Review from Micro Film Magazine
Review by Jason Pankoke
Source

It seems that the genre underground has been heading in two particularly distinct directions as of late, neither of them remarkable: the retro homage, of which Seventies-era exploitation is the current flavor du jour, and the kitchen-sink stew more dependent on its fan-friendly ingredients then anything resembling a compelling story. SEX MACHINE, the first feature from former Eyeball and Cinema Eye publisher Christopher Sharpe, might look like it’s headed towards either aesthetic rut at first glance, but thankfully circumvents the obvious choices with a game blend of low-key drama and well-timed thrills that put its not unwelcome influences to good use.

The film opens as Frank (John Howell) finds himself standing amidst a mob massacre of his own doing, staring down a sniveling mark with gun in hand. Disoriented and with no recollection of how he arrived in this predicament, Frank stumbles away. He eventually realizes that the attaché he grasps in the other hand is filled with thousands of dollars and, more significantly, the bathroom mirror in his cheap motel room isn’t lying. One man’s profusely tattooed arm is attached to his left shoulder, a black man’s arm joined with the right, stitches everywhere, and the face under that gauze … Even more mysterious is a strange miniature bolt in his neck akin to that sported by Karloff’s Frankenstein monster many decades ago. After removing this foreign object to much agony, Frank spends the ensuing months wandering through a nothing existence, inhaling pills to kill the pain and weathering sporadic assaults of past memories – some familiar and gentle, others claustrophobically scary.

One evening after maneuvering around glassy-eyed patrons and cleaning up alcoholic spills at a local bowling alley, pretty waitress Claire (Jessica Alfrey) returns home to find Frank passed out in her bed. The masked man awakens and turns the lights out on punk boyfriend Dirk (John Stewart) and roommate Zoe (Kassy French) before taking the woman on a long car ride in the cool night. Claire, an aspiring artist once deeply in love with Frank prior to an apparently fatal car accident, can’t quite fathom whether the ghoul at the wheel is the genuine article or merely crazy, but a sliver of trust keeps her from bolting. They eventually pull up to the motel, after which Claire calls her boss, Owen (Sheridan Marquardt), who stood by her side at Frank’s funeral.

With an audience of two, Frank attempts to recount his fragmented existence from the point that he miraculously cheated death, his monologue setting up numerous clues and red herrings that factor throughout the rest of SEX MACHINE. I’m really tempted to keep the pulp fiction proceedings under wraps for your discovery, other than to recap the “cool stuff” Sharpe readily unveils in the liner notes of his press screener: “hot girls, mad scientists, kneecap violence, bowling, and reanimated hitmen.” All these elements certainly liven up Frank’s quest to redefine his identity while conquering those whose government-sanctioned experiments gave him a second lease on life, and should easily tip you off as to whether or not you might be predisposed to digging this flick.

And yet, in a mildly twisted way, SEX MACHINE is really all about getting the girl – the second time around, of course – as well as recovering some sort of normalcy in one’s life after suffering traumatic mishaps. If you set aside the gleeful sci-fi hooey that crops up in the screenplay by Sharpe and John Oak Dalton (AMONG US), the film spends much of its running time developing quiet moments between the good-guy leads, loyal Owen included. It’s an interesting parallel, allowing the audience to learn about the characters as the characters are re-learning about each other, and while some dialogue moments sound too deliberate or paraphrased for the sake of progressing the tale, the overall effort at realistic interlude works better than one might expect.

The greatest assets to this movie, other than its somewhat offbeat approach for what amounts to a modern skid-row noir splashed with Astounding Science Fiction-era context, are mood and character. I absolutely love the rich secondary color palette achieved by Shogo Nakagawa cinematography and the production design by Leah Sharpe, the director’s better half who recently performed animation duties on Richard Linklater’s A SCANNER DARKLY. (The ending scene here, weirdly enough, parallels the studio-mandated denouement tacked onto another Philip K. Dick adaptation, BLADERUNNER.) Somehow, they tricked up their video footage just right, lending every scene a curiously vintage feel that’s simply cool to watch, backed with a rock ‘n’ twang music score that adds appropriate raucousness to the whole deal.

Unlike many other no-budget wonders, this one also feels confident and complete. Even though the director admits to changing numerous elements due to his production’s numerous constraints, I believe he and his collaborators made the proper choices in whittling down his original concept (and an early, three-hour-long edit) into this streamlined edition. Certainly, SEX MACHINE is not perfect, and those with short attention spans will probably not be very keen on its methodical pace, but I’ll gladly take this effort over many that lean too heavily on the hot girls, mad scientists, kneecap violence, bowling, and reanimated hitmen for their own good. Hell, SEX MACHINE doesn’t even rely on porn, Tom Savini, or James Brown. If nothing else, Christopher Sharpe proudly wears his influences without getting lost in them, and that’s an accomplishment indeed.

– Jason Pankoke