Cult Cinema: Mad Cowgirl (2006) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Cinema Epoch

Nine years before taking up the reins of the long-awaited Kickstarter funded sequel Samurai Cop 2, renowned film distributor and Cinema Epoch company president turned indie filmmaker Gregory Hatanaka in his third feature established himself in 2006 as the other notable industry name besides David Lynch dabbling in surreal labyrinthine microbudget 480 interlaced DV digital photography with his ultraviolent and hypersexual freakout Mad Cowgirl. 

 
A slow, perverse descent into madness, mayhem and murder, this lean-mean indie inspired loosely by the works of Doris Wishman and John Cassavetes is a blurred, fuzzy scream of a movie that begins innocently enough before making a naked spread eagled swan dive off the rails and then some.  While receiving a limited theatrical release and more-or-less flying under the radar before ending up on DVD at the end of the year, this grotesque cacophony of madness and meat, while not nearly as disturbing as say Gaspar Noe’s mad butcher tale I Stand Alone, will leave an impression and perhaps paves the way for the low budget insanities to come later with his Samurai Cop sequel.
 
Young slaughterhouse inspector Therese (Sarah Lassez) first appears onscreen with an appetite for carnality as voracious as her hunger for red meat, switching between inspecting her brother Thierry’s (James Duval) meat packing plant and jumping the bones of lascivious Pastor Dylan (Walter Koenig) with carefree relish.  However, after consuming some of Thierry’s spoiled beef, the young sex kitten succumbs to a deadly brain disease which sends her (and the film) spiraling deep into madness.  Amid her psychological descent, she becomes convinced all the male figures in her life represent the Ten Tigers of Canton, a group of martial artists in the Qing dynasty in China, and that she must defeat them Shaolin Kung Fu style to become a better woman…all the while said men start meeting violent ends.

 
A manic and crazed no-budget crimson-dripping freakout that’s sexy, vulgar, absurdist, darkly humorous, aggravating and most importantly grimy, Mad Cowgirl while perhaps a dress rehearsal for the other like-minded insanities to come from this writer-director later nevertheless finds its own unique footing as a quasi-companion piece to Lynch’s also-2006 Inland Empire.  Shot on DV by two cinematographers Spike Hasegawa and James Avallone and scored by Colin Chin and Toshiyuki Hiraoka, the film’s tonality and attitude isn’t all that dissimilar from the anarchic antics of Gregg Araki and his Teenage Apocalypse trilogy.  Proof positive a film could still be provocative and alive with audiovisual ideas without the means or quality of filmmaking usually required, Gregory Hatanaka establishes himself early on with Mad Cowgirl as a uniquely uncategorizable do-it-yourself provocateur.
 
The young leading actress Sarah Lassez in the central role of Therese goes the full distance in terms of portraying this tragically dying sex kitten who races herself further into madness the moment she learns of her condition and as such is no longer a stranger to horror, continuing onward with such fare as Lo and The Wicked Within.  James Duval as Thierry is always sympathetic onscreen, even when he’s potentially the antagonist in movies.  The one who will really raise the eyebrows of many a viewer is Star Trek’s Chekov actor Walter Koenig in a most unlikely role as a lurid pastor who is busy selling an image on network television while continuing an illicit relationship with the much younger Therese.

 
Though Mad Cowgirl didn’t amass anywhere near the attention of Lynch’s Inland Empire, receiving a limited theatrical release before being lost in the direct-to-video releasing shuffle, Hatanaka’s film nevertheless did achieve something of a cult status which invariably led to the eventual direction of Samurai Cop 2.  A film that’s both terribly sad and uncomfortably hilarious, zanily campy and sometimes downright disturbing, Mad Cowgirl is a striking slice of mid-2000s underground DV filmmaking featuring unlikely cast members and more than a few unexpected detours ahead to keep viewers on their toes.  Not for all tastes but for fans invested in off the beaten path indies unafraid to get a little weird, Mad Cowgirl is quite the romp.

--Andrew Kotwicki