VENDETTA - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Prison Pic Directors/Cast Rise Above Ho-Hum Script

Vendetta (2015)
Dir. Jen and Sylvia Soska
Scr. Justin Shady
Starring: Dean Cain, Paul "The Big Show" Wight, Michael Eklund, Kyra Zagorsky

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's one thing screenwriter Justin Shady gets right in the WWE Studios production of the prison thriller Vendetta - he wastes no time in getting to the goods hardened genre geeks and prison picture aficionados appreciate.

When cop Mason Danvers (Dean Cain, star of TV's Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman) and his partner (Ben Hollingsworth) miraculously bust the seemingly un-bustable psycho serial criminal Victor Abbott (WWE's Paul “The Big Show” Wight), they don't count on chief witnesses "disappearing" and their infamous collar going free. What Danvers especially doesn't expect is Victor exacting revenge upon him by savagely beating his pregnant wife (Kyra Zagorsky) to death - with his bare hands. Victor almost seems happy to take the rap for this and go to prison. Danvers, hell-bent upon revenge (of course), murders Big Vic's brother and two other scumbag associates in cold blood. Like his bulky nemesis Victor, Danvers is happy to take the murder rap and go to prison so he can have a shot at killing the killer of his wife and unborn child.

All our hero has left is hatred. He has nothing to lose.

So, this takes all of 20 minutes. No time-wasting on trials or procedurals, but time enough for the dazzling director duo Jen and Sylvia Soska to deliver just enough footage twixt Danvers and his preggers wifey so we can see how much they love each other and how hard they've worked at having their first child and then, the sickening assault upon her, climaxing with Victor repeatedly bashing in the woman's belly, killing both her and the fetus and finally, Danvers delightfully dispatching the three aforementioned pieces of crap with plenty of gushing blood and brain-splattering.

And now, we get to prison. Yeeeeeee Haaaaaaaa!

In fairness to scenarist Shady, he hauls out all the prison picture tropes - the corrupt warden (Michael Eklund), the shifting allegiances on the yard, the requisite scenes against the backdrops of cafeteria, laundry room, solitary confinement, shower room and an eventual full-blown riot. This all continues to move the action briskly enough so the Soskas can continue to bowl us over with their considerable directorial prowess. Things also move narratively at a breakneck clip so we don't have a lot of time to mull over the stadium-sized holes in the plot (such as it is).

Niggling plot-holes aside (as they can ultimately be forgiven) where Shady's script lets discriminating genre fans and, frankly, the Soskas down, is the lack of any genuine thematic, political subtext. Given that the current American prison system is one of the most horrific abusers of basic human rights in the free world, especially since it's been hideously privatized so that prison administrators want their institutions to be ludicrously full and to not let anyone go free (all for profit, of course), one feels a huge missed opportunity here for the Soskas to inject their trademark social commentary and sensitivity to such areas as thematic and/or political resonance. Jesus, even See No Evil 2, their first WWE gun-for-hire gig was rife with strong elements of female empowerment and had a feminist subtext running through it that its screenplay offered plenty of room for.

This script is sadly missing such key elements. Genre fans are not idiots - a bit of flesh on the bones of exploitation is always a welcome treat. I feel badly dumping on the screenwriter here, though, since it's quite possible that the Lions Gate and WWE head honchos were the primary culprits in their own demands for a cookie-cutter approach to the writing. That seems a likely scenario to this fella.

It's too bad. Not only is the direction far better than the film (as written) deserves, but I was especially delighted with the performance of leading man Dean Cain (he's definitely got a nice, steely Eastwood-Bronson quality about him). The delectably smarmy Michael Eklund is never less than entertaining. He comes close to the grotesqueries of John Vernon in Chained Heat.

Why is it that Canucks like Eklund and Vernon make such good wardens in the movies? Probably because of Canada's history of politely corrupt bureaucracies. (Who will ever forget Canuck Hume Cronyn as the detestably sadistic head of prison security in 1947's Brute Force?) This all said, the screenplay doesn't quite allow Eklund to be anything more than a sleaze and he doesn't quite reach Vernon's level of genuine malevolence. (As for Cronyn, we won't even bother going there.)

The real revelation for me was Paul "The Big Show" Wight. Look, he's never going to be doing Shakespeare at Stratford (nor, I suspect, even Shakespeare in the Park in Elbow, Saskatchewan), BUT, as a villain, the man can act. He's a major creep in this picture and even brings a bit of sardonic humour to his line readings. One line the script gives him which he spits out with glee is when he brags about killing Danvers's pregnant wife and chortles that he at least got a "two for one" deal when he decimated her and the unborn child.

I'm happy to credit Shady with this line, but I must also admit, this is the kind of villainy I expect from the Soskas (a la the scum bucket surgery professor in American Mary). Here, though, it's not really allowed by the overall scenario to tie into any larger thematic scope. As for "The Big Show", I, for one, will be looking forward to a lot more of him on the silver screen. Hell, he even has it in him to be a heroic action figure in an Expendables-style picture.

Now, however, we get to the meat of the matter - the action and violence. The Soskas do not disappoint in this regard. Their direction goes far beyond just covering the thwacks, whacks, kicks, testicle-twisting and gore in a perfunctory manner, nor do they resort to the usual wham-bam with no sense of spatiality. I was delighted that they placed a fair degree of faith in actors who could clearly fight, some superb stunt choreography/coordination and a few occasional frissons like the makeshift "brass" knuckles Danvers creates and uses with sweet abandon. (Again, I'm happy to credit this delightful invention to screenwriter Shady.)

As a side note, it is incumbent of me to point out that the one prison movie cliche sadly missing from Vendetta are a few instances of forcible sodomy and blow jobs. Most disappointing. What gives? Even a dull, inexplicably beloved piece of crap like The Shawshank Redemption had a decent anal rape scene.

But, I digress.

Happily, the Soskas avoid the horrendous herky-jerky style of movement, dreadful compositions and endless closeups we're forced to endure by overrated hacks like Sam Mendes, J.J. Abrams and Christopher Nolan, but that they also keep the cuts spare (compared to most pictures these days). My only quibble, and this might partially relate to exigencies of the modest budget and (no-doubt) speedy shooting schedule, is that the action choreography is so good that I longed for wider shots and for many of the cuts to not be employed, thus allowing the action in many of those same shots to play out longer.

The Soskas demonstrate that they naturally understand that both the shots and cuts of action set pieces are dramatic beats and as such, many of them play out more than satisfactorily. That said, the next film they do that has this much action, if not more, one hopes that their producers will budget extra time for these sequences to allow for more shot variation and to allow choreography to play out in longer shots so that the only cuts which occur are those meant to drive the dramatic action forward.

Even though the budgets are ridiculously higher, a good rule of thumb for genuine filmmakers like the Soskas ("genuine" as in their prowess as film artists being hard-wired into their DNA), is to study the work of filmmakers like Sam Peckinpah and John Woo. Both of them utilize a lot of cuts (the final shootout in The Wild Bunch or Chow Yun Fat's first mass slaughter in the bar in The Killer are two of many examples), but what those directors do is to treat the action scenes like dance numbers in a musical (Woo) or a ballet (Peckinpah). Scorsese is a master of this too - the boxing matches in Raging Bull are rooted stylistically in the Powell-Pressburger ballet sequences in 1948's masterpiece of British Cinema, The Red Shoes.

Virtually every shot amongst the aforementioned masters is composed with the crosshairs aimed (a la George Miller in the Mad Max films) in the centre of the main dramatic action. This allows for more sumptuous compositions, but also allows for quicker cuts (if and when necessary) that treat everything as dramatic beats and hence, always maintaining spatiality (unless the director wants to intentionally mess with us, but that only works when said approaches are buried judiciously amidst more classical compositions).

This all said, the Soskas' instincts are right. There's just a few two many medium two shots that don't hold long enough before the cuts and a definite dearth of wider shots.

Finally, one very odd issue is the casting - not for the leads, but with the background extras as inmates. This corresponds to my earlier complaints about too many tropes and not much in the way of thematic layering. Given that the vast majority of American prison populations are African-or-Hispanic-American (a genuine tragedy and failing of America, a nation infused with deep-seeded racism and discrimination), this prison population (supposedly outside of Chicago in the state of Illinois, albeit with the hole that is Coquitlam, British Columbia standing in) seemed awfully "white".

While I'm tempted to continue the litany of laying blame upon the beleaguered screenwriter - characters, even background characters do, after all, need to be written in order to be cast and shot, however, there's a part of me which suspects that such failings fall within the purview of too many suits at Lions Gate and WWE wanting a specific property which ultimately lends itself to the eradication of elements which could allow for a film's pulp sensibilities to rise into a slightly more elevated plane.

