and annoying. And yet, as insufferable as the live action scenes are, the “animated” sequences—which are just cutout images manipulated very simply, but effectively, with zooms and pans to create the illusion of movement—are interesting, reminiscent of a slower paced, weirder, and less witty iteration of Terry Gilliam‘s animation work for Monty Python. The animations are scattered throughout the movie, sometimes laid over the filmed material, but Casserole only heats up in those two extended segments cited above. Stretching for something else to praise, I’ll mention that the synthesized score by Blue Fiction is actually very good. Still, there’s about ten minutes of worthwhile material buried inside of seventy minutes of avant-garde dreck. It may work reasonably well as background wallpaper for an acid trip, though, which may well be Casserole Masters intended route of ingestion.

We’ve embedded the video below for your convenience, but we found the playback on blip.tv to be sporadic, particularly if you try to use the slider to fast forward the movie. If you’re having trouble watching the embedded video you can try viewing it on the Casserole Masters homepage. It may also help playback if you let the file load on the page for a while before hitting “play.” Good luck!

Capsules

CAPSULE: SMASH CUT (2009)

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DIRECTED BY: Lee Demarbre

FEATURING: , Sasha Grey, Jesse Buck, Michael Berryman,

PLOT: An incompetent horror director discovers he can make realistic gore effects by killing his critics and co-workers and using their severed body parts as special effects.

Still from Smash Cut (2009)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: With Smash Cut, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter auteur Lee Demarbre pulls back the weirdness and takes a step towards the conventional (to the extent that a comedic tribute to Herschel Gordon Lewis’ cheesy gore films, featuring a main character who considers a dead stripper in the trunk of his car to be his muse, can be considered mainstream). The results are, frankly, a little boring, though camp gorehounds might find some entertainment here.

COMMENTS: The one-sentence plot synopsis tells you all you need to know; there are very few story surprises as Smash Cut unspools.  You can figure out that the diabolical director starts to enjoy killing as his megalomania grows, finds it increasingly difficult to cover his tracks as the bodies pile up, and is eventually thwarted by the clean-cut young heroes. Since we know what’s coming, it’s crucial that Smash Cut deliver on the gags (especially the weird gags), and unfortunately this is where the movie falls down on the job. The best parts are the two films-within-the-film, perhaps because they push their deranged style to its limits and stay true to their own madness. The first is director and future serial killer Abel Whitman’s trashterpiece Terror Toy, featuring a ragdoll clown murdering a busty psychiatrist with an ink pen and one of the worst “dangling eyeball” scenes you’ll ever witness. The second featurette is a silent art film created as a mousetrap to try to play on the felonious filmmaker’s sense of guilt. In between those two highlights are some interesting, mildly absurd touches—for example, a “suicide” by harpoon and a minor character who sets army men on fire—and a lot of deliberately unconvincing, campy gore effects (though the scene where Abel extracts eyeballs with a box cutter delivers a significant cringe factor). The acting is inconsistent, which is not necessarily a problem in the overall spoofy enterprise, but Continue reading CAPSULE: SMASH CUT (2009) →

Miscellanea

WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE

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Anyone who might be interested in reviewing ultra low-budget movies in return for screeners, please see the “ad” below (or click here if you’re really lazy). We’ve had a couple of nibbles in our search for a dedicated microbudget reviewer, but we’ll hold the position open for at least a week or two.

Next week we’re planning reviews of the web-released amateur surrealist feature, The Casserole Masters (we’ll be embedding the movie along with info on the choice “chapter stops” to skip to, so be sure to tune in for that!) We’ll also take a look Smash Cut, the new slahser spoof/H. G. Lewis tribute from the auteur behind Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, and we’ll be taking a second look at Jim Jarmusch‘s weird western Dead Man (long-time readers will guess what a “second look” indicates).  Alfred will check in with another installment in his Tod Browning series, covering The Thirteenth Chair (Browning’s first sound film, with a pre-Dracula Bela Lugosi replacing Lon Chaney as Browning’s leading man).

For the past seven days, plenty of perfectly strange candidates streamed through our server logs vying for the title of “Weirdest Search Term of the Week.”  In the “okay, now we know you’re putting us on” category comes “spanish young imprisoned male breastfeeding movie.”  That’s your last mention, guy; we won’t be recognizing any more searches for imprisoned male breastfeeding movies of various national cinemas.   We have to give “movie foreskin surrealist” at least an honorable mention, but we were even more impressed by the ambiguity of the search for “paprika crotch,” since we don’t know whether the searcher was looking for  Satoshi Kon fan service or info on a new social disease.  Turning to the classic test of utter incoherence to select the winner this week, however, we find that “clown gasmask movie pharmacy” beats out the field.  Congratulations to the winner for stringing together four totally incongruous nouns!

Here’s how the reader-suggested review queue currently stacks up (many more titles after the break, as usual): The Casserole Masters (next week); Perfume: The Story of a Murderer;  Dark Crystal; Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (this appears to be unavailable at present, actually); The Nines; The Pillow Book; Final Flesh; Lunacy [Sílení]; Inmortel (2004); Continue reading WHAT’S IN THE PIPELINE →

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366 “JOB” POSTING

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Sorry, the position below has been filled.  Anyone who likes may still write a reader review for the site, but we won’t be offering screeners at this time.  Thanks to all who applied!

366 World Industries is looking for someone to review movies—specifically, low-budget movies. Increased solicitation of our reviewing services by struggling filmmakers suggests to us it may be worthwhile to have someone on staff whose sole job it is to review low-budget screeners.

The ideal candidate will be able to write, preferably in the English language. The candidate must understand that accepting a screener copy of a movie is a commitment to watch and write about that movie. The candidate understands that these movies are by low-budget filmmakers and are highly likely to suck, with a few minor gems thrown in every now and then. The candidate should be aware that the movies will be a mix of arty, sometimes pretentious experimental films and gritty, sometimes offensive, exploitation movies. The candidate is encouraged to develop his or her own reviewing style, but we are not looking for someone who either A) praises everything unconditionally in hopes of seeing their names in print on a DVD cover, or B) views this assignment as an opportunity to sharpen their wit at the expense of the artists involved.

The review schedule is variable, but will not be more than one movie a week, and probably less than one a month.

Sole payment is in screener copies. Current contributors are welcome to apply.

Please use the contact form to apply. Use “screener review position” as the subject. If you have a writing sample, be prepared to submit it; if you are new to movie reviewing you should do a sample review of an appropriate low-budget movie first. We will answer any questions you have.

There is currently no time frame to fill this position. EDIT: Due to postal rates, we’d prefer applicants from the U.S.A.

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