NOVEMBER 12 ― Partly because of censorship rules, but mostly because the only 24-hour culture we have here in Malaysia is the “let’s-lepak-at-the-mamak” culture, that wonderful phenomenon known as midnight movies has totally passed us by.
This is not to say that we don’t have fans of John Waters, Troma Films and gorehounds excited by the B, C or even Z grade movies gurgling in the underbelly of horror flicks here in wonderful Malaysia, because we do have little pockets of them individually scattered across the country.
What we don’t have (and have never had before) is something comparable to a crowd of weirdos turning up in the middle of the night at a low-rent and dilapidated cinema to hoot and sing along to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or any other midnight movies for that matter.
It’s a communal experience that we’ve never regularly experienced together as Malaysians, at least not where it’s supposed to be experienced ― in the cinema ― simply because our cinemas just do not open all night, therefore not needing slots to fill way past midnight.
The only exceptions I can think of in recent memory is when a new Rajnikanth movie opens, wherein some cinemas in Klang even have showtimes at 4am and they’re still packed with enthusiastic moviegoers who, yes, cheer, sing along (or shake/dance along) to the songs and shout at the screen, making for an incredibly memorable viewing experience.
Still, it’s one thing to watch Sivaji The Boss, Kabali or Enthiran with a rowdy crowd but I’m pretty sure it’s a whole other thing altogether to get to watch something like The Toxic Avenger, Class of Nuke ‘Em High, Thundercrack, The Gore Gore Girls or Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD with a crowd of rowdy weirdos.
According to some reports I’ve read recently, while there’s still no shortage of movies aiming to become a future cult classic being made in the last few years (the output of the Astron-6 gang alone is enough to keep the fire alive ― Father’s Day, Manborg and The Editor), that communal experience is reportedly starting to suffer a slow death as more and more independent cinemas are closing and more and more of these midnight movies are experienced individually at home on the small screen due to the fact that most of these movies go straight to VOD (Video-on-demand), bypassing cinemas entirely.
So it is indeed very good news when a new film that’s clearly inspired by John Waters, Troma Films, Russ Meyer and even a bit of Alejandro Jodorowsky gets a run in cinemas (no matter how limited that run may be) and is getting the kind of ink that The Greasy Strangler has been getting, even to the point of a full one-page interview with its director Jim Hosking featured in the highly-respected film magazine, Sight & Sound.
While I have read a little bit about the ruckus that the film caused at its premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, earning plenty of walkouts just like another Sundance buzz film, Swiss Army Man, I definitely did not expect the actual film to be this delightfully demented.
Reviews have understandably been mixed, with critics and normal moviegoers firmly divided on either side of love and hate, but there’s no denying that Hosking has crafted something so utterly singular and strange that whatever your feelings may be about the merits of the movie itself, its characters, scenes and gags will have burned deeply into your memory once you’ve seen it.
Having not seen the trailer beforehand, I was expecting another wannabe cult film like The Human Centipede, where the only thing you can take out of it is the shock of the concept and the gross-out set-pieces masquerading as intellectual provocations.
What I got instead was still a provocation of course, as it’s a movie that’s filled with grotesque characters walking around in their underwear doing all sorts of gross things (with catchy names like Big Ronnie, Big Brayden and Ricky Prickles), but at its heart it is a rather sweet film about a father’s son (he’s a bit too old to be called a daddy’s boy) belatedly coming of age by confronting his father’s questionable legacy as a murderer called the Greasy Strangler. That confrontation comes after a love triangle forms between him, his father and his new girlfriend Janet, leading to a series of events that are alternately hilarious, gross and sweet.
What that short summary of the film failed to point out is how funny the film actually is in many places, though just like the bunch of grotesques (a lot of them clearly given direction to give “bad” line readings) it has as characters, it also has a bizarre sense of humour that’s centred around the principle of repetition wherein Hosking is never afraid to take a joke way beyond normally acceptable lengths, with the results being that a joke or a gag can sometimes go from being not funny at first to absolutely laugh-out-loud hilarious and then back to not funny again, and the scene is still not over!
A case in point is an almost three minute scene where the characters do nothing but talk about potato chips and wondering what the chips are made from, after which you’ll never think of the word “potato” the same way again.
That is why I mentioned earlier that this film, once seen, will burn itself into your memory with characters, individual scenes and jokes playing in your mind for days on end, even to the point of finding yourself quoting its lines to your friends, which really is a sign that The Greasy Strangler might just be a totally legit future cult classic. It is already a personal favourite of mine this year, a delightfully demented viewing pleasure.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
