Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas (2009)

• Directed by Charles Roxburgh
• Written by Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh
• Starring
  • Matt Farley
  • Kevin McGee
  • Sharon Scalzo
  • Marie Dellicker
  • Kyle Kochan
• Produced by Matt Farley

I’m trying to find a way to describe this movie that doesn’t come off as a full-body slam. It’s amateurish in the extreme; the acting strain to reach mediocrity and the script bounces all around like an eight-year-old full of Pixie Stix. But it’s also amateurish in the other, non-belittling meaning that comes from the Latin root, amator, meaning a devotee or enthusiast. This movie was made for the love of making movies, and even through the crude results, it shows. That, at least, counts as a redeeming virtue.

Not only is Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas written, produced and directed by the same people who gave us Freaky Farley (2007), practically all of the same cast and crew are present, in largely the same shooting locations (“Manchvegas” being the mirror-universe analog of Manchester, New Hampshire). Marshall (co-writer and producer Matt Farley) and his two best friends Jenny (Marie Dellicker) and All-Star Pete (Tom Scalzo) comprise “M.O.S.,” the Manchvegas Outlaw Society, an adolescent clubhouse “gang” weirdly transplanted to performers in their mid-twenties. M.O.S. delivers newspapers and sells lemonade from a little red wagon, spends their spare time on the rope swing into the river… oh, and records pop songs, the latest of which, “Summer Fun,” is riding the pinnacle of the Manchvegas Top Ten right now. (They sell their CDs along their paper route.) Their main nemesis is Southcott (Bryan Fortin), the spoiled rich kid — and by “kid” I mean “man who’s almost old enough to come in to his trust fund.”

Summer, season of pulchritude!

This isn’t just an instance of much older actors playing teenage parts, such as one might see in a stage play; the characters live in an odd limbo between childhood and responsibility, like stereotypical American twentysomethings but more so. Jenny is starting to chafe a bit at the forced extended adolescence of M.O.S. and occasionally goes on dates with guys in the community (including Southcott), but Marshall spends a lot of energy sabotaging those dates. Yes, he’s got a thing for Jenny, and he’s such a manchild that if she had pigtails she’d pull them.

Meanwhile, in a parallel storyline that will eventually intersect, local diner sweeper-upper Vince (Kyle Kochan) is being pursued by finishing-school girl Melinda (Sharon Scalzo). Scalzo’s character is nigh identical to the one she played in Freaky Farley: She’s a vivacious, energetic go-getter who sets her eye on her prospective man, despite him evidencing no real eye-catching qualities, and pursues him –not too hard, as he stands still. Just to increase the correspondences to Freaky Farley, Melinda’s father is played by Kevin McGee, who played Farley’s father.

“Don’t be silly! A stalker wouldn’t be this extroverted!”

Oh, and the one other storyline: Marshall finds a university expedition (one professor and three students) conducting an archaeological dig in the woods, which means that they’re poking at the ground haphazardly in between partitioning strings. They’re looking for evidence of “gospercaps,”which are supposed to be the local mythological version of the skunk ape.

The first half hour cuts back and forth between the three storylines; the M.O.S. and Southcott exchange barbs and pranks, Melinda drags Vince out on dates over her father’s objections, and Marshall and All-Star Pete play a prank on the university people (dressing in leftover ghillie suits from Freaky Farley to pretend to be gospercaps).

People with paper routes can’t afford the richer cellphone plans.

At the 33-minute mark, events suddenly start to coalesce. While Vince naps on the edge of the river, Melinda goes skinny-dipping (probably the most fantastic and unbelievable event in this movie), and she disappears; something grabs her. Vince is suspected of murder, but is left free because the police detective (James McHugh) and the town’s sole reporter (Elizabeth Peterson) are too engaged in a battle of “Which of us is the worse actor?” Melinda’s dad is on as crusade to have Vince pay for Melinda’s supposed murder, and the M.O.S. gets interested too, seeing those headlines every day as they deliver papers. Especially when other girls around town start showing up dead…

Again, a correspondence to Freaky Farley: Despite the filmmakers’ avowal of appreciation for, and inspiration from, the schlocky horror fare of the ’70s, precious little horror finds its way into this movie, even with multiple deaths. (The killings all take place off-screen, and are presented less horrifically than your average episode of Murder, She Wrote.) We’ve got deaths, we’ve got developmentally-arrested protagonists inhabiting a universe slightly sideways to our own… All we need now is monsters tossed in incongruously, right?

String? And shovels? But that must mean — there’s ARCHAEOLOGY going on here!

Ta-dah! The gospercaps are real — as real as a half-dozen performers dressed in suits of fake fur and fabric scraps can be — and are responsible for at least some of the mayhem around town, like killing the archaeological team, and kidnapping Melinda to tie her to a tree. (Being sensitive types, they wrap some of their cloth scraps around her girlie bits for modesty.)

Will Vince be cleared of Melinda’s death? Will the murders of the other young ladies be solved? Will Melinda escape from the gospercaps before their alien-in-Jabba’s-palace voices drive her insane? Will Marshall ever come clean about his attraction to Jenny?

Shucks, you didn’t think I would spoil it for you, did you?

Revenge of the Carpet Remnants.

Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas sometimes comes across as Freaky Farley 2.0. Matt Farley’s a more sympathetic version of the adolescent-retentive he played in the earlier movie, and the story revolves largely around the love of an extroverted woman (the same extroverted woman, in fact) and the monsters that live casually at the edge of this microcosmic New England town, with a couple of casual references to schlocky horror tropes that would be all but invisible if the filmmakers didn’t point them out with pride.

The question then is, Is pride warranted? Not just in the glancing movie homage references, but in the whole production? It is, if you consider the journey to be as important as the destination. Whatever you say about what eventually ends up on the DVD, it’s clear that Matt Farley and Charles Roxburgh (aka “Farley and Charlie,” according to the cast in the behind-the-scenes footage) really really like making their movies. Its presentation to a wider audiences seems almost like an afterthought; they are, in a very real sense, getting more out of the experience than we are. Monsters, Marriage and Murder in Manchvegas may not be must-see viewing if you don’t have a relative among the cast and crew, but I would imagine that for people in that category, it’s a solid hoot.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 7
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• dream sequences: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0