Thursday, November 19, 2009
David Hess and Sasha Grey in
Smash Cut
Review by Tony Martins
Though it has already screened in several other cities, director Lee Demarbre's much-anticipated
Smash Cut makes its Ottawa premier tomorrow night at the Mayfair Theatre. With
Smash Cut, Demarbre and friends have struck a delicate balance, paying tribute to cheesy/gory filmmaker Herschell Gordon Lewis with just the right blend of their own cheesy gore and movie-making smarts.
The film is true to the genre and all the required elements are here: the stiff acting, the corny in-jokes, the awkward '70s-era soundtrack, and of course the gore that is comically phony but often induces a wince just the same.
Ian Driscoll's clever script moves along briskly, giving us a multi-layered film within a film: When disgraced filmmaker Able Whitman (David Hess) accidentally kills his girlfriend Gigi Spot (Jennilee Murray), he discovers that using her body parts in his current flick adds the level of realism his gore movies have lacked. But one corpse is never enough: Whitman kills, kills, and kills again, offing his critics and adversaries and chopping them up for fresh props. Unfortunately for Whitman, Gigi's sister, television reporter April Carson (Sasha Grey), hires sleuth Issac Beaumonde (Jesse Buck) to crack the case.
Ironically, the best acting in the film is delivered by adult film star Sasha Grey. Sure, she, too, has her shaky moments, but overall Grey comes across as someone who is comfortable both in front of a camera and, er, in her own skin. Disappointingly, she never appears naked.
Produced by Robert Menzies of Ottawa's Zed Filmworks,
Smash Cut sometimes seems high-production and other times appears laughably (and suitably) low-budget. In one memorable gore-genre shot, the camera remains fixed on the stairwell of a double-decker bus while a stripper gets slashed on the upper deck. You know that the blood will come running down the stairs, but the impossible torrent that appears (probably poured from a bucket) is laugh-out-loud funny.
Still, the best moments in
Smash Cut are when the tribute is put on hold and the filmmakers transcend the gore genre with some intelligent visual forays and moments of subtle humour. These instances startle and would seem more out of place had they not been handled with restraint. There's the segment where the serial-killing Whitman takes time out for some yoga in the park. There's an awkward-funny moment when budding starlet April Carson attempts to hand the bloody heart that she is holding to a reluctant production assistant.
Details such as these hold
Smash Cut together as a film in it's own right—and there are others details to be admired: the clever gore movie posters that appear in several scenes; the wonderful closeups of plastic soldiers melting in a booze-fueled fire.
Flashes of excellence such as these make you wonder what the filmmaking team of DeMarbre and Driscoll could do if they ever channelled their efforts toward a so-called “serious” film. But to muse in this manner is to miss the point of
Smash Cut. It's an intelligent tribute combining buckets of blood with loads of fun.
The cast and crew will be in attendance at Friday's 9 p.m. Mayfair screening, which will be fully licenced.
