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| Courtesy of FilmRise |
British cult director Jim Hoskin first
came to the horror filmgoing public’s attention in 2014 with his contribution
to The ABCs of Death 2, the short film segment G is for Granddad
about a wrinkly grandfather who murders his grandson but not before pulling his
pants down to show off his pubic hair covered crotch to the camera. This style of surreal horror comedy
uncomfortably placing young and old actors together in bizarre situations with
a peculiar fixation on distinctly elderly male nudity would be expanded to
feature length with the director’s first official movie, the gross-out darkly
humorous father-son/murder vomitorium The Greasy Strangler. Think of it as a slimy festering misbegotten
love child of John Waters and Flying Lotus, a film about paternal bonding
through the eyes of Kuso.
Big Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels), a
wrinkly old reprobate running a disco-themed walking tour with his nebbish
inept overweight son Big Brayden (Sky Elobar), offers a roof over his son’s
head when he isn’t demanding Brayden drowns his breakfast in Crisco grease. Meanwhile at night a naked serial killer
covered from head to toe in Crisco grease known as The Greasy Strangler is
randomly murdering people in the area, making Big Ronnie’s own obsession with
grease suspect. But when a sexually
alluring woman named Janet (Elizabeth De Razzo) takes the tour and falls for
Brayden, it creates a competitive romantic triangle in the household between
Ronnie and Brayden over her affections and further stokes the murderous rages
of The Greasy Strangler.
An ugly duckling bastard lovechild with
the DNA of John Waters, Harmony Korine and Flying Lotus sandwiched together,
this perversely gross and disgusting shockfest believe it or not is coproduced
by both Ben Wheatley (In the Earth) and Elijah Wood. Loaded with deliberately inventively
offensive and often flat-out stupid dialogue including a certain chant involving
another character’s anus, The Greasy Strangler means to gleefully offend
and make queasiness within the viewer who hastily signs up for this thing. But running through the thing is a weird and oddly
touching riff on the father-son story, anchoring the insanity down
somewhat. But when our titular Greasy
Strangler washes off the Crisco the next morning in a car wash with
particular emphasis on his wrinkly flaccid penis, we’ve lost track of how to
take this movie all over again.
A bit like a Jackass episode as
imagined by Luis Bunuel with a chortlingly offbeat-weird ass score by Andrew Hung
which lets you know from afar something is amiss with the world of this movie, part
of the film’s oddball vulgar strength comes from the cinematography by Mårten Tedin. Largely shot at night with some daylight
scenes with the Greasy Strangler lit in shadow, coupled with the bright
pink sweaters worn by the main characters, the film takes on the candy colored
romcom look of a Todd Solondz film where the more reprehensible the gags
become, the more cheerful and bright the picture has to look.
A lot of familiar character actors from the Happy
Madison team and David Gordon Green’s Eastbound and Down show up
including Abdoulaye NGom from Grandma’s Boy. Sky Elobar from Under the Silver Lake does
a good job playing a strangely effeminate Eric Wareheim, but it is mostly John
Travolta’s former hairdresser Michael St. Michaels who completely steals this
movie.
Lanky, wrinkly,
crusty, hairy and often sporting an erection, Michael St. Michaels completely
gives himself to physical gross out comedy and puts himself in more than a few
awkward and uncomfortable situations.
That he was able to play this with a straight face and say the dialogue
without bursting into obscene laughter is remarkable in and of itself. Then there’s that gross drippy Greasy Strangler
makeup which looks like he crawled out of a pit of quicksand, and many
scenes of things that shouldn’t be covered in Crisco being drowned in it. That any actor would allow themselves so
confidently to be completely humiliated onscreen like this is a testament to his
commitment to the piece.
Dumb, deliberately irritating, vulgar
and offensive, The Greasy Strangler is the Old 96er scene from The
Great Outdoors involving leftover gristle and fan played out to feature
length. Interspersed within the vomit
gags is something resembling a human story but all the dialogue and actions are
designed to be a rancid send up of those things, making us wonder if this dose
of slimy icky feral surrealism is closer Waters or Lotus. Either way, theater owners must’ve had a
heyday cleaning up all the puke left on the floor from unsuspecting moviegoers
who couldn’t keep their popcorn down.
For what it’s worth, The Greasy Strangler is either deeply
infuriating or deliriously entertaining depending on the viewer. I myself fall into the latter camp.
--Andrew Kotwicki