God knows, classic American directors like Jules Dassin in Brute Force (maybe the best prison film ever made) or Don Siegel with Riot in Cell Block 11 (maybe the second best prison picture ever made) maintained B-movie squalor that crackled with excitement because the films had inner lives beyond the surface tropes. Is it unfair to compare Vendetta to classics? No. The Soskas are such damn special filmmakers, it would be an insult not to compare them to early works of masters like Dassin and Siegel.

The bottom line I think is that WWE and Lions Gate were the ones with their heads up their asses. Thank Christ the Soskas were at the helm to pull a superbly directed picture out of their respective asses in spite of the vision-bereft parameters of the screenplay and property itself.

Curiously, I watched Vendetta with my 14-year-old daughter who has long been a fan of the Soskas (yeah, I know, I know, but she is my daughter, after all). When the picture ended and cut to their credit, she yelled out, "God! That was such a good movie!" And you know what? In spite of wanting a fucking masterpiece, I felt exactly as she did at the end.

Like Daughter. Like Father.

Or something like that.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½

Vendetta is currently available on VOD, DVD and limited theatrical venues.

SEE NO EVIL 2 - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Soskas deliver goods w/gun-for-hire slasher pic

If this happy fellow was stalking you
in a morgue at night, it would probably NOT
be an ideal situation for you to be in.

Moments of Tenderness - Soska Style

See No Evil 2 (2014)
Dir. Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska
Scr. Nathan Brookes, Bobby Lee Darby
Starring: Glenn "Kane" Jacobs, Danielle Harris, Katharine Isabelle

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I couldn't get Alfred Hitchcock out of my head while watching the third feature film by the Soska Sisters. In particular I was forced to recall Hitch's espionage thriller Torn Curtain. His picture has one of the most brilliant, harrowing and excruciatingly violent set pieces in movie history which, I believe, should be every young filmmaker's guide to what makes a movie great (and not just those who are making genre films). At the very least, the scene provides an example of the sort of elements most naturally-gifted filmmakers should always be thinking about.

The scene involves a mathematician and a simple rural housewife forced to kill a deadly East German Stasi agent as silently as possible in a farmhouse kitchen. Neither man nor woman have experience in such heinous shenanigans. The odds of succeeding are stacked against them big time and as such, the hurdles they face are rife with conflict. Even more importantly, Hitch makes the fullest use of the setting for the foul deed to be carried out, thus begging the question: if they're not killers and don't even have the required implements to kill, what do they use? Anything and everything at their disposal in the kitchen. (Just thinking about this probably places any number of horrendous thoughts in your head and yet, none of them will come close to the sheer horror and brutality of what's actually used.) The bottom line is that the scene must naturally use what would be at these characters' fingertips and be the sorts of things they'd need to use with very little time to think it through (hence, the aforementioned notion of not automatically guessing what's used).

Fuelling the scene thematically is Hitchcock's desire to make it clear just how hard it is for a "normal" person to kill someone - taking a life is not an easy thing, even if it's the only thing to do to survive - especially on the levels of practicality and morality. The cherry Hitch places on the ice cream sundae is that the historical backdrop is post-war Communist Germany during the Cold War. The victim is a German. His last breath will occur within a household item that's sickeningly symbolic of what Germans did to their prisoners in concentration camps.

You might wonder why I'm spending so much time discussing this ONE scene in an old (and even quite flawed, save for a few great scenes) Hitchcock film. Well, it serves two purposes. One, it places the Soskas, as filmmakers, in that wonderful sphere of natural born killers - or rather, uh, directors.

Though See No Evil 2, a sequel to Gregory Dark's mediocre slasher film made eight years earlier for WWE is clearly a gun-for-hire picture for the identical twin auteurs, they seem to have been given a great deal of rope to assist in the development of a screenplay that not only includes many of their trademark touches and thematic concerns, but, in so doing, they've also been blessed to employ their natural gifts as genuine filmmakers and as if, by osmosis, have conjured Hitch's spirit in rendering a picture that is sickeningly brutal, but also darkly, grotesquely funny and most of all, employs the most important elements of setting in order to reflect upon character, theme and just plain old terror-inducement.

It's a quiet night night in the city morgue. Good thing, too. Wheelchair-bound boss-man Holden (Michael Eklund) seems happy enough to let his star employee Amy (Danielle Harris, the always gorgeous scream queen) book off early to join some pals at the bar to celebrate her birthday while he and her significant-sniffer-around-her beau Seth (Kaj-Erik Eriksen) preside over the dull goings-on. Ah, but as fate would have it, all three need to hang about since an emergency phone call informs them that the morgue is going to be soon flooded with corpses from a nearby mass-killing-spree. Gosh, golly, gee! They're also going to be blessed with the body of the killer himself, the seven-foot, 300-pound, Jacob Goodnight (former WWE wrasslin' champ Glenn "Kane" Jacobs).

That's a decent stacked deck. To begin with, that is.

Once Amy informs her pals she's gotta work, they decide to bring the party to the morgue. Armed with all manner of booze and hallucinogenic comestibles, Amy's goth-and-death-obsessed party animal bestie Tamara (Katharine Isabelle), babe-o-licious and hunk-o-licious pals (respectively), Kayla (Chelan Simmons) and Carter (Lee Majdoub), plus Amy's dour, obsessive (almost creepily Oedipal) brother Will (Greyston Holt). Needless to say, this clutch of new characters add a number of interesting elements to the mix, but also beef up what will, no doubt be added slasher fodder.

Good, another stacked deck. Oh, and might I remind you, we're in a morgue. Feel free to do the math on what implements (and inmates) this joint will be loaded with to add to the inevitable party games.

Now, we get to the pièce de résistance of stacked decks: all seven feet, 300-lbs of serial killer Jacob Goodnight are not dead at all. The lad's merely been resting. Now he's ready for more naughty horseplay. Let's put those thinking caps back on, folks. It doesn't take a Rhodes Scholar to figure out what this bloodthirsty, mightily-engorged-penis-on-two-legs will have at his disposal. He dons a mask used for burn victims. Those, I can assure you, are bowel-movement-inducingly scary. Ah, but what else will this throbbing gristle find? Duh, it's a morgue. All manner of blades are available here and Jacob's only too delighted to pack as many delectable items as possible. He's a crafty S.O.B. so he finds a way of sealing everyone in the morgue - all ways out are locked.

We have a morgue full of babes, hunks and one cripple and a killer on the rampage.

Need I say more?

Not really, save to inform you that screenwriters Nathan Brookes and Bobby Lee Darby have imbued the tale with a whack of clearly-Soska-inspired character-quirks including guilt, Oedipal obsession, promise unfulfilled, the same promise buried deep inside and aching to be implemented in surviving, mega-grrrrrllllll-power, unabashed sexual abandon and empowerment-galore.

Danielle Harris has always displayed promise as an actress, but the Soskas manage to coax a great performance out of her that's layered, sensitive and yeah, tough and sexy. Harris is always a welcome Scream Queen, but here, she displays acting chops heretofore only hinted at. I hope she never abandons genre cinema, but the Soskas have managed to create an atmosphere wherein her genuine talent shines in ways that a few intelligent producers (mostly an oxymoron, I admit) will be offering Harris a wide bevy of roles in a whole passel of different styles of pictures. (Hell, I'd LOVE to see a contemporary version of the great Greek tragedy The Trojan Women set in the war-torn east of Ukraine and featuring Harris in the haunting, harrowing role of Cassandra.) And let's not forget all the stuff Harris normally brings to the table. There will be kills in See No Evil 2, but there will also be mucho-ass-kicking, tear-assing around and narrow-escapes and rescues, a lot of it from the hot, shapely and physically fit Ms. Harris.

Hot Canuck thespian missy Katharine Isabelle (American Mary and Ginger Snaps) is allowed to go completely into the madcap stratosphere and delivers a performance that taps delightfully into her natural sense of humour, but luckily does not leave either her intensity, nor jaw-dropping-camera-loves-her sexiness behind. (Personally, I'd love to see a Soska remake/reboot/retelling of Lynne Stopkewich's Kissed with Isabelle in the Molly Parker role. If one does a careful analysis of such things, Americans have successfully remade a number of great genre films that wisely placed them within the context of varying political/historical contexts. If any Canadian picture was ripe for this, it'd be Kissed.)

See No Evil 2 is ultimately one scary-ass, intelligent and superbly crafted slasher film - gorgeously shot, cut and, of course, directed. In actual fact of matter, there aren't too slasher pictures even worth thinking about, let alone seeing. The Soskas have delivered one that's at the top of the heap.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

See No Evil 2 is available on Blu-Ray. Sadly, it was not released theatrically save for selected festival showings. But it's out there and definitely worth owning. Avoid digital downloads and streaming, though. It doesn't do the picture justice. Screw DVD too. Same deal. The Blu-Ray is perfection.

