Tag: Black Comedy

Wishmaster (1997): Evil a-Djinn

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Directed by Robert Kurtzman (Buried Alive, Deadly Impact) Wishmaster is a horror film that has its tongue firmly in its cheek. Starring Andrew Divoff and featuring a cornucopia of horror film alumni, as well as Jack Lemmon‘s son Chris. (Chis Lemmon sounds just like his dad and even has most of his mannerisms)

In the beginning of the film we see the “back story” of the evil Djinn (Divoff in heavy makeup) and we also see how he comes to be defeated by a court sorcerer. The sorcerer traps the Djinn in an opal the size of Texas and that is where he remains until a drunken crane operator smashes the statue that the jewel was hidden in.

This newly released opal is pocketed by a dock worker and it finds its way eventually to an auction house. The owner, Nick Merritt (Lemmon) gives the stone to Alexandra ‘Alex’ Anderson (Tammy Lauren) to see how much it’s actually worth. She in turn gives it to her best friend Josh Aickman (Tony Crane) to analyse and its while doing this that the Djinn escapes and starts his deadly path to Alex who actually woke him up.

I really enjoyed this film the first time I saw it. It was a case of “spot the horror star” with its long list of cameos by favourite genre actors. The list is long and impressive:

Like I said, quite a lot of folks to spot and enjoy recognising them before they each meet their respective ends.

The only real problem I had with the film was the female lead Tammy Lauren. Everything about this young lady; her actions, her voice, even her facial features,  screamed “Laura Hamilton” clone. It felt like the director and the producer really wanted Hamilton and since for what ever reason they couldn’t have her, they grabbed another female who resembled her and made her “act” like Hamilton.

I could be wrong, but man, she sure made me think of the Terminator gal.

I know that Wishmaster has been pretty much panned over the years and that it spawned three more sequels (none of which I’ve seen) that were equally panned. But if you took the film at face value and realised that from frame one it was never meant to be taken seriously; you would enjoy it. This film oozes a sly humour that is hard to avoid if you look for it.

Interestingly enough, Wishmaster was the only film out of a grand total of 4 in what became a series, was the only film to have the “Wes Craven Presents” credit.

I remember showing this to my daughter (at a pretty young age, yes I know, I was a bad parent) and once she got past a few of the scarier bits (scary if you’re that age) she found the film to be chock full of sardonic humour. The same way I did.

It’s a great film to watch and chuckle at. Kane Hodder’s scene with Andrew Divoff’s Djinn is hysterically funny. (Amazingly, it was this scene that scared the crap out of my daughter.)

I’d give this a 4 out of 5 stars for black comedy and sly innuendo and for Andrew Divoff and Chris Lemmon‘s performances. A big bowl of popcorn movie for sure.

Andrew Divoff and Robert Englund.
Andrew Divoff and Robert Englund.
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Jackpot (2011): Brilliant Black Comedy

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Written and directed by Magnus Martens and based on a story by Jo Nesbø, Jackpot is a hysterically funny film about the lack of honour among criminals and how one innocent man gets caught up in almost more than he can handle.

The film opens with two men in a police interviewing room in the Ostfold Police Station. One is covered in blood and bruises while the other man, who is in a suit, questions him. The first man is Oscar Svendson who one hour previously crawled out from under the body of a huge woman while clutching a shotgun, the only survivor of a massive shoot-out in the club.

As Oscar struggles to tell the police detective what happened we are treated to a flash-back. A car with three young men is going down the road.We see it drive into the car park of a strip-club/video store called Pink Heaven. The three young men jump out and trot through the door eagerly calling out, “Any pussy in here?” As the doors close on them, gunfire erupts and all three men are shot.

As the opening credits roll, we see the carnage left in the club and we meet the detective who will question Oscar later in the film.

The Cast:

Kyrre Hellum …
Oscar Svendson
Mads Ousdal …
Thor Eggen
Henrik Mestad …
Solør
Arthur Berning …
Billy Utomjordet

The Plot:

Oscar is a sort kind of Parole Officer/Supervisor in a “Halfway House” factory that employs ex-convicts when they are released from prison. The factory makes small plastic Christmas trees. Oscar enters a football pool with three of the ex-cons who work there. Thor, Dan, and Billy all fill in tickets and Oscar drops them off paying for all the men to play. Oscar’s girlfriend tells him to change the first team that they’ve chosen to win to a draw.

When the match is televised the teams do indeed play to a draw, Billy, Thor and Dan are furious until they find that Oscar had changed the first match bet. They win over 1.7 million on the pool. Unfortunately for Oscar, despite his good fortune, his troubles are just beginning.

Waiting for the results...
Waiting for the results… Oscar, Billy, Dan, and Thor.

