Crispin Glover

  • The Wizard of Gore (2007)

    The Wizard of Gore (2007)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2021) I know, I know — it makes no sense for me, who strongly dislikes gore films, to go watching something called The Wizard of Gore. To my defence, however, I thought I was going to watch the 1970 version of the film, which has been called a reference in the field of horror cinema (hence something to check off the list of the movies I should be seeing, if only once). It quickly became obvious that this was not the 1970 version, but seeing Crispin Glover’s name in the opening credit kept me watching, and looking up the cast to see a mention of “Suicide Girls” (a pin-up aesthetic I often like) didn’t hurt either. First up: yes, there is gore, as much of the film is about a stage magician bloodily “murdering” young women on a stage show, only for those girls (apparently unharmed by the end of the show) to die horribly hours later. The plot, such as it is, has to do with a journalist investigating the mystery and, obviously, getting sucked into this vortex of splatter. But the set-pieces of the film are about bodies being sliced open, internal organs taken outside, blood spraying everywhere and an appalling disrespect for the sanctity of the human body. I did not like the scenes of extreme violence, obviously, but was still hooked by some of the surrounding material. Set in downtown Los Angeles, this is a film that revels in the dirty, grimy, off-putting side of things — nearly every shot of the film is off-kilter, with terrible things lurking in the numerous shadows of the frame. The characters are all damaged, delusional or pupeteered by director Jeremy Kasten, as he seems intent on delivering as nightmarish a vision as he can. There’s some skill in the way the images are put together that definitely raises the film from the bottom tier of schlocky horror. Still, praising a gore film for not being quite as terrible as expected is not exactly high praise: it’s far from a recommendation. Still, this The Wizard of Gore remake is not quite as terrible as it could have been, and I’m going to stick to that as my assessment.

  • Lucky Day (2019)

    Lucky Day (2019)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) While it’s far too early to call curtains on writer-director Roger Avary’s career, the first quarter-century of it has shown a filmmaker with interesting ideas that couldn’t quite get them properly expressed… and that’s in addition to a tumultuous personal life that saw him go to prison for vehicular manslaughter under the influence. Somewhat on-the-nose, his first film after his prison sentence is Lucky Day, which begins with the protagonist… getting out of prison. Said to be a belated sequel to Killing Zoe, the film quickly becomes its own thing—an action-comedy very much in the style of the 1990s wave of black criminal comedies that Avary himself pioneered by co-writing Pulp Fiction. The film is directed with some stylish glee, and Crispin Glover’s delightfully unhinged performance as a fake-French assassin can go a long way in sustaining interest in the film. But as much as my fondness for Tarantinoesque (or should that be Avaryesque?) black crime comedies grows stronger now that they’re not making nearly as many of them as they used to, even I felt that Lucky Day quickly became annoying. It certainly does itself no favour through its constant excessive violence against innocent characters, starting with a cute supporting actress shoved aside for the sake of a bad joke. But it gets worse moments later with cheap CGI gore, and again later, as what could have been a good action showcase in an art gallery becomes a repulsively violent sequence. Coupled with the film’s cartoonish humour, it demonstrates an immaturity and an inability to keep a consistent tone. If you’re looking for the ways in which Lucky Day is a clear step down from Pulp Fiction, it’s this kind of juvenile insistence than an R-rating is inherently better than more broadly accessible fare: you can be funny and rough and dark without disgusting audiences. Glover’s performance is pretty good (it had been a while since we’d seen him in this much crazy glory) but the rest of Lucky Day is dull when it’s not actively repulsive. This being a Canada-France co-production may explain the unusually high amount of French dialogue (most of it obviously not spoken by native or fluent speakers).