AMERICAN MARY 2012, XLRator/Anchor Bay, 102m 24s, $20.99 (BD), $14.99 (DVD)
Universal/IndiVision, £8.29, 102m 24s, BD
DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK 2009, IFC,
88m 40s, $24.98, DVD By Tim Lucas
In just a couple of years, but after more than half a decade of concentrated labor, Vancouver’s “Twisted Twins” Jen and Sylvia Soska stand better poised than anyone else at the moment to inherit the mantle of Horror’s Next Big Thing. They have it all—talent, resourcefulness, a flair for the outrageous, and a remarkable rapport and gener- osity with their fans. (For two weeks last August, they invited their Facebook friends to send them their DVD slipcovers for free autographs, with them paying re- turn postage and promising ad- ditional geegaws as well.) The Soskas also have something none of their predecessors of ei- ther sex have had quite to the same degree: a gift for self-pro- motion that stems from their abil- ity to fashion and refashion themselves into different carica- tures, all of them playfully dark and sexy. They are identical twins, with just enough difference to appear complementary: Sylvia looks slightly more wholesome, Jen looks slightly more sinis- ter—like a mirror image of Good and Evil, you might say. And yet, for their first feature, the nascent writer-directors
(perhaps unknowingly) cast themselves against apparent type, with Sylvia taking the lead as the streetwise “Badass” and Jen supporting her as the nerdy “Geek” in DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK.
Filmed for only $2,500 as an
hommage to Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’ GRIND- HOUSE, this exceptionally well- accomplished home movie was eventually scooped up for distri- bution by IFC. In the wake of its completion, the Soskas culti- vated themselves into a living brand, with matching hairstyles out of Takashi Miike’s AUDITION, so successfully that their latest film, the Universal-acquired AMERICAN MARY, could plausi- bly be described as the first erotic horror fantasy written and di- rected by an erotic horror fantasy. Shot in 2007-2008, first screened in early 2009 but not released on DVD until 2012, DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK finds a short list of Canadians wearing a lot of different hats, with the Soskas not only writing, starring and directing, but also producing, editing and occasion- ally operating the camera. It doesn’t have the slick sophistica- tion of their sophomore effort, but it does have all the blunt in- strument cartoon charm of a Ramones lyric.
DEAD HOOKER attends the escalatingly absurd (and gory) events that ensue when openly criminal teen Badass (Sylvia) and her self-explanatory friend Junkie (Rikki Gagne) hit the road to score some drugs, while sharing the car with awkwardly attracted Bible students Geek (Badass’ sis- ter, played by Jen) and Goody Two Shoes (co-editor/co-cin- ematographer CJ Wallis). A wors- ening smell in the car leads them to discover the titular inconve- nience. (Also in the trunk is a bag of pot and some anal beads,
which Badass tosses aside, mut- tering “I think these are mine.”) Intending to dispose of the corpse after they make their score, our unfortunate heroes arrive at their connection’s house as it comes under attack by a vi- cious rival gang, leading to a lost arm for one principal character and a lost eye for another. The arm is crudely reconnected with needle and thread (in some shots, the character briefly re- gains the use of it!) while the empty eye socket is patched-up with a stylish double-swatch of electrical tape—a touch which, as Goody notes, makes the victim look like an anime character. (That character would be SPEED RACER’s Racer X, featured in the Wachowski Brothers’ film re- leased in 2008, when DEAD HOOKER was still in production.) From its introductory shots of the slo-mo ambling dramatis personae to smart-ass dialogue like “I am quite fucking far from being fine,” Tarantino’s influence is well apparent, but the picture feels most indebted to Robert Rodriguez (a mentor to the Soskas) and Sam Raimi, while the situation itself is a punk riff on Hitchcock’s THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY (1955), or perhaps the 1957 ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS episode “One More Mile To Go.” There are faults aplenty, nearly all blamable on youth or necessity, most of them forgivable in light of how many responsibilities were being di- vided among cast and crew. The Soskas are guilty here of occa- sionally reaching too far for ef- fect (scoring mayhem with Bizet’s “Carmen” works, but to accom- pany the dismantling of a human body with a track from PET SOUNDS is bad taste) and of shooting at too-convenient tar- gets like Bible school students, and it must be said that the f- word has probably never been
Jen and Sylvia Soska— glamorous avatars of the new Canadian horror cinema, just signed by Lionsgate to direct SEE NO EVIL 2. T-shirt by Atomic Cotton.
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