Another Hole in the Head Film Fest Reviews: “Easy Does It” and “Housesitter: The Night They Saved Siegfried’s Brain”
By: Joseph Perry
Those who long for the days of 1970s cinematic antiheroes and road movies — Smokey and the Bandit, Grand Theft Auto, and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, for example — should find plenty to love in director Will Addison’s feature film debut, Easy Does It, which has a heart as big as the parking lots of your favorite old twin drive-in theater. In this seventies-set tale, Ben Matheny (who co-wrote the screenplay with Addison) stars as Jack Buckner, a down-on-his-luck dreamer who receives a postcard from his recently deceased mother telling him that he can find something special buried on a beach where they once took a family vacation.
He and his friend Scottie Aldo (Matthew Paul Martinez) quit their dead-end dishwashing jobs and small-time conning of transient men to set out from Mississippi to California to go after the possibly life-changing treasure — with only a few pennies to their name and a near-empty gas tank. First, though, they must outwit and outrun local crime matriarch King George (Linda Hamilton) and her violence-prone daughter Blue Eyes (Susan Gordon). They find themselves becoming wanted men after taking a meek hostage (Corey Dumesnil as Collin Hornsby) at a gas station holdup. Their misadventures are both a load of fun and bittersweet, and Addison directs this whimsical film splendidly. He is aided by a superb cast — you root wholeheartedly for the main characters, no matter how much trouble they make for themselves, thanks to the fine performances of Matheny, Martinez, and Dumesnil, and the supporting cast is top-notch, as well — beautiful cinematography by Bruno Doria (Kickboxer: Vengeance), and a cool soundtrack. Addison has crafted a terrific tribute to pursuing the American dream, full of moxie and verve.
Director Robert Nuyen shot Housesitter: The Night They Save Siegfried’s Brain in 1987, but it sat unfinished until this year. Now unleashed on an unsuspecting world, this slasher/mad scientist hybrid is driven by nuttiness and a whole lot of chutzpah. Richard J. Gasparian stars as Andy, a university student working on transferring information from one brain to another — and he is an Elvis Presley fan whose Elvis action figure helps him with homework and life advice. Little does Andy know that his mentor Dr. Ambrose Crosby AKA Doc (David Karsten) has an evil plan to murder Andy and several of his partygoers to gain the baker’s dozen of human brains he needs for his own nefarious experiments. The scenes set in Doc’s lab are shot in black-and-white, while everything else is in vivid color, including copious throat slashing and other gore gag scenes. At times, it feels like there is as much inner monologue as there is spoken dialogue, and there are loads of puns and groaner jokes, most of which fall flat, which may have been the intent of co-writers Gasparian (who went on to a successful career as an animation timing director, for such vehicles as The Simpsons and Family Guy) and Nuyen. Housesitter: The Night They Save Siegfried’s Brain is a true labor of love that should find success as a party film and on the film festival circuit with audiences looking for a fun time with a newly discovered slice of 1980s horror comedy cheesiness.
Easy Does It and Housesitter: The Night They Save Siegfried’s Brain screened at Another Hole in the Head Film Fest, which runs December 1st –15th at New People Cinema in San Francisco.
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Ghastly Grinning (ghastlygrinning.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
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