Call Girl of Cthulhu (2014) — Triskaidekafiles

CALL GIRL OF CTHULHU

WRITER: Jimmy George and Chris LaMartina

DIRECTOR: Chris LaMartina

STARRING: David Phillip Carollo as Carter Wilcox

Melissa O'Brien as Riley Whatley

Nicolette LeFaye as Erica Zann

Dave Gamble as Sebastian Suydum

Helenmary Ball as Professor Edna Curwen

Sabrina Taylor-Smith as Squid

Alex Mendez as Rick "The Dick" Pickman

George Stover as Walter Delapore

Leanna Chamish as Detective Rita Lagrassi

QUICK CUT: Boy meets girl, girl is a hooker, boy falls in love with girl, girl is the prophesied girl to bring Cthulhu’s child into the world.

THE MORGUE

Carter - A young artist who is shy, quiet, and likes to keep to himself, but is a hopeless romantic at heart.

Riley - A hooker with a heart of gold, who is charmed by Carter.

Erica - Carter’s roommate who makes awful music, loves sex, and has an abrasive attitude.

Sebastian Suydum - A cultist seeking to bring about the rise of Cthulhu, and he has a bit of a light sense of humour about the whole thing.

Professor Edna Curwen - A former student of Suydum’s, who is seeking to stop his evil plots.

Squid - One of Curwen’s associates. She has no time for anything, and will slice through whatever to get the job done. Also thinks everyone’s name is Jack.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! This week, the 475th Trisking, is a movie I've had in the piles for awhile, and I've debated off and on when or if I'd do it, since it's a bit of a horror comedy. However, after a lot of thought, I decided that it does indeed fall very well on the horror side. Yes, it brings the jokes, and it's tongue is every much firmly in cheek, but...well, we'll get to all that. For now, let's just get started on the Call Girl of Cthulhu.

The movie starts with flashes of horrific mind bending imagery, or at least an attempt at such, and then we snap out of this vision to Carter sitting in a holding cell being questioned by Detective Legrassi, before we flashback into the plot.

In retrospect, now that I've seen this a few times, I think this opening scene does spill a few too many of the beans, with everything Carter is being accused of, but there's enough mystery and questions of how we get here that I can let it slide.

So we jump back to Carter watching some internet porn featuring, I shit you not, a woman named Missy Katonix. And there is a LOT of stuff like this; in jokes both large and small are all throughout this movie, and every one I catch tickles me. If nothing else, this movie knows its source material.

He gets interrupted by his roommate Erica and her boyfriend, Rick "the Dick", loudly having sex. They need more condoms, and send Carter out to get some.

While that's going down, we meet Sebastian Suydum at a nearby motel, checking out the shapely rear of a hooker he hired, trying to find one with the adorablest squidhead birthmark.

These IKEA instructions get more and more confounding.

Disappointed, he calls in his squidgoons, a pair of people who never say a word, their faces are completely covered up, and they are sucking on pacifiers. This is such a weirdly specific visual, it FEELS like a reference, but it's beyond my ken.

They leave to take care of other business, while the Professor and her trio of associates sneak around to have a look inside the motel room.

While all this is going on, Carter keeps running into another escort, Riley, and she has a nice pair of sunken cities, if you know what I mean.

The professor has stolen what is surely the Necronomicon, even though it’s never called as such, from the motel room, and finds two of her crew making out, instead of keeping watch. They pay for this when one of the squidgoons show up and lops off their heads.

And this time, I mean it! I don’t think those two ever got named.

Carter makes an appointment with Riley, so that his little death will not eternal lie, but he awkwardly diverts and says he wants to paint her portrait.

Suydum has Riley's boss, Ashton, bring him a whole trio of escorts so he can check them for the birthmark, and is once again completely disappointed. At the rate he's murdering hookers, it's gonna be a problem.

