The Item (1999) — Triskaidekafiles

THE ITEM

WRITER: Dan Clark

DIRECTOR: Dan Clark

STARRING: Dawn Marle Velasquez as Lauren
Dan Clark as Alex
Dave Pressker as Marty
Dan Lake as Fatty
Ron Fitzgerald as Dr. Ody
Romy Shaft as Nurse Nicky
Judy Jean Kwon as Rita

QUICK CUT: A group of childhood friends do their best to make sure an item remains safe throughout the night.

THE MORGUE

Alex - He’s a bit of a jerk, the arguably leader of his merry band of criminal couriers. He tries to keep a cool head, but frequently fails. Although, extreme circumstances…

Lauren - Probably the second in command, and the one who secures jobs for the team. She’s got her issues of guilt with what they do, unlike Alex.

Marty - A man with a secret, and a guilty conscience.

Fatty - More guilt!

Rita - An art student dating Alex, who has no idea what sort of night she’s gonna have.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! Did you enjoy last month's exploration of a drug obsessed phallic symbol? Well, have I got the exact opposite of a treat for you, The Item! This movie sure is somethin' so let's just get on with it.

After watching horrific scenes of doll torture, which is kinda awesome, we find ourselves out in the desert with our main characters, as they wait for a package they've been hired to receive and deliver.

Turns out they're a bunch of criminals who do this sort of stuff all the time, but as the item has yet to arrive, they decide to call it a night, and get into an argument. Hey. Remember that era when every movie wanted to be Quentin Tarantino? Yes, that's where we are, and it sucks.

Also, they keep questioning who they're working for. This is a mystery that is asked a lot, and never answered. Not that it's important, but it is frustrating.

Fortunately, just as Marty is getting fed up with losing out on touching the monkey, touch him! LOVE HIM MARTY!! another car shows up, and a man dressed all in shiny silver, walking with a cane, long hair and sunglasses, show up. Get it, he's quirky!

So they take the foot locker sized box, go to put it in their car and WAIT! says Dr. Ody, and explains what to do if something goes wrong with the organism.

He opens up the box, passes out glow sticks, quirky!!, and shows off what is in the box. We only get glimpses of pulsing flesh, and bondage gear, but that's enough for now.

After checking out the ten pounds of weird in a five pound sack, their leader, Alex, pulls Ody aside to ask a few pertinent questions, starting with WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT. But dur hur, it's not WHAT that's important, but WHY the blob is, that's important. And no, I am not making a strained Drax joke, they actually say that in the movie.

Professor Silvercoat then comments on how he loves the night sky, because it's looks the same way upside down. Wow, this movie is so, so very fake deep.

Alex seems satisfied, and all of a sudden, Professor Silvervoat LOSES HIS SHIT demanding to know who he sold the item too, and tries to recant on the deal. There's a scuffle, he gets dead, and his nurse/assistant soon follows when she rushes out to help.

Discount Darren Kitchen…wait, no one is gonna get that.

Now, I went back and did my best to count, but fast gunshots are fast. Still, I figure at MINIMUM they shoot the nurse...EIGHTY. FREAKING. TIMES. That's maybe a TAD excessive, no?

So our merry band of misfits head to Rita's, Alex's girlfriend, and the artist who was mangling dolls over the credits. They're gonna hunker down 'til morning, and I am sure nothing bad at all is gonna happen!

Everyone settles in, and we sit around for more Tarantino wannabe dialogue scenes. Which isn't entirely fair, they're not that bad, but we are definitely spinning wheels for a bit.

While Rita goes off to grab food and supplies for everyone, the team decides to check out the thing in the box, because why not?

They ogle the thing, entranced by it, and...why am I staring at a bondage penis? Why? Also, the addiction thing is so totally cribbed from another movie.

Speaking of, Alex reaches down to touch the slick, moist, gooey body, and then tastes the KY jelly he scrapes off it. Because why not?

Which is when a bunch of drag queens or transvesties show up to hang out with Rita, because what this movie really needs right now is to be offensive.

They enquire about Gwyneth Paltrow's head, and the crew start reaching for their guns. Fatty (sigh...) draws and everyone scatters, running off into the alleyways. Two of the drag queens gets instantly shot, and the others keep running.

And...this is when the utter batshit hilarity begins. Because they don't so much RUN through the alleyways as...THEY FUCKING GLIDE. It's like they're on skates being dragged along, or they're standing still and the scene is rushing by on a green screen, or SOMETHING like that. It is HIILARIOUS.

The Asian queen gets the drop on Fatty (sigh...) and of COURSE she knows kung fu, because racism.

Alex arrives and she runs off, and he has a chat with his overweight friend. They hear some noises, and the *ahem* Ninja Queen starts blasting at them from behind some trash cans. She is...a terrible shot.

We are never speaking of this again, got it?

They sit around for awhile, and Alex offers her a deal, to stay quiet, hand over the gun, and walk away with 5k. She's no fool though, and when Alex comes out, she kicks the cans over, and starts shooting.

Alex grabs his friend to use as a large shield, and returns fire. After more running minus running, they do the poor girl in, and head back to the flat.

Which leads to a lot more sitting around and talking, until the box decides to randomly screech alarms at them, so they must disconnect and revive the creature. Finally.

They undo the hose and remove the hood, and reveal a fleshy muppet with sewn up eyes. The eyes are sewn up for no particular reason other than looking freaky, I guess. Then, Marty applies the disinfectant.

I too like to be disinfected with Mountain Dew.

So they stick the bondage penis in a bucket, like you do with all slimy addictive phallic symbols. It proceeds to sit there doing nothing, while we get more talking.

With such gems as, "I like being lied to. Knowing when a liar lies to you is almost like being told the truth." Great, more fake deep nonsense.

