Saturday, April 15, 2006

The Gardener – 1973 (aka The Seeds of Evil)

     This movie looks and sounds so crummy, for the entire movie, I assumed it was an Italian production. That’s not a slam on the Italian film industry, its just that their films from the seventies has a certain look and feel, and their soundtracks have that certain “disconnected” feel, like the music doesn’t really quite go with what’s on the screen. That’s what this movie has. The music is completely wrong often, and there were some companies with letters after their names in the credits, so I just assumed it was Italian, and wrote off it’s weirdness as standard Italian fair.

Imagine my shock when I discover while watching the Interviews featurette that in fact, this is an American movie. But, but, but….. it sucks just like an Italian movie sucks. Like, for instance, nothing happens for the first 75 minutes of the movie. Nothing. The music gets “mysterious”, the heroine looks around frantically, and then, nothing. Finally, at the 1 hour and twenty minute mark, there’s an 80 second scene of action. And then there’s some kind of weirdness with the topless gardener guy (more on him later), and then the heroine lights a tree on fire, and then it ends. Huh?

Okay, you all know that I watch a lot of low budget movies. For the most part, I like them. They’re unpretentious, and usually deliver the goods. This movie is exactly the opposite. It’s SUPER pretentious, and doesn’t deliver the goods. How the hell did this movie get an “R” rating? Even in ’73?

The titular Gardener is none other than Joe Dallesandro, the cheesecake “actor” who worked with Andy Warhol on such classics as Trash and Flesh. In his commentary, he mentions that Paul (that would be Paul Morrissey) told him to take this part. The way he talks about Paul, it would not surprise me to learn that they were lovers. Interestingly, he talks about how after he did this, he left with Paul and Andy to go make Frankenstein and Dracula. But IMDB says this movie was made after them. This is obviously a mistake, as the opening credits clearly say 1973, and that would put it right before Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein. Anywho, this guy spends the ENTIRE movie topless. No, seriously, he never wears a shirt in the entire movie. I guess this was supposed to be sexploitation for women. Certainly the characters in the movie droll over him rather openly. I’d be interested to know if any homosexual men who might read this think he’s all that. I’m not a very good judge of sexy in men. I gave up on this commentary after about 30 minutes. It was just too boring.

The second commentary is by Jim Kay, the director. Now Jim was, according to both the commentary and the Interviews featurette, a successful commercials director. And he really didn’t have any trouble raising the money ($100, 000) to make this movie. Too bad his talent as a commercials director didn’t translate to feature film. Everyone claims the script was great. Too bad that didn’t translate to onto the screen. All we’re left with is a talky, tedious mess. I gave up on his commentary in about 30 minutes also. He even talks with a monotone!

I’ve mentioned several times that there is an Interviews featurette. It is definitely more interesting than the movie. But there is a second extra that actually explains the whole thing. On the disc, it’s called The Million Dollar Dream. It’s a Master’s Thesis in PR entitled “The Distribution of Low Budget Films or The Gardener’s Seeds of Evil Killed My Million Dollar Dream”. It was obvious shot on VHS tape, but there are interviews with the Producer (who’s thesis this is), the Lawyer, the Director, and several other film and movie “luminaries”. Its here that we learn that this movie couldn’t get distributed [Maybe that’s because the film SUCKS! You ever think of that?] and when they finally did find someone to distribute it, they got ripped off. So a $100K film returned $50K (and a Master’s Degree in PR, evidently). But boy, is the Producer bitter. I say, take a look at the film, bozo. No one would touch it because it stinks. There’s no action, there’s too much talking, the special effects at the end are too dark to tell what the hell is happening. And nobody wants to see Joe Dallesandro topless for that long!

One beer out of five. The only interesting thing about this entire disc is the final featurette. The rest “ain’t fit for man nor beast”.