Screamplay

I first saw this film on late night cable. I was channel surfing when I was confounded with the Troma logo of the city skyline that most cult movie fans know and love, eminently my brain triggered that it was going to be an hour and a half of mutant junkies with D cup breasts fighting giant penis monsters. But when the 1930's style opening credits come up (in black and white!!!), I was in for a rude awakening: this Maltese Falcon meets Eraser Head had me glued to the set form start to finish (which is pretty good considering it was 3am).

It's a complete send up of the short series of the 30's and 40's complete grainy picture and the actors over acting (in a ROCKY HORROR sort of way not a Troma sort of way), with their voices booming out like it was recorded on a old style microphone. Sure there's a bit of gore but not to the heights that Troma is famous for.

I was surprised (as well as sadden) when Troma didn't release this film with their 'RE-MASTERED' series, as most of this film is fading from memory (I saw the film over two years ago and haven't found a copy of it on video since!). Maybe it's too 'artsy' for Troma standards or not enough T & A - in fact NONE AT ALL!!! Or maybe the Penis Monster had a bit part I missed when I blinked.

Sort of a "Sunset Boulevard" plot meets "Cabinet and Dr. Caligari". It works best with the stiff silent-film or expressionist acting, and the reusing of old-time "special effects" (such as scratches on the film to represent rain, or peculiar use of rear-screen projection to suggest depth). Gets a little slow in the middle but it's worth it to the hear the LAST LINE for the worlds worst/best pun, which sort of suggests the whole film was designed just for that. We gave it a standing ovation at the Brattle in Harvard square (the filmmaker lived in Brookline). This film was released on video by TROMA in 1999, but thank god is not like a Troma film.

This film reminded me a lot of THUNDERCRACK which was also shot in black & white with overly melodramatic acting and also with filmmaker George Kuchar in an acting role. The grainy black and white photography, primitive double exposure effects and harsh lighting bring to mind old silent movies (some old movies like NOSFERATU are edited into the movie). It's basically a twisted and slightly nightmarish look at a screenwriter whose scripted murders happen in real life. The director plays the lead role like Dwight Frye on speed. Definitely recommended to fans of strange and unusual experimental cinema.

Rufus Seder belongs to that extremely select club of film directors who have only made one film ever and a masterpiece at that. (The other one in that club being Charles Laughton for "The Night of the Hunter"). Screamplay is one of my all-time favourite movies. George Kuchar is his usual sweaty, smarmy, sleazy screen ego, but not as outrageously so as in Curt McDowell's "Thundercrack". Rarely have I been entertained so much during a film screening - the film works really well on the big screen despite scratchy and fading grays in the footage. The story rocks and the projected backgrounds in many scenes are gorgeous. Even went to see it twice in a row!

What I love about watching extremely obscure, low-budget movies is that, every once in a while, amidst all the garbage, a true gem is discovered; Screamplay is one such movie, a refreshingly original, wonderfully observed movie rich in style, with pitch-perfect performances from all involved.

Screamplay tells the story of aspiring oddball screenwriter Edgar Allen (played with relish by the film's director Rufus Butler Seder) who arrives in Hollywood hoping to make it big. At a diner, Edgar has a close encounter with a roller-skating transvestite mugger, but is saved by Martin (George Kuchar), owner of a cheap apartment complex inhabited by a disparate collection of characters, including an ageing actress (M. Lynda Robinson), her beautiful student (the lovely Katy Bolger), a wannabe agent (Ed Callahan) and a hippie guitarist (Bob White).

Martin offers Edgar a room to live in and a job as janitor; when not performing handyman tasks, Edgar continues his murder mystery screenplay, channelling his anger and frustration into his writing, using those around him as inspiration for his script's victims. But when the occupants of the complex start to turn up dead, killed in the same manner as in his script, Edgar becomes the prime suspect of Hollywood cop Sgt. Joe Blatz (George Cordeiro).

Shooting in black and white, director Seder employs movie-making techniques from the age of the silent movie—vignettes, back projection and crude optical trickery—giving his film the look and feel of a German expressionist horror or an early Universal film, the effect heightened by the exaggerated mannerisms adopted by his cast. Seder, as Edgar, is redolent of Dwight Frye from Dracula (1931) while Bolger looks just like those dusky eyed damsels that used to get menaced by mustachioed villains in cliffhanger serials.

Seder wraps up his mystery in great style, with Edgar writing himself into his script as the final victim as a way of finding out the identity of the killer. The best, however, is saved for the very end, the film closing with one of wittiest final lines I can remember (I won't spoil it for you—watch the film to find out!).