Lively, entertaining reviews of, and essays on, old and newer films and everything relating to them, written by professional author William Schoell.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

THE CREEP BEHIND THE CAMERA

Josh Phillips as Vic Savage
THE CREEP BEHIND THE CAMERA (2014). Writer/director: Pete Schuermann.

Art Nelson (Josh Phillips) struggles to finance and put together a terrible monster epic called The Creeping Terror, in this docudrama about the making of the film and the life of its director, who was actually named Vic Savage. The film "savages" the late director's reputation with real-life scenes of his widow talking about how he was a wife-beater, psychopath, and a pedophile and god knows what else, but this embittered woman seems to be the only source of these horrible stories -- there is no real research into the veracity of these reports at all, but then the film has to live up to its title. There are also on-camera interviews with other people involved with the movie, some of whom are played by actors during the fictionalized segments. Josh Phillips gives a good performance as "Nelson," as do Jodi Lynn Thomas as his wife, Lois; Bill LaVasseur as actor/producer William Thourlby; and Mark Lee as FX man Jon Lacky, but the style of the film is off-putting and disorganized, and it needs a much better script. It seems the most unforgivable thing in Hollywood is to make a cheap and lousy movie.

Verdict: A burlesque in more ways than one. **.

2 comments:

Neil A Russell said...

I was really anticipating this one, it's been in the works for what seems like forever, and frankly I'm surprised it finally was released.
Just from the behind the scenes teases it looked like the makers were trying to come up with a salacious back story for "Vic" and I'm glad you cast some light on their evidence.
I still want to see it, probably more for the technical recreations of clips of the original film, although I bet I've seen some of the best stuff already.
Mind you, if there's a clean cut of that wacky dance tune I'll pay the price of admission!

William said...

I believe the dance sequence is recreated in "Creep Behind the Camera,' and a lot of other sequences, and are probably the best parts of the movie. Worth a look!