Shortly
after unveiling his cult rock-and-roll comedy Detroit Rock City, actor-writer-director
Adam Rifkin best known for his work on Mouse Hunt and Underdog turned
around to make what proved to be one of the grimiest crime dramas of the 2000s
few if anyone actually saw, Night at the Golden Eagle. Written, produced
and directed by Rifkin in maybe one of the filthiest feeling movies of the decade
that wasn’t directed by Larry Clark, Harmony Korine, James Toback or Salomé
Breziner, the film plays like a snapshot of Hell if it were crammed in between
skyscrapers in deathly hot Los Angeles.
Co-produced by the late Steve Bing whose own brushes with drug abuse and
suicide can’t help but further layer on a dark edge to the proceedings, the
film is a rarity in that it could only have come during the 2000s, a period
where low rent crime dramas were a low budget filmmaking no man’s land. One might not come away enjoying this sleazy
wallow but it most certainly a product of its time.
On a scorching day in downtown LA after being set free by the prison warden (James Caan in an overqualified cameo), crusty old fart criminals Tommy (Donnie Montemarano) and Mick (Vinny Argiro) reunite with plans to spend their last night in California at the Golden Eagle Hotel before their departure for Las Vegas, Nevada. Planning to wipe the slate clean with a fresh crime-free restart, the twosome shack up in the hotel room only to be accosted by prostitutes, violent pimps, drunken bums and young teenage runaways. Sooner or later, one of the prostitutes turns up dead with the blood seemingly on Tommy’s hands, quickly transforming their once quiet little evening into a raging nightmare where everything that can go wrong for these two does. Meanwhile the film cross cuts between said pimps, prostitutes and runaways forming a bleak ensemble tapestry of lowlife foraging for survival in the dark rotted crevices of a sleazy cheap hotel.
A jet-black
poison pill of a movie that looks, feels and even sounds dirty despite there
being little to no sex or nudity onscreen, wading through the world of this
movie is enough to make one take a shower after its over. Every bit as grimy as Larry Clark’s Kids or
Bully with enough of a formless plotless swim through septic fields to
make Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers cleanly by comparison, this is the
sort of film that hardly gets made or talked about anymore yet is distinctive
of the era in which it was made. As with
the director’s previous film Detroit Rock City, the film tosses in porn
star turned sex offender Ron Jeremy into the mix, adding yet another patina of
scum to the whole endeavor. After awhile
one gets the impression the film is less interested in whether or not the two criminal
elders leading the film can get away clean than it is in pointing out how
terrible crimes go unnoticed in bad areas.
The
first and foremost technical aspect to the film feeling as downright gross as
it does is the film’s grungy 2.35:1 cinematography by eventual It: Chapter
Two cinematographer Checco Varese who films the proceedings with a gritty
desaturated brownish-orange color palette, echoing Ernest Dickerson’s scalding
hot vistas from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing with more than a hint of
filth. The score by legendary and
accomplished Marvel movie composer Tyler Bates is a serviceably crusty moody
jazz score, lending a somber tone over the whole saga of characters that play
out across this sordid hotel on the ass end of Los Angeles. Performance wise, both actors Vinny Argiro
and Donnie Montemarano tear away at their roles with fanged sociopathic
relish. Also of note is actress Natasha
Lyonne (American Pie) as a prostitute who bites off more than she can
chew, though no character in the piece ever winds up taking center stage as the
hotel itself is the main star.
Despite
bombing hard, raking in a measly $18,000 against a $1 million budget before
languishing in Blockbuster Video exclusive Hell, the film seen now is something
of a time capsule. A nihilistic, ugly,
vulgar and disgusting neo-noir of sorts with a sardonic attitude about itself, Night
at the Golden Eagle as aforementioned is the kind of crime drama you really
don’t see at all anymore. Even some of
the recent crime epics that have come and gone don’t scrape the bottom of the barrel
as hard as this one digs and claws away at it, a film that gets its hands dirty
as it swims through toxic waste. Yes
some lower budget neo-noir films of recent have been considerably more extreme
or violent or even sexually disturbing but few if any feels as gross to watch
as this one does, a crime movie that isn’t afraid to show its rotting teeth and
perhaps leave an infectious gangrenous bitemark.
--Andrew Kotwicki
