"The Foreigner" wasn't the first underground movie I ever saw, but I was tempted to make it my last. Clearly influenced by Andy Warhol, writer-director Amos Poe's movie is, at first glance, appealing for featuring a lot of familiar faces from the 1970s punk/new wave scene (most notably Deborah Harry, but also Anya Phillips, Patti Astor, and the Cramps), as well as treating us to shots of New York in all its grimy glamor. But while the movie is interesting as a time capsule, it's insufferable as a 90-minute film (not 77 minutes as this site lists, or viewers would hope). Eric Mitchell is the titular foreigner Max Menace, a dour blond secret agent whose reason for being in New York is as vague as the reasons so many people want him dead. His wandering around NYC comprises the bulk of the movie. Sometimes he's hanging out in his room at the Chelsea Hotel; sometimes he's held captive by an verbally abusive harpy; sometimes he's getting beaten up at CBGBs; but mostly Max is just wandering, much as the movie wanders.
If you're watching this for Deborah Harry (my reason for checking this one out), you'll have to wait almost an hour for an appearance that lasts maybe three minutes. "Hey blondie, got a cigarette?" she asks our protagonist, her voice sounding as if it were looped in a subway station restroom. Between puffs she sings a German song (her "character" name is Dee Trick), then
well, that's it. And even though it's not much of a scene, it's one of "The Foreigner's" better moments, especially if you're a Deborah Harry fan.
I could overlook the movie's technical shortcomings – lousy sound, iffy cinematography, bad acting – but not the crushing dullness of its barely-there narrative. Though Warhol made some patience-trying movies in his day, he at least had the good sense to pander to our prurient interests now and again. Poe, on the other hand, doesn't appeal to our interests at all, prurient or otherwise.