AMERICAN MARY (BLU-RAY & DVD) Review By Greg Klymkiw - COUNTDOWN TO CANADA DAY 2013 - One of the best Canadian horror films of all time! Now available on Blu-Ray/DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada

L'Avare de cinéma et les étranges
soeurs jumelles du cinéma d'horreur
vous accueillent dans leur lieu de perdition
qui est remplie de plaisirs insondables.

American Mary (2012) ****
Dir. Jennifer Soska and Sylvia Soska
Starring: Katharine Isabelle

Blu-Ray/DVD Review
By Greg Klymkiw

The time has come for all serious fans and aficionadi of truly magnificent horror to rejoice in whatever manner they choose. They might wish to hoist a glass of the best bubbly or partake in Holy Communion in their favourite Catholic Church or dance naked in the moonlight, covered in the blood of a virgin sacrifice. There is, finally, no celebratory activity too grand for this genuinely momentous occasion.

American Mary has arrived for private home consumption via Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada on two formats - Blu-Ray and DVD - and whichever is your poison, you'll be guaranteed a lifetime of joy. Unlike using the far inferior streaming or download formats such as Netflix, iTunes, etc. there is NOTHING - and I goddamn well mean this - NOTHING like owning the product itself in a form that will allow the very best picture quality. Add the packaging and added features to the mix and there's no substitute for home entertainment of the highest order - especially the kind you can put your mitts, handle with admiration, place lovingly on display in an IKEA Billy Bookcase and, in general, just plain fetishize.

And let it be said, that American Mary IS entertainment of the highest order! I've (insanely) seen this movie six (count 'em - 1,2,3,4,5...6!!!) times. I've let it unspool before me twice in motion picture theatres (once in the majestic Bloor Hot Docs Cinema during the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and then again at the AMC Yonge and Dundas Cinema during a Cineplex Entertainment Front Row Centre event presented by Sinister Cinema and Anchor Bay), twice more on a DVD screening copy and yet two more times on the new Anchor Bay Blu-Ray (NOT counting my one screening of the film with the commentary track).

My first helping of the film was a mind-blower. They say you never forget your "first time". THEY are correct. However, like any "first time" activity worth its weight in gold, American Mary gets better and better. This is no mere "entertainment" (though entertaining it most certainly is), but it's without question one of the best Canadian Horror Films of all time (and the land of the Beaver and the Maple Leaf has been a leader in this department for decades, so to proclaim the film as such is no backhanded compliment). Moreover, and I'll go out on a limb here, but I'm more convinced than ever that American Mary is one of the best horror films of all time - period! That it's Canadian is the mere cherry on the ice cream sundae for those of us who live above the 49th parallel.

I've written extensively about the film, so I'll include a cut-and-paste to my most recent review below (AND, you can read my scintillating interview with its brilliant directors in the next issue of the immortal Joe Kane's "Phantom of the Movies VIDEOSCOPE"), but I want to use today's column to briefly discuss what's on the Blu-Ray/DVD, but also, what I hope can eventually be included on any future releases of the film. Since the Soska Twins are destined for greatness and more movies, I suspect that eventually there will be a Special Limited Edition to end all Special Limited Editions. (Well, at least through MY rose-coloured lenses.)

First of all, for those of you who've inexplicably not made the move to Blu-Ray, I'm happy to report that the picture looks just fine on DVD - especially when it's up-rezzed to an HD monitor with a DVD player that allows up-rezzing. If you already own a Blu-Ray player and an HD monitor, the DVD looks especially amazing, but I'd really have to wonder WHY you'd buy a DVD disc when Blu-Ray is available. You're either a bear of very little brain and/or little faith. No matter. DVD is a more than acceptable format and for my money, it still beats streaming and downloading - maybe not by much, but it beats it all the same.

HOWEVER, the Blu-Ray edition of American Mary is completely and utterly orgasmic. This is ultimately the best way to see the movie at home - bar none. The Soska Twins have a great imagination, but even better (and most importantly for the best filmmakers), they have a phenomenal eye (well, actually, make that, uh... FOUR eyes).

Working with an astounding team of artists, all aspects of the cinematography and other visual accoutrements (including, but not limited to production design, costumes and F/X) are, on Blu-Ray, simply astounding. Wherever the film was mastered digitally, I am thrilled to report that the colourist and whomever he/she worked with from the creative team indelibly captured the visual richness of this great film (sometimes overt, more often intelligent and subtle). The sound also kicks major ass. The location sound in addition to the post-production sound design, cutting and mixing is rich and varied and as such, translates magnificently to Blu-Ray.

The added features will definitely please fans of the film and the Soska Twins.

The primary value of the "making of" bonus is giving us a few excellent snapshots of how the Soskas work collaboratively with what clearly appears to be a crack crew. Thankfully, it never comes off like some slick, bullshit glorified electronic presskit. Christ, I hate those things. They're so goddamned phoney-baloney. I can't imagine why anyone in their right mind would want to watch them on a Blu-Ray/DVD. Even worse is that they're actually made and used so heavily by media outlets in the first place which, frankly, is merely another example of how lazy, unimaginative and dumbed-down broadcasters (and sadly, most other mainstream media) have become when covering cinema.

It's a nice feature, but I do think the title used for this segment, "The Making of American Mary" is, well... a tad unimaginative. It gives the impression that you WILL be watching some horseshit glorified EPK instead of what you DO get. The piece feels like it has a bit of an arc to it and as such, might have benefited at the concept and cutting level with a more defined title (and hence approach, or in egghead terms: thesis) - something like: American Mary: The Collaborative Process - which is, essentially what this added feature offers in an almost purely direct cinema fashion.

Secondly, the Blu-Ray/DVD includes the de rigueur commentary track and again, it's going to please fans of the film immensely. Jen and Sylv Soska lead the discussion as the movie unspools with added comments from the brilliant actresses Tristan Risk and Katharine Isabelle. There's a bevy of tidbits thrown our way about the making of the film that bounce almost seamlessly from screen specific to in-depth to anecdotal. All four ladies seem comfortable together and it has the feel of old friends/collaborators getting together for a few drinks to sit in front of the movie and reminisce about it.

However, Isabelle appears to be on a speaker phone. I have no problem with this, but some twisted post-modernist excuse for this could have been offered up. When I couldn't be present for the recording of a commentary track for one of the Guy Maddin movies I produced, I used a crappy little cassette recorder, made a whole bunch of comments timed to scene specific moments, sent the tape to Guy, whereupon he brought his crappy portable cassette player to the official recording and announced I was present via trans-Atlantic cable. Given that American Mary is cult film of the highest order, a similarly perverse approach might have been nice to please a handful of mega-geeks.

At the end of the day, there's not a darn thing wrong with either of these added bonii, but I have to say that this is the perfect film to describe my own frustration over the use of extra features. I think doing more than what's been done for this initial home entertainment release of the Soskas' film would indeed be a bit much, however, I keep seeing terrific films like American Mary that, at some later juncture deserve so much more.

For example, I can imagine a point when one could add three additional commentaries to a limited edition. Firstly, a very focused and MODERATED commentary with the Soskas discussing screen specific elements as they relate to both narrative and theme (and especially the feminist aspects of the picture). Secondly, a semi-eggheaded commentary from a film critic - not unlike those one finds on Criterion releases - would give viewers a "reading" on the film from the perspective of someone who watches movies in ways most viewers never do. It not only gives fans cool shit to mull over, but in its own way can contribute to a higher level of cinema appreciation and literacy - a movie like American Mary is not only deserving of such regard, but frankly, so are its fans. Thirdly, a focused and (again) MODERATED commentary with the Director of Photography, Production Designer and someone from the F/X team dealing specifically with the look of the film and how it relates specifically to story, character and theme would be an absolute-must for any American Mary added feature. Interestingly and in fairness to what already exists, this latter point is dealt with in both the "making of" and the current commentary, but the problem for me, is that I want more. The movie is so rich and layered in terms of its visuals that a solid, detailed discussion of them in a scene-specific setting would give fans, geeks and eggheads a veritable buffet.

As for added visual materials beyond the commentaries, I think specific mini-documentaries with detailed interviews would be the way to go here. They'd have to be conducted by someone who knew what they were doing and had a passion for both this film and cinema in general. The number of interesting topics to cover with American Mary feels almost infinite (which, by the way, is kind of my own yardstick for whether or not a movie will attain masterpiece status). The bottom line for such materials is that they actually have to be produced and directed by genuine filmmakers. Very few people in the world can do this properly, but they're out there and it has been done on a variety of great added bonus features - mostly via Criterion, but for a longtime on selected Universal and Warner Brothers DVD releases.

