Gutterballs (2008)

It's a rare film that contains a pretty equal amounts of elements that I really enjoyed, and elements that I found completely awful.  Gutterballs is making me glad I decided that review scores were for pill-munching dandyheads because any arbitrary grade I gave this movie should wouldn't feel right.  This movie is a gory butterfly trapped in a autistic amateur's cocoon, and I just want to cut all the dumb bullshit away and let it fly, fly away.

Gutterballs is about a slasher in a bowling alley.  It's Canadian, and very gory.  The victims are all awful, either scenesters of various stripes, punk greaser types, or vapid ladies who exist to waggle their boobs around.  In a movie like this, the audience doesn't care about character traits or motivation, we just want to see the blood and cuts come at a steady pace, and in this respect, the movie doesn't disappoint.  Once the murders start, they keep coming at a constant ten minute pace, like the world's most perfect 50-year-old jogger. And for this, I applaud.  The kills hit about every possible way you could murder someone in a bowling alley, and then some, and they're all creative and messy.    Detailing them is probably the only spoiler I care about in these kinds of film, so suffice to say that while they were bloody and messy and pretty cringe inducing, it's another positive tick for this movie that none of the kills went for that gross psychological terror angle.  I mean, people are begging for mercy and all that, but the camera is focusing on the disemboweled guts and not a crying face, if that means anything to you Hostel-raised wippersnappers.

I also have to give a kudos to the soundtrack, as was done by Gianni Rossi, who had a hand in the faux disco prog shit that all horror nerds love about 70's Italian horror.  I'll admit that I only heard of the movie after downloading the soundtrack and grooving to some pure 80s nostalgia.  The wikipedia page on the movie had some malarky about it originally having a "who's who" of canadian rock, and I think everyone who has watched that movie can breathe a sigh of relief that that shit fell through.

Okay so what was awful about this movie.

SOUND.  For a movie with a soundtrack that makes me feel all warm inside, the actual production values on non-soundtrack audio were beyond awful.  Everything is muffled, distant sounding, and colliding together.  One looks forward to the death of the characters in the film moreso than normal because the early scenes of the film are an unending stream of Canadian drama kids all trying to talk over each other.  It's less of a problem than it could be, since all of the dialogue, as far as could be made out, was the sort of banal improvisational troupe exchanges you'd see in some ten-dollar cover charge theater in Portland.

RAPE SCENE.  This isn't really a spoiler, as the summary of the film on any site includes the notice that there's a rape.  What it doesn't say is that the rape is not some standard, exploitive "oh no aiiiie awkward angle shots occasionally showing a boob and a scary leering rapist face" rape scene that, while pretty gross, is sort of a part and parcel of a certain segment of the horror scene.  No, what we get is the answer to a theoretical question of "what if some not really that great filmmakers were challenged to do a rendition of the Irreversible rape scene in a bowling alley's arcade room?"

I didn't hate the rape scene because it was overwhelmingly brutal and honestly kind of uncomfortable to watch with my girlfriend, to the point that I just started looking at the arcade machines* because holy shit was this scene going on for way too long and hey what are they doing with that oh my god.  Really brutal rape scenes can work, or at least have a sort of internal logic, with certain kinds of films.  These kinds of films do not remotely include Gutterballs, which is at all other points a fun little throwback to 70's giallo inspired slashers. Those kinds of slashers do have rape scenes, but they are, let's be honest here, usually for the excuse of titillation and not much else.  There is nothing titillating about the Gutterballs rape scene, which is just really weird and off-putting for a film that otherwise seems to have its tongue firmly implanted in its cheek.

Amazingly Awful Ending!  I'm not going to spoil the ending since there's already a summary on wikipedia that goes into excruciating detail about the fifteen palm in face twists, but suffice to say it is a total goddamned mess.  It's true that giallo slashers love their shocking twist endings, but while the ending of Deep Red amazes you and the ending of Phenomena shocks you in delight, the ending of Gutterballs just forces the viewer to throw up their hands in realization that the subconscious part of every true horror watcher that cynically predicts the dumbest obvious twists was totally correct this time.

All in all, Gutterballs is worth watching if just for the great gore and inspired soundtrack.  Just don't feel bad about skipping minutes of cinema at a time.  The life you save may be your own, unless you're near a ball polishing machine.

* true fact: in one of my not-so-proud moments, I pointed out the 4-in-1 neogeo arcade machine while it had metal slug on attract mode to my girlfriend.  She wasn't impressed. ;_;

Tales From the Hood (1995)

s Why are black-centric horror films generally pretty awful?  By black-centric, I mean the modern trend of hollywood equating movies with a black cast to have some sort of an "urban" bent.  Generally, this sorts of films are the most generic possible plots with the addition of some terrible THUG LIFE aspect.  I rarely see them in video stores, but apparently there's some dark and sinister subsection of BET that's producing them, since they seem to premiere a new take on "VAMPIRE GANGSTER HEIST INSERT WEED JOKE HERE" every month or so.

