Jak Kendall plays the annoyingly meek Jimmy. Musician Mike Patton in his acting debut plays his brother David who dominates the family and rapes Jimmy. Their mother Eleanor is played like a sinister version of Requiem for a Dreams Ellen Burstyn by Karen Black, who also plays a circus singer Sandra, who was pregnant by David but forced to have a DIY abortion by the circus owner, also played by Patton, who genitally disfigures her. While Black uncannily plays two opposite characters Will Patton succeeds in neither part. I could not decipher a reason for the dual roles. A friendship develops between Sandra and Jimmy and he begs her to let him join the circus as her piano player. David is murdered and Susan Traylor plays the investigating officer. Brooke Baldersons plays a silly mystical character entirely unrelated to the plot and as a serious actress she fails. Visually it aims for David Lynch circa Wild at Heart but the constant shifting from black and white to colour just jarringly reminded me that I was watching a film. It has some of the overacting of Balderson excellent camp trash-fest Pep Squad but rarely aims for humour. While the first half of the film isn’t great, the second lags as we wait for the murder to be revealed and little else happens, though the film has its moments, including a Hitchcockian scene involving a washing line. The soundtrack consists of effective industrial noise and bad low budget over dramatic stereotypical film music. Appearances by The Enigma and Katzen are appreciated but the film is not got a patch on Santa Sangre or Freaks.
2.5/5
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