Excreamer (2004)

20th Dec 06





Plot
The blurb goes that in 1971 N.A.S.A. considered it a sound idea to load up a spaceship full of toilets for whatever reason. Cut to present day and the spaceship is hijacked by aliens who proceed to unleash the cargo of toilets upon the Earth. Before you know it the plot has run out of ideas just five minutes in and people are transmitting shit, Shivers -style, from one gob to another for another fifty five minutes… Welcome to Excreamer!

Review
Any movie that opens with a man – in this case lead character Professor Van Reek (played by the movie's writer/director Shane Mather) - welcoming a penetration from a smiley-faced dildo gets a chuckle from me. That this pleasure-giving contraption then pops up a couple more times for no discernible reason is indicative of the standard of movie you are about to watch when you sit down to view Excreamer – limited in ideas and never knowing when a gag has had it's day.

It's a shame as I do have the utmost respect for anyone that stumps up the cash to make their own movies and has enough good ideas to pull it off. Mr. Mather seems a nice fella however, by his own admission on his website, he mentions that he loathes political correctness and dares to break taboos that he feels very few independent filmmakers do. That's fair enough but if you're going to do it then please ensure it has a point and then have a coherent storyline and script to flesh it out. Doing so for the sake of doing so seems a little pointless.

Apparently Mather started the project in 2002 with a view to creating a movie that sent up Prime Minister Tony Blair's multi-cultural dreams – a snippet of which remains in a newscast. How Mather got to aliens and people ejecting shit into other people from such a premise is put down to budget. Perhaps a lack of ideas relating to the original subject matter was more the case.

Women get a fairly bum deal here, either being mute, beaten, raped and strangled to death or having their nipples chewed off. That said the men don't fair much better. However, unlike the female rape, scene the 'man' stuff is deliberately winking to the audience that it is meant to be funny, whereas the punching and kicking of a woman and repeatedly calling her a cunt before raping her is not. Tonally the rape scene is judged badly, failing to sit with the shit and blood that splatters the rest of the running time. Following such a scene with a 'joke' in the form of playing Cliff Richard's jolly Congratulations isn't breaking taboos it is just very, very wrong.

With the male characters much of the 'jokes' flap around homosexuality to the point where you wonder if the director fancied making a soft porn gay movie instead. Witness the scene where three men drink and play cards only for one of their number to be 'attacked' via his toilet, end up with girlie locks, snog his mate transferring 'shit' from one to the another before rubbing baby oil on him and joining his other mate for a threesome.

After establishing a comic vibe with it's opening scenes which included some ambitious, for such a budget, special effects as toilets are seen ejected from an alien craft and landing in key cities around the world, the mood is jarred by the aforementioned rape scene. From then the hour long movie doesn't flow at well with little making much sense. In fact just thirteen minutes in I was considering turning it off.

Whenever the action cuts back to Professor Van Reek things cheer up a little but unfortunately it's not enough. Everyone acts like they are in a different movie to everyone else and very little makes narrative sense or ties up. This might be a laugh for the guys making it but for anyone else it's an endurance test. People come and go and you're never any the wiser as to how or why they were there except for director Mathers to have as many blood squibs he can have go off just for the sake of it.

I'm awarding the movie one star for effort regardless of what the finish product is like as I take my hat off to anyone that stumps up the cash and gives making a movie ago. Here's hoping Mather can find someone that can write him a script, as he admits he loathes doing so and is asking for people to get in touch if they feel they can, because boy does he need one to rein in his excessive tendencies. Who knows a couple of movies down the line he may just produce something as likeable as Jake West's Evil Aliens.

There are extras on the disc including a commentary. However, because listening to the commentary meant watching the movie again I gave it a miss. I just couldn't find the strength to do so even if it meant missing out on seeing that male cutie with the girlie locks again.

Versions
One version is quite enough thank you.

Posted by
S Cockwell



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