Customer Reviews

Killer Flick

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"An outrageous, inspired satire... pertinent and enough to deserve much wider, more accessible play" -- Kevin Thomas, LA TIMES

"Writer-director Mark Weidman cleverly subverts audience expectations" -- Chuck Wilson, LA WEEKLY

"The movie blurs film-within-a-film narrative, filmmaking in-jokes and cartoon violence. I liked its audacity and got the jokes... enjoyed the ride!" -- Allen White, FILMTHREAT ONLINE (www.filmthreat.com)

"One of the festival's standouts... a breathless, funny, inventive film" -- Gary Morris, SAN FRANCISCO WEEKLY

"Part self-reflective road movie, part eye-candy, the narrative is a finely stitched patchwork masterpiece. Every battle divides winners and losers, KILLER FLICK emerges from this one gloriously triumphant." -- Marlene Friis, SAN FRANCISCO INDIEFEST

"An American indie-film of the most energetic kind! More than just a low-budget road movie full of action, the clever script holds some slick gags -- Tarantino style -- a handful of action-racketing a la Robert Rodriguez and a dash of absurd irony." -- Mikko Aromaa, ESPOO CINE FILM FESTIVAL, Finland

AND

Winner, Best Picture, 1998 Pomona Film Festival

I give this 3 stars because I think the movie is true to it's satirical intent. It's a crazy, ridiculous, sick, nonsense of a cheap, 70s style crime spree film. That's it-and nothing more. I am glad to have it in my collection, but it's certainly not a great film. The DVD itself is mediocre quality and the audio is very bad.

The sensitive writer is, of course, gay, though he doesn't seem to think so until the film is half over. I got all the jokes and found 90% of them to not be funny. This is just a bunch of testosterone-laden misogynistic schtick masquerading as a satire when it's in exactly the same position as what it seems to think it's making fun of. Instead of being subversive, as it intends, it reinforces everything such a satire suggests that it dislikes.

The best scene, though, which earns it its extra star, is a self-reflexive moment in which an acting class, consisting of actors who have already appeared in the film go over the lines and comment on how bad the film is. Unfortunately, scenes as self-reflexive as this are few and far between. Weidman ultimately champions his heroes way too much, when their entire goal is to make derivative crap and make money, which is apparently Weidman's goal as well.

It's easy to compare this film to _Cecil B. DeMented_, which it precedes, but John Waters understands satire much better than Mark Weidman, though this film is so bad it might have inspired him.