The Greasy Strangler (2016) - Movie Review (1000th Post Special)

Well, this is going to be a very special review. This marks my 1000^th blog post, a number that has steadily built up over the past five years, encompassing movie reviews, lists, articles looking at my critical influences, and a few one-off experiments that didn’t really make it off the ground. What began with a spur-of-the-moment trip with friends to see a One Direction concert film has grown (or possibly mutated; the lab results are inconclusive as of yet) into not only an uneven-yet-prolific amount of writing material but also a chance to write for proper publications and even getting into doing podcasts. None of this would have been possible without my dear readers, every one of you who has ever taken the time to read what this uneducated dude has to say about the latest releases. I humbly thank all of you out there, and here’s to a thousand more.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s get into today’s feature. This film, in every conceivable way possible, is the single strangest feature I have ever sat through. Even with my cinematic upbringing relishing the works of Ed Wood and John Waters, not to mention my continual trips to the cinema for The Room interactive screenings and even growing up with the joyous bugfuckery of The Peanut Butter Solution, this tops them all. I chose this film not just because this is the kind of weirdness that begs for milestone treatment, but because its weirdness is so pervasive and so consistently confounding, that being able to put just how bizarre this is into words is going to be a challenge. But a challenge worth undertaking, as this is the kind of film that needs to be seen to be believed.

The story of a grease-obsessed disco tour host and his son, this film revels in its compulsion to pervert just about anything that resembles normalcy. From the awkward sex scenes to the prominent moments of full-frontal male nudity (I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael St. Michaels was cast largely because of his… asset, as it were) to the Basket Case-levels of gore involved in the titular murderer’s trade, it aims for gross-out material and actually manages to pull it off.

This is furthered greatly by Andrew Hung’s soundtrack, which isn’t so much low-fi as it is the Paranoia Agent soundtrack recreated on the budget of the average Tiktok video. It’s so incredibly chintzy and remarkably inconsistent with its instrumentation (which ranges from bargain-basement synths to organic drum work) that it serves as the perfect accompaniment to a film trying this hard to be strange.

While the strangeness involved begins right with the opening production credits, with Timpson Films making for the most graphic production logo of any film I’ve ever covered on here (as well as Elijah Wood’s Spectrevision, showing their backing of the surreal that would lead to them working on Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy), the film itself is deceptively normal-looking. From the sterile crispness of Mårten Tedin’s camera work and framing to the humdrum set design, it looks like any other indie rom-com. It creates a solid juxtaposition between how regular this looks compared to its frequent moments of memetic surreality, but it also proffers an interesting notion: This is basically the same level of naïve oddity as the works of Ed Wood, made by filmmakers with the budget and production values to look like an actually good movie.

That’s where the other side of the strangeness comes from: The seemingly-ordinary narrative tropes and surprisingly solid acting chops put right next to how insane this all gets. St. Michaels as Ronnie gives an immediately over-qualified tone with his delivery, treating every falsified story about disco legends in his hometown and every moment of obsession over the amount of grease in his breakfast like he’s aiming for Oscar mentions. There’s also Sky Elobar as his son Brayden, as well as love interest Janet played by Eastbound & Down regular Elizabeth De Razzo. Their romantic subplot, as littered as it is with love triangle tropes and a truly unique (read: perplexing) resolution, is rather sweet with how the two keep wooing each other with self-consciously corny lines. It shows a level of genuine heart that, like everything else here, clashes with the intent of the production so loudly that it only adds another layer of bonkers to the proceedings.

Then there’s the overall writing from director Jim Hosking and co-writer Toby Harvard, which should ring familiar to those who have ever looked at the works of Tim & Eric or even Napoleon Dynamite. Much like the film it’s couched in, there is an overwhelming sense that these people are actively fighting for their winced reactions from the audience, pushing for catch-phrases so hard that entire scenes can go by just repeating a single line. Whether it’s Ronnie and Brayden perpetually calling each other bullshit artists, or the infamous ‘hootie tootie disco cutie’ scene that is guaranteed to have that line stuck in your head forever, the concerted effort behind the writing and delivery is quite apparent… and yet, it doesn’t come across nearly as try-hard as it would normally because what is going is indeed just that weird.

That’s probably the strangest part of this whole thing. Films like this, ones that go down in cult film history for just how unlike-anything-else they are, usually come about through a full-force adherence to the vision of a director who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Directors like Tommy Wiseau or Neil Breen; people who are so intoxicated on their own ego that they think they’re creating masterpieces, when in reality they’re creating unintentional comedy gold. Intentionally recreating that vibe, that ‘we’re making a bad movie on purpose’ atmosphere, is typically as see-through as anything because stuff like this only comes about through sheer accident. This sort of thing never comes about because it’s what the filmmakers actively wanted to happen… but Jim Hosking seems to have cracked the code.

I can guarantee that there are a lot of people out there who will outright hate this movie. This creepy, gross, incessantly-fishing-for-memorability ride can be a tall order to push through, even for a film that only just surpasses 90 minutes. But this goes beyond just being a weird movie, or even being weird for the sake of it; it’s one of the few things in living memory that set out to be as subversive and strange as possible, utilising techniques from cult icons past and present to make it happen, and actually manages to pull it off. It is legitimately that bizarre, it is unlike anything else out there, and every single aspect of its production, from the all-out batshit craziness to the more subdued faux-normalcy right next to it, is in service to the creation of a singularity of unforgettably ingenious insanity. I can’t guarantee that you’ll like it, but I can guarantee that you’ve never seen anything like it.