This Sissy Hits the Road
A few weeks back I was fortunate enough to be able to leave my work behind for a few days and follow one of my projects (no, not you, Mom) to a few film festivals, one of which being the DC Independent Film Fest, in the locus of all evil, Washington DC. Despite turning 29 during my screening and seeing some old friends, I was a little tepid about the trip, as I thought the horror films were of lower quality than flicks I have seen at straight-up genre festivals (see my upcoming piece on the Fearless Tales Genre Fest). While I only caught a handful of non-genre films (including the very excellent Oscar-winning short Two Soldiers, starring Hellboy himself, Ron Perlman), I was fairly unimpressed, and didn't really walk away feeling I'd seen anything memorable except for Soldiers, a non-horror Australian short called Sweetheart, and the documentary Whole (reviewed below). The horror program, scheduled at Midnight on Saturday, was as well-attended as a stateside Robbie Williams concert (crickets...), making me wonder where all the horrorheads in DC were -- or if they just had early curfews. Grumble...

Throngs of fans line up to exit the DC Independent Film Festival before the Horror Program begins

The Films I Had a Chance to See and Could Form a Complete Thought About

Exit 8A (dir. Margaret Harris, 22 mins)
While not a horror film, this was easily one of the most violent, loudest, and nastiest films I saw at the festival. The story of a young bigot on a bloody, rage-fueled quest to get in touch with his past, his father's past, his father, his girlfriend, and a guy he gets into a fight with at a gas station, Exit 8A gets points for achieving a brutal immediacy, and then loses them for not making any sense of the mess. The action unfolds in a "shit happens" kind of way, with the handheld camera forcing itself into all sorts of situations that you'd likely rather not be involved in (the main character tracking down a harmless latino family in order, presumably, to destroy them; the main character getting the shit kicked out of him by aforementioned family and about 40 others; the main character screaming at his pregnant immigrant girlfriend; the main character kidnapping and murdering his father, a dentist who works in a shack in the middle of nowhere and apparently has it coming. Alongside this rage-driven tale we also have the story of his pregnant lady, who is afraid to tell him about the baby and also afraid of losing her job at what might be a Middle-Eastern diner. She is either looked after or stalked by a co-worker, and in the end is either on to a potential new friendship/love affair, or butchered and made into a kite -- it's really impossible to tell which might happen. The storytelling is minimal and naturalistic, which is fine, but it's also indecisive, which is frustrating -- especially when you're forced to sit through so much screaming and hystrionics. In all, a brutal but ultimately pointless short.

Whole (dir. Melody Gilbert, 55 mins)
One of the most disturbing things I've ever seen, Whole tells the story of persons who become obsessed with becoming amputees, varying in intensity ranging from those who pretend that one of their limbs doesn't exist to those who have blown one off with a shotgun. This is a disorder that I had never heard of, and I was shocked to hear the victims describe their experiences of having to suffer the torture of living with a part of their body that doesn't feel like it belongs. The dozen or so subjects are at different stages of handling the problem, which gives a very rich insight into the issue (which also seems global -- subjects range from Florida to Holland). Some of the stories are truly horrifying; I can't imagine hating a part of my body so much (it generally seems to be a leg, up to the knee, for most subjects) that I would ask a doctor to remove it and, when refused, actually freeze it to death so that he would be forced to remove it. The stories told by the spouses are similarly varied and fascinating, as are the health-care professional interviews, and after having seen this piece, I have to say: we should let these poor folks chop their limbs off! My only complaints about the film are that some of the video and audio is absolutely horrendous in quality, which really undermines the humanity of the subjects, and a few points where the filmmaker herself interjects during the interviews, including a moment where she informs a clueless neighbor that one subject's shotgun accident was intentional (it stank of exploitation news coverage). Otherwise, though, this is definitely one to check out.

Dead End (dir. Gregory Scarnici, 14 mins)
A by-the-books slasher, this one has some fantastically bad acting and dialogue to boot. When a young couple go to a country house for the weekend, they're expecting to drink red wine and sleep a lot. But the locals have other ideas, especially the escaped inmates from the local asylum, who for some reason have a bloodthirst for retarded yuppies! My favorite "plot device disguised as story element" comes when the husband, unable to find his sleeping pills, says, "oh -- I must have left them in the car". Of course -- they're in the glovebox, with your heroin and shampoo. Laughable enough to sit through, but not recommended.

From a Red Room (dir. Nathan Christ, 20 mins)
A product of too much David Lynch, this short was nonetheless not too bad. A young expecting couple get a series of phonecalls from what seems to be the man's brother, but is actually two weirdos in what looks like the living room of a college group house who are tormenting them for kicks. Despite some really uneven acting (the weirdos are both pretty weak, and the pregnant woman is quite bad), this film manages to achieve some fairly uncomfortable moments, although the dull spots in-between really let the air out of the atmosphere (especially a long sequence around a campfire where a bunch of old bikers tell stories -- neither compelling nor relevant). The ending is a bit of a cop-out, as nothing is solved or explained, and you get the feeling that the filmmaker didn't really know the answers and decided to leave the ending open rather than think too hard about it. This film does feature an appearance by the aggressively strange (and strangely named) Prince Camp, who will resurface later and on another coast in another screening...

Call to the Dark Side (dir. Barbara Klutinis, 3 mins)
Three minutes of grainy video of what might be a fat kid on an overpass. Call me conventional, but experimental film usually makes me think of grad students who drink red wine and listen to Kristen Hirsch and are therefore patently unable to express themselves. A Call to the Therapist might be in better order.

Gorno: An American Tragedy (dirs. Oliver Assaran and Les Norris, 81 long, unwatchable mins)
The fact that it took two people to direct this makes me want to sit down and weep.

I went to this feature because the press material called it a "teenage American Psycho". I don't know if that's more of an insult to American Psycho or to teenagers. Gorno is a stupid, horribly-made, pointless, graceless, and ultimately mean-spirited film that is as much a commentary on social issues as my cat is the Queen of England. A derivitive, clumsy recycling of such effective and intelligent satires as Gummo, Man Bites Dog, and American Psycho, as well as "Mallternative" favorites Requiem for a Dream and River's Edge, Gorno starts out bad and proceeds directly to worse. Pointlessly insulting to just about everyone -- but not intelligently or productively so, as South Park might be -- Gorno lashes out at gays, blacks, women, priests, druggies, and audiences with taste, all in the name of intended (and unachieved) shock value. The directors had the nerve to stand up for Q&A (tellingly, there were no questions, as most of the audience had been bored into naps or had left out of sheer indifference) and claim that their film was not hateful. Okay, then it's just stupid -- and I'd be quicker to admit to being hateful than stupid, wouldn't you?

Anyway, there's no plot, the actors are hideous, and there's nothing remotely shocking or scary about any of it, except for the amateurish cinematography. Skip it. Skip it twice, actually. And hey -- know what the title means? Nothing! Isn't that RAD?!?!
NO SKULLIES