Reflections of Evil

If you've ever asked the question, "What the hell did I just watch?!", prepare to ask it again. REFLECTIONS OF EVIL is definitely NOT for everyone. Some, might even say that it's not for anyone!

An absurdist nightmare caught on film, the casual, raised-on-Hollywood viewer will rip their eyeballs out over this one!

Writer / Director / Actor, Damon Packard plays the immense asthmatic named Bob, who resembles a cross between an overstuffed laundry bag and a shabbily-dressed Christmas tree.

We follow Bob on his various urban adventures, as he encounters a vast array of interesting, sometimes violent characters. All, while the ghostly Julie (Nicole Vanderhoff) attempts to break through to his plane of existence.

Or, something like that.

The disjointed, disorienting dialogue is, well, disquieting. It, along with the beyond-bonkers imagery, exists in some alternate, schizophrenic universe. Bob's life and mission are fittingly incomprehensible.

EXHIBIT A: The tour of the set of THE OMEGA MAN. This is sheer, crackpot brilliance!

EXHIBIT B: The tie-in with Steven Spielberg's filming of SOMETHING EVIL is genuinely bizarre, and ultimately hilarious!

EXHIBIT C: The Golden Guru segment is a gem! Hippies have never shone so bright!

Packard takes horror in an entirely new direction that's both inspired and insane. Watch Skid Row come alive! Suburban, pet dogs attack! Helicopters everywhere!

Through it all, Bob marches on.

Nothing can possibly prepare you for the utterly berserk, Universal Studios finale! It's alarming, disturbing, and VERY funny!

Imagine taking handfuls of mind altering substances while traveling through time and other dimensions. Here's your chance! Don't blow it!...

I've heard of going outside the lines. This bizarre film goes outside the known universe.

The whole thing plays out like a psychotic episode. In washed out cheap film, we witness a sick obese man who wears many layers of clothing like he's homeless, (but he's not) suffering from a life threatening eating disorder making him eat like he's always feeling starved, who wanders around Hollywood, peddles watches, yelling at anybody he sees. He hobbles around like a beached whale, and frequently cracks his skull on the pavement. He's middle aged, but still lives with his nagging mother. Are we to laugh at him? Pity him? Hate him? Who knows?

Whereas an art house director partially assembles a jig saw puzzle for you and gives you the remaining pieces to figure out the meaning, this director just takes the jig saw pieces and throws them all over the place, landing anywhere they might, some lost forever. The "non-structure" structure is taken too far, and becomes a nuisance. It was actually entertaining to see old footage of some vintage 1971 TV programming, and I wonder how he found all this stuff. It jumps on to the screen at spasmodic intervals. The obese guy's late sister pops in occasionally going OD with hippies or dancing around in an angel dress. Vignettes mock Steven Spielberg and Universal Studios. The director makes a caricature of himself as the deranged obese guy. There is some attempt to attack the movie industry, and bash people who just vacantly stare at whatever is on TV; an apathetic couple watches the Movie of the Week (in 1971) while outside their house, the heavy guy (in 2002 ?!?!) yells and pukes.

Nothing fits together. How all this relates to the eating disorder or the hippies and drug overdose victim is anybody's guess. A lot of it looks like a couple of guys with cameras wandered through Hollywood, and filmed anything they saw: helicopters, birds, posters advertising a Sandra Bullock movie, and mentally ill people. Apparently the film was meant to say something about disturbed people and their eccentric behavior, but does it mean-spiritedly and poorly. The value of viewing this is solely for the curious novelty of how odd it is. Nothing more.

I watched the whole movie. Not a lot of people can say that. This has to be the most obscure, most inscrutable, and downright strangest movie I have ever seen. The DVD also comes with Packard's previous work, but for God's sake don't look at that!!!

Reflections Of Evil is without doubt one of the most intellectually challenging and demanding films I've seen since the golden days of the underground scene in 1960-70. I can agree with the opinion that it does come down very hard on the viewer, but as demanding as it is it's also refreshingly relieved from all the Hollywood main stream production values that has been the obvious and only choice for much to long. Personally I'm quite fed up with all that, and I strongly recommend everyone who feels the same way to take a good look at Damon Packards film.

As difficult as it might seem to be for an average viewer to agree with the narrative style, it's well worth the effort to put up with it. On the other hand, if you are at all familiar with the work of Bunuel, Kenneth Anger, Morrissey, productions from "The Factory" and overall experimental film making as such, you will probably find the use of overdubed sounds and the visual compositions as an effective audiovisual exclamation to the very quintessence of the various ideas.

This aggressive and abusive in-your-face tale of an over consuming, over developed and high speed accelerating culture bursting in it's own gloating can be very hard to accept, and I can understand why the main stream viewer have serious problems with the daring and provoking approach of this film.

