Kris is watching “The Office,” episodes I saw late last night, so I wandered upstairs and decided to see what Netflix might offer for instant queuing. I fancied the moment akin to me old college days, when I was green in judgment and grateful for whatever hack horror film I could muster up on cable, so I consciously sought out some crap I would probably never allow myself to actually have sent to my home, simply because it’d seem too much like paying to see them. (And, for any of you who’ve questioned my judgment, you can imagine what someone with my almost degree-zero lack of taste might prefer not to pay to see.) So I found a little early-nineties horror-satire called Satan’s Little Helper, the work of one Jeff Lieberman who various very interesting fan blogs call an unsung hero of indie popcorn horror. (Check out the fantastic final girl blog.)
That all said, and I’d be wasting your time if you had anything worth doing, which you don’t, Little Helper wants to be a satire of our love of violence, always a tricky move best attempted in a genre other than brutal-killers-on-the-road or slasher flick. It’s intermittently interesting, but shot on a budget that would be pleased to be called shoestring, with atrocious acting especially from the terrible eponymous kid Helper, but I did think the thing had some pizzazz and style in its almost classical framing, editing, and development. I enjoyed a little of its manic violent (‘though actually fairly non-graphic and muted violent) wit. Still, it’d have been a lot more fun at 2 a.m. on Cinemax, me half in the bag.
But now I had this itch. What to do? And I remembered, since Jeff recently taught the film and wondered what I’d thought of it, that I had yet to watch my downloaded copy of Martin McDonagh’s academy-award-winning short film Six Shooter. It’s outstanding–funny, vicious, strangely moving. Continue reading I’d’ve shot Marvin Gaye if I was Marvin Gaye’s dad