In any event, this current release of American Mary on Blu-Ray/DVD is a phenomenal must-own item. It's such a great picture that its fans will never feel ripped-off with the eventual availability of special limited additions (often referred to a double or multiple dipping). Besides, like I said earlier, it's too early in the lives of most films to create such materials - they're always better and more valuable when enough time has passed to let the film age like a fine wine.

And American Mary is nothing if not a fine wine - blood red, of course.

"American Mary" is now available on Blu-Ray and DVD via Anchor Bay Entertainment Limited. Below, you'll find a cut-and-paste of an earlier review of the film itself if you haven't read it yet.

American Mary (2012) ****
dir. Soska Twins: Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska
Starring: Katharine Isabelle, Tristan Risk, Antonio Cupo, David Lovgren

Review By Greg Klymkiw
(Note - Rewrite/Revision of an earlier piece)

The scalpel enters a full, fleshy breast and delicately, almost sensually circles the areola's entirety whilst blood oozes out, the surgeon's fingers gently tracing her handiwork.

Both nipples are eventually removed.

The next procedure involves surgically removing all physical receptors of pubic ecstasy and stitching shut the vagina of the aforementioned nipple-bereft body, save, of course, for the smallest allowable opening for the expulsion of urine.

The surgeon is spent, stunned, but satisfied - secure in the knowledge that her first stab (so to speak) at body modification is a success. The client eventually expresses sheer joy over her all-new sexually adhedonic state; how perfectly she's been able to fulfil her own personal essence of womanhood via the excision of those physical extremities which alternately offer enticement and pleasure. Whatever you say, babe. In the words of Marlo Thomas: "Free to be you and me."

Can movies possibly get any better than this?

No.

Well actually, I guess Psycho, Citizen Kane, Birth of a Nation, Bicycle Thieves and Nights of Cabiria might be slightly better,  but it doesn't change the fact that American Mary is a dazzlingly audacious sophomore effort from the Vancouver-based twisted twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska (who made a promising debut with their micro-budgeted 2009 effort Dead Hooker in a Trunk).

Videodrome, David Cronenberg's perversely creepy semi-precursor to the Soskas's new masterpiece-to-be, features the famous sentiment uttered by the Moses Znaimer-like character Max Renn (James Woods) that he must "leave the old flesh" in favour of the future. He intones ever-so scarily: "Long live the New Flesh!" Gotta love Cronenberg when he made some of the best horror movies on the planet, but we've got to call a spade a spade - he hasn't made a horror picture since Dead Ringers in 1988 and his recent output (Spider, A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis) has been downright dreadful. There's a new marshall in town and the reigning royalty of Canadian Horror is not one, but TWO Soska sisters.

Leave the old flesh.

Long live the New Flesh!

With American Mary, the Twisted Twins are perched delightfully on (at least for some, if not many) shaky moral ground (and/or crack), but happily, they maintain the courage of their convictions and do not tread lightly upon it. There are no half-measures here to even attempt making the picture palatable to the gatekeepers of political correctness (those purported knot-headed pseudo-lefty Great Pretenders who reside just to the right of Mussolini, Stevie Harper or Mitt Romney - take your pick). I'd even vigorously argue that non-fascist PC-types (as opposed to the truly fascist PC-types who make most thinking people sick to their stomachs) will, in fact, find the picture more than palatable.

The rest of us (we're cooler and smarter than YOU!) will get it, groove on it and celebrate its excellence.

This movie is some mighty nasty stuff - replete with elements of slashing satire that hack away and eventually tear open "normally" accepted versions of right and wrong whilst grasping the exposed nerve endings of morality, holding them taught and playing the jangling buggers like violin strings. The picture will provoke, anger, disgust and scandalize a multitude of audiences, though chances are good that the most offended will be those "smugly fucklings" (phrase courtesy of the late, great CanLit genius Scott Symons), the aforementioned fascist PC-type poseurs who claim to be outside the mainstream, but have their noses deeper up the rectal canals of fascists than the bloody Tea Party.

Strange as this might seem, the picture comes from a place deep in the heart, so deep that the twins don't bother ripping the pulsating muscle out, but rather, invoke the spirit that lies dormant within to deliver a surprising level of humanity to the proceedings. As far as the picture's carnage takes us we're allowed, in more than one instance to even be moved by the plight of some of the characters.

The screenplay, written by the Soska twins, is - on its surface only - a rape-revenge fantasy, but it goes so much further than that. It's a vital examination of subcultures representing people disenfranchised from the aforementioned accepted standards of human existence. In a world increasingly aspiring to the living death of homogeneity (this includes those who purport to be untouched by homogeneity), the characters will never fit any mould that represents "normalcy", no matter how hard they try.

Within the world of the film, those who refuse to conform (not because it's "cool" to do so, but because they simply cannot conform) seek avenues that will fulfil their basic needs as human beings, no matter how strange or repellent a majority finds them.

The tale told involves Mary (Katharine Isabelle), a med student struggling under the crushing weight of ever-mounting debt and the constant psychological abuse from her mentor Dr. Grant (David Lovgren), the chief professor of surgery - a field of practice she longs to serve in. In desperation, Mary scours the "adult services" want ads and is drawn to one with keen interest. Under the cloak of night she arrives at a nondescript warehouse in an industrial park that emits the thumping bass of dance music, a neon sign promising sensual delights and a burly doorman who immediately allows her entrance - as he clearly does to any babe seeking admittance.

Mary meets with the charmingly sleazy proprietor Billy Barker (Antonio Cupo) who scoffs a bit when she hands him her resume. The only pre-requisites to work in his club are a good overall "package" (which he discovers after telling her to strip to her undies and show-off her gorgeous body), an ability to deliver a fine massage (as she ably proves with her nimble surgeon's fingers) and a willingness to suck him off with skill and abandon (which, she sadly never gets to do). The job interview is interrupted with news that all is not well in another part of the club. Knowing Mary is a med student specializing in surgery, Billy asks her to join him.

In a dank, dungeon-like room within the club's bowels, Mary's eyes widen at a gruesome sight - nothing to phase a surgeon, but the context would be, at least initially, pretty bizarre to anyone - even her. Whatever goes on in this room, has gone seriously awry and as luck would have it, Mary is just what the, shall we say, doctor, has ordered.

For a wad of pure, hard, cold cash - the likes of which she's never held in her hands, Mary agrees to perform some illicit surgical magic which will not only make a wrong right, but provide a much needed service beyond simple lifesaving. The subject, twitching and bleeding on the filthy table, will most definitely require saving, but the painful manner in which he will be saved will provide him with added ecstasy.

Soon Mary is in demand amongst the body modification subculture who troll about the same underbelly as those who work and patronize the club (in addition to the genuine underground activities involving extreme masochistic indulgence - no healthy, mutually consenting BDSM here - this is a place where people go to be maimed, hurt and tortured).

The other subculture portrayed is that of the surgeons themselves. The Soskas create a creepy old boys club where the power of slicing into live human beings has engendered a world of ritual abuse. In the worlds of body modification and masochistic gymnatics, the subjects are ASKING for it. Not so within the perverse world of the surgeons. They use psychological abuse to break down their victims, then administer kindness and fellowship to lure them, then once their quarry is in their clutches, they use deception of the most cowardly, heinous variety to fulfil their desire to inflict sexual domination.

The body modifiers and masochists are pussycats compared to the surgeons who are portrayed as little more than pure exploiters. Their air of respectability as healers and academia is the weapon they use to commit violence and perpetrate subjugation.

Someone's gonna pay. Bigtime.

So, I'm sure you've already gathered that American Mary is not (Thank Christ!) Forrest Gump. We're bathing in the cinematic blood spilled into the tub that is this movie by the insanely imaginative Soska Twins - clearly the spawn of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Elizabeth Bathory with, perhaps, some errant seed from Alfred Hitchcock or William Friedkin.

One of the extraordinary things about American Mary is that it dives headlong into a number of subcultures, which, even if they've been completely and utterly pulled out of the Soska Sisters' respective Autoroutes de Hershey, they feel like genuinely real worlds. The locations, production design, art direction, set dressing and costume design for the various interior and exterior settings look lived in and completely appropriate to the scenes in which they appear.

Even the curse of most lower-budgeted Canadian films - that notorious lack-of-dollars underpopulation - is not especially egregious as some Canuck pictures since many of the settings demand it, while others are appropriately framed (most of the time) to mask it. As well, the Soska Sisters generally have a good eye for composing shots that provide maximum dramatic impact and the lighting and cutting is always appropriate to the dramatic action rather than calling attention to itself.

