Call Girl - Review

****

Written by Eric Havens
Directed by Jill Sixx Gevargizian

Call Girl is a short film with a twist. Its simple structure pitches Laurence R. Harvey, last seen as the obesely inadequate sadist in The Human Centipede 2 reprising his monstrous misogyny as Ed, a man who pays for his carnal satisfaction. Tristan Risk (known to many as the Betty Boop lookalike in American Mary) plays Mitzy, the hooker of the movie’s title.

Jill Sixx Gevargizian directs in another celebration of girl power. Suffice to say that although Ed’s intentions are thoroughly despicable, when he receives his visit from Mitzy, all is not what it seems.

Filmed entirely from Ed’s webcam’s point of view just occasionally the photography frustrates. The tale however is so compact and enhanced by Colin Lacativa’s music, that it flows with a swift wit. Gevargizian is learning her craft and this crowd-funded micro-movie is evidence of a talented young woman with Soska-like potential. A fun cast and a freakish tale make viewing Call Girl to be five minutes very well spent.

American Mary - Fright Fest Originals Poster

Artwork by Chris Everhart

American Mary written & directed by Jen & Sylvia Soska

Chris Everhart's poster

American Mary was an acclaimed festival hit in 2012, garnering praise and awards, before a brief pre-DVD launch UK theatrical tour in early 2013, and a release in USA theaters slated for May 2013. The second feature from the provocative Canadian twins  Jen and Sylvia Soska, it tells of ingénue medical student, Mary Mason, who through a mixture of poverty and coincidence, finds herself drawn from the refined elite of med school, through sleazy clip joints, to the underground world of the body modification community, wherein word of her remarkable scalpel skills rapidly spreads. In a parallel plot line, Mary is unwittingly slipped a date-rape drug at a party attended by med school faculty staff and waking to find that she has been raped by at least one of her teachers, wreaks bloody revenge upon the men that she trusted and who have violated her.

The brilliance of this film lies in the Soskas’ ability to have pitched a story from a challenging and at times uncomfortable perspective and then for that pitch to be brought to life by Katherine Isabelle playing Mary.  Critics have already labelled the movie a 21st century Frankenstein, and whilst that is only partly true ( Mary does not restore life to the dead) , the extent to which student Mason is drawn from being a clean living moralist to a murderous avenger who has made a bonfire of both social and medical ethics, is arguably the creation of a new personality, if not the new creature. Isabelle’s chilling beauty so often appears incongruous against the scenes of violence and bloody back-street surgery that overwhelm her.

The film shocks on many levels. Mary’s rape, the disturbing presentations of the body-modified characters that appear in the movie, the surgical procedures that Mary performs upon her paying patients, and the vengeance she wreaks upon her sexual predators. Tristan Risk plays Beatress, a woman pursuant above all else of looking like Betty Boop , and we meet her character as she is already gruesomely transformed into Boop and is seeking Mary’s services to assist Ruby, another friend of hers who wishes her breasts and genitalia to be radically altered. Risk’s Beatress is as troubling as it is brilliant, a combination of both outstanding  prosthetics and acting. David Lovgren is Dr Grant, Mary’s rapist teacher. It is a mark of the Soskas’ perception that, as in reality, this evil man does not look monstrous or geeky, rather Grant is a youthful handsome and clearly talented doctor, though ultimately a deeply flawed alpha-male. The revenge that Mary subjects him to bears more than a nod to Hannibal Lecter style torture, and whilst the disfiguring effects of Mary’s surgery upon the once-handsome young doctor are deliciously captured by the Soska’s, the twins wisely cut away from actual scenes of surgery. Scalpels and saws are often seen in the movie, though they are rarely seen in action.

It is this sense of controlled understatement that provides a baseline to the movie’s screen printed posted from Fright Fest Originals, a provocative piece of art from Detroit based designer Chris Everhart. A strikingly red image, using only black and grey with the paper’s natural white as additional colour, it suggests horror and torment, without showing any specific act of torture or violence. Inspired by a promotional still, the most striking aspect of the image is that of the surgically masked Mary, with an apron appropriately looped around her neck, but also slim shoulder straps  that suggest underneath the apron she is clad in negligee or similar nightwear. Bizarre dress for surgery befitting her bizarrely altered world. Everhart speaks of wanting to have introduced a creepy innocence to Mary. The surgical mask and apron suggesting a trusted concept of a caring professional who naturally garners our respect, yet Mary’s eyes are flecked with deep red, suggesting exhaustion or craziness, or both. Take your pick. Perhaps above all, in one image, the Mary of this poster suggests a surgeon who has taken an alternative direction and lifestyle from the Hippocratic path pursued by her peers. She is a doctor who administers dark, sometimes deadly procedures. A medic whose knife one would succumb to, either because one’s surgical requirements were beyond the pale of acceptable practice, or more chillingly, because the doctor was offering you no choice.

