• Produced and directed by Massimiliano Cerchi
• Written by Gion Udina
• Starring
  • Arthie Richard
  • James M. O’Donaghue
  • Shannah Betz
  • Wayne Petrocelli

First off, it’s shot on video.

(OK, have all the elitists left the room?)

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t necessarily hold SOV against a movie, but it does change the medium considerably. Instead of being “a film”, produced by unknown means in a faraway land, it becomes much more intimate. These are people with a camera. They made a movie, and now they want you to watch it. And this is pretty damned clear broadcast-quality video here, not someone playing around with a camcorder.

So what’s the movie about? Well, there’s this girl named Melissa, and when she was young she saw her mean father killed before her eyes by a bald, white-skinned boogeyman called Hellinger. Now she’s grown up (and strawberry blonde) and living in New York, but she still believes in him and leaves the light on to keep him away.

Meanwhile, her cousin Kendall (played by Arthie Richard, The Amazing Tattooed Man) has been contracted by the police to find out about a series of gruesome murders in which people have been eviscerated. (Those tattoos! This is the first b-movie I’ve seen with a wholly gratuitous male nude scene — a shower scene, to be exact — for the purpose of showing off the actor’s multi-colored body.) Why he’s hired to do the cops’ job is beyond me; he wanders around, asks some questions, gets into a fight with a pimp who’s so stupid he’s got his girls out on a deserted street at eleven in the morning — you know, all the stuff normal cops can do.

Now here’s the problem: The plot now decides to go out for lunch, check in a little later, make a pit stop, do some shopping, come back to check on us, go out for Chinese, wander back in… Here’s as near as I can tell: The murders are being committed, not by Hellinger as Melissa fears, but by her boyfriend Roger, who’s high up in a religious group that Melissa’s also a part of. (This whole religion thing really doesn’t go anywhere.) At one point we get to see him rape, mutilate and kill Melissa’s roommate. Very distasteful; first he wraps her head in a flourbag and beats her bloody, then cuts out her tongue, then rapes her with his knife. Sick bastard, indeed.

We finally get the exposition on Hellinger himself (which was also on the video cover, but it’s nice to see it on-screen): He had been a priest named Donaldson who had first started his own televangelist church, then gone crazy, obsessed with seeing the glories of heaven while in the flesh. After he died in a mysterious fire, parents used him as a boogeyman figure to get their kids to obey: “Crazy Father Donaldson’ll get you if you don’t eat your peas!” (No clue as to where the “Hellinger” moniker comes from, though. Did he just decide that “Donaldson” doesn’t inspire the right kind of fear? “No one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Wesley…”)

In the end, there’s a revelation that I just didn’t get — something about Hellinger having discovered that there is no Heaven or Hell, merely a Hindu-style cycle of reincarnation. Apparently this is supposed to explain the connection between Hellinger and Melissa, but it escaped me completely. Does that mean that Melissa is in some way Hellinger’s reincarnation, even though he seems to be a pretty active entity in his own right? Then Melissa punches him in the head, reaching in through his face and dragging out his brain. Roll credits.

What impressed me most was the acting. No one was gag-me bad, most were average, and Melissa (played by Shannah Betz) was very good. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that a movie made in New York, even a SOV ultra-low budget feature, should have good acting; the Big Apple is practically crawling with theater wanna-be’s who need something to do in the meantime.

OK, some technical aspects: As I said, the video is very clear. I was especially impressed with the night shooting: Most shot-on-video night scenes either show a single light source very clearly, or end up murky. On the other hand, too much of the camera work is static shots, edited in with hand-held stuff. (Halfway through, I started screaming, “Someone give these people a dolly!”)

But whereas the video was crystal clear, the audio was not. The interior scenes mostly sounded fine (except for a couple of scenes in which the soundtrack drowned out the dialog), but the exteriors all feature location sound — apparently supplied by the mike on the front of the camera or some other directional source. As a result, background noises intrude on the dialog, and whenever someone turns away their volume drops dramatically. (I was reminded of that scene from Singin’ in the Rain where they’re trying to set up the mikes for The Duelling Cavalier…)

Anyway. The bottom line is that I’ve seen worse movies done on film; the good camera work and fine acting help to offset the bad sound and unfocused plot. It’s not exactly art, but hey — what is?

(Watch for the Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD poster on a bedroom wall — not surprising, as Lloyd Kaufman, First Citizen of Tromaville, is credited as a co-producer. Also watch for director-producer Max Cherchi as the Mad Cowboy deux ex machina.)