Wendy McColm stars as a teenage hooker running out of options on the knife edge of life and death in SUZIE HEARTLESS.
for Spanish subtitles. Also avail- able on standard DVD for $28.98.
SUZIE HEARTLESS
2008, Alternative Cinema, $29.99, 88m 41s, DVD By Tim Lucas
This dark character study is an attempt by Tony Marsiglia, writer-director of various Misty Mundae vehicles (DR. JEKYLL AND MISTRESS HYDE, LUST FOR DRACULA), to produce a more personal and serious ex- ploitation picture. Despite the title’s specificity, it presents an unnamed teenage prostitute navigating a narrowing life-and- death passage during the Christ- mas season. The role is played with skill and pathos by relative newcomer Wendy McColm, who sustains a taut link of viewer ten- sion and empathy without the benefit of dialogue. Unfortu- nately, McColm’s good work in this ultimately silent picture is undermined by too much narra- tive monotony and directorial
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excess—desaturated/saturated color, frazzled editing and flipped images (bothersome in grocery store settings when all the signs and product names get re- versed)—and too little informa- tion about our heroine. She might be a Suzie, but she’s cer- tainly not heartless; we see her taking hits on behalf of col- leagues who rip her off, and shar- ing a humiliating can of cat food with a needy hairless feline de- pendant. But we don’t learn much about the reasons for her predicament, other than the bad example of her mother (Andrea Davis), and she’s too cowed by her bad circumstances, never showing the real defiance of a homeless person living on the edge of starvation. The story has some horror and fantasy ele- ments, including some gory deaths and Suzie’s rapport with an externalized vision of her child self, echoing Mario Bava’s HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON. Shot on digital video, the pre- sentation looks and sounds
mostly good, with one or two in- stances of blooming whites. Marsiglia provided his own elec- tronic score, and there are no chapter marks. A 2m deleted scene, involving Suzie’s unex- pected encounter with an old flame from high school, is inter- esting and was likely cut because it would have underscored the film’s need for still more tonal variety. A slideshow of produc- tion and behind-the-scenes stills taken by Marsiglia’s producer wife Donna Kane runs 4m and can be viewed with musical accompani- ment or by chaptering ahead. In an expansive audio com- mentary shared with Kane, Marsiglia reveals that the film was inspired by stories he heard while working as a taxi driver who shuttled prostitutes from one hotel to another, but there’s noth- ing here that a writer with no di- rect experience of such women couldn’t have bleakly imagined. The set also includes a bonus disc of Marsiglia’s debut feature PHOE- NIX (1995, 90m), a B&W horror
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