The performances are generally first rate and the background performers always look 100% right for the scenes. The fine acting, coupled with a script packed with dialogue that's always in keeping with both character and milieu rather than going out of its way to be overtly clever, also contributes to the overall sense that we're wandering through very real, albeit completely, utterly insane worlds. This is also not to say the film is bereft of stylish visual touches, but they're again used for dramatic effect rather than the annoying curse so many younger filmmakers suffer when they abandon narrative (or even dream) logic to say, "Look Ma, I can use a dolly." And believe me, when a shot and/or cut NEEDS to knock the wind out of us, it happens with considerable aplomb.

What sells the film is the world the Soska Sisters create. It's seldom obvious and more often than not we believe it - or at least want to. In many ways, the film is similar to the great early work of Walter Hill (pretty much anything from The Warriors to Streets of Fire) wherein he created worlds that probably could ONLY exist on film, but within the context of the respective pictures, seldom felt less than "real". (That said, Hill was ALWAYS showy, but he knew how to make it intrinsic to the dramatic action.) This makes a lot of sense, since it always feels like the Soska Twins are making movies wherein those worlds that exist realistically on-screen, but furthermore evoke a feeling that the film has been wrought in a much different (and probably better) age than ours.

Dead Hooker in a Trunk and especially American Mary, seem to exist on a parallel plane to those halcyon days of 70s/80s edginess reflected in the Amos Poe New York "No Wave" - not to mention other counter culture types who straddled the underground and the mainstream - filmmakers like Scorsese, Rafelson, Waters, Jarmusch, et al who exploded well beyond the Jim Hoberman-coined "No Wave". Their work even approaches a bit of the 80s cult sensibilities of Repo Man, Liquid Sky or even such generational crossover titles as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet) and the deranged work of more contemporary directors like Eli Roth, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino - all of whom "steal", to varying degrees, from earlier periods of film history, but use the work of previous Masters as a springboard to make the pictures all their own. (By the way, I'm not necessarily suggesting American Mary is culled from any of the aforementioned but rather, that the Soska Twins are clearly working in the same sort of exciting territory. It's especially dazzling when it's within a burgeoning stage of their development as film artists.)

The character of Mary, though, seems like she was born on the set of a 70s James Toback movie like Fingers or the Toback-penned Karel Reizs masterpiece The Gambler or yes, even Don Siegel's magnificent work of cold-cocking art Dirty Harry and though the decade was replete with male heroes of the anti-hero variety, the world just wasn't quite ready for a female heroine to embody the steely resolve of Harvey Keitel, James Caan and Clint Eastwood in the respective pictures. So somehow, Mary was transported in some kind of time machine into the minds of the Soska Twins (at the point of their conception) and spewed herself upon the pages of their script and into the body of Katharine Isabelle.

Well thank Christ for open portals in the time/space continuum - we now have a genuine horror hero who embodies all the anti-hero qualities of a 70s character and is 110% ALL WOMAN!!!

Katharine Isabelle as Dr. Mary has come long and far from her groundbreaking performance in the classic John Fawcett-Karen Walton werewolf picture Ginger Snaps. Here she delivers a courageous performance on a par with her turn as the cursed teen werewolf back in 2000. It's 12 years later and Isabelle has blossomed into a tremendously engaging screen personality. The camera might actually love her even more now that she's gained considerable physical maturity (and the Soska Twins have definitely used their four great eyes to work with their cinematographer Brian Pearson's additional two eyes to add to Isabelle's stunning, real-woman looks). This great actress's 12 years of toil in mainly television has given her a myriad of roles and experience, but in American Mary, her brave, deadpan (and often very funny) delivery blended with moments where the character is clearly repressing anything resembling emotion is the kind of thesping that demands more roles as terrific as this one. Please, get this woman out of Television Hell and put her on the big screen where she belongs.

The film also has a cornucopia of terrific supporting performances. Antonio Cupo as the sort-of male love interest is both sleazy and endearing (a pretty amazing double whammy). David Lovgren is suitably creepy and reptilian. Paula Lindberg as the nipple-extracted bombshell who also gets her vagina sewn shut and Tristan Risk (easily the best supporting work I saw from any actress in any movie in 2012) as the body modified dancer who promotes Mary's talents far and wide, both transcend the expert makeup effects to bring their respective characters' spirits beyond the almost freakish intensity of their body modifications.

And finally, no review of American Mary would be complete without a special nod to Nelson Wong who wins the alltime accolade for the scariest, creepiest, sickest, funniest rendering of a surgeon you hope NEVER to meet - even in your dreams.

American Mary is a true original. The Soska Twins have generated an utterly buoyant, crazed, thrilling and gob-smackingly brilliant motion picture experience. I expect - NO! I DEMAND! - one kick-ass devil-may-care rollercoaster ride through hell after another from the Soska Twins.

I'm waiting with baited breath. In the meantime, I'll be watching American Mary over and over and over again. I can't get enough of it.

"American Mary" is now available on Blu-Ray and DVD via Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada and Anchor Bay Entertainment Limited.

AMERICAN MARY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - MUST-SEE MOTION PICTURE OF 2013!!!

AMERICAN MARY is the MUST-SEE motion picture event of the year. May 30, 2013 at Cineplex Entertainment Front Row Centre Events all across Canada, Industry Works, Raven Banner and Anchor Bay Canada present a special ONE NIGHT event.

In Toronto, there will be live appearances from directors Jen and Sylvia Soska and star Katharine Isabelle and a moderated Q&A hosted by filmmaker/writer Jovanka Vuckovich.

May 31, 2013 a limited theatrical release via Industry Works will unfurl across the country. 

On June 18, 2013 RUN, DO NOT WALK TO YOUR FAVOURITE RETAILER and purchase your very own Blu-Ray or DVD from ANCHOR BAY CANADA with a making-of documentary and commentary track from Canada's very own TWISTED TWINS - The SOSKA SISTERS!

AMERICAN MARY is one of the BEST FILMS made in Canada in YEARS and blows most of this country's product clear out of the water.

Keep tuned for my ongoing coverage of this spectacular motion picture on this website and in the legendary Joe Kane's ultra-cool genre magazine "Phantom of the Movies Videoscope", "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema" and my screenwriting book "Movies Are Action". 

American Mary (2012) ****
dir. Soska Twins: Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska
Starring: Katharine Isabelle, Tristan Risk, Antonio Cupo, David Lovgren

Review By Greg Klymkiw
(Note - Rewrite/Revision of an earlier piece)

The scalpel enters a full, fleshy breast and delicately, almost sensually circles the areola's entirety whilst blood oozes out, the surgeon's fingers gently tracing her handiwork.

Both nipples are eventually removed.

The next procedure involves surgically removing all physical receptors of pubic ecstasy and stitching shut the vagina of the aforementioned nipple-bereft body, save, of course, for the smallest allowable opening for the expulsion of urine.

The surgeon is spent, stunned, but satisfied - secure in the knowledge that her first stab (so to speak) at body modification is a success. The client eventually expresses sheer joy over her all-new sexually adhedonic state; how perfectly she's been able to fulfil her own personal essence of womanhood via the excision of those physical extremities which alternately offer enticement and pleasure. Whatever you say, babe. In the words of Marlo Thomas: "Free to be you and me."

Can movies possibly get any better than this?

No.

Well actually, I guess Psycho, Citizen Kane, Birth of a Nation, Bicycle Thieves and Nights of Cabiria might be slightly better,  but it doesn't change the fact that American Mary is a dazzlingly audacious sophomore effort from the Vancouver-based twisted twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska (who made a promising debut with their micro-budgeted 2009 effort Dead Hooker in a Trunk).

Videodrome, David Cronenberg's perversely creepy semi-precursor to the Soskas's new masterpiece-to-be, features the famous sentiment uttered by the Moses Znaimer-like character Max Renn (James Woods) that he must "leave the old flesh" in favour of the future. He intones ever-so scarily: "Long live the New Flesh!"

Gotta love Cronenberg when he made some of the best horror movies on the planet, but we've got to call a spade a spade - he hasn't made a horror picture since Dead Ringers in 1988 and his recent output (Spider, A Dangerous Method and Cosmopolis) has been downright dreadful. There's a new marshall in town and the reigning royalty of Canadian Horror is not one, but TWO Soska sisters.

Leave the old flesh.

Long live the New Flesh!

With American Mary, the Twisted Twins are perched delightfully on (at least for some, if not many) shaky moral ground (and/or crack), but happily, they maintain the courage of their convictions and do not tread lightly upon it. There are no half-measures here to even attempt making the picture palatable to the gatekeepers of political correctness (those purported knot-headed pseudo-lefty Great Pretenders who reside just to the right of Mussolini, Stevie Harper or Mitt Romney - take your pick). I'd even vigorously argue that non-fascist PC-types (as opposed to the truly fascist PC-types who make most thinking people sick to their stomachs) will, in fact, find the picture more than palatable.

