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VIOLENCE IS MY BUSINESS
Written, Produced, and Directed by Rock SavageHarry Gross - Rock Savage
The Mod Multilator - Himself
Rex Jones - Eric Koger
All female characters - L.W. Woods
Various supporting cast - Don Woods
Count Gore De Vol - HimselfHere's another set of hard-boiled, pulp-inspired, psychedelic-noir short films from Washington, D.C. underground icon Rock Savage. This new collection of re-mastered Super 8 shorts originally premiered on www.CountGore.com, the new website for legendary horror host Count Gore De Vol (a.k.a. Captain 20), who also hosts this anthology.
Returning are Rock's usual cast of regulars, The Mod Mutilator, Eric Koger, Don Woods, and L.W. Woods, who again finds herself playing each and every female role. I thought about introducing Rock to another pool of talent, but why ruin a good thing. Everyone in the Rock Savage Film Group seems happy being where they are. To the Rock Savage Film Group, having fun is more important than making art.
First up is "Illegal Possession", staring Rock's on-screen alter ego, Harry Gross. A young girl has been possessed by an slime-spewing ancient entity (note: it's not a demon, which is a Judeo-Christian belief. Rock's mythology comes from Paganism.) and her father asks the occult investigator to help find a cure as the current priest is nothing more than a "sissy boy" who can't find his way out of bed in the morning.
Next is my favorite Rock Savage Film Group character, The Mod Mutilator, dealing with a subject very close to my heart, The Goatman. Every city and town has its own legend, Landover Hills, MD had the Goatman. I remember being dared to walk through the drainage passageway under I-202 where he was supposed to carry off all his kidnapping victims, and nearly pissing my pants doing so. "The Mod Mutilator Vs. Goatman" has Mod kicking my childhood fear's ass.
Finally, former Harry Gross partner Rex Jones, who was fighting government agencies the last time we saw him, finds himself working for S.N.U.F.F. in "Daughter of the Yellow Death." Rex has to take on an Asian conglomerate, run by Sum Yung Whor, who is spiking Red Cat beer with a serum that turns its male drinkers impudent, eventually killing them.
Each 15-minute short is virtually identical in formula, all relying on the star to make it unique. On the surface, the acting isn't great, the dubbed-in sound hardly ever matches up, and the editing could use some fine-tuning, but when looking at all of Rock's short films you see a pattern emerge. Most filmmakers grow with each effort, but all Rock's films look and feel the same. They become a humorist's surreal take on what it means to be "pulp," what it means to "rough and raw" in the hard-boiled tradition. The filmic execution only re-enforces this, it's very similar to zero-grade productions out of the 1960's. That might be why Rock never shoots his shorts on video, doing so would unwittingly give the films a modern feel rather than the timeless ones they posses.
Maybe I should take back the statement I made earlier about art taking a backseat to fun. Rock's films are much more dangerous and subversive than that, they are art masquerading as fun.