In a review by Brian J Dillard he offered a list of people
that are likely to be offended by the 1999 exploitation movie Freeway
2: Confessions of Trickbaby: lawyers, African-Americans, correctional officers,
people with eating disorders, wheelchair users, lesbians, Latinos, amputees,
poor white people, the elderly, Catholics, transsexuals, the entire population
of Tijuana, and anyone who is disturbed by necrophilia, incest, paedophilia,
vomit, prostitution, drug use, compulsive masturbation, multiple homicide,
Vincent Gallo's acting career, or gigantic prosthetic genitalia. Not a bad
description of a film that offensive to nearly everyone but one that probably
qualifies for cult status!
Described
as a satire on America's confessional culture, both the films main characters
are exactly the kind of pathologically dysfunctional social misfits who are
wheeled out to confess their sins on carnivalesque American TV talk shows. 15-year-old
Crystal Van Meter known as White Girl (Natasha Lyonne) has been sentenced to 25
years for various crimes including posing as a prostitute to beat up and rob
men, and dealing in drugs. Her first port of call is a minimum-security
hospital to seek treatment for bulimia. While there she teams up with Angela
Garcia, a psychotic young lesbian known as Cyclona who is starting a life
sentence for multiple killings. Both escape and make it across the border to
Mexico and ending up in Tijuana where they meet up with the very strange Sister
Gomez (Vincent Gallo) who our young killer thinks is her guardian angel. On the way White Girl realises that her
travelling companion, now dressed as a boy, is a serial killer when she murders
a family of three and has bloody sex with two of the dead bodies, but it's to
late for White Girl to turn back so she has to join her friend on a murderous
road trip to gain salvation at the hands of a Catholic Nun with a monstrous
prosthetic penis!
A movie that's not afraid to confront taboo subjects and
this stylised modern equivalent of the German folk tale does just that. In
Hansel and Gretel feeding is a metaphor for sex and power, where the witch
lures the young boy and girl into her house with the promise of food intending
to fatten them up and eat them herself. When we reach the ‘church’ of Sister
Gomes we find a basement full of very young children! According to Chris
Campion's notes that accompany the Tartan Video release its Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974)
that is the movies closest equivalent being a road movie that descends into the
heart of darkness. But in my humble opinion I would say that the Alejandro
Jodorowshy’s avant-garde film Santa Sangre (1989) and John
Waters movies had more relevance to our story. I think that with a lot of
exploitation grind house movies the enjoyment, or not, will be in the eye of
the beholder.
"Come to Sister Gomez and repent your sins children" |
No comments:
Post a Comment