The Tribeca Film Festival

Choking Hazard
by Eric Siegelstein

You've got to hand it to the Czechs. They take their zombie attacks in stride.

      Marek Dobes's Choking Hazard, one of the midnight premieres at this year's Tribeca Film Festival, is an insane, nihilistically gleeful zombie comedy, imported from the land that invented Pilsner.

      The movie lets you know where its going from the very first scene, in which the camera moves through a forest to where a woman in Emma Peel leather is straddled over a fat zombie, repeatedly bashing his head with a rock. She stops, and the zombie twitches, so back again to the rock - bash, bash, bash, bash, ad infinitum.

      This woman is only a minor character, however. Most of the story takes place at an isolated hotel (of course!), where a small group of men and women are gathered for a "meaning-of-life" philosophy class, taught by a blind man bearing an uncanny resemblance to Anthony Hopkins. The class is first interrupted by a Jehovah's Witness porno actor who was supposed to be shooting Uncle Tom's Cabin, but with more anal," but has come to the wrong hotel. He gladly joins the class, but then they're interrupted yet again, this time by the horde of brain-hungry zombies. Their reaction is priceless:

"Zombie woodsmen! Run!"

      Choking Hazard is one of those movies that's just plain fun, occupying a space somewhere between a Troma production and Animal House. The characters react to extreme situations in a such a chill manner, as though these zombies trying to kill them are more a nuisance than anything, another interruption as they ponder the meaning of life. There's a scene involving an eyeball that's just incredibly funny and gross; trust me, it beats out Kill Bill 2 as the best "popped-eye" scene in film this year. The title means nothing at all: at the Q&A following the screening, the director said he saw it on a Happy Meal toy. There's a dance sequence, courtesy of mass zombie electrocution. And it's a philosophy lesson, too - the film itself is divided into two parts, titled "Instinct," where our heroes run from the mindless undead, and "Reason," in which they must overcome more intelligent "superzombies." And though the professor is eventually bitten and zombified, this doesn't at all stop the lecture. The whole thing is just fucking hilarious.It's also got something we've just never seen a zombie do before -- nunchucks. Awesome.

Satan’s Little Helper
Siegs

      Satan’s Little Helper, on the other hand, doesn’t work. Another horror/comedy, this one was about a little boy, addicted to a satanic video game, who on Halloween follows and assists a masked serial killer, thinking him to be Satan. The film can’t quite find the balance between the horror and the comedy.

      The devil-obsessed boy starts off believably enough – he’s just naïve and over-imaginative. Maybe he’s a little maladjusted, too. But as the film progresses, the believability frays and eventually shreds, getting to the point where the only possible justification is that he’s either severely retarded or at best, just completely divorced from reality. Or perhaps he just takes after his mother, played by Amanda Plummer (why?!), who follows a very similar character arc. The boy’s beautiful older sister is the most real, believable character in the movie – and then she’s given some of the worst lines of dialogue in the whole thing.

      Even the killer has no personality, which is unfortunate. All the great villains of the genre – Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, even the Maniac Cop – are fully-realized characters, with backstories and motives. Here, “Satan” is just an anonymous psycho. A possible identity is hinted at in the beginning, but it never pays off.

      There is one really memorable scene, near the middle of the picture. The killer and the boy, after going on a candy-and-sharp-implements shopping spree, speed around the supermarket parking lot, running people down with a shopping cart. They knock over an old lady, a blind man, a pregnant woman… it’s just incredibly sick and demented, and darkly hilarious. This is the high point, and also where the movie starts to derail. From then on, Satan’s Little Helper succeeds in being neither funny nor scary – just plain awful.

Freeze Frame
Siegs

      Freeze Frame, a first feature by Irish director John Simpson, grows from an interesting, unique concept: A man named Sean Veil is accused of the murder of an entire family, and while he’s freed following a mistrial, the press, public, and a very vocal criminal profiler all assume he’s guilty. Fearful that the authorities will try anything to finally send him to jail, the accused man proceeds to videotape every second of his life from that point on, guaranteeing he’ll always have a rock-solid alibi.

      Ten years pass, during which Veil is continually hounded by an Ahab-like detective and denounced by the publicity-hungry profiler. Finally, the police come to accuse him of another murder – but when he goes to get the tapes that would prove his innocence, they’re missing.

      It’s an intriguing reversal of Big Brother, where the protagonist is worried that at any given moment, he isn’t being watched! It’s a dark, very stylized film with an ever-twisting plot. But it loses steam towards the end, and the last act has so many twists it becomes comical and borders on not making any sense. Suspension of disbelief is one of the film’s weak points, as it’s hard to imagine how Veil, who has no apparent source of income, is able to afford his array of cameras or the mountains of tape stock he goes through.

      It’s a curious, thought-provoking picture, though. Played by comedian Lee Evans, Veil is one of those odd film heroes who you end up pitying more than empathizing with. The claustrophobic sets and heavy shadow give the movie a very ominous atmosphere, while Veil’s almost High Fidelity-esque voiceover narration adds a crucial breath of humor. Digital video is used very effectively here, contributing to the look and feel of the movie rather than coming off as a cheap alternative to film.
Freeze Frame is exactly the kind of film you’d go to a festival to see – unpolished and a little rough around the edges, but original and unusual. Keep an eye out for this one, it’s definitely worth a look.

Let’s Rock Again
Obie

      There’s something almost sad about seeing Joe Strummer, unknowingly a year before his untimely death, determined to break even with his Global A Go-Go album after his previous record lost money for Hellcat, trying to pimp his Trump Marina gig by passing out self-made magic marker-inked flyers to mostly apathetic Atlantic City boardwalkers. That is, it would be a sad scene if it didn’t perfectly depict the populist DIY ethic and never-say-die attitude that caused millions of Earthlings (outside of Atlantic City) to fall in love with Joe in the first place. “You’ve got to have a thick skin when you’re hustling,” he says with equal parts of stoicism and just-happy-to-be-alivism. “It’s like Captain Beefheart said: ‘One cold vibe won’t stop this boogie.’”

      Dick Rude’s documentary Let’s Rock Again! features the last year and tour of Joe Strummer’s life, and needless to say, it’s a bittersweet experience for any Clash die-hard. Like Joe & the Mescaleros’ final album Streetcore, it’s not without filler (a few too many MTV-esque montages), but the moments it captures are priceless enough to charm the average music and movie lover: a performance of “London’s Burning” still makes the kids go pogo crazy; we learn about a Himalaya dweller who practiced his bass while listening to Joe’s radio show; backstage before a show, Joe psyches himself up by shouting “Let’s rock again!” only a shade less enthusiastically than he probably did in '77. Just then, you realize there are countless rock star fates worse than street-promoting your own casino gig- and any of you who still think The Sex Pistols' angry nihilism was more important to punk, rock or the world at large than The Clash's angry perserverance can watch Johnny Rotten embarrass himself on British reality TV and see for yourself what rock n' roll tragedy looks like. The only tragedy in Joe's story is the simple fact that the invincible cold vibe of death had to stop his boogie before he was ready.