Jug Face: Hillbilly Death Cults and Outsider Art

Moonshine and pottery are a wicked combination.  One young woman living in a hillbilly cult understands that only too well.  She knows exactly what it means when the kiln tolls for her in Chad Crawford Kinkle’s Jug Face (trailer here), a Modernciné production which opens tomorrow in New York.

“The pit wants what it wants.”  In return, it cures members of the hardscrabble hill country community.  That was how their grandpappies survived the great cholera outbreak.  All that is required is a periodic sacrifice.  They will know who has been chosen from the special jugs the designated potter casts in a state of paranormal ecstasy.  Ada was supposed to be next, but she chanced upon her jug face before Dawai came out of his pit-induced stupor.  Stashing it in the woods, Ada is determined to live—not just for herself, but also for her unborn child.

Whose child would that be?  Take a lurid guess.  It is not Dawai’s, unfortunately, since he’s not a bad chap, really.  Nor is the boy to whom she is to be “joined” the father (a term that sounds uncomfortably Human Centipede like).  The answer will be pretty easy to guess, given general filmmaker attitudes towards rural border state residents.  Ada is definitely in for a hard go of things and the deadly visions she gets from the pit will not help.

Basically, Jug Face is southern gothic exploitation fare, which co-star and Glass Eye Pix producer Larry Fessenden certainly understands.  As Ada’s cult leader father Sustin, he is not nearly as loathsome or malevolent as one might expect.  He might even be half-human.  In the lead, Lauren Ashley Carter’s eyes are almost supernaturally wide.  Her Ada is also reasonably down to earth for a sheltered cult-child.  Looking not unlike Will Ferrell on a below average morning, Sean Bridgers finds surprising pathos in Dawai.  In fact, if it really were Will Ferrell, it would probably be his best performance ever.  It is hard to recognize Sean Young as mother dearest, but at least her off-screen persona does not distract from the on-screen action.

Evoking the spirit of outsider art, Jug Face’s opening credits effectively set an unsettling tone right from the start.  However, the pit is a little underwhelming.  It just gurgles a little and turns red from time to time.  Regardless, Kinkle really knows how to tap into coastal dwellers’ hillbilly phobias, without going the full Deliverance route.  Unfortunately, the climax is more of a deflation than a conflagration.  Still, those looking to shudder at ritual murder and Appalachian inequities will find plenty of fodder in Jug Face.  Recommended for Fessenden fans with a taste for hicksploitation, Jug Face opens this Friday (8/9) at the Village East.

T & D vs. E

It is like the polar-opposite of Kevin Smith’s Red State. In this horror movie mash-up, it is the snobby elites who are out to get the innocent red necks. Still, there is enough grisly slapstick humor to keep the studio-bashing director entertained. Indeed, the killer hillbilly movie gets a subversive twist in Eli Craig’s Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Dale is the shy one and Tucker is the more outgoing one. Neither is what you might call well educated or snappy dressers. They mean well though. On their way to Tucker’s vacation cabin (newly purchased at a bargain price because of its notorious history) the innocent bumpkins cross paths with a group of snotty college students. Mistaking the overall-clad lads’ leering in awe for leering with intent, the kids become easy prey for the anti-hillbilly venom of the Mephistophelean Chad, who carries a deep seated hatred of all backwoods residents.

Whipping his friends into a paranoid frenzy, Chad convinces his companions to attack first. However, it does not work out well for the preppy predators, who inadvertently maim and kill themselves in a series of gruesome encounters that combine Harold Lloyd with Final Destination. There is one exception though, the lovely and empathic Allison, who is majoring in conflict resolution studies.

T & D vs. E is definitely a meathead movie that delights in devising new and outrageous ways for college kids to die. Yes, there is a wood-chipper to be found at Tucker’s cabin. Indeed, you have to admire its plucky determination to keep one-upping itself, without breaking the Rube Goldbergian format. Still, the reversal of the well established Deliverance formula is quite refreshing, particularly after Rod Lurie’s Straw Dogs remake shamelessly trafficked in such red state vs. blue state stereotypes. As a bonus, the media takes a few hits as well in the wrap-around framing device.

Alan Tudyk & Tyler Labine share a likable, easy-going chemistry as T & D, respectively. It is strange to think, but there are few recent movies that have depicted male friendship in similar unconditional terms, free of any psychological baggage. While obviously blessed with physical beauty, Katrina Bowden also shows a nice sense of comedic timing as Allison. Indeed, her character’s attempt to apply her conflict resolution training is a real riot. Who would have ever thought a 30 Rock cast-member could actually be funny?

