Cult
Epics | Buy
RED SILK at Amazon.com
| Review
by Crites
Grindhouse
blues play over softcore stills as the credits
roll, and straightaway we're poolside with
a pair of naked dykes setting up their evening
John. Good start, good start... But this
encounter is only barely laughable, whether
you concentrate on the tubby Paglicacci-fancier,
his two gruesome hos (for fucksake, these
chicks look like Edie Falco and her mother!)
or the fact that our sucker suddenly offers
the hag-faced whores an important smuggling
job.
Meeting the wenches at a café
the next day John passes over a number of
stolen artworks (stolen, judging by their
quality, from the very hotel that houses
the café) that are to be delivered
to... some guy, someplace, or something.
I'd save this for later, but I have to mention
at this point that the ridiculously flat
plot is made further incomprehensible by
the fact that all of the dialogue appears
to have been dubbed in – with badly
faked foreign accents. Whether this is a
goof or meant to make the picture seem more
fancily European is beyond me, but it only
amplifies the essential shittiness of the
film and makes the shit-brained story all
the harder to follow. Anyway, the two broads
immediately start planning a double-cross,
and somehow manage to get their new patron
pinched by a detective who for some reason
leaves the artwork in question in the hands
of the whores.
Shortly thereafter they fuck
over a fellow lowlife who was trying to
help them out by blackmailing them, steal
a car and get a hold of one of crime boss
Roman's snuff films. Sneaking onto Roman's
estate and finding him alone and unguarded,
the wenches proceed to shake him down and
call him "motherfrucker." Taking
his bank cards they set off to collect his
'riches' as Roman gets a surprise from his
trusty henchman Fargas, who has apparently
fallen in love with his boss' latest would-be
starlet. There's the worst fake-out in cinematic
history and, finally, this is over.
'Cult' filmmaker Jess Franco
here proves that whatever he had he's lost
entirely, shaking out a truly useless piece
of video that, well, just sucks on every
level. And then invents new ones and keeps
on climbing the ladder of suck. To paraphrase
Homer Simpson, "I've seen flicks suck
before, but that was the suckiest bunch
of suck that ever sucked."
The distinctively cheap shot-on-video
look has all of the production value and
skill of amateur porn, just without the
talent. The bad dubbing's been covered (but
it never gets less annoying), as has the
essential unattractiveness of the overly-sexually
active performers. Interludes of the whores
getting it on with each other stop and start
randomly for no other reason than to provide
unpleasant vignettes of filler space; these
are apparently meant to be arousing but
instead come off as grotesque. Dog-faced
lesbians – Yow! Much as the plot itself,
these 'erotic' scenes revolve solely around
finding reasons to waste film. I mean video.
Stars Lulu Laverne (AKA Lina
Romay), Christie Levin, Zeke Cohen, Paul
Lapidus and Anna Stern. Extras include a
"sneak peek" at Franco's SNAKEWOMAN,
which promises to be every bit as vapid
and disappointing as RED SILK, and a collection
of trailers.