But It's not a question whether you like it or not, that's hardly the point. The point is that it truly is a most remarkable piece of work, and probably more related to experimental, over expressive and self dissective art form culture than anything else.

Either way it is indeed impossible to ignore a film like Reflections Of Evil, and if you are at all interested in what's happening on the true alternative scene of independent film making today it definitely is a must see. For all you others, take a refreshing holiday from Hollywood with Damon Packard as your tour guide and host. I personally guarantee you a unique film experience!

I think it´s a pure masterpiece of art. Really. I have the deepest respect for this kind of filmmaking.

It´s not horror. It´s not splatter. It´s satire. The best satire I´ve seen in years.

I wrote this just have seeing it the first time:

"Reflections on reflections - Damon Packard, genius or just insane?

One sunny afternoon a strange spam-mail dropped into my mailbox. I first thought had to do with a project I was working with, but I soon realized that this was something completely different. It was about Damon Packard´s epic movie about a man called Bob and his trip through the streets of LA: Reflections of evil.

Damon wanted to give me a copy for free and I mailed him at once. I needed to see this flick. And after studying the very cryptic official page I was going mad. I MUST SEE THIS MOVIE!

I´ve never been so curious about something like I was this time. When I haven´t received a copy in almost one week and really felt sick. I wasn´t myself. I wanted to hear the mailman drop the package in my mailbox.

My angst disappeared on Friday morning. The mailman had a present for me. A dvd from Damon Packard!

A friend of mine got a copy the day before and said that this was very strange, so I just manage to keep away from the movie for a couple of hours. This was something special, and I didn´t want to see it at once. But what the f**k!

This is the story of a slightly tragic salesman. Or is he really tragic? Roaming the streets of LA, furious and clearly out of his mind. It´s like a roadmovie, but inside the heart of tinseltown. The city of happiness and madness. It´s not only about tinseltown, it´s about the american society, the fury of the people. This is the country that never sleeps and never seems to get some rest. People are furious and sad, confused and obsessed. Some reviewer said it made him think about Apocalypse Now - and I agree. This is the ultimate inner travel I´ve seen in many years.

Slowly the city around Bob is turning very weird. The hate comes out and the paranoia is over us. Helicopters is watching everything, cops are everywhere and people are just insane.

During the time the Bob is attacked by homeless people and dogs we´re turning back in time, till 1971. Bob, his mother and older sister is visiting Universal Studios and taking the tour. After his sister disappears and get´s involved with weird sect that makes her one of them. She dies of an overdose (I think). No she want´s to save Bob from the hell he´s in, from beyond the grave.

Let me say one thing, this is a movie that´s helluva hard to describe. The best way to understand what I mean, is to see it. Go get a copy goddammit.

Packard have shot the movie on 16mm, super8 and Digital8 on a very low budget. But this don´t mean it looks like crap, because it dosen´t. Packard and his cameraman is clearly very talented and the jumping from documentary dogme-style to classic dolly-shots are marvelous and works very well. The light is most of the time very tight and moody. Some people seem to be disturbed by the strange and noise soundtrack. But I don´t. Everything seems to be dubbed afterwards and it makes the feeling of the movie more surreal.

I know, I´m being hypnotized by this flick. I can´t help it. It had something that spoke to me very clearly. Maybe was it the inspiration from J. Kennedy Tools novel Confederacy of Dunce's or the surreal and unconventional storytelling? You´re pulled into Bob's strange mind and all the people he meet. And it´s impossible to stop.

Packard goes from very cheap physical humor to Woody Allen-esqe dialogues, from Jess Franco and Jean Rollin to Herzog and Fassbinder. The inspiration clearly comes from the movies from the sixties and seventies and it works well.

Does Packard want to tell us something with this movie? Maybe I´m very wrong, but I think so. This is a story about a country falling apart. About people who dosen´t trust the system and the constant `big brother' watching over them. The fear of that somewhere there´s a couple of fat men in expensive suites that makes all the decisions of the country's future.

Packard seems to have a love-hate relation to America, Los Angeles and the entertainment industry. Universal Studios become the symbol of the cultural decay of the world and when it almost literary turns into living hell at the end, it becomes clearer. There´s only Damon Packard to make E.T. a terrifying experience. E.T. - the symbol for peace and happiness, cute children and the moral people.

Probably some of you are just calling this movie crap. Some of you will just throw it in the garbage (don´t) and some people, like me, will love it. Adore it.

Give Packard a movie contract and some money, let him do whatever he want. He deserves it.

(and, yes...Damon isn´t insane. He´s a genius)

/Fred"