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STUDIO: Unearthed
MSRP: $18.99
RATED: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 88 Minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
None
The Pitch
We’ve got $5,000 and a couple of pornstars… let’s make a movie!
The Humans
Charlie Laine, Matt Jones, Matt Bianco, Marek Matousek, Jacqui Holland and Sally Sandoval.
It’s all fun and games until someone gets an ant inside them.
The Nutshell
In the 1950’s, a director of soft core fetish pictures, named Samy Lands, gets arrested and convicted for a double homicide the media dubs “The Greenhouse Murders”. The police connect the killings to some sort of black magic ritual because of evidence leading them to believe the murders were filmed and that the women were a sacrifice of some kind. Fifty years later, Samy’s son Chet (Jones) sets out to clear his father’s name by finding the reel that’s been missing all these years. He also must try and find a way to keep his club, Nylon, from going out of business. Chet teams up with a sexy and twisted…mortgage broker named Veronica (Laine) who has her own reasons for wanting to find the film and helping save Nylon. As Chet and Veronica search for the missing film, they sink deeper and deeper into the world of sexual fetishes and their own darkest desires.
The Lowdown
Holy shit. It’s not the worst I’ve ever seen, but it’s close. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what to write when telling you folks about this movie because, frankly, sharing this movie with people is counterintuitive to what should happen, which is acting like it never happened. But then I realized that, by watching this movie, I could serve as a cautionary tale to those who have time that is more precious than mine. The main thing that’s wrong with this whole enterprise (other than the acting, directing and it’s overall demeanor) is the fact that the story makes no sense whatsoever. None of the scenes connect to the following scenes and the big twist at the end is fucking nonsensical. There’s also no internal logic to the film. Not even a little. In order to get into the specifics of why this movie isn’t worth your time, I’m going to have to talk about the ending a little bit, so consider this your spoiler warning if you believe that shit like this can spoil.
Anyone up for a game of Five Card Genital Warts? No? Cowards.
First off, aside from Chet and Veronica, all of the characters are basically pointless. There’s an INS Agent named Montes who is undercover at the club to bust illegal’s, but who and what kind we’re never informed of. She tries busting a couple of strippers (named Zipper and Catfish!) but they have all their papers in order so she just goes back to stripping. Her cover is totally blown, yet she keeps giving lap dances instead of going back to her INS job, not because she likes it but because the story requires it. Veronica has a vaguely Eastern European husband that she hates named Ric. We learn that it was a marriage of convenience as Ric needed a green card and promised Veronica $250,000 that she hasn’t been paid yet. There’s also Stockton, a dirty cop who is extorting money from Chet so he doesn’t raid the club for illegal prostitution, which isn’t really happening in the first place. The only reason for these characters to exist is so they can be used for one twist in the final five minutes of the film.
While looking through some of his Dad’s old blue movies, Chet gets the idea that the only way to save the club is to start doing live fetish shows. It’s all extremely tame in relation to the fetish type stuff you can see on the internet. There’s spanking, shoe licking, foot sucking, nylon sniffing, leather, latex, chicks with leg braces, a ton of binding, sadism, masochism, sub\dom, boob whipping, choking, choking with nylons and general uncleanliness. Since Chet’s father made fetish flicks in the ’50’s, Chet mostly focuses on the Bettie Page type fetish stuff as opposed to the darker, edgier stuff. If you’re gonna make a movie called American Fetish, the least you could do is throw in a little scat or suspension or something. If you’re looking for something to be an expose’ on the underground fetish scene, I would watch anything other than this film. It sheds no light on the mind-set of fetish addicts, nor does it give any insight into the world or community surrounding it. The saddest part of all is none if it is sexy. It’s all so poorly lit and flatly shot that it’s impossible to be aroused by any of it.
I don’t have the greatest eyes, but doesn’t this look like Santa, balls deep in a glory hole or a tree trunk? American Fetish even ruins Christmas.
Finally, in the last five minutes, there’s some progress. While Chet is watching one of his father’s old movies from the 1950’s (not the one he’s looking for) he sees footage of Veronica and Agent Montes making out and they haven’t aged a day. So, a confused Chet looks in the box he’d been searching through the whole movie and finds the reel, near the top, under a pair of nylons. This movie lasted 88 minutes because Chet isn’t a very thorough searcher? Anyway, he puts the reel on and it has a trio of hooded figures in pig masks (complete with oinking sounds) cutting the throat of Veronica and Agent Montes. The hooded pigs are taking their masks off only to reveal Chet’s friend Zach, Veronica’s husband Ric and Stockton as the murderers. Then the filmmaker steps in front of the camera and it’s Chet. This naturally disturbs Chet, so he blinks his eyes and FUCKING TIME TRAVELS BACK TO 1950 and discovers the greenhouse with the bodies inside right when the cops show up who arrest him and put him in a mental hospital. The last shot is Chet in his cell playing solitaire, staring at a chick wrapped in nylon writhing against the wall.
This ending leaves me with a few questions for the film. If Veronica and Mexicagent Montes were ghosts or time travelers, then why did they get jobs as mortgage brokers and INS agents, respectively? Shouldn’t they have just haunted some shit instead of working for $45,000 a year? If Chet committed the murders in the 1950’s, then why did his father spend 50 years in jail? Was the entire film a delusion of Chet’s while locked up in a mental hospital? If so, then why didn’t you come up with a better idea than that, or at least make that idea clearer and less shitty. If Chet made the movie in the 1950’s, then shouldn’t he have known where he hid it in 2010? Why did you cast Matt Jones as Chet? He’s not even trying to make facial expressions or changing the tone of his voice to signify emotion and meaning. You should have done better, American Fetish. You should have done better.
Chud made me wear this straight jacket so I wouldn’t remove my eyes while watching this film.
I know I spent a lot of time talking about the plot of this movie, but I did it for two very important reasons. 1) I enjoy fucking with you. 2) Now you don’t ever have to watch it. If you ever see it, any time ever, at all, you have no one to blame but yourself since you couldn’t find one other movie other than this one. Any other movie. The acting is wooden and lifeless but nowhere near as flat as the light deficient cinematography. Charlie Laine gives the least worst performance in the film, but I’m mostly judging that on the amount of times she showed me her ass. Which was three. The sound design and editing are the worst I’ve seen outside of Charlie Laine’s other movies. The script is stilted and almost sounds like it was translated into English by Persians. But the biggest deficit of them all would be that none of it is hot. It’s a low budget movie about fetishes starring one of the sexiest pornstars out there and it’s lit so that every tied up stripper or spank happy Hot Topic chick is half in darkness. The naked half. I felt like I was watching a movie about bowling that only had the sounds of the pins falling for an hour and a half.
Rent something else. If you’re into fetishes this will only disappoint. If you’re not into fetishes then why did you read this whole review? I don’t think it will pick up steam in cult circles the same way The Room did because it doesn’t have Tommy Wiseau. Don’t watch this. In fact, I want you to forget you read this as soon as you click away, because you probably will never hear of American Fetish outside of this page and then you can move on with your life. You can do better, too.
This looked better in Demon Knight and so does your mom.
The Package
Since this was a screener, there were no special features other than the film letting me know who’s property it was for the entire running time. Also, it came in an attractive cardboard sleeve.