Reviews

You know that kind of film. We all do. It´s the kind of film where, in the trailer, the Voice of Boom spells the predictable: "They burned his wife! They raped his house! But this time, they pushed him too far. And now... THEY-ARE-GOING-TO-PAY!!!!". Cue to big explosions and the hero mowing entire armies of tommy gun-wielding ninja mobsters with his bare hands.

Hall of Mirrors is that kind of film. Only that it isn´t. It´s the Signs version of the man-gets-mad-and-even scenario. And just as M. Night Shyamalan brought new twists to the horror, superhero and alien invasion genres, helmer Brad Osborne puts his own spin to the `underdog revenge' plot.

Imagine yourself as a gambling addict neck-deep in debts. $90,000 neck-deep, to be precise. Ouch. Not the kind of money your best friend or bitchy ex-wife have around to loan you. To make things worse, your bookie has a henchman who just watched a Chinatown rerun and got some new ideas on how to bull debtors.

Well, that´s the hell Dylan Hewitt (Eric Johnson) is going thru (the opening sequence is not just a nod to the bone-tossing scene from 2001; it´s a cool storytelling device to show how our anti-hero became a compulsive gambler since his childhood). Of course, when you´re in the bottom of the pit, the only way to go is up.

(Yeah, right).

Things start to change when Dylan meets Mara Payton (the stunningly gorgeous Julie Arebalo). They bump uglies and that´s just a figure of speech, cause there´s nothing on Julie that´s even remotely ugly. Later that night, Dylan gets a weird phone call. `What about some free money? Come meet me at Santa Claus´ home and we´ll solve all your problems, no strings attached!'. Well, actually the dialogue is more noir-ish than that, but that´s the gist.

Dylan does what any normal person would on a situation like that: he dismisses the whole thing as bullshit and hangs up. The end.

Nah, that´s not the end. The story must go on, so Dylan decides to meet the caller, a mysterious man called Haze (Halim Jabbour), and it´s weaved inside a weird tapestry involving conterfeit super-dollars, broadway strippers, dead people coming back to life and the surprise appearance of Dylan´s evil twin, Darrin.

Okay, I made up the evil twin bit, but that´s basically what Hall of Mirrors is: a surprisingly well-crafted con/revenge story that may not be original, but is gripping enough to keep you guessing til the very last minute. And the best thing is that the movie gets BETTER on a second viewing, when we can see how we were so cleverly deceived by Brad Osborne´s scrip. Sure, it´s a script that cheats a lot to achieve the desired effects, but so what? It´s not as if walking zombies or starships making noise in space count as realistic moviemaking.

And do you wanna know something more surprising? Hall of Mirrors was made for scant $ 4.000 and doesn´t show it at all. It´s not schmancy fancy (it was shot on digital video and processed to look like film, hence the soft image) and some sets look cramped, but it doesn´t look cheap - a lesson those multi-digit-hungry vultures from Tinseltown REALLY need to learn.

No-budget or not, this flick was made very professionally, with smooth editing, excellent photography, cool minimalist music (also written by the director) and attention to that little thing 99% of indie producers never fail to neglect: sound. Using only sound effects, they managed to turn Dallas during winter on sunny Louisiana. It´s a very subtle detail that will probably go unnoticed (and I only know that ´cuz they say it on the commentary track, so don´t think I´m a genius), but it sells the illusion on a subconscious level. Or quite: during a night scene, Julie appears with a tight sweater with no bra that´s a tell-tale sign of how cold it was that day, if you know what I mean.

Save for some small exceptions, the acting is consistently good and convincing. You know you´re going to see a nice acting job when a small bit player, the guy who plays the blackjack dealer as the casino (Chip Joslin), delivers a single line with rare naturality. Seeing how the movie is character-driven, the cast did a wonderful job in bringing Brad´s story to life.

Hall of Mirrors is available on DVD thru the official homepage and it´s a pretty decent disc. Video compression leaves something to be desired, with at least two brief scenes suffering from heavy pixelation, but don´t let that stop you. The extras include a fun commentary track with writer/director/composer Brad Osborne, producer Marc Pilvinsky, director of photography Bobb Truax, actors Eric Johnson and the woman I want to call my wife, Julie Arebalo. There´s also an interesting documentary/making of, and a series of bloopers and outtakes. FUNNY bloopers and outtakes, for a change. There´s only two things missing: the trailer, and a photo gallery consisting solely of Julie pics.

In the last decade, Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Williamson rose to fame paying self-referential homages to drive-in classics of yore. That´s cool, but what about bringing new ideas to tired genres? Hollywood´s not doing that anymore. This task is now at the hands of guys like Alvin Ecarma (Lethal Force), Brian O´Hara (Rock´n´Roll Frankenstein), Dante Tomaselli (Desecration) and, now, Brad Osborne. More power to them! And I only hope they don´t screw things up once they dip their feet on those murky Hollywood waters!

