(1994)
Dir - Jim Van Bebber
Overall: WOOF
One of the most endlessly annoying cliches for any movie is that of loner, drug addict, douchebag losers who listen to heavy metal and think the Devil is just the bees knees. My Sweet Satan takes this one-note premise and tries to do whatever with it for about nineteen minutes. The result is skin-crawling in how unwatchably stupid it is. Characters who we are barely even introduced to are narrating off screen, the movie begins with the lead character, (writer/director Jim Van Bebber looking like an asshat clown parody of a disturbed metalhead), hanging himself, and no attempt is made to make him or anyone else he ever encounters appear more than cartoon character scumbags. So clearly having sympathy for anyone on screen was not the point. If it was just to highlight a disturbed youth culture then it is an utter failure since things are exaggerated to the point of parody. In this regard though, it is far from trying to be funny either and just bashes you over the head by being amateurish and brain dead.
(1997)
Dir - Stan Winston
Overall: WOOF
It is such a shame really that by 1997, (post molestation charges no less), Michael Jackson was certifiably out of touch with reality. Layers of proof had come to light at that point and much more would follow, but the curious, thirty-nine minute music video, (a Guinness book record), for "Ghost" off the HIStory album/compilation is a solid timestamp of where the King of Pop's psyche was at. A toddler could not miss the overt symbolism in having an angry mob storm a "weirdo's" mansion only to have one authority figure point the finger at him while all of the kids and nice parents go along with the batshit insane, supernatural shenanigans that Jackson's "weirdo" gets up to. He at once seems to be taking out his frustrations with the media ripping his endless eccentricities, (and again, child molestation charges), apart while still indulging in his childish fascination with horror films and fairytale whimsy. Sadly, the results here are not only uncomfortably on the nose, but awkwardly boring as hell. It is almost entirely just people pretending to be amazed or scared at awful CGI, ghouls in not-Thriller costumes dancing around, and Jackson stretching out his hands and yelling at least nine-hundred and eleven times. Even with Stan Winston behind the lens, Stephen King co-scripting it, and Jackson providing a solid enough soundtrack of course, it still comes off as an extreme vanity project that is downright sad to watch.
(1997)
Dir - Douglas Buck
Overall: MEH
This stark and very aloof short from Long Island filmmaker Douglas Black takes an enormously bleak look at family dysfunction. It pushes into the horror genre by the mood of mounting dread that it builds to, (made possible by the a mostly non-existing musical score and deliberate pacing), which culminates with an excessively gory finale. The mood is perhaps too depressing and uncomfortable at least from a state of enjoying the experience, but this can also be seen as a successful trait for such a somber movie to have. How exactly this doomed couple got to the point of such an extreme emotional void in their and their child's lives is left a mystery which makes it less something to really connect with and more surreal instead. Cutting Moments is pretty striking yes, but it sure is rather miserable as well so it kind of comes down to how bummed out you want to be in twenty-nine minutes.
(1999)
Dir - Charlie Deaux
Overall: MEH
Pretentious nonsense more or less, occasional music video director Charlie Deaux's Zoetrope is an adaptation of Franz Kafka's In the Penal Colony, but one that decides to meander pointlessly for eighteen minutes instead of maybe going somewhere with its subject matter. For such a short film, it sure does repeat the same shots over and over again and it does not take long at all to get the gist of it and realize absolutely nothing else is going to happen. This is one of those black and white, spastically-edited art films that you can probably just see a couple stills from and basically "get" the whole movie without having to watch it. The industrial, bludgeoning sound design is interesting, but as it is mixed with senseless, philosophical hogwash that is monotonously uttered by one of the two "characters", it ultimately does not matter one tit what any of the dialog is as since it may as well just be mumbled gibberish. A steampunk-esque, dystopian nightmare sure, but a very aimless and boring one all the same.
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