Liberation Hall: Shelf Life (1993) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Liberation Hall

The career of actor-writer-director Paul Bartel continued on until his death in the year 2000 with posthumous role or two coming out.  But despite keeping busy until the end the indie dark comedy filmmaker’s ninth and final feature Shelf Life from 1993, a kind of proto-Blast from the Past by way of Dogtooth freakout of experimental theater, never saw the light of day until now.  Unable to find distribution until after Paul Bartel’s death when his personal 35mm print of the film was donated to the Academy Film Archive and was eventually picked up by new niche and clandestine boutique label Liberation Hall to be unveiled to the public for the first time.  While the results look and sound rough and scratchy, this previously unreleased film and former live theater brainchild of the principal three cast members O-Lan Jones, Andrea Stein and Jim Turner comes to home video packed with plentiful extras including new interviews with all three actors and a running commentary trying to make sense of the madness.

 
Circa 1963, a small Californian family with three happy-go-lucky children Tina, Pam and Scotty, heads into an elaborate well-supplied deep underground nuclear bomb shelter following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy fearing World War III.  Over the course of thirty years and the film’s sardonic opening titles sequence set to Brian Wilson & Andy Paley’s In My Moondreams, the film jumps into then-present 1993 with all three kids grown into adults Tina (O-Lan Jones), Pam (Andrea Stein) and Scotty (Jim Turner) still foraging in the bunker with their long since deceased parents now skeletons in their bedside.  From here, the film follows the day-to-day activities these overgrown adults with the mental and emotional maturity of minors spend including but not limited to watching TV, role-playing of numerous caricatures and fighting over whatever remnants of food are left. 

 
A darkly hilarious, nightmarish, grating and maddening vision of what The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser might’ve turned out like if the poor man never escaped captivity, the final never-before-seen swan song of Paul Bartel is truly an unexpurgated slice of outlaw cinema.  Experimental nuclear bunker theater featuring childlike characters in adult bodies, it sports some of Bartel’s best direction of stage and set pieces.  Featuring uncanny threatening production design of the claustrophobic bunker by Alex Tavoularis, a screwball synth score by Andy Paley and tight, trained cinematography by Philip Holohan, Bartel and his three main actors let loose into their roles including child-playing “adults” like a mock-up grade school classroom.  That everything they’re acting out comes from what little they see on an old black-and-white CRT television from 1963 only forecasts the VHS rental tape bouts of freedom glimpsed in the equally surreal yet far more provocative Dogtooth.

 
O-Lan Jones is one of those character actresses who shows up in tons of bit parts for notable films including Miracle Mile, Edward Scissorhands, Beethoven, Natural Born Killers and The Truman Show.  Usually playing a waitress or otherwise frumpy seductress in movies, one of the most familiar faces in film here is allowed to completely come unhinged in a role that’s loose and maniacal.  Easily the most committed performance of this insane chamber piece, playing everything from scared crying child to sultry seductress to spoiled brat, O-Lan attacks this role with everything she’s got like a wild animal in the stage of feeding.  Almost upstaging her are her co-stars Andrea Stein as the more maternal older sister while Jim Turner as the ‘kid’ brother competes with O-Lan as who can be the most increasingly infantile of the group. 

 
Shot on a low budget six weeks after the original Lex Theater in Hollywood stage show ended, the film was screened at the Palm Springs Film Festival as a workprint but was passed on by Toronto and Sundance before effectively failing to find theatrical or home video distribution.  A deal that never worked out which Paul Bartel kept under his belt, the film like its characters wouldn’t see the light of day until some thirty years later thanks to this new blu-ray edition from Liberation Hall.  As aforementioned, the picture and sound quality of this thing is rather rough with cigarette burns and scratches as well as pops on the soundtrack but given this is all that exists of an otherwise previously unreleased film it is a serviceable transfer.  Fans of Bartel and the original stage play will be keen on the extras including a zoom video Q&A conducted by the American Cinematheque featuring the three principal actors.  Fans of Paul Bartel will be delighted by this release while the uninitiated are inclined to both buckle up and surrender to this movie’s peculiar, certifiable but nevertheless infectious charms.

--Andrew Kotwicki