The rest of us (we're cooler and smarter than YOU!) will get it, groove on it and celebrate its excellence.

This movie is some mighty nasty stuff - replete with elements of slashing satire that hack away and eventually tear open "normally" accepted versions of right and wrong whilst grasping the exposed nerve endings of morality, holding them taught and playing the jangling buggers like violin strings. The picture will provoke, anger, disgust and scandalize a multitude of audiences, though chances are good that the most offended will be those "smugly fucklings" (phrase courtesy of the late, great CanLit genius Scott Symons), the aforementioned fascist PC-type poseurs who claim to be outside the mainstream, but have their noses deeper up the rectal canals of fascists than the bloody Tea Party.

Strange as this might seem, the picture comes from a place deep in the heart, so deep that the twins don't bother ripping the pulsating muscle out, but rather, invoke the spirit that lies dormant within to deliver a surprising level of humanity to the proceedings. As far as the picture's carnage takes us we're allowed, in more than one instance to even be moved by the plight of some of the characters.

The screenplay, written by the Soska twins, is - on its surface only - a rape-revenge fantasy, but it goes so much further than that. It's a vital examination of subcultures representing people disenfranchised from the aforementioned accepted standards of human existence. In a world increasingly aspiring to the living death of homogeneity (this includes those who purport to be untouched by homogeneity), the characters will never fit any mould that represents "normalcy", no matter how hard they try.

Within the world of the film, those who refuse to conform (not because it's "cool" to do so, but because they simply cannot conform) seek avenues that will fulfil their basic needs as human beings, no matter how strange or repellent a majority finds them.

The tale told involves Mary (Katharine Isabelle), a med student struggling under the crushing weight of ever-mounting debt and the constant psychological abuse from her mentor Dr. Grant (David Lovgren), the chief professor of surgery - a field of practice she longs to serve in. In desperation, Mary scours the "adult services" want ads and is drawn to one with keen interest. Under the cloak of night she arrives at a nondescript warehouse in an industrial park that emits the thumping bass of dance music, a neon sign promising sensual delights and a burly doorman who immediately allows her entrance - as he clearly does to any babe seeking admittance.

Mary meets with the charmingly sleazy proprietor Billy Barker (Antonio Cupo) who scoffs a bit when she hands him her resume. The only pre-requisites to work in his club are a good overall "package" (which he discovers after telling her to strip to her undies and show-off her gorgeous body), an ability to deliver a fine massage (as she ably proves with her nimble surgeon's fingers) and a willingness to suck him off with skill and abandon (which, she sadly never gets to do). The job interview is interrupted with news that all is not well in another part of the club. Knowing Mary is a med student specializing in surgery, Billy asks her to join him.

In a dank, dungeon-like room within the club's bowels, Mary's eyes widen at a gruesome sight - nothing to phase a surgeon, but the context would be, at least initially, pretty bizarre to anyone - even her. Whatever goes on in this room, has gone seriously awry and as luck would have it, Mary is just what the, shall we say, doctor, has ordered.

For a wad of pure, hard, cold cash - the likes of which she's never held in her hands, Mary agrees to perform some illicit surgical magic which will not only make a wrong right, but provide a much needed service beyond simple lifesaving. The subject, twitching and bleeding on the filthy table, will most definitely require saving, but the painful manner in which he will be saved will provide him with added ecstasy.

Soon Mary is in demand amongst the body modification subculture who troll about the same underbelly as those who work and patronize the club (in addition to the genuine underground activities involving extreme masochistic indulgence - no healthy, mutually consenting BDSM here - this is a place where people go to be maimed, hurt and tortured).

The other subculture portrayed is that of the surgeons themselves. The Soskas create a creepy old boys club where the power of slicing into live human beings has engendered a world of ritual abuse. In the worlds of body modification and masochistic gymnatics, the subjects are ASKING for it. Not so within the perverse world of the surgeons. They use psychological abuse to break down their victims, then administer kindness and fellowship to lure them, then once their quarry is in their clutches, they use deception of the most cowardly, heinous variety to fulfil their desire to inflict sexual domination.

The body modifiers and masochists are pussycats compared to the surgeons who are portrayed as little more than pure exploiters. Their air of respectability as healers and academia is the weapon they use to commit violence and perpetrate subjugation.

Someone's gonna pay. Bigtime.

So, I'm sure you've already gathered that American Mary is not (Thank Christ!) Forrest Gump. We're bathing in the cinematic blood spilled into the tub that is this movie by the insanely imaginative Soska Twins - clearly the spawn of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Elizabeth Bathory with, perhaps, some errant seed from Alfred Hitchcock or William Friedkin.

One of the extraordinary things about American Mary is that it dives headlong into a number of subcultures, which, even if they've been completely and utterly pulled out of the Soska Sisters' respective Autoroutes de Hershey, they feel like genuinely real worlds. The locations, production design, art direction, set dressing and costume design for the various interior and exterior settings look lived in and completely appropriate to the scenes in which they appear.

Even the curse of most lower-budgeted Canadian films - that notorious lack-of-dollars underpopulation - is not especially egregious as some Canuck pictures since many of the settings demand it, while others are appropriately framed (most of the time) to mask it. As well, the Soska Sisters generally have a good eye for composing shots that provide maximum dramatic impact and the lighting and cutting is always appropriate to the dramatic action rather than calling attention to itself.

The performances are generally first rate and the background performers always look 100% right for the scenes. The fine acting, coupled with a script packed with dialogue that's always in keeping with both character and milieu rather than going out of its way to be overtly clever, also contributes to the overall sense that we're wandering through very real, albeit completely, utterly insane worlds. This is also not to say the film is bereft of stylish visual touches, but they're again used for dramatic effect rather than the annoying curse so many younger filmmakers suffer when they abandon narrative (or even dream) logic to say, "Look Ma, I can use a dolly." And believe me, when a shot and/or cut NEEDS to knock the wind out of us, it happens with considerable aplomb.

What sells the film is the world the Soska Sisters create. It's seldom obvious and more often than not we believe it - or at least want to. In many ways, the film is similar to the great early work of Walter Hill (pretty much anything from The Warriors to Streets of Fire) wherein he created worlds that probably could ONLY exist on film, but within the context of the respective pictures, seldom felt less than "real". (That said, Hill was ALWAYS showy, but he knew how to make it intrinsic to the dramatic action.) This makes a lot of sense, since it always feels like the Soska Twins are making movies wherein those worlds that exist realistically on-screen, but furthermore evoke a feeling that the film has been wrought in a much different (and probably better) age than ours.

Dead Hooker in a Trunk and especially American Mary, seem to exist on a parallel plane to those halcyon days of 70s/80s edginess reflected in the Amos Poe New York "No Wave" - not to mention other counter culture types who straddled the underground and the mainstream - filmmakers like Scorsese, Rafelson, Waters, Jarmusch, et al who exploded well beyond the Jim Hoberman-coined "No Wave". Their work even approaches a bit of the 80s cult sensibilities of Repo Man, Liquid Sky or even such generational crossover titles as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet) and the deranged work of more contemporary directors like Eli Roth, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino - all of whom "steal", to varying degrees, from earlier periods of film history, but use the work of previous Masters as a springboard to make the pictures all their own. (By the way, I'm not necessarily suggesting American Mary is culled from any of the aforementioned but rather, that the Soska Twins are clearly working in the same sort of exciting territory. It's especially dazzling when it's within a burgeoning stage of their development as film artists.)

The character of Mary, though, seems like she was born on the set of a 70s James Toback movie like Fingers or the Toback-penned Karel Reizs masterpiece The Gambler or yes, even Don Siegel's magnificent work of cold-cocking art Dirty Harry and though the decade was replete with male heroes of the anti-hero variety, the world just wasn't quite ready for a female heroine to embody the steely resolve of Harvey Keitel, James Caan and Clint Eastwood in the respective pictures. So somehow, Mary was transported in some kind of time machine into the minds of the Soska Twins (at the point of their conception) and spewed herself upon the pages of their script and into the body of Katharine Isabelle.

Well thank Christ for open portals in the time/space continuum - we now have a genuine horror hero who embodies all the anti-hero qualities of a 70s character and is 110% ALL WOMAN!!!

Katharine Isabelle as Dr. Mary has come long and far from her groundbreaking performance in the classic John Fawcett-Karen Walton werewolf picture Ginger Snaps. Here she delivers a courageous performance on a par with her turn as the cursed teen werewolf back in 2000. It's 12 years later and Isabelle has blossomed into a tremendously engaging screen personality. The camera might actually love her even more now that she's gained considerable physical maturity (and the Soska Twins have definitely used their four great eyes to work with their cinematographer Brian Pearson's additional two eyes to add to Isabelle's stunning, real-woman looks). This great actress's 12 years of toil in mainly television has given her a myriad of roles and experience, but in American Mary, her brave, deadpan (and often very funny) delivery blended with moments where the character is clearly repressing anything resembling emotion is the kind of thesping that demands more roles as terrific as this one. Please, get this woman out of Television Hell and put her on the big screen where she belongs.

