Last year my biggest regret was missing the Florida Film Festival. There wasn’t much I could do about it, I didn’t have the time or the money, but this year I managed to catch the tail end of the event with a friend at Orlando’s Enzian theater.
The friend was against it, and only agreed because we made a pact to do something fun or crazy every Friday or Saturday starting last week. Since he was convinced he was subjecting himself to boring pretentious art house films, he only agreed to come along under the condition he could watch everything stone drunk. I obliged. He was late and as a result remained sober. He threatened my life if he regretted having to watch anything that made him regret not being under the influence of something.
So it is with with some irony that our feature film “Murder Party” was introduced with a short film by another film maker that convinced us that we would never have to try acid for as long as we lived. Within five minutes things went from family drama, to incest, to twitching bodies, and then to randomly exploding appendages.
This thread isn’t about that film, though it did set the mood.
This is more about Murder Party, which stands as an awesome indie film with a wonderful mix of horror and comedy, much the same way Army Of Darkness and Shaun of the Dead had. From what I’ve found online, this movie is practically unheard of, and damnit, that’s just not right. By the time this film was over me and my indie film weary friend had enjoyed a bucket of guffaws and good belly laughs. After the Q&A session we both walked out as totally satisfied movie goers. We had seen violence, sex, heard clever dialog, watched a group of people play truth or dare with truth serum, and watched a doomed man take some time to make a really bad pun in the face of certain death. There were no complaints; the entire theater loved it.
I’d describe the movie as a very long, and particularly dark Kids in the Hall Sketch…and somehow the humor reminded me of Mean Girls as well.
The protagonist is a boring nobody who decides to follow up on an invitation to a
card marked “Murder Party” because his plans to stay in and watch movies are
canceled when his cat refuses to get out of his chair.
Upon arriving, our hapless victim finds the invitation was quite literal, and the other party goers promptly tie him up and mull over how to kill him. They’ll all arteests, so they want the death to make an impact of sorts on the art scene. Of course arteests don’t make the most competent murderer’s, so complications quickly arise.
Or sometimes there’s no complications at all and the characters just feel like talking about their feelings in a circle with their victim.
So yeah, Murder Party: Awesome movie. If it stops by your town and your looking for a good B-movie, this is gold. I plan on purchasing the DVD if a manufacturer ever picks it up.
There’s a trailer available, but as it doesn’t capture the tone of the movie at all I’ve opted against linking it. All the same: +1 recommendations towards this here film.