Initial ideas that Everhart considered drew from an interpretation of the USA’s flag, depicted with scalpels and surgical tools.  Whilst that approach would have acknowledged the film’s title , geography, and at its most crass interpretation, some aspects of the plot’s darkness too, it would not have hinted at what the Soska’s tale is about. The crazed young woman that he has painted instead is one who is enduring a massive internal struggle as her world crumbles around her. The artist subtly adds to Mary’s crazed existence. Surgical tape seems to be holding an almost crumpled image together whilst paint spattered across the image in much the way as blood may spatter a scene from a severed vessel, hinting at Mary’s violent menace. Look closely at the title lettering and also around the image and spidery surgical sutures are seen everywhere, a suggestion not only of the medical nature of Mary’s world but also of how, like a body-modified individual, the image has been stitched together, to create this alternative perspective on a radically different lifestyle. The lettering of the films title, hand scrawled in upper case, in a lettering that grows in size, again suggests this crazed  distorted world, that consumes Mary through the story.

The Soska sister’s are themselves thrilled with Everhart’s interpretation of their work, declaring it “stunning”.  The twins have commented that the artwork is unique, and how impressed they are that the work beautifully captures the side of Mary who hides her most vicious and bloody nature behind a perfectly put together disposition A print hangs on their Vancouver production office wall.

A limited edition print-run has so far restricted this contemporary view of a very modern film to collectors and enthusiasts only.  Fright Fest Originals have commissioned a piece of understated brilliance that hints at both terrifying slaughter and troubling psychological horror. It’s a striking image that vividly encapsulates the absolute extremes of existence that Mary Mason is forced to live in.

My original review of the movie can be found here.

Fright Fest Originals can be found here.

Feature : Jen and Sylvia Soska - Canada's Twisted Twins




Jen and Sylvia Soska in a cameo appearance from their latest movie American Mary



Meeting Jen and Sylvia Soska (who are the founders and driving force of Twisted Twins Productions) one is quickly struck by their energy and ability to create a rapport. You feel that their directing of a film unit is likely to be as invigorating for their crew members, as watching their movies is for the audience. So it was as I arrived at London's Soho Hotel for my interview with these talented identical twins, in town to promote their newest feature American Mary, which will be released on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal Pictures (UK) on 21st January 2013.

By the time of the interview my advance copy of American Mary had not yet arrived so in that regard I was interviewing blind, however this was not to prove a problem. The twins, together with the movie’s star, Katharine Isabelle who was touring with them, were delighted that my first viewing of the film was to be later that evening on a big screen in central London and so the conversation flowed around the Soskas’ first feature, Dead Hooker In A Trunk, as well as their background and their philosophy in filmmaking.

The twin’s have long shared a passion in horror film and they speak warmly of the influence and guidance of established director Eli Roth, in working with them and mentoring the pair. They shot Dead Hooker on the infinitesimally micro-budget of C$2,500 ( approximately £1,750!) and of this, most was spent on prosthetics. A look down the cast and credits of that picture at movie database IMDb, reveals that nearly all the main performers (as well as the twins themselves who starred in that oeuvre) often had several roles behind the camera, ranging from electrician to stunt-driver. Only once completed was a copy sent to Roth, already then a giant of horror production with Cabin Fever and Hostels 1 & 2 to his credit and who was bowled over by what he saw. With his input and supportive promotion, the picture went on to achieve global recognition and allowed the twins to command a (still tiny) budget of closer to C$1M for American Mary. The sisters refer to Roth as their “favourite Jew since Jesus”. American Mary is dedicated to him and the guidance that he has passed on to the sisters – one of his most helpful notes being that if a movie cannot be pitched in two sentences, don’t shoot it – echoes the mentoring and support that he himself received from Quentin Tarantino who came on board to produce the two Hostel pictures.

Dead Hooker is a quirky, left of field picture that follows a group of young people, (think of a parody of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five), discovering the body of a hooker in their car’s trunk and setting off on a blood spattered mystery, to uncover the truth behind her murder. Their journey takes them on a bizarre tour of the twins’ native Vancouver and the movies denouement, without too much spoiling, hilariously/horrifically touches upon a Jewish guy whose circumcision as a child had gone a little awry. The glee with which the Soskas’ take such recognised urban anxieties and nightmares and project them on screen as brash innovative statements, is a hallmark of their writing. In American Mary they have defined some of their most evil male characters as eminent teaching doctors.

