"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for 10/2/02: "Bitters and Blue Ruin"
By JOE BOB BRIGGS
Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas
Okay, let's start with the title: "Bitters and Blue Ruin."
I have no idea what it means, and I've already watched the
flick. In fact, I kept forgetting the title while I was screening
it. "Bitter Blue Rum"? "Ruined Blue Bitters"? "Ruined Bitter
Blues"?
Independent B-movie filmmaking rule number one: you have to
understand the whole movie from the title.
Ahem.
Also, they forgot to put a plot in this one--whoops!--or
else the plot is so complicated that I can't understand it, which
is two sides of the same doubloon. Normally the absence of a plot
doesn't bother me so long as you have a few exploding heads,
busty babes, motor vehicle chases or shower scenes. But this one
has no bullets and no nookie. Violating independent B-movie
filmmaking rule number two:
Any girl introduced as a floozy, femme fatale, flaky
girlfriend or mysterious stranger must make the sign of the
triple-snouted twin-humped aardvark. It's in the Constitution.
AND rule number three: When a firearm is discharged, you
MUST cut to the victim clutching his chest in agonizing pain and
writhing on the ground as blood squibs pop all over his body.
(All the gunplay in this one is off-camera.)
What I think they were going for here is Quirky. Quirky is
okay for a scene or two, but an entire movie devoted to Quirky
ends up making you feel like you've just watched six hours of
dinner theater while staring at your potato salad.
"Bitters and Blue Ruin" comes out of Philadelphia, where
first-time filmmakers Scott Elwell and Sean Kelley shot in black-
and-white to get the retro film-noir look of 1947 Philly. Instead
of gangsters, though, they use psychology professors, graduate
students, deans and failed film actors who TALK like gangsters.
(Beats me.)
This may, in fact, be the first film noir to revolve around
the thrillingly suspenseful theme of writer's block. Will
brilliant renegade psychologist Roddy Schiffman be able to score
an illicit blue liquid drug that frees him up so he can tap out
his breakthrough book on pathological narcissism on an old
Underwood typewriter? Or will he be stopped by a portly dean and
a rival faculty member who think he's an alcoholic menace?
I realize it's a comedy, but where's the sultry client with
a guilty secret? Where's the dead body in the vestibule? Where's
the partner who gets shot by the mob IN the vestibule? Where is
the mob? Where, for that matter, is the vestibule?
It's like a series of comedy sketches that don't hang
together too well and are mostly full of brainless chatter that
goes in 19 different directions. At the 2 hour, 11 minute mark--
and the movie is far from over--two of the main characters sit in
a Tiki bar called Flame of Fiji, sipping fruity cocktails and
discussing the philosophy of religion. Save me!
They rounded up some fairly decent Philadelphia actors,
especially Richard Bravo, who plays the dyspeptic carbine-loving
dean with a sort of Al Goldstein gusto, and Bruce Wilson, as the
absinthe-quaffing hero of our story. He's got the fedora. He's
got the tailored suits. He's got the sour-faced, slightly
constipated look of forties gangsters.
In fact, the most remarkable thing about the flick is that
it DOES look like a film noir, right down to the seedy hotel
rooms, taverns and Tiki restaurants. The cast is short on the
distaff side, and the hookers are a little long in the tooth for
their profession, but they got the costumes right and some of the
patter.
There are 32 actors listed in the opening titles, making it
necessary for me to point out independent B-movie filmmaking rule
number four:
There are precisely FOUR main characters in a film noir: the
strong guy, the weak guy, the gal who exploits the weak guy, and
the cop who's trying to hunt down the killer. Everything else is
like trying to put caviar on a Krispy Kreme donut.
Oh yeah, I just invented rule number five:
Never use a professor of any kind as the star of anything
except a mummy movie.
Okay, boys, nice technical work. Now get back over to West
Philly and try again.
Two dead bodies. No breasts. Two lame fistfights. One bar
fracas. Decent jazz score. Off-camera cigar-cutter torture.
Sausage-carving. Vacuum cleaner Fu. Drive-In Academy Award
nominations for Jeffrey Bravo, as the goofy grad student in a
newboy's cap who says "He ain't the boss of me!"; Eric Lyden, as
the official photographer to a vain faded film star, for making
movies with no actual movie camera in his hands; James Daniel
Boyle, as the blowhard thespian who was "supposed to be the next
Gary Cooper," for saying "I'm sure they saw my glowing review in
the Sacramento Bee"; James Gioffreda, one of the finest midget
actors working today; Bruce Wilson, as the drunken undercover
psychology professor who goes in search of a miracle drug, for
saying "The world's got my loins in a vise!"; and John Bravo, as
the nose-bandaged Professor Slavko P. Slavko.
One star.
Joe Bob says check it out.
"Bitters and Blue Ruin" website: http://mysteriumfilms.com.