Choker

Choker, apparently renamed as Disturbance at some point for reasons undisclosed, found its way to my collection as a result of the untimely closure of a video store. It sat in my collection, unwatched, for several years.

In a word, it is delightfully awful. The 8 rating is because we enjoy horrible movies and were devastated when MST 3000 ended its run. Choker/Disturbance would have been a classic MST3K excursion. Alas, it fell to my friend and me to play the part of Crow and Tom Servo asking all of the smart-ass questions and maintaining an inane running commentary ourselves. Though amateurs, it was extremely entertaining.

From the monochrome film noir scenes,replete with Hitchcock-esque silhouettes, the cop with a fedora ripped out of 1947, to the hookers without meth mouth, it was a stirring jaunt through the land of cinematic art gone terribly wrong. Unfortunately, the story was fairly coherent and there were no major continuity errors.

So if you too mourn the loss of MST3K, go ahead and get a copy or put it in your queue. Gather 'round the flat screen and have some fun with it just like in the old days.

Considering what the film makers and cast of "Choker" had to work with as far as budget, time and resources, the film is a triumph of creativity and indie spirit.

Script delivers a fine twisty road to a fun, pulpy resolution and the cast dials in excellent performances in some just-this-side-of-stereotypical roles. The triple-threat of Colleen Porch, Paul Sloan and (especially) Hayley DuMond are a joy to watch on screen.

Technically, flick suffers from occasionally rushed-feeling or under-lit or under-choreographed sequences, but again, considered these folks had 12 days to shoot the film, they did a wonderful job! Overall the film feels more thriller than horror and is quite enjoyable.

Smart, stylish and imaginative - A fun story, sexy cast and even some moving performances combined to give you a twisty, pulpy ride through what seems to be an eternal dark night of alien hunting, fights, secret government agendas and human drama.

"Choker" thinks it's a much bigger film than it is, like a tiny dog that doesn't know how tiny it is or how tiny it should act. No one told these guys that little films can't be deep, can't have sprawling story lines, can't have tons of locations and set pieces or can't have accomplished actors. Applaud these guys for ignoring the obvious constraints of time and money and bringing home some good old entertainment.

I saw the movie at a screening in Los Angeles about 4 months ago or so, at a film festival.

I discovered Choker through the movie's writer and director Nick Vallenlonga's IMDb page. I found out about him after seeing an earlier movie of his, Corporate Ladder which starred Tony Denison and Jon Pollito, who both used to be on Crime Story together.

Anyway, I got to see Choker and I was impressed by the actors performances. My favorite in the film was the alien "leader", Haley DuMond. She can really act and I see she is in Vallenlonga's upcoming film as well, nice. The rest of the cast were also very good: Tony Denison was great as usual. Robert Shafer provided some well timed humor. Colleen Porch was the "beauty" of the movie, and the lead, Paul Sloan, was intense.

This movie was fun and did what it what meant to do, entertain.

Choker is not a huge budget production so don't expect complex CGI or anything really fancy. The movie was somewhat serious at times, somewhat tongue in cheek sci-fi at times. If you want to watch this movie , watch it with the intent of having fun. What I got out of it was kind of a 50's B sci-fi flick set in present time.

DuMond and Denison were not at the screening I attended, unfortunately, but Shafer, Harry Manfredini (who composed all the Friday the 13ths), Paul Sloan and Vallenlonga were there.

It's coming out on DVD and I recommend checking it out. I for one am hoping that the DVD contains a simultaneous director's commentary feature. It would be interesting to hear how quickly a particuar scene was shot since Choker was filmed in a little over a week.

I watched this old flick because Katrina Law (Spartacus, Arrow) was in it. It is the worst lit movie I have ever (sort of) seen. It is DARK. I don't mean psychologically, I mean they were too cheap, or too broke, to adequately light the scenes of the film. Or maybe they just didn't know what the hell they were doing. You can barely see what the hell is going on in the damn thing.

The plot is convoluted to the point of senselessness and the dialog and actions of the characters are often crotch-grabbingly ridiculous. One egregious example is how Katrina, playing a beautiful young medical examiner, while performing autopsies on corpses displaying disturbing symptoms of weird, unknown, possibly communicable disease, doesn't bother to wear a surgical mask.

I've watched a lot of bad movies/TV shows because they had good looking chicks in them and this does have that. Too bad its not better lit so you can see them more clearly.