The Device:

The film switches from interview room to flashback and certain “scenes of the crime” where the flashbacks must “marry up” with the story that Oscar relates to Police Detective Solor (Mestad). Each flashback features more hysterically funny bad luck on the part of Oscar.

The Twist:

By the end of the film you’re left asking; did it really happen that way?

The Verdict:

Rib-tickling fun. Despite the fact that the amount of gore and blood-letting in the film could equal a Takeshi Miike movie, the film is almost hysterically funny. The action, which could be described as overly violent slapstick is blackly funny and is helped by the dialogue which can range from dry dead-pan delivery to over-the-top hilarity.

At one point Oscar is relating something and he states that when Plan A failed they had to resort to Plan B. The detective asks, “What was Plan b?” Oscar responds, “Not very good.” Very, very funny.

Due to the amount of violence and death; blood and gore; and some pretty gruesomely funny means of body disposal the film can only be classified as a black comedy. Jackpot has to be the funniest crime film I’ve seen in ages and I am amazed that Hollywood has not already snapped this film up for a remake.

A real gut-busting 5 stars out of 5 for a brilliant mix of hilarity and death. Proving once again that the Scandinavian countries don’t just write good crime fiction, but, they make great films as well.

Don’t miss it.

Going over the crime scene.
Going over the crime scene…Oscar and Detective Solor.
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God Bless America (2011): Black Comedy Gold-thwait

Every once in a while you find a film that makes you ask the question, “Where have you been all my life?”

And mean it.

Written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (World’s Greatest Dad) God Bless America is a hard hitting black comedic look at all the things that make America unpleasant. It is the  movie I have been waiting for and didn’t know it.

The two main characters are Joel Murray‘s Frank and Tara Lynne Barr‘s Roxy. Frank is a divorced man living in an apartment with paper thin walls. He fantasizes about killing his obnoxious neighbours and their constantly screaming baby. At start of the film he is fired from his job for ‘sexually harassing’ the office receptionist (he didn’t) and discovers that he has an inoperable brain tumour which will eventually kill him. His ex-wife lives with their overly spoiled and unpleasant daughter and her police officer fiance.

Frank decides after yet another night of television channel hopping  that the tv reality programs and the country’s news people are made up of profiteering and mean people. Believing that his tumour will kill him anyway he decides to shoot himself. While he has the pistol barrel in his mouth he watches part of an episode of My Super Sweet Sixteenth Birthday.

The birthday girl is spoiled, selfish and self centered. She screams at both her parents that what they are doing for her birthday isn’t good enough. Frank takes the gun out of his mouth, leaves his apartment and steals his neighbor’s car.He drives to the birthday girl’s school to kill her instead of himself.

Joel Murray as Frank

Easily the funniest sequence in the film is where he meets Roxy and then goes down to kill birthday girl Chloe (Maddie Hasson). He handcuffs her to her birthday car’s steering wheel after she tells him, “You can have the car it’s the wrong one!” Frank replies, “I know.” He then places a rag in the gas tank opening and sets it on fire.

The placing of the rag, setting it alight and the slow-motion walk away from the car is accompanied by a very cool soundtrack. Unfortunately, before Frank gets too far away the  rag falls out of the gas tank and gets blown away from the car. Frank rushes to put the burning rag back. A group of Chloe’s ‘friends’ come up and Frank decides to shoot her instead.

Getting back into his neighbor’s car he flees the crime scene. Roxy is wildly impressed by his actions and tracks Frank down to ask if she can accompany him on his killing spree.

Tara Lynne Barr as Roxy

This unlikely pair spend the rest of the film bonding and killing annoying and mean spirited people.

Despite this being the blackest of comedies, the film walks a fine line between satire and drama. Joel Murray’s acting should have garnered him a bucket load of awards. His performance in the film showed every step his character took in his arc. By the time the film reaches it inevitable climax, Murray is so convincing it raised the hairs on my arms as I watched him.

Barr’s Roxy was a brilliant blend of teen angst, raging hormones and tunnel vision. She could, in my mind at least, give Ellen Page a run for her money as the new Hollywood ingenue.

The film itself was a perfect blend of ‘fly-on-the-wall’ documentary style filming with no musical ambience at all to all out musical set pieces which fit the scene so well that it was like listening to the sound equivalent of a tight fitting glove.

This independent film was a joy to watch from the very first frame of film to the last. It managed to make me a lifetime fan of Joel Murray and an ardent admirer of Tara Lynne Barr. Murray I would cheerfully cast in everything and Barr has fallen into the category of ‘keep your eyes on this one, she’s going places.’

