After the sleeper success of Emanuele De Santi's ambitious amateur outing ADAM CHAPLIN (2010), the same production company, Necrostorm run by his brother Giulio De Santi, returns with a new SOV sci-fi / gore outing. Sporting a title that will leave a lot of viewers who are not fluent in 5000 year old dead languages confused ("taeter" is a latin word meaning "foul" or "offensive"), Giulio De Santi aims for sensory overload with an episodic, disjointed mess that plunders a whole slew of genre classics without doing justice to any of them. Of course as some wise Aussies once said, "if you want blood, you got it."
Set in the presumably distant future, Taeter City is run by The Authority, a faceless corporation that employs cops and freelance "biker" units to judge (Dredd) the cities criminals on the spot. The criminals are few and far between however because of the Zeed units (which look suspiciously like power transformers). Zeed units are planted around the city and send out a signal that causes people with particular brain abnormalities that indicate a potential for criminal activity to suddenly kill themselves in the most gruesome way. The cops then come to pack up the mess and deliver the remains to a processing facility that turns what was once a time-bomb of criminal behavior into... lunch. Yes, in this future, animal farming and all of its ugly by-products (slaughtering and eating) is a crime punishable by death. The perp-meat is packed up and sent to Authority run fast food chains called Taeter Burger, who live up to their name by running obnoxious ads all over the city. Literally.
When not gore-ging themselves on "boiled brain with bone sausage" the residents of Taeter City watch the Authority TV channel which is a guy holding half a mask on his face, giggling maniacally and pimping The Authority and Taeter Burger ala "Max Headroom". Apparently in this urban mecca, people can invent a signal generator that affects a percentage of the population with a specific brain anomaly, but nobody has ever thought of spirit gum. Giulio De Santi apparently loves this guy as we get clips of his campy giggle played everywhere. On the DVD menu (which also runs the Taeter Burger ads), as interstitials between scenes, on the sides of buildings, in the background, everywhere. This, above all else, wears out its welcome in really short order and probably made me less forgiving of this movie than I would have been otherwise.
Insert Uncle Bob Martin "Splitting Headache" joke here. |
Sadly this is referencing "Mortal Kombat", not THE STREETFIGHTER (1974). |
Where CHAPLIN amazed me with its inventive, possibly revolutionary blend of CG and practical effects, TAETER CITY is definitely a step backwards. In CHAPLIN a few characters wore prostheic face masks through out their scenes, so that when their head-crushing demise arrived, it wouldn't look so different from what we had been looking at previously. It's effective on an amateur level, but here in CITY we have every character wearing a mask. The cop showing the simulation wears a half-skull mask, the guy responsible for Trevor's mutation wears a baby-face mask ripped out of BRAZIL (1984), hell there's a random "simulator" scene where Trevor walks into what is presumably a hamburger joint (hard to tell as the establishing shot looks like a gas station) and the cook is wearing a cut-out, paper pig mask. Why? So Trevor can stab him in the eye with a fork and they won't have to do any difficult effects work. Why does Trevor stab him with a fork? He be crazy an' shit.
There are a few well done effects (mainly another head crushing which is used in the promotional material), but they don't make up for the major short comings.With so much stuff lifted from other movies, intentionally campy dubbing, sloppy effects, mock ads that repeat ad nauseum, and the scant near 65 minute running time (which doesn't include the slowest credit scrawl ever, which clocks in at almost 8 minutes and warns of an impending TAETER CITY 2), this turns out to be a major letdown following ADAM CHAPLIN, but still it beats the hell out of VIOLENT SHIT 4 any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
I think that first line explains so much about this movie |
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