Another common Soska thread is their desire to overturn the historic exploitation of women on screen. Their refreshing and honest empowerment of their heroines has so far given rise to stories and chapters that are often best described as emasculatory, at the very least! It is a mark of the respect that these filmmakers engender from their performers that during the filming of Dead Hooker, when the staged beating of actress Tasha Moth by the movie’s mysoginist bad-guy was being filmed, even under the expert eye of a stunt co-ordinator a baseball bat blow went off target and Moth took a swipe to the kidneys. Such was her devotion to the movie and the twins’ vision that she didn’t complain, even when the next day she was passing blood. Needless to say, the Soskas were mortified on learning of this mishap and happily the actress went on to make a full recovery.

Jen and Sylvia work well together throughout the development process of their stories. They talk of how as one creates, the other plays video games before, in the tradition of all good siblings, they dutifully trash and pull apart the other’s efforts. Yet from this process emerge well-argued storylines and intelligent plots. Music and excellent sound feature heavily in  Twisted Twins productions. They talk of how when they write a script that every camera angle, sound effect and background detail is documented right at the very commencement of the creative process. The baseball battering referred to above is set to the Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen and incredibly the combination of refined beauty in music being juxtaposed against distressing violence ( think of Beethoven in Kubrick’s The Clockwork Orange) is effective. The twins speak warmly of having been immersed in culture from a very young age by their parents and in a novel gesture of appreciation have had their real-life father perform minor comic cameos in each of the movies.

Meeting the Soska sisters (and my review of American Mary can be found here) confirms my perception that these striking, talented young artists represent a distinctive and refreshing take on the horror genre. Their films are graphic and wildly imaginative, but where Mary Shelley once shocked a world with Frankenstein, so are these two women reaching out to leave their mark on Tinseltown as an invigorating and formidable force. They also shoot damn good pictures.


American Mary, which will be released on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal Pictures (UK) on 21st January 2013 and will open at UK cinemas on 11th January 2013 (FrightFest)

American Mary - Review - Girl Power As It Should Be!

Certificate 18, available on Blu-ray and DVD from January 21st 2013

****

Written and directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska

( ALERT: Some of this review may not be for the faint-hearted)

Katharine Isabelle is Mary Mason

American Mary, which will be released on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal Pictures (UK) on 21st January 2013 is the second feature from Canadian twins Jen and Sylvia Soska, and their appropriately named production company, Twisted Twins.

Mary Mason is a conventional medical student. Hard working and committed (we encounter her as she practises suturing a raw turkey at home), she is nonetheless broke. Barely have the titles rolled than she is reluctantly drawn to the sleazy world of massage and table-dancing to raise cash. As with most good horror, some aspect of disbelief has to be suspended for this scary tale to work and so Mary, whilst auditioning as a dancer, is called upon at the club to perform unorthodox and illegal emergency life-saving surgery upon a gang member who has been knifed. Her skills are evident, cash is swiftly earned and within days word spreads within the underground community of body modification devotees, of a surgeon prepared to operate illegally. The Soskas’ story then takes their protagonist on two journeys. One is the odyssey into the freakish world of body modification, the other commencing with her attending a party thrown by her senior teaching doctors where she is callously drugged and raped and from whence her trajectory is an arc of calculated revenge.

Katharine Isabelle, possibly most widely known in this country for Ginger Snaps and Freddy v Jason, is Mary, combines the striking beauty that her character demands, with a plausible but realistically flawed naivete. On screen throughout almost the entire picture, her reluctant bravura on entering the table-dancing bar that swiftly evolves into calculated exploitation as she performs her first procedure and thus taints herself with both illegality and amorality, is convincingly evoked. Whilst at times some of the procedures she is asked to perform are shocking ( the Soskas assure that nearly all their medical research is accurate), her violation at the hands of her med-school teachers is all the more harrowing through a combination of her physical performance and a refreshing avoidance by the twins of any aspect of gratuitous nudity or violence whatsoever.

In the cinematic world of the Twisted Twins, with few exceptions, men are without virtue. They either run seedy strip joints, or teach medicine or, in an amusing cameo performed by the twins’ real life father, are a drunken dis-credited backstreet German surgeon. The sisters’ message is clear. If you possess a dick, you more than likely use it to think with in place of your brain. Even the cop who investigates the growing pattern of disappearing eminent male surgeons, is suggested to have motives towards Mary that are more than professional.

Whereas in years gone by, and to some extent even today,  women have been exploited both by Hollywood and the horror genre, the Soska sisters who are unquestionably talented young filmmakers with balls, are with this picture likely to have their male audiences and film-making competitors checking that theirs are still intact.

