Tuesday, April 28, 2009

One Eyed Monster (2007)

Alien invasions aren't what they used to be. When the boss of a porn film studio (Jeff Denton) gets the bright idea to film his next movie in a cabin in the mountains - naturally without a working telephone line and with a snow front threatening to cut the cabin off from the rest of the world any minute now - it is only a question of time until the first alien appears to do some invading. Among the actors are porn veterans Ron Jeremy and Veronica Hart (playing themselves, with Jeremy cutely credited "Introducing Ron Jeremy"), still teaching the young 'uns a lesson about things-this-stuck-up-European-is-not-going-to-talk-about.

Alas, poor Ron soon is hit by a strange bolt of light coming down from the sky, leading to a rather overenthusiastic performance in his first scene, Veronica only being saved from bleeding to death thanks to the wonders of tampon science and Ron's penis absconding.

No telephone, snowed in, an alien-possessed killer penis on the doorstep - yes, that's what Hollywood dreams are made of. Fortunately the film crew (we better don't talk about the pitiable actors) is as well prepared for these circumstances as humanly possible, what with the lighting, camera, sound guy Jonah (Jason Graham, channeling Duane Jones quite nicely) being a gulf war veteran, make-up artist Laura having a huge crush on Ron Jeremy('s member) and being played by Amber Benson and boom mike operator T.J. (Caleb Mayo) having the kind of technical talent that could make one chief engineer in the Star Fleet, if the Star Fleet was interested in mechanical vaginas.

Further bettering the chances of team porn/Earth is their neighbour, a vietnam veteran named Mohtz (Charles Napier, himself veteran of just about every kind of movie or TV show ever made or imaginable), who, what a stroke of luck!, has already had some experience with alien killer penii and brings valuable information about the physiological wonder that is the killer penis with him, as well as a distinct smell of alcohol.

Whatever could go wrong when these people are trying to trap and kill the alien menace to humanity?

As far as killer dick movies go, One Eyed Monster is a newly made classic. As I might have mentioned here already, I'm not the greatest fan of comedies, probably to an even lesser degree a fan of horror comedies, but I have to admit I did laugh here more than once, possibly even loudly.

Firstly, this has to do with the quality of the script. Yes, it is as absurd and silly as it sounds, yet it's also coherent and with a very nice sense for the internal reality of the situation. The film has an amazing lack of the sort laziness which is too often mistaken for irony (I'm looking at Scream and everything that it has to answer for, here) in films. It's still full of comically subverted clichés and honestly funny homages to horror classics like Alien or The Thing (Carpenter version), but the movie also knows when to play things straight - or as straight as things in the world of the killer penis get - and never uses "I'm just a comedy" as an excuse for willfull dumbness. There's also a fine sense for the clichés one should just ignore, so the film lacks the mandatory crap-talking black guy who always is the second victim or at best allowed to sacrifice himself for the hero, and  instead features that rare thing, a capable person of colour (and how sad is it that this is a fact that still stands out as something special in horror so long after Romero and a few others have shown how to do it?)!

Secondly, the actors do a bang-up job with what they are given. I imagine that it must be rather difficult to play stuff like this. If an actor goes too far over the top, he'll probably end up dragging the film down into the land of mainstream slapstick comedy which films like Scary Movie taught us to hate, if he underplays it he'll look rather colourless next to a damn killer penis. Here, everyone (yes, Jeremy and Hart, too) finds exactly the right level.

Thirdly, director Adam Fields (who also co-wrote the film with his siblings Jordan and Scott) does the classic good low budget movie thing of knowing what can be done on a budget and what can't and then acting accordingly. As a consequence, we see less blood and killer penis than some would probably wish for, yet Fields films so cleverly around the lack of a big effects budget that it's difficult not to find it charming. What is there to see is rather well done, my personal favorite being the highly interesting strangling technique of the killer member (something only Ron Jeremy's penis could be capable of).

What more could you possibly want from a killer penis film?

 

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