Unreleased for decades, BANNED is the final film by Roberta Findlay - a movie rumored to be so disastrous it was totally unsaleable and led to the director quitting her career. While I doubt this by itself was bad enough to do that - the external circumstance of contracting theatrical and home video markets was surely more to blame - this famously elusive film definitely lives up to its reputation: it's pretty bad.
As a fan of Findlay's, I was trying my hardest to give this the benefit of the doubt, but it starts testing your patience quickly. The set-up finds Sid Vicious-style punker Teddy Homicide shooting up his band in the recording studio during a fit of pique. He subsequently drowns himself in a toilet, which takes a bit of talent.
Cutting to present day, we find a jazz quartet, Banned (a lame pun on "Band"), busking for handouts in a New York park. Securing a cheap rate at the newly-reopened recording studio, it's not long before lead singer Kent (Dan Erickson) is peeing in the wrong toilet and finds himself possessed by Teddy's ghost. You'd think this would lead to all manner of trouble as the personalities clash, but the listless script by Jim Cirile has no idea what to do after this point. Previously milquetoast, Ken starts telling off crowds in the middle of his sets but finds they're into it; similarly, he begins romancing a fellow bandmate despite the fact he's engaged. The film throws in everything but the kitchen sink in terms of broad comedy - annoying potential in-laws (amped well past 11 up to about 73), Middle Eastern terrorists / robbers, cheap shots at punk music and performance art - but none of it sticks. Findlay admits in the supplements on the Blu-ray she didn't even know she was directing a comedy, and it shows. It's hard to know whether to fault the director or the writer, however; maybe everyone shares a bit of the blame.
Beyond the labored (non-)comedy, the real issue is that the film has no plot. The reincarnated Teddy has no objective, he just pops out of Kent on occasion but doesn't even cause havoc or interesting turns of events. Kent doesn't seem aware of his possession (or if he is, there's nothing he seems to want to do about it), and neither do any of the characters - the film is just endless, directionless scenes of things happening, with no actual story. At 97 minutes, it drags interminably.
Credit to Findlay and Co. For at least throwing together an impressively go-for-broke finale, which finds Kent-as-Teddy and his pursuers running around the streets of New York in a full-on gun battle with rocket launchers and semi-automatics - certainly hard to imagine an indie getting away with that today! It's a jaw-dropping, madcap conclusion to a film that BANNED is anything but. Featuring a little bit of everything with the sole exception of coherence, the film is an absolute farrago. While I'm sure it didn't single-handedly end Findlay's career, if I'd made this, I'd be ready to hang up my hat too.
