Friday, June 4, 2010

The Vampire's Assistant (2009)




Cirque du Freak:
The Vampire's Assistant (2009)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEuX1A2qVrQ&feature=related

“Meet Darren. He's sixteen going on immortal.”

Speaking of “Geek Love” and freaky places—like the Obama Forum. So like I was kinda pleasantly surprised to watch a new fuckin’ vampire movie. One that was actually funny and sexy at the same time.

Being a freak myself—I naturally or rather unnaturally felt myself gravitating to this flick as it got going. A lot of times I find myself so fuckin’ bored—I’m unable to sleep at night.

Who knows why? The crummy full moon, stinky Wolfbane blooming in the spring, the noisome nervous chatter inside my head when I think of all the fuckin’ shit going on in the world.

Jeeze lueez—my new fav phrase when I look in the fuckin’ mirror. Or when it’s midnight—and there’s nothing else to do but stare at Melba on the fuckin’ screen. My syntax slowly slipping down the fucking slippery slope—into another stupid douchebag American spring in my so-called life going down the shitter.

I dunno. So I guess it’s kinda nice to stop being serious, worried and high-road about anything. That’s when “facetious” kicks in. WTF, I feel myself getting frivolous, flippant—or to use that excellent word “facetious” that Gintaras coined for forum survivability there on Melba awhile back.

I’m sure the jocks are ahead of me—and many others. Jeeze lueez—why mind-fuck yourself, all the time man? What are you anyway—a fuckin’ freak?

What can I say? WTF? That’s when I watch a movie.

After all, how else can a freak like me exist—without laughing at myself. And everything else. What’s satire or dystopian dish or Snarke itself—without it?

Gintaras mentioned it offhand to me the other day. I liked the idea so much—that I put it as my motto down there at the bottom of the page.

Replacing my fuckin’ so-called activist literary hero Roberto Bolaño—with something totally “unpolitical” Fuck politics. I’ve been “politically incorrect”—my whole fuckin’ goddamn life. When the Gulf thing happened—well, like that was it. The back of the American century was finally broken—it started in Dallas. It’s been escalating ever since.

That’s when a good movie saves my fuckin’ ass. Sometimes I get one last chance to laugh at it all—the whole freak soup du jour moment, pardon my fuckin’ French. I lose myself in the action and just let it go—I just can’t get into snotty satire and twisted Snarkedom anymore.

It lasts about a minute. And then I’m back at it again. Selfishly, flippantly, facetiously… sick of the world. Gulfzilla, mon amour.

It fuckin’ helps to have a goodlooking “drop-dead for” lead—like Chris Massoglia. Jeez lueez—talk about dark angel bombshell. He plays this Daren Shan—a nouveau-chic chicken vampire. Ed Wood Jr. would die to cast Massoglia—in one of his flicks. Bye bye, Bella—so much for Lugosi. Bring on the kid…

Massoglia is kinda like Nick Stahl—the young stud who plays Ben Hawkins in “Carnivàle” (2003). That opening scene of half-naked Stahl—loaded outta his mind, dressed up in a lavender kimono, fallin’ down the steep steps of Professor Lodz’s “opium den” trailer—into the crazy clairvoyant life in the fast lane with the “Carnivàle” mob of freaks.

If I did a remake of “Carnivàle”—it would begin with young Massoglia doing the same thing. Stumbling down Lodz’s carnival steps—in a lavender kimono with fuckin’ fuchsia gladiolas oozing outta his eyeballs. Jeez lueez—what’d Lodz and the Bearded Lady do to that kid in there for a week?

Both young studs caught up in the most freaky carnival phantasmagorical roller-coaster ride of their lives. With “Cirque du Freak” letting it all hang out even more than “Carnivàle”—I bet Todd Browning would’ve loved the freak expose dimensions a la “Freaks” (1932).

All Todd Browning needed maybe—I suppose was a little more streak of campy facetiousness. Casting his pearls into the sawdust—with a little more help from Zip and Pip. A slightly more smirky striptease by Olga Vladimirovna Baclanova—bare-ass up there on her high trapeze. That kinda thing—facetious, flagrant, flippant, fuckin’ camp. The kind that would make me laugh so hard—I’d weep.

Young Massoglia sucked me into the flick—just like Stahl did. Both flicks about developing chicken clairvoyant powers—whether as a ‘30s Depression carnie roustabout boy or as a goodlooking vampire’s coquettish kid assistant. Their powers grow—taken in by the carnival freaky TPTB.

It’s the classic bildungsroman “coming out” story—of just about any kid. Just as relevant and germane—as Pip in “Great Expectations.” Add some freaks and vampires—and that’s what you get. Except “Cirque du Freak” is more advanced—with lots of gay closetry flaunting itself into the sunset.

No DADT or straight censorship here. Or rather if it is—then it’s subtly so satirized that such scenes almost pass by unnoticeably as the moon sails by overhead. Or maybe it’s just because the younger generation—is so much more jaded now.

In a very sophisticated way—that previous generations were unable to actualize. Their Gen-X style and sensibility—so relaxed that their frivolity and facetiousness seem almost invisible to us now?

John Reilly (Larten Crepsley) plays a much more gay and sophisticated version of Patrick Bauchau’s Professor Lodz. But both know the game pretty well—always playing mind-games and mind-fucking the kid who always plays the Assistant.

There’s this subtext to the young men and their mentors. It’s not even gay anymore. It’s more like that ancient apprenticeship that for centuries had been the basis for all sorts of things. In this flick it’s a rather slow-paced, lacksadaisical slide—back down into the virtues of young vampirehood.






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