The film also has a cornucopia of terrific supporting performances. Antonio Cupo as the sort-of male love interest is both sleazy and endearing (a pretty amazing double whammy). David Lovgren is suitably creepy and reptilian. Paula Lindberg as the nipple-extracted bombshell who also gets her vagina sewn shut and Tristan Risk (easily the best supporting work I saw from any actress in any movie in 2012) as the body modified dancer who promotes Mary's talents far and wide, both transcend the expert makeup effects to bring their respective characters' spirits beyond the almost freakish intensity of their body modifications.

And finally, no review of American Mary would be complete without a special nod to Nelson Wong who wins the alltime accolade for the scariest, creepiest, sickest, funniest rendering of a surgeon you hope NEVER to meet - even in your dreams.

American Mary is a true original. The Soska Twins have generated an utterly buoyant, crazed, thrilling and gob-smackingly brilliant motion picture experience. I expect - NO! I DEMAND! - one kick-ass devil-may-care rollercoaster ride through hell after another from the Soska Twins.

I'm waiting with baited breath. In the meantime, I'll be watching American Mary over and over and over again. I can't get enough of it.

Tickets for the Sinister Cinema showing of "American Mary" can be secured by visiting the Cineplex Entertainment website HERE. 

RAVEN BANNER PRESENTS: A MAJOR THEATRICAL GENRE SERIES ON - 25 CANADIAN SCREENS - By Greg Klymkiw

Raven Banner Launches Exciting

Genre Film Series Across Canada

by Greg Klymkiw

Raven Banner, the exciting genre-friendly company that specializes in strategic project management of innovative independent motion pictures is launching an extremely exciting series for genre fans in Canada. Sinister Cinema is a brand new monthly showcase of what promises to be some very cool horror movies. In addition to the movies, there will be a grand sense of showmanship allowing for added value goodies (consider it DVD/Blu-Ray extras - LIVE at Big-Screen venues). Personal appearances, Live Q & A's and exclusive pre-recorded intros plus interviews are just some of the planned delights to enhance the movie-going experience. The movies will screen at 25 Cineplex Entertainment screens across Canada. The venues are:

Lotus Land
Odeon Victoria Cinemas – Victoria, BC
Galaxy Cinemas Nanaimo – Nanaimo, BC
Colossus Langley Cinemas – Langley, BC
Silvercity Riverport Cinemas – Richmond, BC
Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinemas – Vancouver, BC
(NOTE: Dope Smoking not allowed in cinemas, so toke-up before you enter the premises and/or discreetly utilize the handicapped crappers. Do not forget to disarm smoke detectors and sprinklers.)

Stevie Harper KKK Headquarters
Scotiabank Theatre Edmonton – Edmonton, AB
Scotiabank Theatre Chinook – Calgary, AB
(NOTE: Cross Burnings not allowed indoors. Moonshine not for sale in cinemas, but can be smuggled in.)

Armpit of Canada
Galaxy Cinemas Regina – Regina, SK
Galaxy Cinemas Saskatoon – Saskatoon, SK
(NOTE: You must leave your livestock tethered to the front of the cinemas. Feel free to smuggle in your own smoked hog ears for good eatin' during the show.)

Second Biggest Armpit of Canada
SilverCity Polo Park Cinemas – Winnipeg, MB
(NOTE: The rest of the province is mosquito-ridden swamp land populated by inbreds who do not watch movies or do much of anything besides fight and fornicate in the winter and fish with dynamite charges and big nets in the summer - beer included.)

Centre of the Known Universe (and surrounding environs)
Cineplex Odeon Devonshire Mall Cinemas – Windsor, ON
SilverCity London Cinemas – London, ON
Galaxy Cinemas Waterloo – Waterloo, ON
Cineplex Odeon Winston Churchill Cinemas – Oakville, ON
SilverCity Hamilton Cinemas – Hamilton, ON
Cineplex Cinemas Mississauga – Mississauga, ON
Cineplex Odeon Queensway Cinemas – Toronto, ON
Colossus Vaughan Cinemas – Vaughan, ON
SilverCity Fairview Mall Cinemas – Toronto, ON
Cineplex Odeon Yonge & Dundas Square Cinemas – Toronto, ON
Cineplex Odeon Eglinton Town Centre Cinemas – Scarborough, ON
Coliseum Ottawa Cinemas – Ottawa, ON
SilverCity Gloucester Cinemas – Ottawa, ON
SilverCity Sudbury Cinemas – Sudbury, ON
(NOTE: Torontonians proclaim that Toronto is the Centre of the Known Universe. Most of us know better - especially all the venues OUTSIDE the GTA)

La Belle Province
Cineplex Odeon Forum Cinemas – Montreal, QC
(NOTE: French people do not like horror movies as they are all Catholic. The few who do are politely asked to leave their separatist literature at home and refrain from screaming "Je me souviens!" every ten fucking minutes.)

And now, the MOVIES.

I've seen two of them and THEY FUCKING ROCK!!!

My critical accolades or lack thereof

are not available for the rest at press time.

My Review of "John Dies at the End" is available by clicking HERE

March 27, 2013: Don (Phantasm, Bubba Ho-Tep) Coscarelli's blackly humourous fright-fest John Dies At The End

May 9, 2013: Rue Morgue founder and publisher Rodrigo Gudiño's feature debut The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh

May 30, 2013: The Best Fucking Horror Movie of 2012, American Mary

June 19, 2013: Sicko Ryuhei (The Midnight Meat Train) Kitamura's No One Lives

BUY TICKETS HERE

AMERICAN MARY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF 2012)

The Soska Twins present the Canadian Premiere of their creepy, stunningly directed and viciously dark-humoured psychological thriller AMERICAN MARY at Toronto After Dark (TADFF 2012).

American Mary **** (2012)
dir. Soska Twins: Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska
Starring: Katharine Isabelle, Tristan Risk, Antonio Cupo, David Lovgren

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The scalpel enters a full, fleshy breast and delicately, almost sensually circles the areola's entirety whilst blood oozes out, the surgeon's fingers gently tracing her handiwork.

Both nipples are eventually removed.

The next procedure involves surgically removing all physical receptors of pubic ecstasy and stitching shut the vagina of the aforementioned nipple-bereft body, save, of course, for the smallest allowable opening for the expulsion of urine.

The surgeon is spent, stunned, but satisfied - secure in the knowledge that her first stab (so to speak) at body modification is a success. The client eventually expresses sheer joy over her all-new sexually adhedonic state; how perfectly she's been able to fulfil her own personal essence of womanhood via the excision of those physical extremities which alternately offer enticement and pleasure. Whatever you say, babe. In the words of Marlo Thomas: "Free to be you and me."

Can movies possibly get any better than this?

Well yes, they most certainly can and do, but it doesn't change the fact that American Mary is a dazzlingly audacious sophomore effort from the Vancouver-based twisted twin sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska (who made a promising debut with their micro-budgeted 2009 effort Dead Hooker in a Trunk).

With this new picture, the sisters are on (at least for some, if not many) shaky moral ground (and/or crack), but happily, they maintain the courage of their convictions and do not tread lightly upon it. There are no half-measures here to even attempt making the picture palatable to the gatekeepers of political correctness (those purported knot-headed pseudo-lefty Great Pretenders who reside just to the right of Mussolini, Stevie Harper or Mitt Romney - take your pick). I'd even vigorously argue that non-fascist PC-types will, in fact, find the picture more than palatable. The rest of us will get it, groove on it and celebrate its excellence.

This movie is some mighty nasty stuff - replete with elements of slashing satire that hack away and eventually tear open "normally" accepted versions of right and wrong whilst grasping the exposed nerve endings of morality, holding them taught and playing the jangling buggers like violin strings. The picture will provoke, anger, disgust and scandalize a multitude of audiences, though chances are good that the most offended will be those "smugly fuckling" (phrase courtesy of the late, great CanLit genius Scott Symons) aforementioned poseurs who claim to be outside the mainstream, but have their noses deeper up the rectal canals of fascists than the bloody Tea Party.

Strange as this might seem, the picture comes from a place deep in the heart, so deep that the twins don't bother ripping the pulsating muscle out, but rather, invoke the spirit that lies dormant within to deliver a surprising level of humanity to the proceedings. As far as the picture's carnage takes us we're allowed, in more than one instance to even be moved by the plight of some of the characters.