Mary’s surgery upon the body-mod community and within the revenge she wreaks upon one of her teachers, is surprisingly tastefully filmed. Whilst extreme gore is often suggested, it is rarely displayed, further evidence of the twins desire to avoid the cheap gratuitous shock. Notwithstanding, some scenes are of course hard on the eye and even with unnecessary horror avoided, the film is not suitable for those of a sensitive disposition. A brief appearance is provided by the twins themselves as identical siblings seeking to trade limbs, in pursuit of a "more complete union". Whilst in a (rare) production flaw, the prosthetics of the limb swap disappoint, as if to compensate, the black leather stitches that are apparently woven into the flesh of the twins’ backs are an outstanding body modification effect and perhaps one of the finest examples of horror make-up seen in recent years. Technically, the film is excellent and reflects a refreshing commitment to production values that are as high as the budget will allow. With nods to, amongst others, the Hannibal Lecter movies and I Spit On Your Grave, the twins have produced a compelling saga.

In a story that is written and directed by the twins, it is the chilling familiarity of aspects of Mary’s world: the doctors, the guys at the strip club, that are almost more terrifying than the horror on screen. American Mary has already garnered critical acclaim at festivals worldwide and makes compelling viewing for anyone interested in the evolution of the modern horror genre.


My interview with Jen and Sylvia Soska can be found here.

American Mary, which will be released on DVD and Blu-ray from Universal Pictures (UK) on 21st January 2013 and will open at UK cinemars on 11th January 2013 (Frightfest)

American Mary - Arriving in 2013

UPDATE - DECEMBER 10 2012

The trailer for American Mary has just been released.

Please understand that this is not easy viewing, the movie is a horror pic, and do not click the link if you are likely to be distressed. Click here to view the trailer

However, The Soska Sisters appear to have created a graphic film that presents a feminine angle on exploitation and which is expected to be as intelligent in its structure, as it is gruesome to watch.

The film opens on January 11 2013 at selected cinemas, before a DVD release later that month.





It is rare, in fact, its never happened, that I have promoted a film's press release on this blog. However, come January 2013, The Soska Sisters' latest movie, American Mary is released in the UK.

In 2009, these innovative twins released the cult hit, Dead Hooker In A Trunk. An unashamedly funny, gory, wacky tale, set in their native Vancouver, produced on the tiniest of budgets, and with nearly all cast members doubling up in at least one crew role, as well. The film represented the very best of what low-budget independent film making should be about.

Their commitment to telling a good story is evident - the press release below tells its own story and if you enjoy well crafted horror, then you can expect this movie to be a cracking ride!

JB

The Soska Sisters (aka The Twisted Twins), co-creators of the award winning, cult indie smash hit Dead Hooker In A Trunk make an awe-inspiring return with their second feature AMERICAN MARY, a stylish, sexy, disturbing and darkly comic “body-mod” horror-thriller that many critics are hailing as the best and most genuinely original horror movie of the year.

Co-written and co-directed by Jen and Sylvia Soska (Dead Hooker In A Trunk) and featuring an outstanding, career-best lead performance by Katharine Isabelle (Being Human; Freddie vs. Jason; Ginger Snaps) in the title role, AMERICAN MARY has been wowing audiences at international film festivals (including London’s Film4 Frightfest) throughout 2012 and has already garnered Five Star reviews from Horror-Movies.ca and BoxOfficeBuz.com and Four Star reviews from Fangoria and Dread Central.

A provocative and thought-provoking combination of the horrors of a feminist “Frankenstein” with a fetishist twist and the visceral thrills of the “female revenge” genre, the film boasts a strikingly original script, laced throughout with a wicked sense of humour and a darkly erotic charge, that admirably takes the horror genre in a fresh and new direction. Simultaneously beautiful, repulsive, shocking and endearing, AMERICAN MARY is an unmissable experience that firmly establishes the Soska Sisters as two of the hottest new talents working in cinema today.

SYNOPSIS

Struggling to make financial ends meet while studying to be a surgeon, talented medical student Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle) finds herself reduced to applying for work at a local strip joint in order to pay off her mounting debts. During her interview, she is unexpectedly called upon to perform some illegal emergency surgery on one of the club’s clients and is instantly rewarded with a significant cash payment.

Word of Mary’s scalpel-work soon reaches one of the club’s dancers, Beatress Johnson (Tristan Risk), who approaches her offering to pay handsomely for some off-the-books, extreme body-modification work on a friend. The ensuing surgery is a huge success and Mary’s skills soon attract the attention of an underground network of high-paying clientele, all looking for someone to administer procedures and body-mod work unavailable through the usual legal channels.

However, the allure of the easy money and the increasingly bizarre work she is commissioned to perform begins to leave a mark on Mary, and when an incident involving the established surgeons she once idolized leaves her traumatised, “Bloody Mary”, as she has come to be known, responds in the only way she knows how.