…Kotori Magazine, that is. If you’re not familiar with this top-shelf publication, do youself a favor and check it out. Kotori’s thoughtful and well-written articles cover the whole expanse of contempo global culture- art, music, movies, politics, enviornmental issues, technology and more- and we’re extremely excited to be featured in their latest on-line edition!
This review was written by ace reporter/genre fan/all-around-swell-dude Bob Frevelle, who now has a special place in my heart because he saw fit to mention my personal favorite line in the movie, “Lexi’s pussy screamed at me.”
Follow my logic, now: More pussies screaming at people, less carbon emissions. More pussies screaming at people, less Middle East turmoil. See where I’m goin’ with this? Yeah, you do.
Anyhow, here’s Bob’s review:
MURDER PARTY – Film Review
Tuesday, 2007.06.26, 4:36PM | Art | Bob
The title is not a lie. From the moment Murder Party opens, with its slick sound design and clever opening credits sequence, we know we’re in for a treat (and plenty of tricks, to be sure). The collage of Halloween-related images comes across as fun instead of cliché, most notably the inclusion of bakery goods—like “eyeball cupcakes”—being laid out on trays behind glass display cases. This calls to mind the golden age of the date-friendly slasher film, movies like Silent Night, Deadly Night and Slumber Party Massacre.
The small crew, each of them wearing many hats, wisely keep the color drowned out and the camera low to the ground for the movie’s initial build-up. We already know that a movie called Murder Party is going somewhere bloody, but the good sport in the audience will appreciate their technique for taking us there.
Chris Hawley (Chris Sharp, star victim/Murder Party co-producer) is on his way home with some fright flicks from the local video shop (an establishment fast becoming extinct due to the innovations in HD and Blue Ray formats) when he finds a black Halloween invitation blowing around the sidewalk. Chris, of course, picks it up and is thrilled to have been inadvertently invited to a Murder Party. Even though the clearly conspicuous card warns him to “Come alone.”
Hawley goes up, sets out a bowl of candy corn, slips one of the fright flicks into his VCR (another fossil from an almost-forgotten Century) and is ready to settle in for some cinematic scares…But his cat Sir Lancelot (expertly played by thespianic feline Puff Snooty) is taking up space and dander on his love seat. He asks the cat to move, but it ain’t budging.
He whips together a somewhat Viking-esque, somewhat Hostel-esque costume out of cardboard boxes and yarn, and sets about making pumpkin bread out of the Jack-O-Lantern kids destroyed on his front steps. This is obviously a guy who is given lemons and makes lemonade.
He is also a guy who is so hapless and timid that he can’t simply pick his cat up off its perch. Instead he decides to go to a party…lest he trouble the cat. This provides for one of the film’s funniest lines:
“Okay Sir Lancelot, I’m going,” he says to the cat who is still prostrate on the recliner. “I hope you’re happy.”
The Murder Party is at a big warehouse that so happens to be within a few steps of a very gauche art exhibition (convenient and priceless, as we will learn). Inside he finds the perpetrators behind the bloody and malevolent plan—Lexi, the coke-snorting, futt-bucking painted up Blade Runner wannabe; Macon, the hirsute and wide-eyed alkie who can’t make his mind up as to whether he is insane or indifferent; an effeminate bi-sexual photographer with mutton-chops named Paul; an ephemeral Pippi Longstocking-ish “Jeerleader” named Sky (played by Skei Saulnier who happens to be “banging the director,” by his own admission); and a sluggish mopester in baseball team regalia named William (William Lacey). They quickly restrain him (even if it looks like they’re stabbing him in the chest) and then the exposition begins.
A swarthy but oh-so-shoddy faux-somebody named Alexander (sleazily rendered by Sandy Barnett) has lured them all here to compete for a $200,000 art grant. His reasons for doing this won’t make sense until the film’s denouement, which is unequivocally worth the wait and the many hoots you will have as you’re getting there. The competition, as it were, involves who can come up with the most creative way of killing the victim who, as fate would have it, is Chris.
The film’s second act, the so-called Extreme Truth or Dare sequence, has a structure more reminiscent of The Breakfast Club than anything in the annals of horror. This makes sense since writer/director Jeremy Saulnier admits, in the film’s press kit, that he prepared for it by studying the confession scene in ‘Breakfast Club.’ “It’s the exact same set-up,” he explains. Exact same set-up, perhaps. But exact same scene? Not likely. I don’t remember the Brat Packers talking about shitting their pants at a wedding and having it touch their socks. That’s an exponent of Murder Party.
It is during this segment of the flick that you might start to question the whole Murder element, but in case you start thinking that the chaos isn’t coming, remember what William said in the first fifteen minutes: “I didn’t sign on for second-degree assault party.” Oh, yes. There will be blood! And sodomy. And coke-sniffing dogs. Self-conflagration. Doucheacide (That is, the massacring of pretentious high brow douchebags). Stockholm Syndrome. More sodomy. And a little nose-crunching.
“I’ll eat anything,” one character says. “Anything but fish.” That’s a pretty good description of the film, a collaborative kaleidoscope of bloody fun, a virtual pu-pu platter of splatterpunk comedy and clever effects.
“Lexi’s pussy screamed at me.”
This is one of those movies, like Anchorman or Billy Madison or Texas Chainsaw Massacre Pt. 2 that was made for IMDB’s notable quotable section. Like Alexander’s all-too-accurate portrait of some fancy pants wheeler and dealer that is summed up by his incessant delivery of, “You’re my new best friend.” This flick has more lines than a revival of Rocky Horror or a relapse by an unfortunate celebrity. Even the credits are funny! Production secretary credit goes to Major Oversight.
Murder Party is the debut feature from The Lab of Madness. Let’s hope, for the sake of genre-loving fans everywhere, that they have more madness in their merry method.—Bob Freville
Ohhhh, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby…you can bet that picture of you with George Clinton that not only do we have more madness to mete out, but when it’s time you’ll be among the first to know!
Thanks so much to Bob and Kotori Magazine…here’s a link, go check it!
http://www.kotorimag.com/
And now, a Skei’s Baby Drama Update!
Despite her bubble belly bulging to ever-broader bounds of being in a Biblical way, I distinctly overhead our co-super-producer (along with her not-baby-daddy Chrissy Sharp) announce that she was looking forward to smoking some freebase cocaine at Atit & Nadine’s July 4th party because she’s “in the second trimester now, so it’s cool.”
UPDATE:
Apparently, I didn’t have my “listening-for-when-people-are-just-kidding” ears on when Skei said what she said. About smoking crack and all. My mistake, Skei.