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The actual f*ck.
Ok.
A couple heads out on vacation leaving their baby boy in the care of the wife's sister. Along the way, the brakes surprisingly fail and the couple is violently killed in an accident, leaving the child to be raised by his aunt.
Fast forward about 14 years and the boy is nearly a young man, a high-school basketball star looking forward to going away to school on a sports scholarship... something his over-protective and possessive Aunt Cheryl doesn't seem too happy about. So when Billy comes home one night to witness her stabbing a man in the throat with a kitchen knife, claiming he tried to rape her, a grotesque drama is set in motion. Complicating things further, the police lieutenant assigned to the case is a hateful homophobe who has already decided that Billy is "a fag" and murdered the man himself in a fit of passion. All these ingredients lead the viewer into a rather icky film carried by a startling performance from outsider character-actor and Academy Award nominee, Susan Tyrrell.
I was going to joke that Bill Paxton’s dribbling is actually the most horrifying thing in this film. It would have been fun if this movie were actually bad and I could just make jokes about that. But this was not the case. The movie is not bad. It's surprisingly good in its own way.
I mean, the movie is icky as f*ck, make no mistake. But it's going for that and it hits it with both barrels. I was uncomfortable from about 4 minutes into the film until pretty much the last frame. I paused it a few times and considered bailing. But I went back to it and was rewarded.
It is a surprisingly interesting movie in how it looks at “sexual deviancy” from 1982. There's this twisted incestuous relationship at the center of it but also the intense homophobia that the film examines is really progressive for the time. It seems at first like Bo Svenson, the police-lieutenant, is gonna be sorta the hero of the movie when you first meet him, but he turns out to be a nasty homophobe with a vicious streak. “He's a fag. He grew up without a father, only women around. It’s a classic case.” And he just gets worse and worse. He's decided from the beginning that these "deviants" are guilty and he pushes that narrative forward in some pretty unethical ways until he gets what he wants. Fortunately the movie makes it clearer and clearer that it does not approve of him.
Really Susan Tyrell really deserves some kind of recognition as off-her-rocker Aunt Cheryl, she's pretty amazing, absolutely all in on this performance in a way you rarely see. Her reactions and especially facial expressions to anything from just walking in on Billy reading her letters to actually murdering someone are just priceless. When she finally becomes fully unhinged, it’s just really something.
She is just really uncomfortable and disturbing as hell. She really made my skin crawl and never let up. She was great in Angel too, a movie I feel gets unfairly maligned, not to mention the wonderfully bizarre Forbidden Zone. What a unique character and talent she was.
The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Movie of 1982.
Yeah, this really is pretty good for what it is, it’s just not like too much else I’ve seen and I wasn’t expecting it… and it’s icky as f*ck. But, honestly, I don't think I can say one thing against it, it's committed to what it is and it doesn't falter.
Strong rec, Tak.
The actual f*ck.
Ok.
A couple heads out on vacation leaving their baby boy in the care of the wife's sister. Along the way, the brakes surprisingly fail and the couple is violently killed in an accident, leaving the child to be raised by his aunt.
Fast forward about 14 years and the boy is nearly a young man, a high-school basketball star looking forward to going away to school on a sports scholarship... something his over-protective and possessive Aunt Cheryl doesn't seem too happy about. So when Billy comes home one night to witness her stabbing a man in the throat with a kitchen knife, claiming he tried to rape her, a grotesque drama is set in motion. Complicating things further, the police lieutenant assigned to the case is a hateful homophobe who has already decided that Billy is "a fag" and murdered the man himself in a fit of passion. All these ingredients lead the viewer into a rather icky film carried by a startling performance from outsider character-actor and Academy Award nominee, Susan Tyrrell.
I was going to joke that Bill Paxton’s dribbling is actually the most horrifying thing in this film. It would have been fun if this movie were actually bad and I could just make jokes about that. But this was not the case. The movie is not bad. It's surprisingly good in its own way.
I mean, the movie is icky as f*ck, make no mistake. But it's going for that and it hits it with both barrels. I was uncomfortable from about 4 minutes into the film until pretty much the last frame. I paused it a few times and considered bailing. But I went back to it and was rewarded.
It is a surprisingly interesting movie in how it looks at “sexual deviancy” from 1982. There's this twisted incestuous relationship at the center of it but also the intense homophobia that the film examines is really progressive for the time. It seems at first like Bo Svenson, the police-lieutenant, is gonna be sorta the hero of the movie when you first meet him, but he turns out to be a nasty homophobe with a vicious streak. “He's a fag. He grew up without a father, only women around. It’s a classic case.” And he just gets worse and worse. He's decided from the beginning that these "deviants" are guilty and he pushes that narrative forward in some pretty unethical ways until he gets what he wants. Fortunately the movie makes it clearer and clearer that it does not approve of him.
Really Susan Tyrell really deserves some kind of recognition as off-her-rocker Aunt Cheryl, she's pretty amazing, absolutely all in on this performance in a way you rarely see. Her reactions and especially facial expressions to anything from just walking in on Billy reading her letters to actually murdering someone are just priceless. When she finally becomes fully unhinged, it’s just really something.
She is just really uncomfortable and disturbing as hell. She really made my skin crawl and never let up. She was great in Angel too, a movie I feel gets unfairly maligned, not to mention the wonderfully bizarre Forbidden Zone. What a unique character and talent she was.
The film was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Horror Movie of 1982.
Yeah, this really is pretty good for what it is, it’s just not like too much else I’ve seen and I wasn’t expecting it… and it’s icky as f*ck. But, honestly, I don't think I can say one thing against it, it's committed to what it is and it doesn't falter.
Strong rec, Tak.