By now, anyone who is aware of me or my writings knows that I love horror. Obviously that’s what led me to write for this site and watch some cool and not so cool movies. What a lot of people don’t know is that I’m also a huge diehard fan of the all the “Real Housewives” franchises on Bravo. My days of the week are labeled not just by what movies I plan to watch, but which nights these shows air. You can make fun of me all you want or roll your pretentious eyes, but a lot of this drama is way better than anything on scripted network television (that’s why I love HBO so much).
One of my favorite ones is “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills”, which features the one and only Kyle Richards who genre fans may recognize from the original Halloween. Her sister, who used to be on the show prominently, is Kim Richards, infamous as the child who gets killed in Assault in Precinct 13. A previous season even featured a self-proclaimed witch who the other cast members accused of casting spells on them when things started going wrong. Actress Lisa Rinna has been on the last few seasons (and I loved her as the doomed mother of Logan Echols in “Veronica Mars”) and she loves to brag about her marriage to actor Harry Hamlin. Well, one can imagine my excitement as I watched the screener for DIRECTOR’S CUT and saw Hamlin’s name in the beginning credits. My attention was right on the screen since then.
So, as a physical media collector, I do love a great commentary especially when one is spilling the tea which is a rare find until the movie becomes retro and it’s ok to talk trash about everyone (which is why I love companies like Scream Factory). Adam Rifkin’s DIRECTOR’S CUT takes an experimental approach and presents us with a fan edit of a fake movie called KNOCKED OFF that stars the way underrated Missi Pyle and Hamlin as cops investigating a murder. It’s a cheesy B-movie full of clichés and one liners, but this fan edit is accompanied by audio commentary from Pyle super fan Herbert Blount (Penn Jillette, who also serves as screenwriter). It’s clear early on that Blount is not right in the head and has a hard on for Pyle who is simply just trying to get through a low budget crowd funded project. Blount is actually one of the crowd funders whose reward is to actually be on set. He eventually starts filming private moments like on-set arguments between the cast and crew, but his focus is on Pyle as he feels she is the true star of the film. His obsession turns for a dark turn as his delusions of reality lead him to take over what he believes is his film and Pyle suffers for it. He utilizes poor quality footage to integrate “deleted scenes” into his version and some really bad special effects to add some thrills to it.
DIRECTOR’S CUT is a strange hybrid of meta horror comedy and I’m not sure what audience is going to be out there for it. There is some tongue in cheek moments, but the joke gets old fast and the movie feels long even at 90 minutes. I was however squealing like a fangirl when the real cops get involved and Lisa Rinna shows up with her Bravo crew. There’s even a scripted sequence made to look right out of “Real Housewives” incorporated into the movie which reminds me why I tune in every week to Rinna and her Xanax smoothies.
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