Movie Details
| Title: | Blood, Boobs & Beast | |
| Director: | John Paul Kinhart | |
| Year: | 2007 | |
| Genre: | Documentary | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.24.07 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.24.07 | Alamo South Lamar | This Screening is part of event: FantasticFest 2007 Over the hump and I wokle up with a slightly scratchy throat. Shit. Time to start overloading on vitamin C. Why does my immune system break down after four days of festival? Anyway, I really wanted to see this doc because I knew Zack really loved it and I liked Alien Factor and always find it interesting to see and hear how completely independant guys did their thing. I didn't know Dohler had passed away last December though. That really sucks. That made the ending really sad. Actually, not just that he died but also that he had more or less moved on from filmmaking, finding no joy in it anymore. I haven't seen his later films but judging from the movie they were pretty drastically different from his 80s stuff though so maybe the times are so different now that it was bound to happen, health problems or no. Skipping back to the beginning, Don Dohler was a guy who made low-budget horror movies in the 80s kinda sorta known for being "bad" although plenty of people (like Zack) have genuine love for them. He's a cult figure and since he lives and works in Baltimore, he's kind of like the horror equivalent to John Waters. Longterm readers (man you must have boring jobs or something) may remember me seeing Alien Factor and being impressed by the special effects. One of the things I learned in this doc was that Dohler also published Cinemagic, a magazine devoted to how the special effects work (like CineFX today), as well as working with several big names in the underground comics scene. Dohler's history is interesting but it's intercut with fly on the wall footage of him making his latest film. That's really sad too, sort of like the toward-the-end montage of Boogie Nights when Jack's walking through the video warehouse and Ricky Jay's shooting the lesbians saying "just keep going, it's videotape" like this is the sad state of the industry today look at what it's become. For some reason, seeing Troma films shot that way are ok but seeing Dohler, with Alien Factor so innocent and packed with child-friendly imagination, now making casting decisions based on who will do nudity... Yeah, this movie is sad before Dohler gets sick. It's really good though. I really liked it. UPDATE! I totally forgot to touch on one subject that I really loved about Don and that's his Baltimority! I went to highschool in Frederick, MD (my parents still live roughly five minutes from Burkittsville which is (sigh) where they set the Blair Witch Project) so for shows one either went into big bad DC to the worst neighborhoods where all the cool clubs were invariably located, or every once in a while you went over to Baltimore and Hammerjacks (I'm sure there are more clubs but Frederick highschoolers didn't know about them in my day). So although I've never lived in Baltimore per se, I did live near there; close enough to get some everyday exposure of what I now realize are unique Baltimorean traits. The first is (obviously) the accent. The part in this doc where the friends bust on the "Come Oo-on!" line, asking if people really talked that way. The answer is yes, they do. Dohler's accent isn't nearly as pronounced but he has something I almost like better: It's that deadpan pessimist minor tone to everything he says. Like you hear him talk and you can perfectly imagine a line like this coming out of his mouth: "well it probably won't matter because the world will end in three weeks anyway, just my luck." Like living in Baltimore is so tough that everyone just starts to sound like that. "Had to take the bus cause my car broke down, wasn't but ten degrees out of course." I don't know if this is making any sense on the page, but I loved it. I think his accent went a long way in painting him as the tragic tired figure in the doc. |
