In short: Drones (2012)

Amber Benson's and Adam Busch's (yes, those Benson and Busch) Drones is a film about the old suspicion modern office culture has aroused in anyone who has ever spent more then five minutes in one of those places: some of these poor office drones must be aliens.

So it's not a complete surprise when somewhat shlubby office worker Brian (Jonathan M. Woodward) stumbles upon the truth that his best friend and colleague Clark (Samm Levine) is in fact an alien, and one researching Earth for future enslavement to boot. But Brian shouldn't worry, Clark is putting that one off for as long as he can.

Then, just after Brian and his office crush Amy (Angela Bettis), are taking steps towards an actual relationship, Amy tells Brian that she's an alien too, though one from a different planet with plans to destroy Earth. But Brian shouldn't worry, for Amy will save him and take him with her to her home world. That revelation leads to Brian freaking out, not so much because of the whole "destruction of Earth" business, but because moving in with a girlfriend one has only been together with for four days is a thing to let one freak out, especially when said girlfriend is from a mostly emotionless alien race and is making her first practical experiences with that sort of irrationality. Breaking up ensues.

Would you believe it's not the best idea to break up with your emotionally inexperienced girlfriend (not that Brian can talk here) who basically has the finger on the trigger for the destruction of Earth, nor mock her in an office public Power Point presentation? That things might get so problematic that only another Power Point presentation, the re-establishment of romantic relations and good old fashioned space hippies can save the day?

If you've read this, you'll probably already know if you'll find Drones funny or not. I, for one, did appreciate most of it: the parts when it felt like a less mean version of The Office (when I say "The Office", I do mean of course the rather brilliant UK show and not the endless US abomination based on it), the perfect low budget weirdness of its ideas (of course aliens will use the office environment to communicate with their respective home bases), and the tendency of its dialogue to get odder the longer a given dialogue scene goes on. I also really appreciate how many of Drones' comical digressions turn out to have actual narrative and thematic import later on. This isn't a comedy movie built from a series of sketches even if it may at first seem so,

Also lovely is Angela Bettis's performance. As someone familiar with her body of work, I wasn't really surprised how brilliant she was in her comical alien role. After all, her performances always have something not quite of "normal" humanity (that's a compliment), so if ever I have seen a perfect comical alien, it's her.

So, you know, you might try to watch this one. It's really funny.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,comedy,sf,in short,amber benson,adam busch,jonathan m. woodward,samm levine,angela bettis

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?

 

Technorati-Tags: american movies,comedy,horror,amber benson,adam fields,jason graham,reviews