Cold Fusion Video Reviews

• Directed by Charles Roxburgh
• Written by Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh
• Starring
  • Matt Farley
  • Kevin McGee
  • Sharon Scalzo
  • Steff Deschenes
  • James McHugh
• Produced by Matt Farley

The self-distributed DVD case for Freaky Farley speaks of it as being in the tradition of, or made in a manner reminiscent of, such diverse films as Silent Night Deadly Night 2, Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake, Slumber Party Massacre 3, The Worm Eaters, The Devil Master, and Fiend. Obviously, then, this movie isn’t being marketed as a good movie, as the list above would constitute The Nonexistent Boxed Set From Hell. There’s an implicit appeal to horror fans who appreciate regional independent genre cinema (in this case, from New Hampshire), though that’s scarcely novel in this day and age; you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a backyard-produced slasher flick, and most of them similarly draw inspiration from the schlock films of the ’70s and ’80s that crowded rental shelves during the VHS boom. The main difference between Freaky Farley and these scads of other microbudget flicks, again trumpeted on the back of the DVD case, is that Freaky Farley was shot on actual film, as opposed to the digital video which has become the indie filmmaker’s best friend. Points for authenticity, I suppose, though it’s not as if the difference really shows up on screen; a pocket-change movie shot on Super 16mm with a skeleton crew in locations of convenience looks surprisingly similar to a comparable production using prosumer video equipment.

The main story is told through flashbacks, with an institutionalized and chained Farley Carter (producer and co-writer Matt Farley), the titular “Freaky Farley,” telling his story for Dr. Timson (Ruth Tyler), who is one of the foremost experts in her psychological field, as she proudly says herself. Because this is the story as told to a psychologist, it will start in childhood and work its way through until, very late in the movie, it finally gets to why Farley’s institutionalized in the first place.

“Wait — all these years, we’ve been ‘bonding?’”

Farley’s mother died in his early teens, and his father (Kevin McGee) responds by being totally miscast. The script really wants him to be a hard-ass, but McGee can’t break out of the demeanor of an eminently reasonable if slightly distant suburban father. Thus, when he casually and frequently punishes Farley for breaking one of his many rules by having him repeatedly dig and fill in a massive hole in the back yard, the general impression is that it’s really no biggie. We are eventually informed that Dad is a local talk radio host, not in a way that makes us admire the screenplay for subtly introducing exposition, but simply in a way that makes us think they thought they had told us but forgot.

Farley grows to adulthood (Matt Farley is maybe in his late twenties), friendless and jobless. His only pleasures, when he’s not digging and filling in that damned hole, are tubing alone down the river and creeping around the quiet town of Morgantown, peeping in windows. Because he always wears a distinctive black and white striped shirt, he’s actually one of the town fixtures; I suppose if every town has to have a peeping Tom, it might as well be someone as harmless as Farley.

“Wow! They’re watching a movie in there — and it’s better than this one!”

Which is why he’s sought out by Scarlett (Sharon Scalzo), a would-be novelist of the same age. As she tells him, he’s one of the three most fascinating people around town, the other two being the Ninja (uncredited, sorry), a silent martial artist who runs around town in a black mask, black turtleneck and black slacks (nope, they couldn’t even afford a “real” mail-order ninja costume), and the Bearded Hobo (Jeremy Demers), a crazy guy who lives in the “haunted” woods of Fensdale and always rants about dangerous “trogs” out there in the trees.

Scarlett starts accompanying Farley on his “rounds,” and with her ready smile and adventurous nature, it’s easy to see why Farley falls for her. She keeps him at arm’s length, though it’s not clear whether she’s simply playing hard to get. In any case, Farley’s father disapproves (of time spent with Scarlet — he must surely know about the peeping, but doesn’t say boo about that), and instead tries to use his connections to get Farley a job that Farley doesn’t want at the telephone company.

The couple that stalks together, stays together.

It’s during this turmoil in his life that Scarlett starts pushing Farley to discover what “really” happened to his mother, and why his father won’t allow mention of the old family cabin in the woods that they haven’t visited since mother died…

Now. We’re just shy of an hour into an 83-minute movie which cites as its inspirations Silent Night Deadly Night 2, Rana: The Legend of Shadow Lake, Slumber Party Massacre 3, The Worm Eaters, The Devil Master, and Fiend. Can you see the problem we’re running into here? Yes, you in the back with the bad haircut?

Um… There’s no horror?

DING DING DING Precisely. If you came into this movie blind, aside from a couple of oblique comments by Farley to Dr. Timson in the framing material about having done terrible things, you’d have no clues that this is supposed to be a horror movie, or even a horror-comedy. The most obvious conclusion you’d reach is that it’s some sort of quirky, light-hearted drama, like a vastly inferior version of Townies. Say what you will about that list of inspiring indie horror flicks, but one thing they have in common is that they dished up what they promised to the audience: cheap, crappy horror slashers and monsters.

“I really hate this bathrobe.”

It’s only after we’re two-thirds of the way through Freaky Farley that suddenly it becomes both a slasher movie and a creature feature. Farley finally gets fed up with Dad and stabs him with a pumpkin carving knife, and once started he goes on a killing streak of everyone who’s ever wronged him. Meanwhile, we also find out that the “trogs” are real creatures, as portrayed by people in ghillie suits with latex monster gloves. Despite that (and despite, again, the list of movies that inspired this one), between the slasher elements and the creature elements there still isn’t much gore, to go with the fact that there’s really not much exploitation (this in a movie where the main character is a peeper, too). Minimal blood, no sex… What, exactly, did the aforementioned movies inspire? Bad acting and unimaginative cinematography?

The acting is, naturally, bad; just about everyone is a non-actor, and in some scenes you could probably triangulate the exact location of the cue cards by watching the performers’ eyes. The script gives these well-meaning amateurs no support, either; aside from the aforementioned story problems, the dialog sounds more like something you should read in speech balloons over their heads rather than hear coming out of their mouths.

“Aagh! Aggressive lichen!”

Yes, it’s pretty obvious that intentional campiness was one of the goals of this movie; you don’t cite Slumber Party Massacre 3 if you mean your motion picture to be taken seriously. But here’s the thing about camp: It comes in two distinct flavors. There’s unintentional camp of the Plan 9 From Outer Space variety, in which the earnestness with which the production was mounted adds to the hilarity of the final production. And there’s the intentional camp as exemplified by Troma productions, which succeeds (as much as anything put out by Troma can be said to succeed) to the degree that the filmmakers and the audience are sharing a knowing wink. But somehow, a mix of intentional and unintentional camp, of irony and incompetence, leaves the audience out of sorts; they don’t know if what they’re laughing at was meant to be funny or not. And that’s if they laugh in the first place.

There are plenty of good microbudget horror productions which pay homage to the cheap indie genre flicks of a generation back. This isn’t one of them.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 8, plus some trogs
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0