American
Mary
A
Cut Above
While
horror movies over the years have featured more than their share of witless
bimbos and victimised females, horror is still one of the few genres where
woman are allowed to be strong and independent. Films like Lucky McKee’s The Woman and May, Mitchell Lichtenstein’s Teeth or more recently Richard
Bates Jr.’s wonderful Excision are all smart, politically aware genre-buckers featuring
tough, ballsy, no-nonsense woman who are victimised by but ultimately rebel against and triumph over patriarchal
society.
But
all those films were made by men…
So
thank God for the Twisted Twins, Canadian writer/director team Jen & Sylvia Soska, who’ve followed up the
sleazy, no-budget, exploitation delight that was their first film Dead Hooker
In A Trunk with
the bold, beautiful American Mary.
Brilliant
young medical student Mary (the fantastic Katharine Isabelle) has the potential to be a
gifted surgeon but is having difficulty making ends meet, her financial woes
forcing her to audition for a part-time job at the sleazy strip joint run by
small-time gangster Billy (Antonio Cupo). However, when she’s forced to tend to a tortured crook’s
injuries, she stumbles upon a far more lucrative sideline thanks to stripper
Beatress (Tristan Risk); servicing the needs of the underground body-modification
enthusiasts and surgical addicts who frequent the club. Surgically enhanced Betty
Boop-lookalike Beatress introduces Mary to some friends of hers with some
rather extreme cosmetic surgery demands that no conventional surgeon will
touch, friends like Ruby Realgirl (Paula Lindberg) who’s obsessed with
becoming a real-life (anatomically correct) Barbie doll and ‘the Demon Twins of
Berlin’ (played by the Soska Sisters themselves), and pretty soon Mary is the
go-to-gal for the underworld’s surgical fetishists. But when one of her professors subjects her to a vicious sex
attack, it’s time for ‘Bloody Mary’ to show him just how much she’s learned…
Unsettling,
erotic and darkly funny, American Mary is a perverse mix of body horror and
psychological thriller that despite its visceral material is refreshingly
restrained. Beautifully shot and
edited, the script may lose its way in the last act but it’s a stylish quantum
leap in quality from the Twins first film, the glorious but ramshackle Dead
Hooker In A Trunk, with a strong female protagonist in the shape of the
delightful Katharine Isabelle. Best
remembered for her role as the teen werewolf battling lycanthropy and
menstruation in Ginger Snaps, Isabelle is phenomenally good as the titular Mary; a
smart, resourceful, melancholic anti-heroine emancipated by her trip to the
dark side and she’s ably supported by burlesque performer Tristan Risk as Betty Boop fetishist
Beatress, Twan Holliday as burly bodyguard Lance and Cupo as sleazeball hopeless
romantic Billy.
Sexy,
dark and delicious, American Mary is, thank God, exactly the film you’d
hope a couple of bonkers Canadian Goth chicks would make; a smart, sensitive
slice of feminist horror that’s as sharp as its heroine’s scalpels.
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Katharine Isabelle, Antonio Cupo,
Tristan Risk,
David Lovgren,
Paula Lindberg,
Clay St. Thomas, Twan Holliday, Jen & Sylvia Soska
Genres:
Horror,
Thriller
Language:
English
Runtime:
1 hour 43 minutes
Certificate:
18
Year
2011
UK Cinema Release Date:
Friday 11th January 2013
Rating:
5/5
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