Whorrible
"For years, I've lamented the convenience and power of modern recording equipment, which gives everyone who seeks it instant 'auteur' status. These cretins have no qualms about charging people ten bucks a pop to watch them go through do-it-yourself film school (or, worse yet, fuck around with their friends). I can't get excited about the indie scene anymore because one never knows if they're dealing with the next Stanley Kubrick or a middling Shane Van Dyke."
How could I have known, when writing this on Thursday as part of another review, that the universe would hand me the perfect illustration of what I was describing? I was sent a review copy of Sexsquatch: The Legend of Blood Stool Creek by its producer, Ron Bonk, in advance of the film's home video release this Tuesday. The deal, I guess, is that by posting a review soon, I'll be placed on a list to receive more SRS Cinema screeners. Having climbed through sixty minutes of writer/director Chris Seaver's poorly produced juvenilia, I'm not sure if that counts as an opportunity or a threat.
Sexsquatch centers on a group of friends who throw a party so that the shy, nice kid among them can lose his virginity. Joey (Chip Rockcastle) wants to be a big-time Hollywood creator, but his wacky friends Leo (Tobe Lerone) and Skippy (Steven Deniro) think it best for him to lose his "V" card first. Sure, this sounds like a cute, sub-Porky's knock-off, but Seaver populates his movie with busty, sex-crazed whores who think nothing of drinking piss or waking up with faces caked in semen; a mother (Francine Mitchell) who blows out her son's "Happy Fuck Day" cake by unleashing history's most powerful queef; and, of course, a ferocious red-haired monster who stalks, kills, and anally rapes the hapless kids who've invaded its woods.
While this would make a great premise for a porno movie, Seaver and Bonk clearly aren't out to make one. Sexsquatch features plenty of girls shaking their wares in short shorts and tops that strain credulity, but the only boobs we get to see are the idiots wearing allegedly hilarious retro clothing and fake Mario-as-a-mountain-man hair appliances. All the increasingly graphic, unnecessarily inventive sex talk--especially on the part of the women--is not only tedious, it's cause for concern. Halfway through the film, I wasn't sure if Seaver was trying to be hilariously shocking, or expressing some form of undiagnosed Tourette's syndrome.
The film also lacks bona fides as a splatter flick, even a comedic one. The gore amounts to little more than red syrup splattering against trees or dribbling out of people's mouths (except for one scene that will neither impress nor entertain anyone who's seen Romero's Dawn of the Dead), and the gag about the Sexsquatch being an articulate, snarky, Kelsey Grammer-type is about as funny as the name "Blood Stool Creek".
These problems beg the question, "Who is this movie for?" All I know is that I never want to meet the person who would raise their hand. I might have loved this thing as a pre-Internet twelve-year-old. But, as I wrote yesterday, technology has made jacking off to anything less than the real thing as quaint a premise as women's suffrage. Like Swamphead before it, Sexsquatch is a movie created by people who don't care that they don't know what they're doing; nor do they give a shit if anyone outside of the people on-screen (and their GED-deficient, glue-sniffing friends) are entertained by it. You're damn right, that's a gross blanket statement, but nothing about either picture suggests it's inaccurate.
"Jesus, Ian, did you like anything about this movie?"
In fairness, I laughed once--during a bizarre cut-away to most of the cast performing a song about the KKK adopting a highway near someone's house. Unlike everything else in the movie, the moment was unexpected, smart, and demonstrated thought on the part of the filmmakers. After about a minute, Sexsquatch resumed with the same "Editing? What's editing? Auditions? What are auditions?" pace and flavor I'd come to know and loathe.
I also appreciated what I can only assume (and hope) are the porn-style aliases of most every actor involved. Deniro's name alone gave me something to think about while enduring Sexsquatch: he looks like he could be Robert DeNiro's ne'er-do-well nephew, and wears the constant, constipated expression of every DeNiro impersonator in history. Somewhere during the movie's ninetieth monologue about the awesomeness of jizz, I ventured into my own mental cineplex to watch an uproarious documentary about Deniro and DeNiro's awkward relationship. I don't recall the point at which I snapped back into Seaver's movie, but I'm pretty sure someone was getting peed on.
Look, I'm not trying to tell you how to live your life, but just understand that by purchasing Sexsquatch, you're taking money out of the hands of hungry independent filmmakers who actually have something to say. In my book, Seaver and company get credit only for the ambition to shoot, package and distribute their bullshit, long-weekend shenanigans; in any other regard, this project is a slap in the face to every legit movie that got drowned out in a marketplace flooded by this zero-sum trash.
But I understand that at least some of you will finish reading this review and pre-order the Sexsquatch DVD, precisely because my uptight film snob ravings actually sound like an endorsement somehow. Just do me a favor and please get your parents' permission before using their credit card.