The screenplay, written by the Soska twins, is - on its surface only - a rape-revenge fantasy, but it goes so much further than that. It's a vital examination of subcultures representing people disenfranchised from the aforementioned accepted standards of human existence. In a world increasingly aspiring to the living death of homogeneity (this includes those who purport to be untouched by homogeneity), the characters will never fit any mould that represents "normalcy", no matter how hard they try.

Within the world of the film, those who refuse to conform (not because it's "cool" to do so, but because they simply cannot conform) seek avenues that will fulfil their basic needs as human beings, no matter how strange or repellent a majority finds them.

The tale told involves Mary (Katharine Isabelle), a med student struggling under the crushing weight of ever-mounting debt and the constant psychological abuse from her mentor Dr. Grant (David Lovgren), the chief professor of surgery - a field of practice she longs to serve in. In desperation, Mary scours the "adult services" want ads and is drawn to one with keen interest. Under the cloak of night she arrives at a nondescript warehouse in an industrial park that emits the thumping bass of dance music, a neon sign promising sensual delights and a burly doorman who immediately allows her entrance - as he clearly does to any babe seeking admittance.

Mary meets with the charmingly sleazy proprietor Billy Barker (Antonio Cupo) who scoffs a bit when she hands him her resume. The only pre-requisites to work in his club are a good overall "package" (which he discovers after telling her to strip to her undies and show-off her gorgeous body), an ability to deliver a fine massage (as she ably proves with her nimble surgeon's fingers) and a willingness to suck him off with skill and abandon (which, she sadly never gets to do). The job interview is interrupted with news that all is not well in another part of the club. Knowing Mary is a med student specializing in surgery, Billy asks her to join him.

In a dank, dungeon-like room within the club's bowels, Mary's eyes widen at a gruesome sight - nothing to phase a surgeon, but the context would be, at least initially, pretty bizarre to anyone - even her. Whatever goes on in this room, has gone seriously awry and as luck would have it, Mary is just what the, shall we say, doctor, has ordered.

For a wad of pure, hard, cold cash - the likes of which she's never held in her hands, Mary agrees to perform some illicit surgical magic which will not only make a wrong right, but provide a much needed service beyond simple lifesaving. The subject, twitching and bleeding on the filthy table, will most definitely require saving, but the painful manner in which he will be saved will provide him with added ecstasy.

Soon Mary is in demand amongst the body modification subculture who troll about the same underbelly as those who work and patronize the club (in addition to the genuine underground activities involving extreme masochistic indulgence - no healthy, mutually consenting BDSM here - this is a place where people go to be maimed, hurt and tortured).

The other subculture portrayed is that of the surgeons themselves. The Soskas create a creepy old boys club where the power of slicing into live human beings has engendered a world of ritual abuse. In the worlds of body modification and masochistic gymnatics, the subjects are ASKING for it. Not so within the perverse world of the surgeons. They use psychological abuse to break down their victims, then administer kindness and fellowship to lure them, then once their quarry is in their clutches, they use deception of the most cowardly, heinous variety to fulfil their desire to inflict sexual domination.

The body modifiers and masochists are pussycats compared to the surgeons who are portrayed as little more than pure exploiters. Their air of respectability as healers and academia is the weapon they use to commit violence and perpetrate subjugation.

Someone's gonna pay. Bigtime.

So, I'm sure you've already gathered that American Mary is not (Thank Christ!) Forrest Gump. We're bathing in the cinematic blood spilled into the tub that is this movie by the insanely imaginative Soska Twins - clearly the spawn of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Elizabeth Bathory with, perhaps, some errant seed from Alfred Hitchcock or William Friedkin.

One of the extraordinary things about American Mary is that it dives headlong into a number of subcultures, which, even if they've been completely and utterly pulled out of the Soska Sisters' respective Autoroutes de Hershey, they feel like genuinely real worlds. The locations, production design, art direction, set dressing and costume design for the various interior and exterior settings look lived in and completely appropriate to the scenes in which they appear.

Even the curse of most lower-budgeted Canadian films - that notorious lack-of-dollars underpopulation - is not especially egregious as some Canuck pictures since many of the settings demand it, while others are appropriately framed (most of the time) to mask it. As well, the Soska Sisters generally have a good eye for composing shots that provide maximum dramatic impact and the lighting and cutting is always appropriate to the dramatic action rather than calling attention to itself.

The performances are generally first rate and the background performers always look 100% right for the scenes. The fine acting, coupled with a script packed with dialogue that's always in keeping with both character and milieu rather than going out of its way to be overtly clever, also contributes to the overall sense that we're wandering through very real, albeit completely, utterly insane worlds. This is also not to say the film is bereft of stylish visual touches, but they're again used for dramatic effect rather than the annoying curse so many younger filmmakers suffer when they abandon narrative (or even dream) logic to say, "Look Ma, I can use a dolly." And believe me, when a shot and/or cut NEEDS to knock the wind out of us, it happens with considerable aplomb.

What sells the film is the world the Soska Sisters create. It's seldom obvious and more often than not we believe it - or at least want to. In many ways, the film is similar to the great early work of Walter Hill (pretty much anything from The Warriors to Streets of Fire) wherein he created worlds that probably could ONLY exist on film, but within the context of the respective pictures, seldom felt less than "real". (That said, Hill was ALWAYS showy, but he knew how to make it intrinsic to the dramatic action.) This makes a lot of sense, since it always feels like the Soska Twins are making movies wherein those worlds that exist realistically on-screen, but furthermore evoke a feeling that the film has been wrought in a much different (and probably better) age than ours.

Dead Hooker in a Trunk and especially American Mary, seem to exist on a parallel plane to those halcyon days of 70s/80s edginess reflected in the Amos Poe New York "No Wave" - not to mention other counter culture types who straddled the underground and the mainstream - filmmakers like Scorsese, Rafelson, Waters, Jarmusch, et al who exploded well beyond the Jim Hoberman-coined "No Wave". Their work even approaches a bit of the 80s cult sensibilities of Repo Man, Liquid Sky or even such generational crossover titles as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet) and the deranged work of more contemporary directors like Eli Roth, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino - all of whom "steal", to varying degrees, from earlier periods of film history, but use the work of previous Masters as a springboard to make the pictures all their own. (By the way, I'm not necessarily suggesting American Mary is culled from any of the aforementioned but rather, that the Soska Twins are clearly working in the same sort of exciting territory. It's especially dazzling when it's within a burgeoning stage of their development as film artists.)

A number of the cast members are truly first-rate. Katharine Isabelle as Dr. Mary has come long and far from her groundbreaking performance in the classic John Fawcett-Karen Walton werewolf picture Ginger Snaps. Here she delivers a courageous performance on a par with her turn as the cursed teen werewolf back in 2000. It's 12 years later and Isabelle has blossomed into a tremendously engaging screen personality. The camera might actually love her even more now that she's gained considerable physical maturity (and the Soska Twins have definitely used their four great eyes to work with their cinematographer Brian Pearson's additional two eyes to add to her stunning, real-woman looks). Isabelle's 12 years of toil in mainly television has given her a myriad of roles and experience, but in American Mary, her brave, deadpan (and often very funny) delivery blended with moments where the character is clearly repressing anything resembling emotion is the kind of thesping that demands more roles as terrific as this one. Please, get this woman out of Television Hell and put her on the big screen where she belongs.

Antonio Cupo as the sort-of male love interest is both sleazy and endearing (a pretty amazing double whammy). David Lovgren is suitably creepy and reptilian. Paula Lindberg as the nipple-extracted bombshell who also gets her vagina sewn shut and Tristan Risk as the body modified dancer who promotes Mary's talents far and wide, both transcend the expert makeup effects to bring their respective characters' spirits beyond the almost freakish intensity of their body modifications. And finally, no review of American Mary would be complete without a special nod to Nelson Wong who wins the alltime accolade for the scariest, creepiest, sickest, funniest rendering of a surgeon you hope NEVER to meet - even in your dreams.

American Mary is a true original. I recently had the pleasure to personally express to William Friedkin that his new film Killer Joe - in spite of how violent, scary, horrific, darkly funny, nasty and just plain vile it was - sent me out of the theatre in a state of sheer, unadulterated bouyancy. This pleased the Master, greatly. Somewhere out there in Canuckville's Lotus Land, I hope the Soska Twins realize just how utterly bouyant there own crazed, brilliant film is. And someday, I expect them to deliver one kick-ass devil-may-care Friedkin-like rollercoaster ride through hell after another.

I'm sure they'll do it.

"American Mary" had its Canadian Premiere at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival (TADFF 2012) and will be released in Canada via Anchor Bay. For further info, feel free to visit the TADFF website HERE.