The Review Cinema

AMERICAN MARY does not make you jump out of your seat, Directed by Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska opting instead for intelligent dark humour The clarity and precision of American Mary, and psychologically disturbing scenarios the new horror offering from Canadian in seedy surroundings. Rather than a directors and identical ‘Twisted Twins’ Jen collection of conventional ghoulish scares, and Sylvia Soska, stands in marked contrast the Soska sisters achieve a memorable and to their raw, no-budget breakthrough Dead suitably gothic visual, of Mary in red surgical Hooker in a Trunk. In more ways than just scrubs and black latex gloves operating to the title, the former is a much more subtle the sound of soothing piano arpeggios, or film, and demonstrates how impressive the practicing suturing on raw turkeys. sisters and their distinctive style can be, The plot line brings new meaning to © 2012 The Weinstein Company Inc given any budget at all. doctor–patient confidentiality, as Mary It tells the story of medical student and evades discovery by the authorities, (Samuel L Jackson) setting in motion a aspiring surgeon (or ‘slasher’) Mary Mason, and reaches a gory but rather poignant spiral of violence that ends in a bloody wonderfully portrayed by the laconic denouement, when she is finally faced with showdown. Katharine Isabelle, who stumbles upon the consequences. Remarkably, American There’s a scene near the start of Mel the sinister but lucrative world of ‘body Mary was shot in only 15 days, yet does Brooks’ gut-busting 1974 comedy Western modification’ and literally carves out a new not feel constrained or rushed, and with Blazing Saddles when the railroad career for herself. After a brutal, sexual an outstanding lead performance from foreman, Taggart (veteran character actor attack by one of her surgical lecturers, she Isabelle, it is a refreshingly understated and Slim Pickens), informs his henchman, abandons medicine and turns her skills funny tribute to its two talented creators. Lyle (Burton Gilliam), that there may be toward this twisted, underground cosmetic quicksand ahead. When Lyle offers to send surgery, helping her misfit clientele to Kim Lawrence Ah-See a team of horses ahead to test the ground, ‘express’ themselves through a ‘mod menu’ Email: [email protected] Taggart smacks him upside the head of procedures such as ‘tongue-splitting’ or saying: ‘Horses? We can’t afford to lose any DOI: 10.3399/bjgp13X664360 ‘voluntary amputation’. She even performs horses, you dummy! Send over a couple of an ‘appendage exchange’ on the ‘Demon n*****s’. Twins of Berlin’ (cameo by the Soska sisters It’s a throwaway moment of angry themselves) and with the help of strip-joint eloquence that, in one scene, lays bare * * * * * manager Billy (Antonio Cupo) finds time to over two centuries of American racism, exact gruesome revenge on her lecturer illuminating a brutally stark, uncomfortable (who serves as something of a practice truth; that the Land of the Free was built subject for her new-found speciality). on oppression. In the context of the film, DJANGO UNCHAINED Needless to say, surgeons are not it’s also shockingly funny. With his gory, Directed by Quentin Tarantino portrayed kindly. Laughing that they ‘cut cartoonishly violent reimagining of Sergio Set in America’s Deep South 2 years before up people for a living’, it is their ruthless Corbucci’s Django, Django Unchained, the Civil War, German former dentist turned treatment of Mary that transforms her from Quentin Tarantino, cinema’s greatest bounty hunter Dr King Schultz (Christoph a vulnerable student with financial issues, magpie, loudly makes the same point Waltz) purchases the slave Django (Jamie to the unflinching ‘Bloody Mary’, sauntering for two and three quarter hours (um, Foxx). Schultz is after a trio of outlaws, the from one grisly scene to the next. But the racism and slavery bad!) while homaging notorious Brittle brothers, and only Django gore is not gratuitous and the violence is (STEALING!) scenes here and there from can identify them. In return for fingering the more implied than graphic. American Mary his favourite Spaghetti Westerns and trying brothers Schultz offers Django his freedom to set a Guinness World Record for use of and trains him as a bounty hunter, taking Katharine Isabelle as American Mary. the ‘N-word’. him on as his partner. Funny and profane, packed full of Together the two men spend the entertaining cameos (Don Johnson and winter collecting bounties before setting Jonah Hill as ineffectual Klansmen, original out to rescue Django’s wife Broomhilda Django, Franco Nero) and awash with (Kerry Washington) from the clutches of blood, the resulting collage may just be moustache-twirling villain Calvin Candie Tarantino’s best film in years (certainly (Leonardo DiCaprio), owner of the infamous since Kill Bill: Vol 1) even if does feel at Candyland plantation, where he trains male times like you’re watching Sam Peckinpah’s slaves as ‘mandingo’ fighters for vicious Blazing Saddles. human cockfights while prostituting the female slaves. When Django and Schultz David Watson infiltrate Candyland under false pretences Email: [email protected] however, they arouse the suspicions of Candie’s duplicitous house-slave Stephen DOI: 10.3399/bjgp13X664379

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