LIGHT READING

LAST SUPPER

Allegedly found in the cellar of a recently deceased elderly woman:

BLACK SPOT

Filmmaker Luther Bhogal-Jones, whose previously shared with me his short film, "Creak," reached out to me to share another short film made by himself and his merry band of miscreants. Called "Black Spot," it is a six-minute homage to the deranged and mentally unbalanced films made at the height of 1970s madness. Personally, I had The Last House on the Left in mind the entire time I watched it. It's available to watch in three different formats: traditional 3D, stereoscopic 3D, and plain-old 2D. The 2D version is embedded here:

Black Spot - 2D version from Faster Productions on Vimeo.

“Black Spot” F.A.Q.

What was the inspiration for the story?
 

Luther was looking for a scenario that would let him test the device out against landscapes, but also a compact interior. He didn't want to film something entirely set in a house, as it felt somewhat limiting on scope.  Luther isn't too sure where the actual inspiration for setting the film around a broken down car came from – possibly as a result of his day job travelling around as an account manager – but also it references back to his previous short film “Stranded” which involved a broken down car in one of the three storylines.

 There was definitely a desire to give the film a 1970s horror feel – not necessarily the now cliched grindhouse style but something that felt relentless, grim, trashy...

What was the budget of the film?

 Removing the “cost” of the camera from the film's budget, "Black Spot" was made for less than one hundred and fifty pounds, with all cast and crew working for travel and food expenses only. Specific props and clothing were required for the film which was where the majority of the expenditure went.

Where can people see the film?

The film is available online with 3 formats available to view – in 3D with red/cyan glasses as Luther intended the film to be seen, in stereoscopic 3D for those with 3D TVs at home and, lastly, in a 2D version for those who cannot view the 3D versions.

The film will also be submitted to various horror festivals around the world over the year.

 What's next for Faster Productions and Sincerely, Psychopath?
 
“Black Spot” comes under the umbrella name of Sincerely, Psychopath which is used by Faster Productions for the films of a more horror/ fantastical nature. The next film to come under that brand will be “Knock Knock,” which is a short horror showing the mental breakdown of a woman terrorized by a knocking at her door.

The next offering from Faster Productions will be “Pick-Ups,” which is currently in post production, and is a short drama with a comedic sting in the tale about a man gives up everything and travels to Eastern Europe to be with the woman who he thinks is “the one.”

VIDEO: YIKES

SHITTY FLICKS: PIGS aka DADDY'S DEADLY DARLINGS

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis. 

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

Pigs, released in the '70s as Daddy's Deadly Darling, remains three things: amateur, boring, and about pigs. This is seriously one of the most boring films I've ever sat through. This is like 2001: A Space Odyssey, but with pigs. Any film that was ever made that involved pigs in any way, like Babe: Pig in the City and Charlotte's Web, is automatically better.

There's even a movie called Pig Hunt. I've never even seen it, and it's allegedly pretty stupid.

You know what? Better.

In fact, there is a scene in Hannibal in which a man is eaten by a large group of pigs, and the pigs begin to eat the man's cock and balls, and what that must feel like in real life - to have your cock and balls being eaten by a bunch of pigs, and you probably get pig shit all over your face - is still better than just sitting down and watching Pigs.

There have even been better historical political pig-related fuck-ups, like the Bay of Pigs. That crazy fucking redneck in Canada who killed a bunch of people and fed them to his pigs is better than Pigs, and while that's exactly what this movie is about, that redneck killer is better. So many more things in this world are better than Pigs that I am thinking of starting a blog called Hairy, Spiked & Boiling Shit in My Cheeks And It Plays Rihanna 24/7: Better Than Pigs.

US!

Crazy Lynn, a girl locked up for murdering her rapist father, looks on from the small window on her asylum door as a nurse and doctor make weird love in the middle of the hallway. Crazy Lynn rolls her face around the window, hair mussed and plastered to her forehead, as she longs for the day that she will be able to make weird love to a doctor twice her age in a busy hospital. This couple, distracted in their lust dance, isn’t keeping watch, and the lonely girl escapes. None of the cells in this insane asylum are locked, I guess. She easily steals a car and motivelessly drives, seemingly directionless, to a farm out in the middle of nowhere.

Upon getting there, she is haunted by the over-modulated squeals of pigs that we can't see. The squealing of pigs layered over footage of people looking lost and confused will occur occasionally throughout the film, and it is genuinely unnerving.

Lynn meets Zambrini, a lonely old man who owns a farm but wears a leather vest and whose voice betrays that he is clearly from the Bronx.

