Chicago Underground Film Festival
Frank Grow’s effects-laden, MTV-paced independent feature follows Larue, a young man suffering from “compulsive reading syndrome,” as he’s prematurely discharged from a mental institution and takes up residence in a seedy rooming house. Everyone else in the film is crazy too: Dr. Noguchi, who has his own theory of evolution, keeps a giant primordial worm that escapes into the sewer system and emerges from toilets to attack the unwary; Larue’s neighbors include a young mute woman who uncontrollably throws herself upon him and her cleanliness-obsessed mother. The numerous effects, rapid cutting, and fast-moving, handheld close-ups seem designed to keep the pace lively, but everything is pitched at the same level of hysteria, and the whole thing looks like a parody of a student-film parody of a campy grade-Z horror film. If seeing characters shriek and writhe while covered in blood sounds appealing, this is for you. (FC) (7:00)
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Writer-director J. Michael McCarthy may have provided an antidote to the blockbuster Men in Black with this lurid SF action comedy. The plot–a marvelously rabid diatribe about alien psychokillers sent to earth every generation to wipe out the latest incarnation of hippies–seems to refer to dozens of movies and comic books I haven’t seen or read. But that didn’t diminish the intensity of this exploitation joyride along desolate highways and through eerie forests, with pit stops in garish nightspots for clumsy stripteases and in small-town alleys for showdowns between self-conscious cool guys who carry guns or toothpicks as if it didn’t matter which–all revved up with miraculously persuasive cheesy special effects. A sound track featuring several bands accompanies Darin Ipema’s glorious cinematography, making this picture downright danceable but much more than audio-enhanced eye candy. If McCarthy weren’t so marginalized, many filmmakers could be modeling their work on his layered lyricism instead of Quentin Tarantino’s canned vacuousness. On the same program, Petula & Freddie, a 1996 animated short by Ingrid Yegros. (LA) (5:30)
Short films, program two
Nanni Jacobson’s 55-minute video is described by festival programmers as the only authorized documentary about musician Nick Cave; it contains concert footage of the Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds, as well as interviews with Wim Wenders, Blixa Bargeld, and Henry Rollins. On the same program, Charles Gatewood’s True Blood, Charles Pinion’s I Get Ideas, and Patty Chang and Anie Stanley’s Paradice. (10:45)
