This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
A title’s eye view: CJ Wallis, Rikki Gagne, Sylvia Soska and Jen Soska in DEAD HOOKER IN A TRUNK—a $2500 tribute to grindhouse action pictures.


used in a movie so arrhyth- mically. However, they already show a knack for romancing comedy from uncomfortable situations, such as when polar opposites Badass and Goody are momentarily left alone together in the car (“Uh, we’ve never re- ally talked...”). There are also in- ventive touches of Magic Realism (as when Goody hails a taxi and is answered by Heavenly Cabs), and Sylvia’s performance not only shows a fierce conviction un- necessary to comedy but a gutsy physicality that deserves fuller exploration someday. This is ac- tion-gore, but most essentially a road movie, and while “40 miles of bad road” jokes are brought to mind by the bumpy 2.35:1 photography (it was shot in Panasonic HVX-200/P2 format), chances are you didn’t put your last year to work for you half so well.


IFC’s disc, with its 5.1 mix, shows the humble production to be impeccably post-produced with the full benefits of a rip-roar- ing songtrack that seldom stops long enough for anyone to hear the spit and gum holding things together. The audio is comple- mented with subtitles in either


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English SDH or Spanish. The bonus supplements consist of an alternative version of Goody Two Shoes’ introductory scene (57s); an extended cut of the apartment scene where the sisters make their plans for the day and the car (3:11); a “Behind the Scenes” montage (15m 15s) that captures the playful atmosphere on the set, as well as its down-to-the- last-paper-towel constraints; a deleted scene (1m 20s) from the motel parking lot; a trailer (1m 27s); and a misleadingly titled “Interview” (1m 13s) which finds the Soska Sisters not talking about their own film, but gener- ously playing host to Carlos Gallardo, director of the simi- larly micro-budgeted actioner SINGLE ACTION. Though one wishes an audio commentary track had been included, this is an appropriately strong basic disc and all the more attractive now that it can be found through Amazon and other outlets for well under $10.


The Soskas have not been so public with their AMERICAN MARY budget, admitting only that it was “limited” and enabled by their parents’ re-mortgaging of their house. Such reticence is


probably a wise move for a pro- duction that looks a good deal better than a million dollars; cer- tainly, its tony, deliberate pacing belies the fact that it was shot in only fifteen days, working from a 180-page script. Unlike its predecessor, AMERICAN MARY (whose title is taken, more senti- mentally than thematically, from a song by The National) is a self- described “love letter to Asian and European cinema,” but it does a good deal more than riff on its influences. It’s another re- venge story, this time more as- sertively feminist and set in and outside the medical establish- ment, and manages to explore the aesthetic limitations of trends in body modification and its roots within feelings of inad- equacy, put there by vocational models that allow, if not encour- age, sexual predation as a means of professional advancement. Katharine Isabelle (the Ginger


Snaps franchise, FREDDY VS. JASON) stars as AUDITION- haired Mary Mason, a medical student introduced (to the strains of Bach’s “Ave Maria”) while prac- ticing her surgical techniques on a raw, pimply chicken—by add- ing multiple wings to it, tipping


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