Related Links

0

A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER

Originally intended to be a narrative driven slice and dice picture, the whole thing went to hell or to my mind, heaven when a disgruntled employee at the lab where the film was kept destroyed the majority of the original negative. While many other filmmakers would have thrown in the towel, these filmmakers would not be Doris Wishman, who with the remaining footage put together one of the most deliriously disjointed pieces of absurdist cinema ever. I've seen other reviews in which this movie is chalked up to being in the "so bad it's good" Ed Wood category (at best) or "the total piece of crap" area (the worst). I disagree with both, for having been experienced, awoken so to speak, in the art of Wishman, I can say with full conviction that she never made bad films, she made insane films and A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER is as crazy as it gets. God bless her.

Plot? Who needs plot! "Plot is pornography" and if we take that statement as true then A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER is a Disney film at heart, the least pornographic film ever made! Starting off with a voice-over narration from a detective whose hairstyle changes drastically throughout the film, we learn the sad story of Vicki Kent who allegedly brutally murdered two young boys some years past. Of course, prior to this is a vignette about another member of the Kent family who had his wife killed. This starting scene sets the tone in much the same way MAGNOLIA used three unrelated events to set the tone at least I think that's what it's supposed to do (I'm not sure and I love it).

Anyway, Vicki (played by porn star Samantha Fox, who manages to both suck and not suck, if you get my drift - wink, wink) is released from the insane asylum and the family drives her home. Apparently they're not too worried about her because they let her sit in the back seat of the car. Back home her brother and sister are conspiring to drive her crazy, again, in hopes to get her out of the picture and possibly the will. Oddly, the girl already seems loopy enough, but hey, I'm no psychiatrist. A master plan is hatched by the siblings, in which the brother will buy a really scary mask he saw at the store and of course if she sees him in it, she'll go insane. When he puts this mask on he turns into an entirely different actor, just like real life. Anyway... oh hell, who am I kidding? I couldn't make sense out of this, but damn was I entertained.

The term "jaw dropping" is used so often lately that it has lost most of its impact. A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER isn't "jaw dropping," its jaw breaking. This is a full frontal assault on the rational mind that manages to continually confound throughout its brief 69-minute run time. There is no continuity, a character is in one costume in one shot, then in another in the next and it's supposed to be the same scene! And let's not forget the ever changing hairstyles. In what is supposed to be a linear progression our detective/narrator goes from perm to straight to perm without a single explanation loss of activator? Story points are brought up, built upon and dropped without reason. Images appear that don't logically belong in the film. It's crazy I tell you, crazy, but brilliantly crazy.

It may sound funny that I actually found some of the images Wishman captured to be genuinely unsettling, not in the gore sense, but in a Lynchian way. A spectral hand carrying a knife through a kitchen, a fog enshrouded graveyard, a close-up of sliced swiss, and Samantha Fox eating sliced ham with childish carelessness are just a few moments that actually had me squirming, in between laughter. At times the movie felt like a delirious Dada masterpiece, an artist's rendition of the schlock film. I realize this was likely not the intention, but it is still the effect. I laughed, I cringed, I watched it twice in one night and I'll be watching it again after this. I loved this film.

Fans of Doris, from the excellent releases from Something Weird Video (DOUBLE AGENT 73, THE AMAZING TRANSPLANT) and other venues, will be more then delighted to see that the master has not lost her love for cutaways to feet and post dubbed sound. For A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER has got plenty of the foot action and imported karate film type sound synch. Fans of gore will be ecstatic to see fingers chopped off, hearts ripped out, heads axed and throats punctured with various degrees of realism. (Personally I've never known anybody who can punch through the back of a car seat and through a mans chest, but hey, I don't know everybody.)

Elite Entertainment has put this film out on DVD in a widescreen anamorphic transfer and it looks like a poorly stored student film. (If you want it to look even worse watch it on your 16x9 TV with the anamorphic function on!) But who cares?! These sort of movies were low on prints when first released and we're lucky to have them at all. Elite Entertainment has done a great service to Wishmanites everywhere in putting this on the market. (Non-Wishmanites should know that burning a company to the ground is highly illegal.)

Included is a promotional trailer that was put together before the negative was lost and looks like an entirely different movie (well, it was). It's an interesting little number that leads one to believe that Wishman may have actually had a more mainstream cult success in the works, but that's merely speculation.

Biggest surprise of all is that the company managed to get Wishman to do a commentary track, something Something Weird Video has been unable to do. While one may have wished for the moderating skills of a Mike Vraney (of Something Weird), the back and forth banter between director of photography C. Davis Smith and Wishman is so damn funny that the box's blurb "Hear Doris Wishman talk about her films and her incredible career in one of the most entertaining commentary tracks ever recorded" proves to not be hyperbole (except for the talking about her career bit - she hardly scratches the surface on that). Between Wishman's constant complaints of Mr. Smith interrupting and her bumping into the microphone, I couldn't stop chuckling. This woman is truly a character and this commentary track is truly a gem.

It's a pretty damn good time to be alive when a thing like A NIGHT TO DISMEMBER is finally getting wider public distribution the film itself was never picked up for distribution when it was finished and I stand by my grade of "A." However, if you are not a Wishman aficionado I will say you should adjust the grade to "F." Actually, what's lower than "F"? Whatever it is, adjust it to that.