Body Melt

Two nights ago, I watched and AWESOME Australian film on DVD.

How often do you get to say that?

I had no intention of blogging about it, until this morning's paper carried an article about the unfortunate effects of a particular sleeping tablet.

Interestingly the details differ between the online version and the print version, with the print version being a superior read.

"Abandoning it's usually dry language" reports Julie Robotham, "the Adverse Drug Reactions Advisory Committee's bulletin, published yesterday, referred to "bizarre sleep-related effects", of the drug."

Different examples are given in each version but they share the important detail: "104 reports of hallucinations and 62 of amnesia since the drug...was released in 2000."

I recommend you check out the references to "inappropriate or strange automatic behaviour while asleep."

Now, go slowly with me here, the film I saw...(drumroll)... has the tag: "The first phase is hallucinogenic...the second phase is glandular...And the third is...(have you got it yet?)...BODY MELT.

Oh alright, I sort of gave it away in the post heading.

The article could be a bit of serendipity but really is just a handy provocation for me to rave about this movie, which has, as it's far-out premise, the idea that an evil corporation is marketing a very unsafe vitamin supplement to unsuspecting Melbournians.

Body Melt was made in 1993 and re-released, in a speccy DVD version last year by a mob called Umbrella. I'm very late to the party, please forgive my enthusiasm.

I've watched a lot of horror/slasher/splatter flicks over the last 18 months or so - in preparation for the (eventual) staging of "Zombie State", a play by Ben Ellis.

These films have such clear genre specifications that even the worst really hone your sense of who has command of the narrative tropes and, importantly, who has something to say, or not. Actually, this last thought is more interesting; there is equal delight in the high art/low-art/no art gemischte of the genre in general.

Body Melt stands up. On all those fronts.

The film is brilliantly crafted and has an aesthetic that, I would wager, makes it better with time (in stark contrast with most Aussie movies actually of that era, which date appallingly). Sound design, from such a prestigious sound designer/director is obviously fantastic, particularly fun is had with the cheery, counter-intuitive jingles that kick in, almost subliminally, when things get really ugly. The pacing of the whole is spot on and the movement of the camera is classy. Brophy has a kind of Kubrickian-thing (I'm thinking of The Shining) going on, with the camera inexorably thrusting into dark spaces, altering our sense of scale and generally probing in a way that YOU REALLY WISH IT WOULDN'T.

Add to this unnerving element a fine integration of dodgy computer graphics, great design all round (there is a tie that Andrew Daddo wears, at a specific climax that should have won its very own AFI) a number of nicely understated lead performances, an elegant coat-hanger plot, and you have a ripper film.

What makes it great, tho', are the so-bad-they're-brilliant elements: the two totally OT "Wogboys", a dag-version of the Chainsaw Massacre family and some truly awful dialogue (Ramsay Street drivel colliding with feeble buddy-movie one-liners). Gratuitous porn and bodybuilders almost complete the picture but I would be forgetting a feast of scenes. I won't spoil them all but can't help recording my pleasure at the delightfully "Monstrous Feminine" plot-tangent that sees William McInnes having his (presumably spare) rib ripped out by Suzi Dougherty. And then there's what they do to Lisa McCune... but now we are back into plain "good-film-making" territory. It is this game between the low and the high that make it such terrific stuff.

All in all, Brophy has every reason to write
this article which I also highly recommend for a chuckle and a weep.

and now, if you'll excuse me I'm off to make a movie of my own. I was going to head up to the Top End and bait a psycho-killer croc with, maybe, Rhada Mitchell, but I'm not sure anyone will buy that...