Meanwhile, the Professor has contacted Carter, and hires him to make a perfect replica of the Necronomicon's art, so she can swap it for the real one, and Suydum will be none the wiser.

Riley has actually taken a liking to Carter and his shy acceptance of her lifestyle, and they go on an actual date. He asks about her work, and we get a montage of clients and their kinks, including someone playing a "Doctor West" which amuses me greatly.

While Carter works on the book, Riley gets called down to the strip club by Ashton, to see if she fits the bill for Suydum's needs. Spoilers, she does, as she has the birthmark of Cthulhu on her butt.

Professor and her surviving helper, Squid, show up to collect the Necfauxnomicon from him. That's when Squid notices Carter's latest painting, and the birthmark on its subject's ass.

Always in the last place you look, huh?

He sends them to the strip club, but they arrive too late, and Sudyum and his followers capture Riley and the professor. Squid barely escapes to mount a rescue plan.

Oh, Rick the Dick is also there, and gets a free blowjob from one of the squidgoons, which I'm sure will be fine and normal.

They make some drama over which book is real or fake, and they've already established the book can't be destroyed, soooo...toss both into a fire, and whichever one doesn't burn, right? Man, I should run a Cthulhu cult.

“…what am I even doing? I can’t see shit through these goggles.”

Edna isn't speaking, so Suydum cuts out her tongue, while the squidgoons try and figure out which book is which. Well, now the professor REALLY isn’t going to tell you!

But they roll the dice and Sebastian reads from one of the books anyways. The portal opens, and tentacles come through and...oh, I've heard of movies like this.

Meanwhile, Rick is having a not very good night after his minion blowjob, and the thing that comes out of his pants is...quite the sight to behold.

If I had to see a giant penis monster, so do each and every one of you.

Riley wakes up the next day, covered in sucker marks and her skin all sliced up, and Sebastian informs us she's changing.

Despite Ashton being dead, she still has clients to attend to, and makes the rounds. But things do not go well, and most of the torments she inflicts upon her clientele would fall under the "ironic punishments division".

It starts with spaghetti spewing from her vagina to kill a guy, and escalates from there. And that is both a sentence I have now said, and a thing I have now seen. It's quite the montage.

Riley takes some time to break up with Carter, not wanting to hurt him, and Squid breaks into Suydum's lair to try and do stuff.

The escort heads to the roof to try and kill herself, but Suydum interrupts before Riley can go through with it. He explains some of what has been done to her, and takes Riley with him to tell her more, and make her comfortable for the birth of Cthulhu's child.

Meanwhile, Squid finds the two books and is about to take them, when the cultists interrupt her, and runs off with them.

Carter and Erica are dealing with their mutual breakups, and you can feel the sparks starting to fly between them. Erica gives him a CD of her *ahem* 'music', and Carter gives her a piece of art to use as album art.

He sighs about losing Riley, and how he thought she was the one, and Erica reassures him that hey, it's not the end of the world. Snerk. Although, it does genuinely have him put some pieces together and rush off.

But Erica is left behind, and she hears someone shuffling around. Unfortunately, it's Rick and his Dick, come to rekindle their lost love.

I’m glad that the creature from “The Item” still gets work.

Fortunately, she had a cleaver nearby, and gives Rick a little extra circumcision.

Carter runs into Squid, and they head back to his apartment to regroup. While there, she is rather unfazed by the giant severed cock on the floor.

She gets Carter to figure out which book is which, but Suydum and his two goons show up to reclaim their book, and take Erica as a hostage.

Before they are taken away though, Carter plays some of Erica's music, and the goon chasing him has an adverse reaction. And by that, I mean he pulls a Mars Attacks! and her head explodes.

So we have everyone end up at the church for the final act, and it's a gigantic fight, with a lot of people dying, to the point I genuinely lost track.

All the escorts that were transformed by Suydum once they didn't meet his standards are set loose, and Squid takes care of most of them.

We also get to see the fully transformed Riley before she gives birth to the baby Cthulhoid.

