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| Images courtesy of Anchor Bay Entertainment |
Anchor Bay Entertainment, the Michigan based boutique label
that started out as a titan of horror releasing in the DVD era before vanishing
and resurfacing rebranded with MVD Visual as a distributor of distinctly
independent off-the-wall oddities, has taken a new step in creating a sublabel
known as Undiscovered. With their first blu-ray
disc release being New York based performance artist Dean Dempsey’s 2015
semi-autobiographical Candy Apple, a DIY punk rock ensemble odyssey
following the day-to-day meanderings of Texas Trash a grizzled double-amputee
who moves in with his young filmmaker son Bobby (Dean Dempsey), they’ve gotten off
to a surprisingly good start. In this microbudget
digitally rendered production written and directed by Dempsey picked up from
obscurity and given new life with this Anchor Bay Undiscovered disc, we don’t
get all of the answers out of this unprepared deep bite into the underbelly of
New York starving artist life but it still gives a good smattering portrait of
a small group of people trying to survive the Big Apple so to speak.
Texas Trash, walking with a prosthetic leg which he limps on
and a hook for an arm, is a down-on-his-luck junkie loser whose falling on hard
times leads him back into the path of his wannabe filmmaker-actor son
Bobby. In between making random appearance
in his films, Texas Trash mostly goes to bars looking for some sex or drugs
occasionally picking up prostitutes barely interested or noticing him. Bobby, following in his father’s footsteps,
bumbles about drunkenly at parties while poppa Texas Trash takes a liking to an
androgynous performer and stylist named Roxy (Neon Music) who at first is
annoyed by Texas Trash’s come-ons but eventually comes to care for the crusty
tattooed bum.
With its camera moving in
and out of graffiti filled bars, subways where bikers show off their testicles
to passerby, junkie laden streets including perverts who get off on eating milk
and cereal off of people’s chests (yeah, that actually happens in this), the
overarching vibe one comes away with watching this unfold is scuzzy grime. But at the same time, you have Roxy’s world
of glamour which Texas Trash is only tickled pink to freely indulge in, his son
Bobby’s passable apartment setting and a lesbian prostitute with her lover trying
to collect unpaid debts from Texas Trash.
A little bit like a Larry Clark film without the preteen
porn featuring a cacophony of quirky, troubled yet ultimately likable
characters you find yourself caring for even as you realize they’re past the
point of redemption, Candy Apple is a New Yorky kind of Krisha film
in which the offspring tries to provide their unstable parent with stability
with mixed if not disappointing results.
Surprisingly compelling for being a slice-of-life bit of punk rock
cinema intertwined with glam, done in a scrappy DIY style that befits the world
of the film, this wound up being a surprisingly good little microbudget number.
In what could’ve been a hard pill to swallow
considering the ugliness contained therein, Candy Apple as a movie is a
little bit like stumbling upon a homeless person in the street, reaching down
to help and somehow befriending and/or spending time with the person. That it so freely mixed in the flamboyantly
bisexual performative aspects of many of the characters in this saga only enhances
our understanding of how different walks of life try to reckon with if not care
for a man who has lost all regard for himself and his well-being.
Released on Blu-ray disc by Anchor Bay Entertainment’s new
Undiscovered sublabel and featuring an original trailer as well as a video
essay on the origins and meaning of Punk Rock Cinema, Candy Apple from
its bright cover of a bright inviting apple with a sparkler fuse coming down
about to explode suggests something pretty and ripe is about to explode
revealing an underneath full of worms and used syringes. It’s a tragicomic bittersweet mixture of ugly
and beautiful, lovely and gross all mashed together. Yeah sometimes it meanders and the
performances which lean towards street casting aren’t always the sharpest, but
somehow or another in this little effort Dean Dempsey captures a broad tapestry
of then-2015 New York life just trying to survive. Anchor Bay’s Undiscovered label has my
attention in a film that from the outset looked rancid and while a lot of it
is, Candy Apple has heart at its glittering epicenter well worth taking
a bite out of.
--Andrew Kotwicki