Obviously, T & D vs. E is all about gory laughs rather than social commentary. Still, the extent to which it humanizes hill-and-holler dwellers, while casting big city elites as the villains is somewhat notable. It also has chainsaws and other assorted power tools. Recommended with affection for those who enjoy their comedy with a body count and a spatter pattern, T & D vs. E opens this Friday (9/30) in New York at the Village East.

Exploiting Peckinpah: the Straw Dogs Remake

“Dueling Banjos” must be expensive music to license. It is about the only thing missing from the formerly indie Rod Lurie’s red state-phobic remake of Sam Peckinpah’s career-defining film, Straw Dogs. Transferred from the English countryside to the Deep South, the once edgy examination of violent human nature is now a standard issue killer hillbilly movie (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

The prodigal television ingénue Amy Sumner tells her screenwriter husband David her hometown of Blackwater, Mississippi is properly pronounced “Backwater.” There you have the film’s flash of wit. It also tells viewers what to expect of the locals. Everyone watched her canceled show, including her former high school beau Charlie Venner, whom her husband hires to fix their hurricane damaged barn. In retrospect, this is a bad idea.

Venner, his brother Darryl, his other brother Darryl, and their wacky next door neighbor, the unmistakably psychotic Norm, do not exactly hustle on the job, taking plenty of breaks to leer at her and deride his manhood, such as it is. Things quickly escalate when one of the good old boys strings up the family cat in their closet. Yet, Sumner will not confront them directly, preferring to confuse them with his cryptic beating around the bush. Eventually though, things get way out of hand, forcing Sumner to defend home, hearth, and Jeremy Niles, a developmentally disabled grown man with an implied history of inappropriate behavior, whom the gruesome foursome and their former football coach, Tom Heddon, are out to lynch.

Strangely, Lurie’s adaptation hardly ever deviates from the basic structure of Peckinpah’s original, yet he clearly has no clue what made it so effective. For one thing, the 1971 film pulled a cultural reverse, unleashing a violent maelstrom against the picturesque backdrop of Cornwall, while casting a Yank as the pacifist victim. However, a city slicker terrorized by a pack of southern hicks is a real dog-bites-man story in Hollywood.

As a nebbish mathematician, the responses of Dustin Hoffman’s Sumner also made more sense in the context of Peckinpah’s film. It is not hard to imagine he might have been bullied before and is reverting to old survival strategies in his attempts to befriend his antagonists. In contrast, James Marsden’s snobby jag-driving outspokenly atheistic screenwriter never seemed to have a bad day in his life before he got to Blackwater. Frankly, Venner might be a knuckle-dragging neanderthal, but he has a point when he tells Sumner it was rude to walk out during the pastor’s sermon. Of course, in real life he should not be brutalized for such boorishness, but in a sleazy exploitation film (which is really what the new Straw is) it is a close call.

There is no question Lurie is demonizing the gun-and-religion clinging Red-Staters, but at least he refrains from playing the race card in his Straw. Though savage, Venner and his crew are really not portrayed as racists, per se. In fact, they more or less respect the town’s African American lawman, Iraq War hero John Burke. Of course, as an authority figure, they still have problems with him.

At least Lurie gets down to business during the climatic siege, delivering the old school payback with efficient directness, though again he more or less replicates the methods of execution employed in the original film. He also includes the notorious rape scene as well, but the reactions of Kate Bosworth’s Amy Sumner are never ambiguous (indeed, it is hard to blame him for “wimping out” in this respect).

Marsden and Bosworth make a pretty dull, unlikable couple. Alexander Skarsgård is not a particularly flamboyant villain either, but at least he adds an intriguing dimension, hinting at Venner’s possible sense of remorse. Naturally, it is up to James Woods to ham it up something fierce as Coach Heddon, a mean drunk if ever there was one.

It is hard to understand why this film was produced. If Lurie wanted to make a southern fried grindhouse movie, he should have done so without invoking comparison to such a controversial (and superior) film. Faithfully violent but often outright silly, Lurie’s Straw is just about what you think it is. Not recommended (except perhaps as an ironic trip to the drive-in for fly-over country), it opens today (9/16) in several New York theaters, including the Regal Battery Park.