Will you still love me when I’m old and transformed into a brood mare for Cthulhu?

Carter finds Erica, and when he laments that he's going to die a virgin, they bang in the cage they're being held in.

Squid finds the lovebirds and sets them free, and while she goes to make stabby on as many cultists as she can find, Carter sets up the church AV equipment to explode some calamari all over the place.

While heads explode, Squid tries to get the book, but Suydum gets her instead. Erica kills the baby Cthulhu, as Carter closes the portal.

The transformed Riley kills Erica before the couple can have a happy ending, but the music does in Carter's other girlfriend, so he's not having a good day.

So that catches us up to the present, and the detective is not amused with Carter's wild stories.

Carter throws a tantrum when she won't believe him, and he is dragged off into the asylum, as she runs into a group of cultists, proving Carter right all along.

Hey babe, just give me a sec to get my face on…

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: This looks very good, as one would expect from even a low budget movie made in the 2010s.

Audio: A very good soundscape too.

Sound Bite: “I only lie to my mom! She thinks I sell insurance!"

Body Count: Holy potatoes. I don’t remember the last time we had a movie with this amount of carnage.

1 - About eight minutes in and a prostitute gets fanned in the face.

2 and 3 - The professor's associates lose their heads.

4 - Ashton shoots one of the cultists

5 - And then another

6, 7, and 8 - Three prostitutes eaten by monsters

9 - And then their transformed bodies eat Ashton

10 - Foot fetish dude gets his neck sliced by monster toenails

11 - Then Riley eats the food fetish dude.

12 - Shit fetishist gets acid pissed on

13 - Dr. West gets...I don't even know.

14 - Riley snaps another guy's neck

15 - Rick the Dick gets done in quick

16 - Minion #1 goes boom

17 - Professor gets her head caved in by Minion #2

18 - One of the transformed hookers gets killed

19 - And another

20 21 22 23 24...you know what, a whole lotta hookers get killed

25(ish) - Suydum shoves the spear into black girl's head

26 - Cthulhu kills one of his cultists

27 - And then it kills Suydum

28 - Erica stabs the Cthulhing

29 30 31 32 cultists heads exploding. That's all we see, but clearly even more pull a Scanners.

33 - Riley kills Erica with a tentacle

34 - Erica's music gets it's revenge and kills Riley

Best Corpse: The melting skull effect from when Riley killed the shit fetish dude was pretty great.

Blood Type - A: There’s quite a bit of blood, and some fantastic effects, from head explosions, to issing faces, to tentacles, to monster Riley.

Sex Appeal: As expected from a movie feature so many call girls, it doesn’t shy away from the nudity.

Drink Up! Every time Carter tries to correct someone on Riley’s profession.

Movie Review: Oh how I needed something like this. This was pure fun. The story works, the humour works, for the most part. The horror comedy aspect can be a bit jarring at first, but never overpowering. Like I said, this movie knows what it is, and knows the source material. You can tell this was made by fans with a lot of love. Without being a straight adaptation, it does tick almost all the boxes you would expect from a Lovecraftian movie. The acting is a bit mid level, but nothing too bad. And Suydum is clearly enjoying himself. I was nervous going into this, because it looks so clearly low budget, but it took some surprisingly big swings, and unlike a lot of Lovecraft movies that miss the mark, like I said, they know their stuff well enough. I had a ball with this, and it is now one of my favourite Lovecraftian movies. Four out of five baby Cthulhus.

Entertainment Value: While it does pull off a lot for it’s budget, there are still some delightfully cheap effects that give me a chuckle, but never ruin the moment. The cheap paper masks on the cultists are a good example. It works for what it is, and what this movie is. The effects are surprisingly good and fun to watch, and the humour keeps these end of the world stakes fairly light, with a lot of chuckles. It maybe could’ve been tightened up a bit more, but I really can’t complain. Four out of five pacifiers.