God Bless America does not hit one sour note. It is paced well, edited perfectly and ends as it logically should. I could write reams more about this movie, but I would soon enter into spoiler territory. I’ll have to finish here and state quite simply that if you haven’t already seen this movie, you need to.

I will be purchasing this film to see if they have any ‘making of featurettes and/or director/cast interviews. This one is definitely a ‘keeper.’

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Drag Me to Hell (2009):Campy Dark Humoured Horror

Cover of "Drag Me to Hell (Unrated Direct...
Cover via Amazon

Drag Me to Hell is pretty damn good for a film that sat dormant for over ten years. Sam Raimi and brother Ivan wrote the screenplay after the last of the Evil Dead films had been made. The original title had been The Curse (Hmmm, wonder why Sam didn’t use that title?) and it was meant to be a modern morality tale.

Unfortunately Sam had to wade through three Spiderman films before he could start work on Drag Me to Hell. so it’s no real surprise that the screenplay is over a decade old. This is Sam Raimi going back to his Evil Dead roots. And though he doesn’t have Bruce Campbell to torture, he does have Alison Lohman who proves that you don’t have to be Bruce Campbell to imitate a Timex timepiece.

Lohman actually endured some things at the hands of director Raimi that would have most folks gagging. She doesn’t doesn’t even like the horror genre, but she’s a game girl who did all her own stunts. Pretty impressive.

The film opens with a 1969 visit to a spiritualist who is trying to drive an evil spirit or demon from a young Mexican boy. she loses the fight and the boy is dragged through her floor, screaming all the way to hell. The film then jumps ahead a whole lot of years to the present.

We meet mortgage clerk Christine Brown (Lohman) who is competing for the post of assistant  manager against her creepy colleague Stu Rubin (played with a kind of smarmy charm by Reggie Lee). In an effort to please her annoying boss Mr Jacks (David Paymer) she turns down Mrs Ganush’s  request for an extension on her mortgage which will stop the bank from taking her home. Mrs Ganush is played brilliantly by the much younger Lorna Raver

Mrs Ganush flings herself at Christine’s feet and clutching her skirt, begs for her to re-consider. Christine ‘freaks out’ at this dramatic behaviour and calls for security to remove the gypsy woman. Before she is dragged away by security, she spits at Christine and swears angrily at her.

A shaken Christine leaves for the day and as she gets into her car in the banks parking garage she is attacked by Mrs Ganush. This is one of the funniest scenes in the film as the two battle tooth and nail. At one point Christine ‘staples’ the other womans head. Just when Christine thinks she has won, Mrs Ganuh  snatches a button from her clothes and places a curse on it and Christine. The woman then vanishes.

Christine enlists the help of her fiancée Clay Dalton (Justin Long in perhaps the ‘straightest’ role he’s ever done.) and they go to a fortune teller Rham Jas ( Dileep Rao) who tells her, initially, that there is nothing he can do. He explains that she is being  haunted by an evil spirit. Christine goes home where she is attacked by the spirit and she goes back to Rham Jas pleading for a solution.

Jas explains the the spirit is the Lamia and it is very powerful. He tells her to sacrifice a small animal to appease the spirit. Christine heatedly states that she could never kill and innocent animal. The next day she is attacked by the spirit again.  After she is pummelled and thrown about her bedroom like a rag doll, she kills her pet kitten. (Again one of the funnier moments in the film.)

The rest of the film is Christine’s battle to defeat the now dead Mrs Ganush and the curse. Sam Raimi could just as easily titled the film “Things That Make You Cringe with Embarrassment.”

Most of Christine’s ‘tortures’ are in public and excruciatingly embarrassing. Each set piece is a form of social gaffe that is so outlandish that it reaches the realm of slapstick. The nose bleed at the bank, the humiliation at the meal with Clay’s parents, the entire episode at Mrs Ganush’s funeral.

And that for me was what made the film fun and entertaining. What makes these social faux pas work so well is Christine herself. She is the epitome of the small town farm girl who feels out of her depth in the big city. Her insecurity is what forces her to cruelly turn down the pleading woman at the start of the film and this is what gets her in trouble.

Like his cult classic Evil Dead series and its hapless hero Ash, Christine gets the metaphorical crap kicked out of her, repeatedly. But like some kind of demented Weeble, she refuses to stay down and fights all the way to the end of the film.

This film made me laugh a lot. It also made me jump and squirm at some of the more ’embarrassing’ punishments meted out to the heroine. In short this was Raimi doing what he does best, making horror films that make you do all the aforementioned things while watching.

If they ever give out awards for Court Jesters of Horror, it should go to Sam Raimi and Wes Craven. Two of the best Schlock-Meisters in the business.

I would rate this film as a ‘two-bagger’ because you’ll lose half of your popcorn from jumping and the other half by doubling over in laughter.

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