Body Shop

This obscure film, available for a pro rata 50 cents in one of those "6 Horror Films on 2 DVDs" bargain basement offerings on amazon.com, is a combination of worn-out genres, aimed at the completists audience of me and about 3 other fans out there. Its novelty is the filmmakers' urge to revive not the dead (zombies) but rather dead genres.

I loved going to drive-ins in the '70s; I even bought a Dodge Challenger in 1972 and used to watch VANISHING POINT over and over at Cleveland/Akron/Canton area drive-in bookings of that enduring hit. While Fox was raking in the cash with such car chase epics, and Hal Needham/Burt Reynolds were hugely successful in the genre, Earl Owensby and more famously H.B. Halicki were leading indie purveyors of same, and for a while good ole boy action films rivaled reissues of Rene Bond starrers from Harry Novak for outdoor cinema popularity.

Apparently in the 2000s two thick-twang regional would-be filmmakers Newman & Brown III, naturally insisting on casting themselves in the starring roles despite no evidence of acting ability or screen presence, teamed up with B-movie vets from the horror/sci-fi field, Farmer & Piper, to produce this anomaly. It looks like a 35mm shoot, way out of place released to accompany the usually homemade shot-on-video horror crap that makes up these poverty row 6-packs.

What amazed me, a couple of reels into this mind-numbing 106-minute opus (roughly 30 minutes overweight), is that circa 2002 someone would bring back the cornball Southern-fried fast cars/good ole boys genre, add extreme gore and maniac in helmet disguise format of a 30 year old Robert Ginty movie, throw in a dollop of half-hearted, old-fashioned religiosity, and expect anyone to be interested. It's no wonder that like so many thousands of its indie peers, it failed to attract any meaningful distribution.

Writer/producer Phillip Newman top-lines as the glum hero, who runs a body shop and has his wife killed & daughter left in a coma when 3 thrill seeking youngsters in a mint vintage Chevelle (whose real-life owner gets a big end credit, of course) run him off the road. Laborious storyline picks up 2 years later as someone is killing and/or torturing the trio belatedly in revenge, and dressing up with a welder's protective helmet on, torturing and killing other folks for the fun of it, too. Plot twist on the killer's true identity is poorly executed so the film generates zero suspense.

To give this junker borderline legitimacy, two B-movie heart-throbs are given guest roles, aimed at suckering in their fans (a ploy as old as the days when has-beens of once-top-stature like Ray Milland and James Mason were thrown in the most ludicrous projects, for a quickie one or two day fee, making for instant international sales potential). William Smith is professional, as always, as the slow-witted local sheriff -a nothing role once played (over & over & over) by Bo Hopkins. I like seeing Bill in sympathetic casting -my favorite all-time WS movie is the classic RUNAWAY, RUNAWAY, his most positive character ever, but he has nothing to chew on here. Robert Z'Dar, a cult actor if there ever was one (though lacking the acting chops of similarly adored predecessors like John Davis Chandler or Timothy Carey), is cast as a local store owner who is attacked by the young trio at the beginning of the film. In a distasteful scene, reminding me of the way Rondo Hatton used to be humiliated in '40s movies making fun of his physical handicaps, Z'Dar keeps whining about how horrible he has been made to look by the thugs. He's looked exactly like this for maybe 70 films before making this one, so it's embarrassing to have him reading lines purporting to explain away his oddly long jawed-face as being maimed here.

Director Farmer made some videos for New Jersey's soft porn outfit Seduction Cinema around this time, so it's no surprise that that label's early starlet Tina Krause is on hand to take an endless, full monty shower, to appease the t&a fans. Later the killer spray paints her fully frontally with bright blue lacquer; I kept expecting the MST3K crew to pop in with shouts of "Better get Maaco!". Maybe this ludicrous scene was based on the asphyxiation premise of Shirley Eaton's demise in GOLDFINGER, but I doubt it.

A couple of other beauties, including Rachael Robbins, also get nekkid, but this film is more about torturing, gore schtick and sheer nuttiness, as when the killer whips out a bazooka to blow up the youngsters' car. A melodramatic subplot involving the fate of Newman's sleeping-beauty daughter is preposterous, with her waking up, on cue, just in time for a bloody and nonsensical climax scene.

Newman joins the ranks of many, many ego-maniacal would-be filmmakers who insist on playing their own roles, sometimes effectively (Stallone and Tom Laughlin's breakthroughs as ROCKY and BILLY JACK come to mind) but usually with horrendous results, as in the aforementioned Earl Owensby, who had a brush with greatness when his soon-to-fail North Carolina studio complex was rented by Gale Anne Hurd and James Cameron to film THE ABYSS. (Ironically, Owensby just previous to working with Gale & Jim had made a clutch of flop 3-D features, but of course it was Cameron 25 years later who has finally made 3-D a mainstream, nay inevitable, part of the film-making toolkit.)

Second lead L.P. Brown III threw me for a loop -he looks uncannily like a Eurotrash porn star Mircha Carven (oversize retro mustache to boot), who is still popular in such DVD revived junkers as THE EXHIBITIONIST opposite Lili Carati and as the good guy in SS EXPERIMENT LOVE CAMP. Brown's acting is terrible, but at least the out-of-left-field Carven look kept me awake racking my brains to remember who his doppelganger was.

Body Shop (aka Deadly Memories) is an incredibly slow movie that wastes the talents of Robert Z'Dar and William Smith. Instead of a tightly edited movie about vengeance, we get a meandering and unfocused movie that offers almost nothing worthwhile.

William Smith is almost a none entity and it looks like they only got him on set long enough for him to drive around the block a few times while he delivered the handful of lines given to his character.

Z'Dar gets far more screen time but he acts so blasé that he could have been played as anyone else. He has the occasional moment of brilliance when he is trying extra hard to emote but a handful of fun expressions does not make a movie.

Beyond that, there are a few kills that are almost notable but the rest of the movie just drags on as it focuses on life in early 2000's Tennessee. If that description doesn't excite you then I'd strongly suggest you never watch this movie.

Art runs a body shop for fixing cars. He is a religious man who, whilst transporting his family to church, is run off the road by some drunk teens. His wife is killed and his daughter survives but is left in a coma. Two years after this event, he cares for his daughter at home. He is joined by her old boyfriend, Billy- Bob , who is passing through on the way to a job that he starts in a couple of months. He asks Art for a temporary job, and he is happy to oblige. It is not long before the three teens from two years ago show up and a deadly revenge is exacted.

There is more to the story than the above summary, but I really do not want to give away too much information. This film reminded me of the 80's slasher Don't go in the house (1980), but not quite as sick and twisted as that old video nasty. This was made in 2002, but would have fitted nicely into the glory/gory heyday of late 70's/early 80's slashers. It follows all of the conventions and I, for one, loved it for it.

Directed by Donald Farmer who has an impressive history in exploitation films, still going today. Starring some familiar faces to exploitation films, William Smith (needs no introduction here). Tina Klause and Rachel Robbins. (Both of who are well established scream queens, still going strong today).

Good story, decent acting, decent gore, some neat twists and turns that I did not expect and the usual slasher implausible situation made up for an excellent package that entertained me thoroughly.

Highly recommended. AKA Body shop.