Roger Ramjet was created in 1965 by Ken Snyder and brought to cel life by director Fred Crippen and voice actor Gary Owens. And, even if the animation was so static it became the butt of jokes to this very day, Roger´s adventures still owe more to the anarchy of Jay Ward and Bob Clampett than, say, Sam Singer. Roger Ramjet, the `Daredevil, Flying Fool and All-Around Good Guy' is an obvious parody of super-hero antics AND patriotism itself, including the cold war paranoia. At first glance, it´s pure formula: our hero is assigned to some mission, always gets in trouble so the kids from the American Eagle Squadron can rescue him, and ends up kicking the villains´ badly animated behinds by ingesting the Proton Energy Pill, that grants him the power of twenty atom bombs for twenty seconds. But the similarities end here, cause RR is filled with clever puns, cultural references, Hollywood in-jokes and a LOT of adult-aimed dialogue which often went over kids´ heads. I´ll give you only one example, and that will be enough to lure you into the zany, adorable world of Roger. Let´s take the `The Shaft' episode from `Hero of Our Nation'. It´s about Roger creating a super-rocket that´s more powerful than… uh, anything else. Problem is, the rocket backfires and burrows a hole through the Earth. The ENTIRE darn planet. What we Earthlings do? Oh, not much. Just watch were we walk, to avoid falling in the hole and getting a free trip to China. Aye, we can live on a donut-shaped planet, no problem sir. The ONLY thing that bugs people is when winds runs through the hole, creating an annoying whistle. THEN the nations decide to join forces to fix the problem! See what I mean?

I don't know what Ron Ford was thinking when he commited this sorry piece of S.O.V. crap. But if he had the intention of creating "the worst movie ever made", Deadly Scavengers is uncapable of being even THAT! The plot is a direct rip-off of "Food of the Gods" combined with some nonsense about mercenaries carrying toy guns. Instead of giant animals, we have only one big cockroach achieved by a) a real cucaracha filmed up close and badly composed with a lame chroma-key effect, and b) a guy in a suit so shabby that's only shown on the DVD cover! Everything that can be done wrong IS done wrong: acting, lighting, sound, dubbing, editing, SFX and all the like. How bad is it? Well, there's a scene where, to simulate a car in movement, the director points the camera at the windshield and shakes it up and down! But one thing must be clear: this is NOT the worst film ever made, and I'm 100% sure that the worst film ever made is ten times more amusing than this complete and utter garbage.

When I was a wee tot I never cared about superfluous things like plot, characterization or people yakkin' exposition for more than 30 seconds. What I wanted to see was the car chases, explosions, high kicks and bikini girls with machine guns. Happy happy happy, joy joy joy! Of course, one day we have to grow old and abide to the rules of Society, that forces us to become, uh, "sophisticated". We ditch Hollywood blockbusters in public and pretend to like Finnish art movies and David Lynch. But deep down inside, in the heart of that happy child we once were, we really want to get home in time for the Baywatch rerun. And that, friends and foes, is the spirit of Sidaris' work. I've seen the polls at IMDb and voters aren't fond of Andy's flims. They're completely missing the point AND the fun.

The story of "Massacre in Dinosaur Valley" (a.k.a. "Nudo e Selvaggio") is clichéd to the very last speck of celluloid. We have the not-so-invincible hero, the tropical version of Professor Challenger and his gorgeous daughter, the neurotic 'Nam vet and, to add gratuitous T&A, a photographer and two models. They go dig dinosaur bones on a forbidden area of Amazonas, but the plane crashes (it's one of them Star Trek-like crashes), leaving 'em stranded in the heart of the jungle. On the way to get back to civilization, they stumble on hungry alligators, piranhas, quicksand and a tribe of meat-eating Indians. But the real threat is an illegal mine where the sadistic China abuses his slave laborers. Everything's derivative, but at least it's well directed and full of gore and nudity. Sharp ears will recognize the score. It's the same one composed by Andrew Barrymore for Lamberto Bava's "Blastfighter" (also starring Sopkiw, also co-written by Dardano Sacchetti, who's not credited in "Massacre").

Try to imagine a Tarantino script not directed, but ANIMATED by Chuck Jones. I don´t know if that´s the effect director Ecarma tried to achieve with LETHAL FORCE, but don´t let the generic film title fool you. Right at the cartoony first sequence we know that this isn´t your average John Woo rip-off. Ecarma knows where he´s coming from, where he´s going and what he´s doing. Shot on film with a budget of 50.000 dollars, LETHAL FORCE blends every pop culture riff ever imagined and compositions taken directly from comic book pages. But he also gives us likeable characters. Some absurd sequences reminds those old Looney Tunes, but the homoerotic relationship between the leads is believable (look at the big cigars they munch during the flashback sequence with the, uh, vietnamese ninjas), and so´s Jack relation with his son (played with gusto by young actor J. Patrick Collins Jr.).

And the best thing is that Ecarma don´t let the "homages" get in the way of storytelling. At little more than 70´s minutes the movie moves REALLY fast and is filled with great low-budged action sequences. All begins with an exciting fight between Jack and "Psycho Bowtie" (a silent karate-fighting goon played by the multi-talented Eric Thornett, who also directed a cool indie film called 23 HOURS), and ends with a long, gore-drenched, over-the-top finale complete with nods to Abel Ferrara´s DRILLER KILLER and every duel-at-sundown western, decapitations, crucifications and exploding heads - not to mention the priceless blood-squirting eyeball.

This movie has only one fault: it´s not yet available on the home video market. But thanks to the success LETHAL FORCE is making in the festivals circuit, that soon will be corrected.