Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Written and directed by Frank Parker, Jason Santo, and Steven Sherrick
• Starring
  • Frank Parker
  • Joe Vaccariello
  • Cassie Ross
  • Steven Sherrick
  • Jason Santo
  • Roman Berman
• Produced by Jason Santo, Joe Vaccariello, Cassie Ross, Steven Sherrick, and April Cresey

Fade to Black is a series of short films from Pangea Films and Random Foo Pictures, assembled into one-hour installments for cable-access and other venues. Normally I treat anthology movies as a single film, but since each of these short films is shown complete with its own credits, I’ll give each its own mini-review, plus a summing-up section at the end covering comments common to all films.

The Item (1998)

Taking its cues from everything from Hitchcock to Tarantino, The Item is the tale of a number of unsavory characters all trying to get their hands on “the item,” one of those never-identified objects of great worth (its identity is identified after the closing credits, but it really doesn’t have any bearing on the story). It goes something like this; Liam (Vaccariello) offers the job of acquiring the item to Fitz (Parker), who demurs; Liam then rounds up his associate Mac (O’Donnell) and goes after it himself. Fitz has already guessed from the description, though, that the holder of the item is none other than his friend Oakie (J. Santo), and so arrives at Oakie’s house just after Liam and Ned’s departure, sending him on a merry chase. Meanwhile, Liam tries a doublecross of his own on Ned; it all leads up to the four of them arriving at the rendezvous point, resulting in a burlesque of that old action stand-by, the multiple gun-to-the-head scene (you know, guys A and B have guns pointed at each other, but guy C puts his gun to the head of guy B, but guy D…).

Given that a straight McGuffin story is a thin hook on which to hang a feature, I suppose I should be grateful that this is a short. There is, as with most crime flicks nowadays, a heavy Tarantinoesque flavor; the longest single conversation is about Ned’s inability to piss on the side of the road like a normal guy, and there’s a running gag about all of their (prop) guns being identical.

But even given the lightly-comical flavor intended, it sometimes comes off as a little too light; the protagonists are not only all of college age, but they all dress like college students (when all four supposedly-hardened criminals are wearing knee-length shorts, you know you’ve got a real image problem).

But hey, it’s moderately clever and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Marisa (1998)

In a deliberate and mostly successful experiment in the story-telling power of pure images, Marisa is a dialogue-less montage told in color flashback from a black-and-white present as Marisa (Ross), our protagonist, cleans a gun. in disjointed flashbacks, we see her and her beau (Sherrick) fall in love — first platonically, then more sweatily. Great use here is made of rather prosaic imagery, notably a single red rose and a mirror shattering and showing a reflection of the “action” (wink wink, nudge nudge). As with most imagery, the most understated is the most effective, that being Marisa simply glancing over to the nightstand in the midst of passion and noticing, abstractly, a packaged condom sitting there unused.

Which is why it’s so disappointing when director Santo, who’s set up a commendable series of images that need no overt narration, loses faith in either his ability or his audience’s intelligence and inserts, over a scene of a distraught Marisa looking at a letter in the mail, the words “HIV Positive” in that edgy jump-all-over-the-screen script that’s being done to death right now. Yes, thank you, we understood the importance of that condom, and we could probably have guessed the contents of the envelope from Marisa’s behavior.

Despite that, it’s a great showcase of budding cinematic talent, as well as the ability to coordinate on-screen motion with a good choice of music (more on that later).

The Final Sale (1999)

Our young protagonist (Santo) is a door-to-door life insurance salesman, on his last legs, as not a soul will listen to his sales pitch. (An aside: being in the insurance industry myself, I’d like to point out that anyone who tries to sell life door-to-door is simply too stupid to be preserved in the gene pool.) He comes home distraught, sees his life as a failure, and prepares to down a concoction of Clorox and other household cleaning agents. All the while, as the salesman moves around the house, a hapless burglar (Berman), surprised at his task, tries to keep out of his way and make it to the front door; but when it’s apparent that the salesman is about to end it all, the burglar feels compelled to make his presence known.

The foregoing is pretty fun, especially all of the sight-gags involved in the burglar creeping toward the door and scurrying out of sight; the whole deal kind of loses a lot of steam once the salesman and the burglar get to talking and discussing suicide and stuff. It’s a nice little idea, but it is definitely a little idea, and unsupported it really can’t support even this short a running time.

Final Thoughts:

All of these films look very much like student films in vey specific ways; the camera work is shaky, and the locations are all very minimal. (Thanks to the common setting for at least two of these three films, I’m getting to know one upstairs apartment very well.) In other words, the in-front-of-the-camera components show the evidence of a budget of roughly zero. The footage itself is clearly digital, though, and both the video editing and sound mix are slick; sum it all up, and it looks like students using the school’s equipment. (I’m actually pretty sure that that’s not the case, but it’s still the impression left.) Said sound mix is helped immensely by the use of the filmmakers’ personal libraries, obviously pressed into service without the aid of actual musical license. (A common refrain in the closing credits is, “All music used without permission. Please do not sue us. We haven’t any money.”)

Adding to the studenty feel is the realization that all of the films are, in once sense or another, visual experiments, Marisa more obviously so than the others. These are obviously new filmmakers trying to find out exactly how to pull off certain storytelling techniques, and watching well-meant near-misses is almost as entertaining as watching the successful attempts.

Yet on the technical end, a case could be made that this Fade to Black episode is no better than, say, Blood Red Planet. I mean, cast is obviously composed largely of the filmmakers themselves and whoever else they could press into service, and acting ranges from adequate to, well, somewhat inadequate. What’s the diff?

The diff is that the Pangea/Random Foo crowd is not just trying to make movies; they’re trying to tell stories. That desire is evident in everything they do. And that simple desire makes all the difference in the world.

I was sent a stack of randomly selected Fade to Black episodes, of which this is the earliest, along with the assurance that they get better as they go along. Given the unfocused talent glimmering in this early episode, I can’t help but believe that, and I look forward to watching those skills grow as I work my way through the stack.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 1
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0