Gorotica was blessed with presence of one Getty Chasun. Her uninhibited and unhinged performance as true lead Carrie in that movie made you stand up and take notice… most likely in more than one way. So, I jumped at the chance to see her give it another go. The fact that it was a mid-90’s SOV flick about a drummer knocking off folks at a battle of the bands contest that I had never heard of and ran under an hour just sweetened the pot. Getty is Creatura, she’s in a band called HorrorGirl with her friend who she dropped out of City College with. Also in the band is some dude who dies mid performance due to an electrical accident. Naturally, they bring him back to life with more electricity. So they all start howling like wolves. Ok. One year passes and an awkward conversation happens at a pizza parlor that would not pass any health inspection. The pizza maker looks like an Italian Edgar Wright in poor health. A pizza delivery guy gets held up at gunpoint but fends them off with his gun. The band watches this and eventually distract the delivery guy and steal the pizza. They eat and get to playing music that sounds like early Filter streamed through a heroin overdose by a Krysten Ritter impersonator. The delivery guy follows them to the cellar they’re practicing their awful music in just in time to witness the landlord cuss them out and threaten to evict them. This is why the battle of the bands really needs to be won by our… I guess we can call them “heroes”. Underground horror and underground music go hand in hand in that they’re concealed far away from the mainstream for a good reason. Flower pasties forming the eyes of the skull you painted on your exposed chest and then dancing in front of a leering camera while your band waits to perform makes me happy I never heeded the call of the underground. These people are far too insufferable for me. Some evil bald guy takes notice of the drummer, rancid music happens that Yoko Ono would probably shut off for being “too much”, Getty Chasun makes for an undeniably impressive lead singer (she has stage presence in droves), their performance is well received, the pizza boy tracks them to the club, the VIP afterparty looks about as fun as an orgy where you’re guaranteed at least one fatal STD, boots are licked, nipples are pinched, a spell is cast and boredom is experienced. Two hours into the fifty minute movie, the drummer finally becomes a greasepaint nightmare and fashions herself into a murder machine by jamming plastic cutlery into her fingers and teeth. Creatura knows something is up and excuses herself from an amazingly unappetizing bone-session to figure out what is going down. It climaxes in the cheapest version of the astral plane you will ever witness (green screen, slow-motion acting and plenty of Saran Wrap). Hit that happy ending! The gutter aesthetic is present and accounted for, it just feels like most of the damn thing is an inside joke that maybe they weren’t even in on. I’m aware that I’m an amateur horror apologist, which I apologize for (INCEPTED!), but here even I’m a little hesitant to ride with the vibe. Whereas Hugh Gallagher and Charles Pinion used their outsider mentality to form a kind of cohesive insanity expressed through dumpster horror, Raoul Vehill feels just kind of lost in his own anger and confusion… a little too cautious to add any kind of form to the void he’s throwing on screen. Interesting? Begrudgingly, yes. Entertaining? Unfortunately, no. Getty Chasun is still a national treasure.
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