The Editor

'THE EDITOR': Four Stars (Out of Five)

An extremely odd horror-comedy/mystery flick, from directors Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy; the two also co-wrote the film, with actor Conor Sweeney. Brooks, Kennedy and Sweeney also star in the movie; along with Paz de la Huerta, Samantha Hill, Kevin Anderson, Udo Kier and Laurence R. Harvey (of 'THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE II' and 'III' fame). It tells the story of a veteran film editor; that becomes the prime suspect in a series of grisly murders. The movie is hilarious, quirky and packed with gruesome shocks and bloody thrills!

Rey Ciso (Brooks) was once considered one of the best film editors in the world. After a horrific accident, and a mental breakdown, left him disfigured; he now only works on low budget B-movies. When the lead actors, on his latest film, are brutally murdered, Rey becomes the lead suspect. He still struggles to complete the movie; while also dealing with a mentally ill wife (la Huerta), a new love interest (Hill), a moronic actor (Sweeney) and an incompetent police detective (Kennedy). The killer continues to viciously murder people, at the same time.

The movie is really weird (which I respect), and surprisingly funny; not to mention shockingly gruesome. Going into it, I didn't know quite what to expect (I kind of assumed it was just a poorly made B- horror flick); so I was pleasantly surprised. The filmmakers definitely have a lot of talent, and the film is packed with nostalgic style and wit; I can't wait to see what they do next. I've also recently became a fan of Paz de la Huerta; so seeing her (in a lead role) was a nice, added touch!

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If you never have seen those old school Italian horrors called Giallo then you will never understand this flick. The way the sound was created (overdubbed?), the score, the editing, the lighting it all referred to the seventies galore of the Italian genre.

The story itself is what it should make funny, sometimes it was sometimes it didn't work at all. But overall this flick delivers on gore. The effects are top-notch. But again, it's the story that tears it a bit down. You can refer to those classics but don't exaggerate. After half an hour you have seen it all on that part. So if you aren't into Giallo's then this isn't going to be your thing, for the geeks they will search to all those references made towards the classics, I did, and get lost of the story somehow and that isn't good news. But it contains what makes a good Giallo, the glove, the POV from the knife, the eye stabbing and of course a lot of gratuitous nudity.

But the story guys....

Gore 1,5/5 Nudity 2,5/5 Effects 4/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0,5/5

It is pretty clear that much fun was had in making this but perhaps more effort was put into emulating previous affects and scenarios and less on creating a coherent story within which to set them. There are marvellous sequences like the homage to Black Belly of the Tarantula and Hitch-Hike but maybe things go a little far with the inclusion of Videodrome and Poltergeist. Fantastic though much of the gore and re-enactments and jokes are, we simply don't care about the main protagonists here and the flat, almost bored performing (intentional?) at times is off putting. Again references to gays and disabled - referring to the main guy with fingers missing once as a cripple was startling and maybe vaguely amusing but again and again? Similarly the face slapping gets a bit much but I suppose somewhat salutary especially where used prior to sex. Mixed bag but maybe more fun after a few drinks especially if you only have a very rudimentary awareness of gialli.

Dear lord this movie had me howling. It's one of the finest examples of deadpan spoofery since 1980's "Airplane!" or if you're really up on your cinematic satires, it's a lot like 1978's "Movie Movie" with George C. Scott.

What makes this film thoroughly enjoyable is that it's not just pure silly absurdism; there's actually some brilliant substance there. The visual gags are very subtle, the script is so witty that you might miss half of them, and of course the big selling point is that this 2014 flick is a meticulous, hilarious time machine back to 1970s cheese. It's authentic right down to the mens' mutton chop sideburns, leg warmers for the ladies, the alpha male's penchant for randomly slapping women, and of course gratuitous nudity with a capital g-string (the nudity starts out mostly in context, but by the end of the flick, I'm not exaggerating, there are people randomly taking off their clothes and walking around naked in the background). If you grew up watching all those bad 70s crime dramas & horrible horror flicks, then you'll be guaranteed a good in-joke and belly laugh every 5 minutes for this entire 95 min ride.

The plot, as you might have guessed, is about a fingerless, downtrodden film editor "Rey" who becomes the focus of a cavalcade of campy murders on the set of a film he's editing. Enter the unhinged detective "Porfiry" who is something like Starsky, Hutch, Dirty Harry and Peewee Herman rolled into one. Choice lines include

"Where were you the night of the murder?"

"I went home. And shaved my p***"

(Porfiry lifts up woman's skirt, hold shot for 5 seconds)

"Your story checks out."

If this sort of irreverent, tongue-in-cheek humor tickles your funny bone, then I guarantee you'll be a dancing skeleton by the time the film ends. I don't even know what that means. But suffice it to say that "The Editor" is a lot of fun.

Now a word about the "brilliant substance" I mentioned earlier. The film actually explores some very thought-provoking, poetic thoughts. As the film progresses, Rey the editor begins to lose the distinction between reality and the trashy horror flick he's editing. Lots of great surreal visuals accentuate this mindbending transformation, and for those of us trying to keep score, "The Editor" becomes a movie within a movie within a delirium. There are a few subtle cues as to which plane of existence we're in (such as fake movie blood being bright red while real world blood is a darker more realistic hue), but the crisscrossing flashbacks, delusions, hallucinations and bizarre murders can be very disorienting, in an awesome way. None of it is random. I'm convinced that if you watch this film a 2nd or 3rd time, as I'm about to do, you'll see that beneath the wackiness is a really solid story about that place where reality and delusion intersect. "It's like Plato's Cave" says our hero. "I haven't seen that movie," responds the sidekick. Great stuff!

I hate to give this such a low mark, because there were at least half a dozen times in the first half hour when I thought The Editor was about to blossom into a note-perfect giallo homage. A few brief scenes mimicked exactly the kind of bad dubbing/dialogue/acting/lighting/fashion etc of the original 70s Italian giallo horrors it's clearly inspired by. Frustratingly however these were just teases, and the film seemed more interested in being some kind of hip underground indie-flick slasher that didn't remind me much of anything giallo based, and it started to *seriously* drag. The lead character's virtually comatose performance didn't help much, and the plot soon got impossible to follow. After 45 mins I didn't really know or care what I was watching any more.

Overall The Editor is nowhere near as bad as the absurdly boring Berberian Sound Studio (the closest modern-day comparison I can think of), but I wish they'd concentrated more on paying tribute to the classic giallo clichés instead of becoming a directionless and rather average slasher.