AMadLane

I really did want to like it. It was all shot here in the Detroit area, but it doesn't feel like it -- it has more of a generic, anywhere feel, and that's okay.

My biggest issue with it is that the script rings totally false. These are young people anywhere from high school sophomores (thus, about 15) to about-to-be second-year college students (thus about 19) -- and they all behave like 11-year-olds. Are we really to believe that people this age get all put-offish over mere kissing?! What world does the writer/director inhabit? This opened the same week as the fine film "Terri," and that movie just crushes this one. Here, the editing is too loose, the acting is average at best across the board, and by the 20th time some guy announces "I want to kiss you" or the like, you're just so bored with it all.

A "freshman sleepover" in the University of Michigan gymnasium? With old women "chaperones" guarding/falling asleep at the door? May be, but I sure can't imagine it.

Guaranteed unlike anything you've likely ever seen (except for the first 15 minutes of set-up, which play a bit like Rocky Horror without the singing), and pitch-perfectly scripted, filmed, cast and (bravely, bravely) acted, this film draws on the medical gorefests of Japan from the mid- to late-80s, such as Guinea Pig: Devil's Experiment (where the whole raison d'etre for the film was to showcase a young nude women being surgically dismembered in ultra-realistic style) and the over-the-top camp-gore films of Andy Warhol, specifically his Frankenstein and Dracula, and is at once quite funny (mostly early on) and then rather sad, or almost -- dare I say -- poignant. If you ever think YOU'RE having a bad day...

Dieter Laser, the villain, is quite a find. Reminiscent of Udo Keir in the aforementioned Warhols, his massive Teutonic forehead is like a character in its own right. The women, although both caucasian brunettes, are both fine actresses, and only make the mistake of drinking the glasses of water offered by their host -- which of course contain roofies (which do look a bit too much like Alka Seltzer tablets). They pretty much behave the way one would think they would in such an absurdly grotesque situation. The Japanese actor is also called upon to show some acting chops, and has some of the funnier lines, which are subtitled (as is the German dialog). Even the other, relatively minor couple of characters are rendered interesting through accomplished casting. This movie screened for two weekends at midnight at the Detroit area's primary Landmark art house; went away for a weekend or two; and now, is back, apparently by popular demand. Of the audience of approximately 20 last night, only three people left, and that was during the brief, but realistic, surgical sequences. Frankly, I wasn't originally interested in it, figuring it for just some more badly made, cynical torture porn, and while it certainly does share many of the constructs of that subgenre, I must admit that, of our group of four people who saw it together, all seemed to relish its uniqueness and cinematic skill. Even as we were laughing and imagining what our subsequent dreams were going to be like...