i don’t box with kid gloves .
i don’t play nice , i’m not a nice guy , and i never , ever , go easy on a film .
i consider it to be a breech of some sort of code of ethics for a movie critic .
however , i do some favors , and these often come in the form of points that i hand to certain groups due to the artistic bravery .
rigormortis , the production company that has been my prime example of how money does not need to motivate filmmaking , gets several of these points each time .
i still , however , will not go easy on them .
they recently sent me a vhs copy of their down with america trilogy ( which begins , quite wittily , with a disclaimer that they are not trying to undermine america with the making of this film . ) and i decided to spend an hour of my day watching it .
in the famous lines of many martyrs , i have no regrets .
well , i do have some regrets , but that is not the point in the previous sentence .
the point of it was that down with america was a film that , from a critical standpoint , did not entirely disappoint me .
sure , the risky use of vhs instead of super 8mm or 16mm was a pain , and the natural light was one of the most annoying things about public access films , but the movie itself was fairly enjoyable .
down with america concerns a government agent , needless murder , and a book containing everything from the unabomber’s manifesto to the 1995 apple computer profit report .
like the previous films of rigormortis that i have reviewed , it displays an off-kilter humor and intelligence ? it succeeds in making me laugh where countless studio films fail .
the best way to see this film would be as a parody of the countless conspiracy films that we have been drowned in since the paranoia of the 80s .
a dying movement from the day they started , these paranoid `thrillers’ had the government always covering up something and had the same favorite word : `roswell . ‘
in down with america , the line `roswell’ is highly absent .
with an about ten minute running time , down with america effortlessly sidesteps every clich ? that the conspiracy films fell into , makes jokes at them at the same time , and provides us with funny and memorable characters .
again , i have seen movies that have gone on two hours with characters i couldn’t care less about .
the film , as previously stated , concerns a federal agent ( peter roach ) , an obsessed librarian ( meri stevens ) , a mystery man ( joe kaczkowski ) , and two people obsessed with silence in the library ( robb sherman , kevin flowers ) .
the plot : a book containing the secrets of all anarchists is hidden in ? a public library where it can be viewed by all .
from there we go into a delightful parody .
the federal agent claims his sovereign right to alter the truth , the librarian goes on a diatribe about the sanctity of books .
we spend our time laughing at fairly idiotic jokes that are performed much too well considering the lack of coaching of the cast .
although the actors and actresses are in small roles and give a whole new meaning to `no-name’ , it ends up being the no-name people who do a good job , delivering better performances as comic villains than half the crap that hollywood turns out .
for once , i don’t have a url that i know offhand to give you as to where to locate the film online .
i can only say that you should find my previous reviews of l’auto and les x-files and look up the rigormortis productions site in and of itself .
it’s almost as much fun as the film .