'EFFECTS' (1979) or; "I REGULARLY WORKED WITH GEORGE ROMERO AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS UNRELEASED MOVIE"

Way back in 2009, a tidy bunch of maniacs, which includes directors NICHOLAS WINDING REFN and FRANK HENENLOTTER, ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE founders TIM and KARRIE LEAGUE, and rapper RZA, pooled their collective madness to develop the non-profit organisation, the AMERICAN GENRE FILM ARCHIVE (AGFA); a super-repository of over SIX THOUSAND film prints ranging from forgotten/underappreciated gems to outright pieces of shit. What a time to be alive, right?!

Working closely with a handsome group of genre distributors such as ARROW, SEVERIN FILMS, and, in particular, VINEGAR SYNDROME, AGFA have already unleashed an unprecedented degree of cult titles on an unsuspecting and unprepared world. Until recently, American consumers have been the lucky buggers when it comes to the lions share of these titles, but luckily, those delicious bastards at 101 FILMS have brokered the kind of distribution deal with VINEGAR SYNDROME that makes my already-weeping wallet scream for the sweet release of death…

***When you order Joe Spinell from Wish.com***

THE SYNOPSIS:

While a small film crew is shooting a low budget horror movie in a house in the woods, the lines between reality and fiction start to blur, and the movie slowly starts to turn into a "snuff" film.

THE REVIEW:

If you were to slip this disc into your player and start reading this review the moment the film began, it’s ok. I know what you’re thinking; “uh-oh. This looks like the kinda movie where some jobbing young actress from Nebraska is gonna have to take her top off and writhe around on a filthy mattress in the middle of a dilapidated wood shack”. Well, I’m here to tell you that you’re only partially right. Sure, it might look like that’s going to be the case, but, mercifully, there is only one instance of gratuitous tittery and it’s actually reasonably tasteful. To be honest, that’s the degree of respect for actual filmmaking I’d expect from some of GEORGE A ROMERO’s extended film family, who made this movie using change they presumably found in the pockets of dead transients. It’s certainly not without its merits, though; TOM SAVINI effortlessly breezes through his part in the movie with a natural fluidity which reinforces my belief that, had his career in make-up effects ever fallen through, he’d have easily carved out a living as a damn fine actor, and JOE PILATO, some six years before we’d ever hear him bellowing about his new-found responsibility in ensuring the smooth operation of a jackanapes’ smallholding, brings a suitably restrained and naturalistic performance to his role as beleaguered camera-man Dominic. Other areas of note include the OST, which is fun, quirky and off-kilter, and it is used to remarkably good effect throughout. The editing is also surprisingly good for the most part considering that I was absolutely expecting it to accurately simulate the sensation of having a concussion. But, since we’re talking about the editing, the film isn’t without it’s “less expected” problems, and having someone with a large pair of scissors run rampant in the cutting room would have been to the benefit of everyone…

***A solid fishing hat is a necessary part of the process, apparently. Hollywood taught me that.***

The first 45 minutes are a Herculean feat of endurance, and by the time we’re first granted a glimpse of sleazy director character Lacey Bickel’s student film, an uncomfortable and highly effective black and white presentation of a hulking meat-sack of a man wearing a burlap murder-mask and tying a woman to a chair before stabbing her in the soft parts, you’d be forgiven for having lost a certain degree of interest. It’s certainly worth noting though that this, the stunned silence of the assembled revellers bearing witness to what appears to be a genuine snuff movie, is one of a handful of scenes where the attention is well and truly drawn to the onscreen action, so it’s frustrating that a large chunk of the movie, at the beginning and part way into the middle at least, is spent on poorly paced character building and asinine nonsense.

EFFECTS, from the offset, isn’t entirely transparent in its intentions, and the long stretch of time spent prior to anything actually interesting happening could potentially leave you asking the last thing any filmmaker should want the audience to be asking of themselves; “when does the movie start?”. That it becomes genuinely intriguing so close to the end of its sparse 84 minute runtime, and without any set up of any real substance to support itself, is infuriating. On the plus side, and given the film’s central setting, this could very, very easily have been some nasty, cheap, exploitative, piece of shit, and it certainly is not that. Enough directorial flourishes exist within EFFECTS for it to be classed as a fascinating, if flawed, piece of work, and could even make one believe that the director, DUSTY NELSON, may well have gone on to much bigger and better things, but instead he made NECROMANCER. So, yeah…

THE PRESENTATION:

Look, let’s get real for a second; one, single 35mm film print of this movie exists anywhere in the entire world, ok? This flick was shot in 1979. It never had a theatrical release. Shit, up until the point where SYNAPSE released it on DVD in 2005, it had never even been seen on home video before. The film stock looks like the undercarriage of a Kraken. It’s abysmal. BUT by god, if you can just put your unquenchable thirst for crystal clear imagery to one side for a fleeting moment in time, you have to appreciate just how stable the image is and how good the sound is. Restorative miracles have been performed on this transfer, you animals. Restorative. Miracles.

THE FEATURES:

Archival commentary track with John Harrison, Dusty Nelson, and Pasquale Buba
UBU short film
BEASTIE short film
Liner notes by Joseph A. Ziemba of AGFA and Bleeding Skull!
AFTER EFFECTS documentary with optional commentary track

EFFECTS, along with LADY STREETFIGHTER, are the first in an ongoing series of AGFA releases distributed by 101 FILMS in the U.K. and are available to order now by visiting https://101-films-store.com/collections/agfa

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