Thursday, May 18th, 2006

Effects – 1980

     Here we have a “lost” film, recovered after being buried in distribution hell since it’s theatrical release 25 years ago. And a film that stars Tom Savani! That was shot on 16mm (can you image a film shot on anything other than hi-def digital or 35mm being released theatrically today?). And there is SO much drug use talked about or shown in this movie. There is no way you’d get away with that kind of stuff today.

But as I watch this movie, all I can think is “You know, I ought to be more into this than I am. I mean, it’s a movie about making a movie, and duping the cameraman so you can make a snuff film! That sounds interesting.” Too bad it wasn’t. I mean, when a highlight is a woman being strangled by a wicker basket (No, I’m not kidding), you know you’re in trouble. The fact of the matter was, I didn’t care about the characters, so didn’t get involved enough to care whether they lived or died. The dark ending was kind of a pleasant surprise, though.

Commentary has the writer/director, the Producer/actor, and the editor. Some of their historical comments are pretty interesting. Most of what they say about the movie isn’t. I was interested to know that these guys had worked with George Romero , and that Martin had been shot at the Editor’s house. That’s kinda cool. So what we have here is a group of friends that had worked for Romero and learned that you can do it all yourself, who go to and live in the house where they shoot the movie. For $55K in 18 days.

Other extras are “Aftereffects”, the making of Effects (subtitled Memories of Pittsburgh filmmaking”. Apparently, they had a reunion picnic at someone’s house, that Romero attended. So they shot all these interviews there, and made a 55 minute long, pretty good little featurette.

There are also two shorts made by people involved in the project. UBU, which is 12 minutes of pure WTF? And Beastie, the story of a pair of losers from the 70’s that had no point that I could see. And not counting the title song, no reference to anything vaguely “Beastie”.

Two beers out of five.