Mars à table!

The 'let's make fun of 50's monster movies' thing has been done to death but TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN is a surprising and total delight. Where most comedies lately work with visual shock and gross-out gags, the humour in this movie--often as shockingly hilarious as anything by the Farrelly brothers--is almost completely verbal. The lines fly by with dizzying speed--a barrage of bad puns, silly one-liners, kinky innuendo and loony non-sequiteurs that had my head spinning! And the fact that it's a Canadian film is the cherry on the cake. Go see it!

TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN (3 outta 5 stars) Canadian director John Paisz came out with some brilliant short movies back in the 80s... culminating in the brilliant "Crime Wave". He showed great promise at the time... his work sharing many surface similarities with the work of David Lynch. But for almost 15 years he seemed to disappear from the world of film... doing a little TV work in Canada and not much else. Well, he finally came back in 1999 with this zany B movie parody film and, while comes nowhere near the quality of his earlier work, it does have enough wit and style to make it worth seeing. The movie starts out TERRIBLY... so don't let the first five minutes put you off... it does get better. Man-eating aliens come down to a small Twin Peaks kind of town and start noshing on the citizens. Luckily a world famous atomic scientist (Campbell Scott) is passing through town to lend a hand. The movie's story isn't quite as well-scripted as the more recent "Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" but it does have some very funny lines... and some bizarre characterizations (the way-too-friendly brother and sister, the town policeman who goes around singing his own jazzy theme song). If you're in the mood for something silly you could do lots worse than this. Choicest lines: "An atomic scientist's life can be very lonely. There aren't many atomic lady scientists, after all." "I got backbone! Matter of fact when I was born I had a tail, too! That's just MORE backbone only it's furry!" "A genetically engineered band of devil worshiping serial killers... or a Sasquatch type thing? I don't like the sound of that!"

I just saw this film and really had no idea what to expect. I watched it twice and found that I really enjoyed it. Its a strange, funny little tale. I really thought it was going to be dumb. But as turns out I really liked it.

In my area, this movie is available to rent as "Invasion!" It also has a holographic box, and the picture of Campbell Scott looks eerily like Martin Sheen. Don't let any of these factors deter you from renting the movie. It is a little known gem. Even video clerks don't know about it, they'll look on you with scorn when you bring it to the counter. But it's worth their scorn, trust me.

This movie parodies the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well as other 50's sci fi classics. But it doesn't just do a basic plot parody with dumb jokes plastered over it, a la Airplane or other Hollywood broad parodies. Top of the Foodchain gets into little details, like making fun of how all men in 50's sci fi seem to have traditionally female names (see cast list) or the bizarre, ham handed way that those movies dole out religious platitudes and hypocritically pro- and anti-science ideology.

Campbell Scott is, as usual, dead on in his mimicry -- this time of 50's leading man mannerisms. He's got the reassuring shoulder clap *down*. Every little nuance of this movie is brilliant and surprisingly innovative in spite of the fact that the movie is a spoof. I'm giving credit to the Canadians on this one. I doubt this movie would have been as funny or insane had it been done in the States. Do not miss Invasion! or Top of the Food Chain or whatever it's called in your neighborhood. It is smart, funny and will always be one of my personal all time favorite rentals.

I'd given up hope, after a decade and a half, of ever seeing another John Paizs film and I've contented myself with frequent repeat viewings of CRIMEWAVE, far and away the funniest Canadian movie ever made. FOOD CHAIN's local release on Friday came, to put it mildly, as a happy surprise. Its credits aren't as auteurish so I suspect his shrewd collaborators got behind what must've been a hard sell of this unique talent. To the best of my knowledge, or at least taste, there's no other director, including his brilliant fellow Manitoban Guy Maddin, who can take such deadpan, shamelessly bizarre humour and make it so side-splitting.

To dispute its absolute originality, TOP OF THE FOOD CHAIN shares a craziness of concept with 1984's BIG MEAT EATER, another micro-budget Canuck item (something in our water?) Rather than the conventional smug mockery of 50s drive-in sci-fi (oh look at Woody and the giant tit, how droll and cunning) these films strive to be, in look and feel, a modern day continuation of a time-locked genre that had logic and principles of its very own, though so free form that comic expression can flourish on a wide open range. While MEAT EATER, a delightful though haphazardly directed mess, was marginally a musical remake of PLAN 9, FOOD CHAIN takes its initial premise from from the interesting ASTOUNDING SHE MONSTER, complete with the strangely lit alien sexpot in the woods and main characters that are somewhat similar to the ones here. It's clear that the actors are in improvisation heaven but Paizs, in the tradition of Altman and Morrissey at their best, never lets them stray from his story telling vision. And what a vision: this is like MARAT/SADE! It's a 50s monster melodrama concieved, produced and acted out by mental patients!

Not a single character in this movie even attempts to approximate socially acceptable behavior, nor does anyone, even on a good guy/villain level, ever question one another's unusualness. Sexual obsessions spring up all over the place but are pointedly ignored in terms of detail, as if Paizs is taking on the role of gossippy spinster aunt who knows where to cut things off for decency's sake. It doesn't stop there. He interrupts things, though briefly enough to maintain the flow, to point out things of visual interest, like a hideously familiar faux-wicker basket full of saltines, that you just know you once saw in your own childhood home. He actually has the gall to reuse enjoyed props within the same sequence: a bright pink hugely finned bulgemobile ('59 Pontiac?) appears in the background during both takes on an opposite-angled dialogue. Even the FX showcase at the grand climax, suitably tacky looking by today's standards, he undermines with swift dispatch that makes it clear that the characters are far more interested in each other's activities of the moment than any impending doom.