Zambrini questions Crazy Lynn as to why she drove so far into a dead area looking for work, and though she doesn't answer, he is satisfied with her boobs and shows her to her new room.

Later in the film, we meet Ms. Macy, an old busy-body who shrieks to Patrolman that Zambrini feeds corpses to his pigs. What's weird is that it's understood by pretty much everyone in town that Zambrini feeds dead bodies to his pigs, but as Patrolman says, "I don't think that's against the law." What's even weirder is that Zambrini is NOT a murderer. So where does Zambrini get these dead bodies?

Shrug.

Crazy Lynn works for Zambrini in his café as people near and far come to snack on Old Man Zambrini's White Non-Descript Food.

Lynn had a rather unorthodox way of letting
people know her parties were over.

Crazy Lynn runs afoul of Brown Teeth Man who likes to flirt and eat Zambrini's Pure White Triangle-Shaped Food while simultaneously grossing out the audience and validating the Southern stereotype.

Despite Crazy Lynn's clear repugnance over this foul dolt, the two later go on a date that ends in forced kissing and blue balls (for Brown Teeth Man). Lynn establishes her status of a strong, independent woman and fights off the disgusting man’s advances, but then relies on another man to get her out of this fix.

Enter Patrolman!

Crazy Lynn is rescued by Patrolman and he drives her back to Zambrini's café. From here on out, the movie actually becomes interesting; not because of plot twists or character metamorphosis, but because the editing of the film becomes abruptly terrible. New scenes will begin, and once established, will suddenly begin again, reestablishing what's already been established.

Example?

EXT. FARM - DAY

A dog jumps over the fence.

ZAMBRINI

Wanna see--

SUDDEN CUT TO:

EXT. FARM - DAY

A dog jumps over the fence.

ZAMBRINI

Wanna see my pigs??

This altering of space and time will occur at the start of every new scene until the end of the film. Was this purposely done in an artistic way to convey to us a question which we should endlessly ponder? Are we all stuck in one place at one time, unable to escape our fates as our lives encircle us; suffocating us; cutting us off from society and perhaps the world?

Or is this just a terrible directing debut, and appropriately a swan song, for director/star Marc Lawrence...?

...Huh?

Oh.

It's a terrible directing debut by Marc Lawrence.

Marc Lawrence could appreciate a fine set of

double-Ds, even if they were his daughter's.

Crazy Lynn makes frequent phone calls to her dead father throughout the film as Zambrini attempts to help Crazy Lynn pick up the insane pieces of her insane life and help her to move on. Lynn begins to murder random men, and what else can Zambrini do but feed them to his pigs?

Lynn appreciates his heroics in her own way, making him safe from any future psychotic breakdowns on her part. Why, Zambrini has been really the only caring figure that she’s ever had. Caring…and almost father-like. Wait, her father?

Uh-oh!

Crazy Lynn freaks out and kills Zambrini, feeding him to his own pigs.

We then reach the resolution of the film, which is carried out in three parts:

1. Lynn peels off her clothes.
2. The camera focuses on Lynn's delectable breasts.
3. Lynn alludes to also feeding herself to the hungry pigs.

It's kinda weird that Lawrence makes the audience think that she is committing pig suicide, but then we find out seriously two minutes later that she had faked her death and driven off into her psychotic sunset.

A crowd of three people soon gather at Zambrini's farmstead and Patrolman and everyone else agrees that Crazy Ol' Lynn has fed herself to the pigs and look into it no further, even though her car is clearly missing.

Sure, Timmy could fight, but it was his lackluster
dance moves keeping him from joining up with The Jets.

Director Lawrence, as if daring the audience not to laugh at his film one last time, employs a scene in which a random farmer at the crime scene gets in his truck and drives it off-screen. Once the truck is clearly well on its way into the distance do we then hear poorly applied sound effects of a truck starting its engine and pulling away. About five seconds off there, Lawrence.

I laugh.

The movie ends. The credits roll. The credits are as badly edited as the rest of the film, and once the cast list is in progress, it begins again.

I laugh again.

What I Learned From Pigs:

• Boobs.
• Everyone knows the following: Zambrini feeds dead people to pigs. Zambrini slaughters said pigs for food. Zambrini runs a successful café, in which some of the menu is pig-based. Everyone eats there, anyway.
• Breasts.
• Filmmakers don't audit their films for errors before before releasing them to the public.
• Fathers who cast their daughters in trash will feature their boobs very prominently, but only inside bras.
• Editing is really hard.
• (Boobs.)

:D

I love these two.

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?