Townies (1999)

Posted on Nov 26, 2002 under "Hot", Comedy, Horror |

Written, produced and directed by Wayne Alan Harold
Starring
- Toby Radloff
- Lori Scarlett
- Shane Koltnow
- Michelle Sibits
- Jay Geldhof

Probably the biggest disservice done to this movie is the cover of the Tempe DVD. It’s colorful and cartoony, with a typeface that just barks “Zany comedy!”

Well, it is a comedy of sorts. But it’s not colorful (literally or figuratively) or madcap. It’s gritty and bittersweet and surreal and challenging and convincingly-acted; it gets most of its laughless humor from the weight of sheer absurdity rather than pratfalls and gags. It’s also a hell of an impressive micro-budget feature.

“So how drunk do I have to get before you start looking good?”

It also doesn’t lend itself to my normal “plot synopsis with riffs” review format, mainly because it doesn’t have what we normally term a “plot.” There are a number of plot threads here, and unlike most movies, they don’t converge; what this ends up being is a slice of the lives of several of the crazy outcasts — the “townies” — of Schlarb, Ohio. To wit:

Probably the headliner storyline is that of geekish dumpster diver Dickie (Tony Radloff, who also played the titular role in director Harold’s Killer Nerd and Bride of Killer Nerd — talk about typecasting!). Egged on by a Thad and Billy (Sean Wolf and Phil Schmeidel), a couple of locals who delight in tormenting the townies, he awkwardly propositions his longtime galpal Crazy Connie (Michelle Sibits) and is soundly and tearfully rebuffed.

Hey — them’s good eatin’!

It’s in this state that Dickie finds something very unusual in a trashyard: a young woman’s corpse. Given his state of mind — both habitual and immediate — he wraps up the corpse, trundles it home in his shopping cart, and makes her his girlfriend. Scenes of him bringing her a new hat, spraying the airspace around her with freshener, and dancing alone with her in the basement constitute a peculiar kind of humor. In the hands of other filmmakers, this would be material for a blackly comedic farce, a necrophiliac version of Weekend at Bernie’s. Here, though, it’s played straight. The situation is indeed humorous in its broad outlines, but the actual scenes are purposely without yuks and gags; the poignancy, though not artificially inflated with melodrama, still sinks in.

Another large storyline, one with even less humor, is that of Pricie (Lori Scarlett), a gentle grown woman who never learned to talk. She spends her time pushing her doll around in a baby cart, and visiting a single mother who’s kind of taken Pricie under her wing and treats her like a normal person. Pricie’s almost a complete innocent, unfazed by (and largely unaware of) her outsider status in society — though she is haunted by the image of the carefree frolicking squirrels that her grandfather later serves up for dinner with gravy.

This is “normal”? Feh. Give me the townies any day.

Of course, there’s nothing that attracts violence like innocence, and thus Pricie ends up victim of probably the most tastefully depicted sexual assault in the last few decades of cinema. And she seems only vaguely disturbed by it; most disturbing to her is the fact that when her rapist tosses her out of his car, she loses her doll. (If I had the impulse to act like an art-house film geek, I’d point out how her doll can actually be seen as a symbol of her own innocence. But let’s not go there.) And since the single mother’s young son trusts her implicitly, she tries to replace her loss with him. (If I had the impulse to act like an art-house film geek, I’d point out…)

Of all the storylines, it’s the only one that has any substantive resolution, and it’s actually pretty upbeat. Comparatively, at least.

It’s never too early to start auditioning for Romero’s next flick.

But the cinematic heart of Townies is the story of high school Kelli (Shannon McNamara), who tries to impress Thad by terrorizing the enigmatic townie Caduceus (Shane Koltnow). But the mute and phlegmatic Caduceus instead follows her around town, watching her from afar impassively, like a mental ward version of Kwai Chang Caine. Kelli finally gets Thad and Billy to go after him — which leads to the most striking scene in the whole movie: The beaten but unruffled Caduceus, dancing like the snakes of his namesake and taking out both of his assailants.

Which is an appropriate spot for me to praise as highly as possible the soundtrack. Most micro-budget productions either use donated MP3s from nameless rock bands trying to make a name, or “my brother and his Casio” electronic scores, both of which often exhibit desperation instead of aptness. But the edgy acoustic cues for Townies, by a band called Fuzzhead, matches perfectly the unvarnished footage it accompanies. It makes good scenes great, and great scenes — like the Caduceus dance — jawdropping.

“Boy, they never told us about this in the academy…”

There’s more to Townies than these three storylines; even that would be too linear and structured. There are other examples of Thad and Billy’s cruelty to townies, demonstrating well the fact that “normal” is a word that speaks only of prevalence and not of any comparative value. And yes, even for being a mirthless comedy, there is one scene that had me laughing out loud: When the mostly-loony inhabitants of a boarding house practice a birthday show for their landlady, and one (Jay Geldhof) bellows out a fervent rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” all heedless of the key of his accompaniment. (Geldhof was also the artist for the DVD cover — I guess the good cancels out the skilled-but-ill-conceived.)

The truly amazing fact: According to J.R. Bookwalter’s liner notes, Townies had a budget of approximately $300. For probably less than you paid for your TV and VCR, Wayne Alan Harold put together a piece of cinema that would be credible and impressive if made for literally tens of thousands of times as much.