Not Another B Movie (Troma)

There are a lot of reasons going into this movie to think that it’s anything other than what it is. Given the parodious cover with spatters of blood and a girl with an underboob-revealing shirt giving off a fuck-me look – or maybe that’s a kill-me look, who knows – I was expecting something in the vein of “Scary Movie” or “Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween”. What I got was a lot smarter, a lot better and a whole lot different. Other than the fact that this film takes aim at B cinema, it’s got nothing in common with the beaten-to-death-and-beyond parody genre that was funny in “Top Secret” and the first “Naked Gun” movie but which quickly rode itself into the ground, only to be resurrected with genre-specific focus later on (“Scary Movie”), following which it was beaten back to death with ham-fisted humor whose parodyings are obvious, predictable and not particularly funny. So, I was hoping this would be an out-and-out horror movie that was also making fun of horror movies. It’s been done before and done well – consider “Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon”. However, this is neither parody NOR horror movie. It is, in fact, a quiet, smart and funny comedy that relies on wit, performance and subtlety rather than cheap, clumsy farcical comedy wielded with all the finesse of a barbarian swinging a club. Granted, cheap, trashy filmmaking is what Troma is all about, as a rule, but there’s a world of difference between the deliciously rotten antics of Troma films and the unfunny tripe Hollywood parades in front of audiences under the fraudulent term “entertainment”. “Not Another B Movie” is a badly mistitled film if for no other reason than the frivolity and implications of the title are very misleading, more likely to draw fans of the dumb, endless parodies rather than the kind of viewer such a thoughtful film requires. I’m not being entirely fair. As a horror fan, there are plenty of bad, dumb movies I like. I guess I’m just uber-picky about comedies. Not too long ago, I chastised Roger Ebert via his E-mail The Answer Man feature for a comment in his review of “Final Destination 5″ which suggested fans of that film would not be reading his review. As a big horror fan AND a big Ebert fan, I had to suggest to him that perhaps there’s more diversity among fans of horror franchises than he realizes. So I’ll quit picking on bad parody movies and start praising this film. As I said, you’ll never guess from the packaging what you’re really in for. Parody fans and fans of indie horror comedies are both going to be surprised. I guess it depends on the fan as to whether it’ll be a pleasant or unpleasant surprise. And that, I reckon, depends mostly on just how set one is on watching the kind of movie one thinks this is. Which it’s not. Packaging aside. OK, so onto the movie itself? For a movie that at its heart loves B films but which also sees the absurdity of a lot of aspects of the film industry, it chooses an awfully toned-down approach. The core of this story is three people – writer, producer and director – sitting around a table and “doing lunch”. The topic of discussion: the latest indie film from the trio. This has obviously been a tense relationship for sometime and at this lunch, things reach a head. The writer is an intelligent guy and wants to make a bona fide GOOD movie – not another Frankenstein of exploitation tropes to rake in DVD sales and to hell with quality. The director and producer are both rather shallow and think only in terms of tits and blood – ticket-selling commodities, in other words, at least for this fan base. And the writer wouldn’t even have a problem with that, but he’d at least like to make a good thriller and not a shitty, cranked out clunker just waiting in the video store aisles to ambush horror fans with disappointment. It’s a case of two different conversations happening in one. In other words, there’s a total disconnect between the writer and the other two, and they’re definitely not on the same page. This is the case literally in several instances in which the writer discovers to his horror that yet another pointless shower scene – or some other exploitation staple – has been added for no damn good reason. One wonders if director of “Not Another B Movie” John Wesley Norton has been through this before. It certainly feels like it was written from experience. And speaking of writing, it’s a VERY well-written film. Given that much of its running time is conversation, a lot of sharp writing chops were necessary to give us characters and dialogue to keep our attention, since this isn’t a tits-and-gore affair. Nudity as a horror staple is referenced in the film but chastely avoided – in one instance, it’s a very Austin Powers method used to hide a large pair of breasts. There’s also not a lot of blood, either. Of course, you’re saying to yourself, “Well, duh, if they’re just sitting around talking, where WOULD be the blood and boobs?” Well, that’s where the script discussions come in. Every new dumb idea spat out by the money-blind director and producer is presented to the viewer, so the film still gets its chance to mock horror, and other genres, particularly the cop film. See, excess genre-mashing is another gripe from the writer – all to no avail. So as the writer loses patience, the director and producer get ever so much more enthusiastic and the central conversation is punctuated by “scenes” from the movie being re-written/defiled throughout the course of lunch. On top of these frustrations, there is a cute waitress who seems especially eager to get the attention of the writer. And Norton, thankfully, doesn’t use this as an excuse to throw in pointless romantic comedy. I’ve nothing against that genre, have even enjoyed some of its examples, but it would have been out of place here. This is a movie about B movies – or, rather, the people who make B movies, both those who are in it for pure monetary exploitation and those who sincerely want to make a worthwhile film. Razor sharp writing, spot-on performances, well-written supporting characters – everything went right with this movie. The cast is even worth mentioning: David Faustino, Joe Estevez, Ed Asner, Reggie Bannister, LLoyd Kaufman (of course), Byron Thames, James Vallo, Larry Thomas, Robert Z’Dar and Lindsey Gareth. All worth mentioning because they all turned in perfect performances for their roles. And even if you don’t recognize all the names, you’ll see some familiar faces. You don’t have to be a horror hound to appreciate this movie. You just have to love movies. And this is one of the good ones.

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