Double Whammy

Double Whammy (2001):This is a low budget New York City based detective/comedy/satire/serious movie and is definitely not a typical Hollywood formulated tale. But, it can’t quite make up its mind as to which way it is going and that is its main flaw. Directed by Tom DiCillo (Who did ‘Living in Oblivion’, a great rent about making independent movies from a few years ago.), it has a very good cast including; Dennis Leary, Elizabeth Hurley, Steve Buscemi (Fargo), and Luis Guzman. Leary is a fairly inept detective (actually he has small amounts of ept) whose back goes out on him at the worst of times. He meets chiropractor Hurley and vertebrae start to crack if you get my drift. While cracking the old vertebrae with Liz in his apartment, the building superintendent (Guzman) living a floor below is almost murdered by a couple of low lives with equally low IQ’s. Also living in the next apartment are two would-be screen writers working in a clueless vacuum, composing a script that they believe will take them to Cannes. All three group’s lives come together in the movie and Leary winds up a hero in spite of ineptitude. Buscemi plays Leary’s confused partner to a T. The movie is character driven and actually concerns itself with finding happiness in spite of your natural shortcomings. This is another 6 cylinder effort that is missing a spark plug or two but it is worth a week-end rent if you like detective movies and or Dennis Leary or favor gazing upon Liz Hurley. The DVD contains an excellent director’s commentary. The movie is rated R for: brief Hurley orb, shootings and knifings, murder of an innocent fish, smoking in restaurants, dart in the leg, tattoo envy, piercing photo exhibition, crooks who can’t divide, screenwriters who can’t write, and detectives who can’t detect.

Wilderness

Wilderness (1996) This is actually an edited down version of a three part British TV mini-series. The DVD is in full screen format and has only 2.0 Dolby stereo sound. However, that being said, this is at least a fairly interesting movie about deep psychological problems or werewolves, your choice. It concerns a 30 something woman, working in a library, who has not been doing well with the opposite sex. It turns out; she believes herself to be a werewolf and cannot have lasting relationships. She finally meets a new shrink and a new boyfriend that change her life. The psychiatry profession does not come off lightly scathed in this one. Michael Kitchen does an excellent job of playing a self important doctor who finds a patient that will make him world renown if he can just come up with a cure, but off the deep end of rationality he quickly goes. There is quite a different type of lycanthropy on exhibit here. Those expecting a throat ripping time will be a tad disappointed, but give the producers an A for effort in the nudity department. Overall, an interesting effort and some quality desiccant British humor to boot. The movie is rated R for: considerable female nudity, pre-marital sex, marital sex, pre-divorce sex, cheating hearts, violence to topiary, and for self absorbed psychiatrists.

Angel of the Night

Angel of the Night (1998): This movie is the first Danish vampire movie since the 30’s and hopefully a similar time period will pass until the next one. It is also one in which the trailer is more interesting than the whole movie, not a good thing. It started out as a short student film by director Shakey Gonzalez. His professors encouraged him to expand it into a full length movie. That move casts a dark pall over the future of the Danish educational system. It seems that Shakey was born in Chile and grew up and directed in Denmark, an unusual and apparently unuseful combination. And the movie is as shaky as young Shakey. The DVD copy I viewed had lots of jumps and flickers that apparently were on the original 16 mm film. Dubbing is not good and at times lips move to a different drummer than the soundtrack. The story goes something like this; ingénue inherits an old house in central Europe where a vampire once lived. They read an old book about it (this is the student film part) and then go down to the basement and accidentally bring the vampire back to life. Have you heard this one before? The formerly unstoppable vampire is killed off in short order, which doesn’t jive with the student film sequence set in the past where the vamps, though mostly killed quickly, took a lot of damage before going down. Logic was not considered during plot development I suspect. Unless this is the last movie in the rack, I’d give it a pass, even for vampire hunters. The soundtrack has some nice rock and classical music and the trailer looked good, so all is not lost. The movie is rated R for; brief breastulation, gratuitous strip club scene, neck nipping, gelatinous red stuff, crummy looking bat, heinous illogic, and for an excessive number of short lived vampires.