There are exceptions, of course.  Most would probably point to The People Under the Stairs and Candyman, films that used the whole notion of black people being the underclass to more affluent white people and added a horror bent to that.  However, I'd also argue that Tales From the Hood should also be considered a classic in this category.  If the title doesn't make it obvious, Tales From the Hood is a horror anthology, divided into four stories with an extra "framing story."  The latter involves three INNER CITY youths planning a drug deal at a funeral home maintained by a mortician whose face pretty well determines how things are going to end up here:

 oh hai guys clarance williams iii here

The mortician, being the one with the drugs, is able to leverage his way to telling the four main stories.

Three of the four stories are pretty generic (though not really bad) social commentaries with a horror twist.  The first involves a former black cop who quit the force after seeing his corrupt cop partners beat and murder a black activist.  One year later, he lures the cops to the gravesite of the activist for revenge purposes.  It's basically the Thin Blue Line version of Creepshow's "Father's Day," even to the point of the zombie activist (whoops spoilers I guess) having telekinetic powers.  Still, it gets to the point quickly enough, and there's nothing technically wrong with this story (nor really any of the other stories).

The second story is all about domestic violence, with a kid telling his COOL AND HIP BLACK TEACHER that he's all bruised up because there's a monster beating him up.  The monster, of course, is his stepfather who has a tattoo of MONSTER on his arm.  Monster, monster, monster.  Happy ending due to child apparently having power to kill people by ripping up his drawings of them.

The final story involves a evil gangster who is arrested for his crimes, but takes an offer of freedom by participating in a "rehabilitation program" that is basically the Ludovico Treatment, but with more spinning chairs and nurses in weird latex fetish uniforms.  I'm not sure whether it or the Monster story is the worst one of the bunch, as while the final story features some shocking and provoking actual photographs of violence against blacks, the impact is diluted both by the pictures being intercut of footage of guys in bandannas jumping around firing guns, and the program director (who is basically a solemn Whoopi Goldberg) telling the gangster, "Cain was the first murderer, Crazy K.  He killed his brother HOW MANY BROTHERS HAVE YOU SLAIN?!?!?!"  I understand the message is that black-on-black violence is just furthering the cause of racists, but there has to have been a better way to express it.  Eventually, the gangster fails the treatment, and is sent back to the moment he was arrested, except now instead of being arrested, he's killed by the three gangster in the framing story.

Oh yeah, and then when the gangsters are finally revealed the coffins where the drugs are purportedly kept, they instead find their corpses and oh wait the mortician is actually satan.   

Ultimately, I just wanted to use this review to talk about the third story, which is easily one of my favorite short horror tales, KKK Comeuppance."  When you open with a political ad stating: "You can give it any name you want.  The fact is, affirmative action, quotas, reparations, all mean one thing: Another qualified individual won't get a job or an education simply because he's not the right color.  I thought that's what we were trying to get away from," dissolving to the picture of the whitest person imaginable, you know whoever wrote this had some fun.  The whitest man alive is running for senate, was a former Klansman, and every thing he says is basically what I unironically heard while living in Arkansas.  He's also living in a house that was the site of a former slave massacre which resulted in alot of displaced souls until a later owner transferred all of the souls into dolls.  There's even a picture hey why is one of the dolls whited out???

this was basically what reading highlights as a kid was like

Like all killer doll stories, we get scenes of the doll inanimate (though still able to trip an Uncle Tom image consultant down the stairs), randomly appearing in spooooooky places.  Eventually it reappears on the staircase, prompting KKK Guy to declare that "THERE WILL BE NO REPARATIONS" while throwing a bowl at the doll, and declaring war on a "VOODOO BITCH" while impaling a painting of her with her dolls with an American Flag.  Eventually the doll attacks directly, but is quickly subdued, and tied to a dartboard, though KKK guys uses a shotgun in lieu of darts.  All looks well as "NOT EVEN SOME VOODOO NEGRESS BITCH SPELL CAN OVERCOME THE POWER OF A DOUBLE BARRELLED SHOTGUN," but the painting now suddenly has roughly six dolls whited out.  White supremacy oopsie, as now he's dealing with a whole bunch of "YOU LITTLE...NIGGLINS."    Also, the original doll returns, and the double barrelled shotgun isn't so helpful now, so he retreats to the previous room only to well

 

 

 (seeing this as a 10-year-old really had a profound effect of my attitude towards other races)

In perhaps the most subtle bit of writing ever, KKK Man covers himself with the American flag as the dolls approach and you get the rest.  Again, easily the best story of the bunch, in acting, writing, and general horror movie vibe, like a top-tier Tales from the Crypt episode.  That's the complement, by the way.

Again, it's not really a must-see horror film, and one could even call it a series of spooky morality tales with the exception of KKK Comeuppance, but it's still probably the most socially challenging horror film about black people (and really in general, unless you count silly WHITE PEOPLE PROBLEMS), which is fairly depressing when you think about it.