Rating: 3.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2018 | 6/52 | Video Nasties
A hand lights a gas stove. Cut to a furnace burning in a factory. Donny watches the furnace churn before a coworker, Ben, shuts it to protect his eyes. In another stove is a flammable, pressurized canister. Ben stokes the fire, causing the canister to explode, setting Ben on fire. Donny stares in horrified fascination, unable to move, as other workers rush in to put out the fire, yelling at Donny for doing nothing. Donny mumbles something about the cover of the flame protecting Ben.
Donny returns home to the house he shares with his mother. He starts on her tea, lighting a match to ignite the gas stove. A child’s voice in Donny’s head begs his mother not to. Donny brings the tea up to his mother’s room only to find her dead. The shock overwhelms him, but voices in the house tell him that he is free and that they will help him. Then, another voice that sounds like his mother chastizes him. The other voices tell Donny that the flame must purify her.
A flashback shows Donald’s mother calling him into the kitchen when he is a child. She “burns the evil out of him” by holding his arms over the stove fire. The next day, Donny calls in sick to work to line the upstairs with aluminum. His coworker and friend, Bobby, calls to check on him, thinking it’s about Ben, but Donny barely remembers. He stops by a flower shop to get flowers for his “sick” mother. As he and the florist, Kathy, leave the shop, Kathy misses her bus, so Donny offers her a ride. He asks if he can drop the flowers off at his house first, making excuses after excuses to get her into the house. When she tries to call a cab, he knocks her out.
When Kathy comes to, she is naked and chained up in a room lined with aluminum. Donny enters wearing a fire-retardant suit, carrying a flamethrower. The film follows Donny as he goes on his path to purify the sinful, all while the line between reality and his mind crumbles around him.
I guess I saw an edited version of the movie, because the infamous murder scene is practically non-existent. This version only shows Kathy from the neck up and cuts as soon as the flamethrower cuts on. I’m not complaining — it’s just interesting how tame this movie is otherwise. Don’t get me wrong — this movie is still deeply fucked up. I’ll let you discover how on your own.
The film explores the types of relationships that men form in their lives through Donny’s traumatized lens. His mother acted as the all-knowing controller of his life, so when she died, he struggled to know what to do with himself. The voices in his head tell him to murder, but he also seeks the help of a priest, a friend from work, and a clothing salesman. All of them tell Donny what they think would make his life work, whether it’s the lord, some babes, or a nice suit for the disco. All of them see facets of Donny, but none see the troubled person who doesn’t trust himself.
It also doesn’t help that Donny lies to try and impress people, the way kids make up stories to sound tough or important. I’ve known adults who never grew out of that compulsion, and you want to shake them and tell them it’s okay to tell the truth, but they are too lost in their narrative.
In this way, the film gives an empathetic lead in Donny, much like Maniac. We don’t root for Donny, but we understand, in part, why he does what he does. While you’ll recognize the movies this one is riffing off of, this film stands on its own.
One of the best scenes is one where Donny dreams of explosions and emulsified bodies surrounding him, crawling out of the ground to drag him down. Also, the ending is totally unhinged.
The film also has a queer reading, especially once the disco comes into play, but the narrative is too problematic through that lens for me to chase down that interpretation.