Killer Tongue

Killer Tongue (1996): How can you not rent a movie with this title? Ok, Ok….I know how you can, but I couldn’t resist taking a flyer on this one. This Spanish/UK produced movie is a real mess but is also a real hoot. Somehow they have managed to make a semi-coherent movie about: a) a bank robbery, b) double crossing crooks, c) a maniacal prison warden, d) a meteor crash, e) a talking alien tongue, f) homosexual poodles, g) bored nuns and h) mobile outhouses. Rolling all that into one movie took a lot and the plot jumps around quite a bit but the flick has its moments.

The best line went to the warden when warned to take refuge in a nearby church. He exclaims, “I only go to church with a pine box or a virginal bride.” Trying to write a synopsis of this mess in a few lines is probably impossible, however, it seems Johnny and Candy have robbed a bank and double-crossed some partners. He gets caught and she holes up in a nunnery while he serves his sentence planning to recover the stash when he gets out. Meanwhile a few days prior to his prison release, a meteor crashes nearby. A bit of meteor winds up falling in Candy’s soup while she is dining and ingestion of said bit causes her to mutate into the titular appendage bearing star of the movie. It seems Mr. Tongue needs to feed on the local population and Candy soon has a moral dilemma on her hands or perhaps a tongue dilemma would be more accurate. By the way, the tongue speaks with a Brooklyn accent which fits nicely with the other large amounts of missing logic found in this movie. Will she resist and face a tongue lashing or go along with the tongue?

The big finale occurs at the nunnery when ‘Tongued Candy’, her former nun-mates, her boyfriend, the warden, and the gay poodles all have a big shoot out. Who wins? Well it really doesn’t matter, if you’ve come this far, it’s the journey that counts, not the ending. The movie is rated R for: bloody violence, painted on cat suit, male bummery, talking in tongues, talking tongues, ironing tongues, cutting tongues, romancing the tongue, massive French kissing, swinging from rafters via tongue, tongue depression, and for the humongous amounts of splattering grue from exploding heads and other assorted body parts.

Satanic Yuppies

Satanic Yuppies (1996): First released as ‘Evil Ambition’, the original version went straight to DVD hell and no one saw it. (Possibly that was a good thing.) The Cincinnati based moviemakers thought the flick good enough to add additional B&B scenes (blood and breasts) and reissue in its current mutation. With the B&B and the better title, this direct to video schlock fest became a minor success. The title did catch my attention and I had to see something with such an outlandish name. The story concerns some local politicians in league with the devil who are trying to advance their positions and grab more material things in true yuppie like fashion. The implication is, of course, that if you are successful, you must have some sort of supernatural help. But, this is done with some wit as the opening titles flow to the tune of ‘That Old Black Magic’ and the first human sacrifice is rudely interrupted by a ringing cell phone. The phonee, like the true yuppie that he is, then gets into an argument with a caterer demanding Maine lobster and not the less popular Florida lobster for their post sacrifice diner. You don’t see that happening in too many horror movies.

The best lines in the movie were a tie between the scruffy newspaper reporter working for the number three newspaper in a two newspaper town, and the devil. The reporter replied to a question “Do you play squash?” with the come backer, “No and I don’t eat it either.” The devil’s best line was “Let me see, don’t I have a virgin to soil somewhere?” The devil is portrayed with many similarities to and behaviors of a modern corporate executive but when he downsizes his organization, the procedure is somewhat more extreme than in corporate America and the retraining programs don’t look like too much fun either.

The movie doesn’t take itself too seriously and that is a good thing because this is a pretty low budget affair. Acting ranges from good to really awful but there are plenty of naked people running around to distract you from the thespian shortcomings. Overall, better than expected but not a classic by any means. The movie is rated R for: rampant and gratuitous orbulations, multiple silicone enhancements, multiple involuntary heart removals, multiple inappropriate flying geese, multiple wet cigars, rotating medium, snake having far too good a time, excessive rich yuppies, excessive greasy haired yuppies, excessive dead yuppies, and for the smoothest devil to come down the satanic highway in a long time.