I have a confession to make: I began watching this film for utterly biased reasons. It’s not because I had a burning desire to see what I thought was going to be IDLE HANDS GOES NORTH, but because I wanted to see my lover, Burns The Dragon, pretending to have butt sex with another man in the background of one of the scenes. When someone tells me there is something like that on celluloid, I’m human, and I felt compelled to want to watch. During our early courtship, when we were peacocking for each other with our various resumes, he mentioned that he had done this particular scene that was shot in Vancouver at a bar that hosts local fetish nights, and it was a horror film to boot. I was reluctant to mention that I had not seen it. Burns was somewhat in disbelief.
So now I had to watch it… HAD TO. I was totally on the hook at this point. When I was dating my ex back in the day, and had found out that he had porn on Efuct, you had better believe that I saw that too. But a Vancouver-shot indie movie that featured a bunch of local folks who I adore (Burns, Robin Bougie, Brent Ray Fraser, and Peter Breeze), and it was a horror film on top of all that? It’s for moments like these that the phrase ‘hot-diggedy-goddamn’ were coined. I like to pride myself on trying to watch a fair swath of Canadian content, and to support local talent, so I felt a little abashed that I had missed this gem.
And gem it is. If you recall from the top of this post, that I had likened it cheaply to another film. I’ll be honest, that was a bullshit move on my part, assuming the film’s plot. Writer/director Matt O’Mahoney delivered to us a bastard that is born partly of aforementioned IDLE HANDS, part GOON, and a dash of revenge, kink, and unlikely heroes. This now occupies a little nook in my heart next to BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA with all these elements.
Cartoon artist Travis (Adam Boys) has managed to upset the gentle sensibilities of local mob boss, Leonard Fong, in Chinatown. Travis’ oeuvre tends to be pretty much as dirty and taboo as you can get, and Mr.Fong finds himself in the cartoonist’s crosshairs. As we know, mob bosses don’t run home, throw themselves onto their bed and wet their pillows with their tears when they feel slighted. Instead, he has his goons go and lop off Travis’ drawing hand. As any of you have injured your dominant hand before will attest to, losing your digital mobility sucks. Travis descends into a terrible funk, and becomes rapidly alcoholic, and then is listed by a a spectre of vengeance.
Actually, it’s his hand, back from the dead, reanimated by Mr.Fong’s noxious chemicals, and pissed off at being removed from it’s host. Together they seek revenge and embark on a weird journey that teams them up with a young journalist (Gabrielle Giraud) and takes them to the underground where they find a superhero… an S&M themed super hero, inspired Travis’ creation and named Homo Dynamos (Dwayne Bryshun).
There are fun effects in this. Anyone who like the splat, will dig this. Brent Ray Fraser has a spectacular death scene as a Leather Boy. The whole movie is an insane package, which really deserves more cheers. However, the undercurrent of freedom of speech eerily intoned a certain Cassandra-like prophecy when a year later, the offices at Charlie Hebdo in Paris were the subject of a terrorist attack for the depiction of the prophet Mohammad. It’s not a hand being chopped off over a cartoon… or is it? I hadn’t really considered the implications of the two events having a relation to one another prior to writing this, but as it stands, it’s scary to think that something that has this much of a hyperbole over censorship would come to pass a year after.
Now that’s REALLY scary.
Check out all of Little Miss Risk’s previous journeys into the wild and the wicked here!
LOOKING FOR UNDERGROUND CULT MOVIES, DVDs, LIMITED VHS & OTHER COOL STUFF?
CHECK OUT THE DAILY GRINDHOUSE/CULT MOVIE MANIA STORE!
Tags: Burns The Dragon, Columns, Horror, Matt O’Mahoney, tristan risk
No Comments