Holyfuckingshit: 2011!
Some HFS movies are like fine wines or single-barrel bourbons — they get better with age. Upheavals in fashion, cinematic style and the passage of time can turn an overlooked or odd little film into a bizarro gem ripe for rediscovery — and then there are the films which arrive fully-formed in their holyfuckingshitness. These truly special little nuggets pop into existance as if they were willed from their creators’ fertile imaginations directly onto the screen, specifically for the slack-jawed amazement of thrill-seeking cinephiles ever eager to plunder the unspooled celluloid pile of the zeigeist. We spent all of last year chasing the dragon, looking for that next hit of pure cinematic weirdness, and the results are in! HFS movies are made, not born. And these movies were made just last year. Holy fucking shit!
The Most HFS Movie of 2011!
We’re keeping this one a secret. Come on by, and see the single most mind-boggling, jaw-dropping, eye-popping, face-melting, bone-shattering, soul-crushing piece of batshit insanity we saw in 2011. We had to bring out all the adjectives to this one, but we’re keeping the proper nouns to ourselves –- like all good awards, part of the fun is waiting for the envelope. Free popcorn if you guess the right movie upon admission!
The Abduction of Zack Butterfield
It’s many an adolescent boy’s fantasy vision: to be whisked away from your home and your family, and be kept under lock and key by a ravenous older woman who, in exchange for keeping you alive, wants to make a man out of you — or else she’ll detonate your Battle Royale-style dog collar…? Well, maybe the number of kids in the world who might wanna live through this is tiny — but it was certainly the vision of first-time feature director Rick Lancaster to bring such a singular tale of child abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and “Peter Pan”-style cabin hijnx to the screen. An Iraq War vet of indeterminate age (who should be almost forty, based on her on-screen anecdotes, but who looks twenty) kidnaps an upstanding fourteen-year-old, and based on her experience as a surveillance expert, keeps the lad both on a sexual and electronically lethal leash. With enough creepy Stockholm Syndrome on display to make you want to lock your genitals in a storage facility and throw away the key, TAOZB piles on the novel creepy-crawlies until your skin is ablaze. A helluva great late-night time.
Dir. Rick Lancaster, 2011, HD presentation, 91 min.
Watch the trailer for “The Abduction of Zack Butterfield”!
Showgirls 2: Penny's From Heaven (director/star in person!)
Going from the diamond-encrusted mountaintops of a Hollywood summer blockbuster to the deepest cubic zirconium mineshafts of convention-floor fan fodder, writer/director/producer/editor/star Reni Riffel’s Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven contains one of the most precipitous budgetary climate shifts in franchise history. If that wasn’t enough to make your veins collapse like you’ve got the bends, it’s one of the most exhaustively weird film experiences of last year. Kicking off nowhere near where the original story left off, it’s a movie that starts over a decade later, stars a tertiary yet fan-adored character that only hardcore Showgirls-heads would be familiar with (kind of like making Admiral Ackbar: The Movie), and tonally drifts so far that even its homage-like qualities begin focusing on a completely different movie: Mulholland Drive (in which Riffel also had a co-starring part.) Did we mention this Z-budget opus is two and half hours? Seriously, it is. No, really. That might seem excessive, but remember, it’s only ten minutes longer than Showgirls, and three minutes shorter than Mulholland Drive! We just wanna make sure you’ve been briefed. Director/star Rena Riffel will be at the Cinefamily in person for a Q&A after the film!
Dir. Rena Riffel, 2011, HD presentation, 135 min.
Watch the trailer for “Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven”!
