Vulgar

I was warned before watching this movie not to expect the comedy style seen in previous View Askew movies. What I wasn't told was not to expect the same level of writing, acting, directing or camera work. This was a painfully inept movie to watch. Bad lighting, horrible dialogue, and just atrocious acting. The rape scene was more than a little disturbing and dragged on and on, much like the film as a whole. I would recommend this film only to people interested in never getting 90 minutes of their life back. It's no wonder the documentary "In Defense of Dogma" was included on the DVD. It's the only part worth viewing.

Will Carlson is a birthday clown who is having some troubles. He can't pay the rent, his mom hates him, and everybody gives him a difficult time. He gets the idea of being an adult entertainer party clown. On his first job he is tortured and raped by an insane father and his two sons. He is too embarrassed to call the authorities, so he keeps the entire incident a secret. Some time later, he saves the life of a little girl who is held hostage by her father and becomes famous and gets his own show. Finally, his dream has come true. He gets a call from the family of rapists who had videotaped his performance and tell him to give them a share of his money. He does, but then they also want a repeat reenactment of that fateful night or they will leak the tape to the press. This film doesn't try to be special. It isn't stylized, or done artfully or tastefully. It can be considered many things, but one thing the film can't be criticized for is being pretentious. This is, to put it properly, an old-school exploitation grindhouse style picture. This film is very effective and quite shocking. It certainly is not a film for everybody. It is a hell of an experience. The film is ugly, rough, grainy, and dimly lit. The acting is very intense and the characters are often quite abrasive. The plot of the film is quite realistic to an extent. The rape scenes are pretty horrific and brutal, some of the roughest I've seen in fact. The spends enough time getting us to sympathize and feel sorry for the character of Will Carlson. His roommate(Bryan Johnson, the director of VULGAR) is probably the best character in the film. Ethan Suplee and Matthew Maher are both pretty creepy as the two rapists, Jerry Lewkowitz is quite nasty as the father, and Brian O'Halloran gives a pretty strong performance. In fact, the only serious issue I had with this film is that it tries to be a comedy at times. Ultimately, the attempts at humor come off really poorly. The humor in this film feels out of place and is distracting at times when it shouldn't be. I guess I could call this a black comedy, but the film is actually really disturbing and difficult to watch. Maybe the comedy element was added to make the whole film seem even more wrong. As it is, it's a merciless film and is nasty. If you are a fan of exploitation you will probably love this film. For others, you could probably do with this film.

Pros: -very engaging and moving at times -decent acting -well established dark tone -intense -a guilty pleasure

Cons: -unneeded humor -graphic violence, rape, and sexual torture may be too much for a lot of viewers -bad marketing

6 out of 10

Finally a movie that actually lives up to it's title. This is a film that cuts no corners and really doesn't particularly care if the viewer ends up liking it or not. In many ways the filmmakers seem to take a certain glee in just how disgusting and 'vulgar' they can make it. There is a different type of motivation here. It's a sort of assault on the viewers senses. It's a test at seeing just how much one person can take. It's crude and ugly all the way through. It's just one grotesque image or comment toppled onto another. Victory to these filmmakers seems to constitute how many viewers it can repulse. This seems especially evident on the DVD version where in the bonus section they proudly display all the rejection letters they have received from all the film festival organizations.

The story involves a hard on his luck guy who works as a clown for children's parties. He decides he needs some extra money so he decides to attend a adult party and pose as a male clown stripper, but it ends up all being a set up. Once he gets there he becomes accosted and eventually raped by three grown men.

The rape scene is actually not as disturbing as you might think. For one thing it is handled very well technically. It has some interesting camera angles and viewpoints. It also comes after so much other ugliness that by the time you get to this part it all seems very status quo. In fact the filmmakers become so obsessive in painting such a over the top tasteless and nihilistic portrait that eventually it all becomes darkly amusing. A good example of this is the protagonists mother who sits in a senior home and spews all every imaginable insult and put down that she can to her son. She seems so mean to her son, who otherwise seems like a nice guy, that at first you cringe at what she says. Eventually though she spews out so many that you just can't help but start to laugh.

There may actually be a message here somewhere. It may be saying that we live in a very mean and ugly world with no chance at defeating it or escaping it. Good guys and innocent people get raped by it all the time (Note how our protagonist is nothing more than an innocent children's clown.) You almost have to get ugly yourself in a way in order to deal with it because you can never really get beyond it. This is evident by the way our protagonist becomes rich and famous and yet his attackers just track him down and try to extort money from him by saying they have a videotape of the attack which they could send out and humiliate him with.

Overall this is a very cheap looking and grimy picture. It's excessively vile nature will be a test to just about any viewer. Yet it is well paced with a nicely compact structure. The dialogue is good and the three attackers are perfect enhancements to the mountain men in DELIVERANCE. If anything it has it's own vision. This is a viable candidate for future cult status.

Vulgar is just that. A cheap, nasty but reasonbly watchable exploitation movie of the type that was being made in the late 70's. Sort of a less existential "Driller Killer". The film also has the sort of flatness and flabbiness that characterised much of this type of film.

The sorry tale of Flappy the clown and his treatment at the hands of a bunch of sickos isn't the greatest of stories and there are some agonisingly boring scenes but it is enthusiastically made with a caustic misanthropic eye.

The greatest controversy will doubtlessly be about the rape scene and its perpetrators. These three guys aren't gay - the father is shown as married with a kid and it is his two sons he commits his terrible crimes with. These are a family of psychopaths who delight in homophobic cruelty. "Lets make hate" Dad says as he begins his abuse of Flappy. For a viewer to automatically label the twisted protagonists gay is wrong. They are psychopathic rapists not gays.

The film raises some interesting questions but it just doesn't have the panache to answer them. Unlike "Happiness" and "Contre Seul Tout" there doesn't seem to be much thought behind the provocative nature of the film and certainly the filmmaking isn't as accomplished. A possible cult item of the future but far from an essential view

When I first saw this movie I thought the same as many others, "oh wow it's View Askew it has to be funny!" Boy was I wrong... The beginning of the movie was amusing but it quickly turned dark and twisted. The plot line was intriguing and unique. The actors were wonderful, they portrayed their characters so well. No one else could have played Flappy the Clown, he was so realistic ^_^. The emotion in this movie was so raw and deep, you wanted to reach out and kill some of the characters. It was interesting and it held your attention the whole time, I rather enjoyed it, beyond the scariness. Very well done, the atmosphere, the characters, the plot line, all air tight and fantastic.