After Asshole Shaggy taunts Fatty (sigh...) for a bit and leaves him to guard the giant dick, it decides to start talking. And it sounds like puppet Mister Rogers..

Kermit the Dick preys upon Fatty's (sigh...) insecurities, driving him to go shoot up the house with the bullets he has left and then some. I guess.

Marty eventually clobbers their friend over the head to stop his dick fueled rampage. We then get to listen to Asshole Shaggy give his friend a criminal pep talk. ...Which ends in Alex blowing away his friend to spare him the rest of the movie.

Back inside, Alex acts like nothing happened, and Marty gets sick from it, rushing to the bathroom to throw up. Where he runs into Kermit the Dick, asking for some drugs.

Wormy does his thing and *ahem* worms his way into Marty's deepest insecurities over his impending brain tumour, and guilt over being a bad guy.

Alex finds the last of the art kids we saw Marty not kill earlier, and they have it out over leaving witnesses. Alex insists he finish the job, and gets a frying pan in the face like...a dozen times. Everything in this movie is excessive.

Marty puts his gun against Alex's head, so he says Marty better kill him, or kill the kid, or Alex will do it and THEN kill Marty. Someone is getting real dead, real fast.

Alex gets ahold of the situation, and while he gets ready to clean up Marty's mess, he sends Lauren to "check on the monkey." And gasp surprise! He starts preying on HER insecurities now!

The kid begs for his life, Alex says kill the kid and Rita, which Marty can't believe. Because he somehow has not noticed his friend is a narcissistic asshole. While they argue some more, the kid finds Fatty's (sigh...) gun, shoots Marty, and of course Alex FINALLY ends this subplot.

Lauren finally rejoins the party, and has a chat with how much of a clustersquawk this night has been.

I don’t think you’ll be getting your security deposit back.

We then get a conversation, and it's one of those "Hey, can you tell so and so sitting right there X because I'm a child?" type conversations, that goes back and forth between Asshole Shaggy and Rita for awhile, through Lauren.

Eventually, Alex realises this is pointless, and reaches for the gun on the table to finish her off, and Lauren has a crisis of conscience, spurred on by the bondage penis, and gets there first. Alex's guts spray majestically on the wall behind him.

SOMEhow he is not dead, despite having three people's worth of blood on the wall behind him, and he decides to have a smoke, and go lay down for a bit, to slowly die and have a chat with the bondage penis.

It's good to be the writer/director, you can give yourself an epic death.

And speaking of being the writer, he of course gives himself plenty of time to have the slowest demise which he milks for a few minutes, because of that.

Kermit the Dick rambles on for a bit on the nature of man, and of a man in particular, and just let him die already!

Finally Alex dies, and Lauren tries to clean the mess up. Mostly by letting Rita have all the money, which she doesn't want, and letting the cops handle the mess, and believe she was their 'hostage'.

Oh, and then they make out, because why not at this point?

Before Lauren leaves, Rita asks the important questions, something Alex said that has been haunting her, and lemme tell ya. A fake deep movie like this, asking me, "Do you think my art is obvious?" really is poking the bear.

Lauren leaves with the money, leaving Rita with the creature, and oh, then the sex starts. With the creature, BECAUSE WHY THE FUCK NOT.

Why did the creature get left behind in the first place? Why do we need to have sex with it at this point? What the whatting what?

If I had to see this, so the fuck do you!

Rita begins howling with laughter, and I can relate as my sanity is hanging on by a thread. A thread not unlike the ones that Rita pulls out to remved the stitched on covers to the creature's ocular cavities.

We still don't know why they're covered, why they're uncovering them now, or what any of this at all means.

She walks off, we hear a gunshot, and the credits roll on a reflection of the door to the apartment, as someone bangs and bangs upon it, until it opens up in heavenly light...ending the movie. The fuck.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: Not horrible, but could be much better.

Audio: All right for what this is.

Sound Bite: There’s actually a lot of silly quotable lines, and not just the fake deep ones at that.

Body Count: Well, it manages to kill almost its entire cast, and it’s not a super small movie, so there’s that, at least.

1- Doctor Silvercoat gets shot just shy of 13 minutes.
2 - And his assistant gets filled with so many bullets it's stupid.
3 - One of the transgender group gets shot.
4 - And another right after, by Marty
5 - Alex shoots up the Ninja Queen.
6 - Fatty gets shot by Alex for crying.
7 - Marty gets gunned down by the kid
8 - Then Alex offs the kid
9 - Alex dies as slowly as possible after being shot in the guts.

Best Corpse: Gotta give it to the nurse, simply for the ludicrous number of bullets she takes in.

Blood Type - A: It sure does have quite a lot of blood, as you can get a sense of from some of the images. And hey, the puppet’s not half bad, and just a little creepy.

Sex Appeal: A bit of boobs during the puppet sex.

Video Nasties: Just a taste of the alleyway fight and floating people to amuse you.

Drink Up! every time you hear ridiculous foley sound.

Movie Review: Urgh. Okay okay, it’s not THAT bad. The plot is okay in a very broad, simple way. There’s something there, and a better filmmaker could make a meal of some of it, I think. It wants to be Tarantino, but does not have the skill to pull that off. It’s quirky for the sake of quirk, it does weird things, but the direction and filmmaking aren’t terrible. They’re just not particularly solid either. But it does have a few good ideas there, I am fascinated by the interactions between the characters, it just is at odds with the story here. Two out of five containment hoses.

Entertainment Value: There’s stuff to marvel at here, for sure. Like the weird ass puppet. You do spend a lot of the movie wondering WTF. But the problem is, it’s just so slipshod, and the WTF comes from it being a bit of a mess, with only a few moments from genuinely weird and wild content. It’s so far up its own pretentious butt, and winking at you, that it never quite clicks. Two out of five protective caps.