Wednesday, October 9 @ 7:30 PM / NEIU — The Auditorium at NEIU — 3701 W Bryn Mawr Ave
Tickets: $10 at the door
Directed by Larry Cohen • 1984
Iconoclast Larry Cohen can always be relied on to serve up films that are ridiculous, wild, and idea-rich beneath their trashy surfaces, and the under-seen Special Effects is no exception. Eric Bogosian stars as Chris Neville, a recently disgraced Hollywood filmmaker and full-time slimeball who secretly films his seduction and murder of an aspiring actress named Andrea (played by renaissance woman Zoë Lund). Like the devil himself, Neville lures anyone searching for Andrea into doing his bidding: to build a feature film around this real-life murder footage. Doubles and false faces fill out Neville’s cast and crew. Andrea’s devoted sad-sack husband (Brad Rijn of Smithereens) is cast as himself, an Andrea look-alike (also played by Lund) takes on the role of the murder victim, and an inept homicide detective trades detecting for a producer credit. Based on a screenplay Cohen wrote in the late ’60s, Special Effects drags the plot of Vertigo onto Cohen’s home turf, the grimy world of exploitation filmmaking. This small-scale production made with New York City artists and weirdos saw a middling theatrical release and went straight to video, never receiving the same attention as a much more well-known Hitchcock homage released the same year, Brian De Palma’s Body Double. But contemporary critics imply that an injustice has been done, like author Tony Williams who claims, “Cohen is a more genuine heir of Alfred Hitchcock… De Palma emphasizes style over content, Cohen better develops the radical aspects of Hitchcock’s work.” We can let the Brian and Larry camps duke that one out on their own, but Special Effects should have enough style and brains for everyone without sacrificing Cohen’s madcap sensibilities. Feel like garroting an incompetent employee with some 35mm film? Clear the set and go ahead! That’s show business, baby. (RL)
106 min • Hemdale • 35mm from Park Circus
Preceded by: “Ghostbusters Promo Reel” (1984) – 13 min – 35mm
NEXT UP: The King of Marvin Gardens on October 12 at the Music Box Theatre
