Alex Phillips and Ginger Lynn Allen take on hard-hitting questions in this brief interview covering the subjects of love, cops, darkness, and delight. Part of the traveling discussion series as 366 is forced to move hither and yon to get the scoop.
Keep an ear open for the coffee delivery.
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DIRECTED BY: Alex Phillips
FEATURING: Hal Baum, Jack Dunphy, Nina Hartley, Ginger Lynn Allen, Jiana Nicole, Frank Ross
PLOT: Liam loves his job as a prostitute, but then his clients end up getting murdered.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Equal parts joyous, explicit sex and sinister, gory violence, Anything That Moves is a light romp with a heart of darkness.
COMMENTS: Who are these people? What does this title mean? Where is this story going? Why am I both titillated and unnerved? And how can I hope to write about this fleshful oddity?
Having hit dizzying heights of strange with Jacked Up and Full of Worms, Alex Phillips strikes again with the twice-sold-out feature, Anything That Moves. Phillips and his team (including plenty held over from Worms) arrange the screen with cheerful workers, sympathetic clients, and glowing orgasms. There is love, sex, tenderness, sex, comradery, and sex. But there is also a malignant element advancing from the edges.
What does one do to “anything that moves”? To the best of my knowledge, one of two things: fuck it, or shoot it. Liam, our hero, does the former; he serves his clients very well indeed. The latter appears in the form of two questionable cops who are increasingly suspicious as mutilated bodies pile up. Cop One (he’s got a name, doesn’t really matter) makes no secret of wanting to pop caps in woke millennials. Cop Two, the “good cop,” is no less judgmental, but at least isn’t inclined toward drug-and-violence sprees like his partner.
This hero’s journey takes Liam from a life of lucrative sexual service into the alleyways that turn increasingly dark as the shadowy menace becomes increasingly choate. Bacchanalian bliss sours into bilious nihilism. Our sunshiny sex worker Liam never loses his sparkle, but he is forced to harden in a manner his clients don’t pay for. Shot in 16mm and blown up to 35mm, Anything That Moves’ gauzy visual grittiness nicely complements the film’s tone. Ridiculous episodes accentuate the overarching cockeyed tone: the “smoking funeral” scene was quite touching. The movie itself, in its way, is also touching. No matter how dark the nights become for Liam, he remains defiantly innocent and awed by life’s elements and opportunities.
So perhaps there is a third reading of the title: it behooves us to find the beauty in anything that moves.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
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All Jacked up and Full of Worms is currently available for VOD rental or purchase.
DIRECTED BY: Alex Phillips
FEATURING: Phillip Andre Botello, Trevor Dawkins
PLOT: Roscoe and Benny meet randomly one afternoon and then paint the town red whilst all jacked up and full worms; the bacchanal’s fallout isn’t pretty.
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: There’s lots of manic energy, lots of worms, and though there is only one of them, there’s still too much of filmdom’s creepiest baby doll. All Jacked Up and Full of Worms eschews most logic as its characters careen from mundane life into exhilarating highs, then crash into a third act full of death, violence, fluids—and the ubiquitous worms.
COMMENTS: “There’s only one wrong way to do worms,” Benny proclaims boisterously to a stranger whose motel room he’s just barged into. But the stranger, knowing what’s what, what’s cool, and what it’s all about, casually replies, “Not do worms?”
Bingo. Whatever madness this rundown Chicago milieu has seen, it hasn’t seen nothin’ until these ranks of riffraff find the ultimate high. The riffraff roster: Roscoe, unflappable motel janitor dabbling (also) in New Age-y energy transference; Samantha, girlfriend of Roscoe and insufferable hippie; Jared, interested third-party in Roscoe and Samantha’s relationship, also seen carrying a bucket of his own blood; a pair of possibly homeless worm-junkies, one of whom is never without clown makeup; Benny, a delivery man (?) with a big beard and great need to manifest a baby of his own (name tag reads: Call Me: DADDY); and Henrietta, a kindly prostitute and known addict whom Benny fails to fornicate with. Looming in the background television is a sometime pagan, now born-again Christian, whose soul seems somehow tied to an überworm with the mantra, “You must unlearn your shapes”.
All Jacked Up and Full of Worms unabashedly revels in its body horror roots, drawing much of its inspiration from Cronenberg‘s Naked Lunch. The hook here is worms (if you’ll pardon the bon mot). The film begins like an ensemble comedy, but proceeds mostly along the lines of absurdist-grossout-nightmare. The director introduces each cast member (including the worms) with their own vignette. The entire first act plays like a dingy madcap romp, its joyful madness peaking as Roscoe and Benny ride through a worm-fueled trip (and a concurrent literal one) on a motor scooter.
But as with a worm’s natural orientation, things go sideways, and Alex Phillips reveals his hand. Buried in the dirt of his character’s strange lives is a steadfast streak of seriousness. Roscoe is forced to come to terms with the reactive nature of his existence; and Benny’s trials with his new baby sex-doll (this… was disturbing) elicit far more empathy than perhaps even Todd Solondz could have thought possible. The exuberance morphs into viscera(l) tension, and amidst all the illogical craziness of the double ending, we find peace on one side, and rebirth on the other. And isn’t that what worms are really all about?
Listen to our audio interview with the crew who made All Jacked up and Full of Worms
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: