Produced by Jimmy George and Chris LaMartina
Directed, Written, and Edited by Chris LaMartina
Director of Photography - Stephen Rubac
Jeff - Chris Magorian
Preston - Gary-Kayi Fletcher
Bruce - Ryan Thomas
Zoe - Megan Rippey
Brynn - Helenmary Ball
When WITCH'S BREW director Chris LaMartina first made himself known to me, he was still a teenager with a political chip on this shoulder. Anything conservative was evil and he was going to make sure you knew it. If you resisted, he'd let you know that it was your own stupidity that was allowing you to hold out. It's the sort of image that overpowers everything else I know about Chris, and, honestly, is how I prefer to see him. I just wish he'd bring that sort of passionate hostility to his filmmaking. For such an outwordly political person, Chris' films run directly contrary to their creator's socially conscious disposition. Even his film PRESIDENT'S DAY, a title ripe for pointed satire, is the sort of lightweight, breezy, and good natured horror film that's more interested in celebrating genre tropes and conventions, and ultimately entertaining the audience, than presenting a personal work of art reflective of the creator's world view. But that begs the question, "is pop art any less valid or personal than high art?" So as not to hijack my own review, let's leave that discussion for another time and focus solely on the film at hand - WITCH'S BREW.
Perhaps the closest one gets to anything deeply political in WITCH'S BREW occurs during the opening scrawl and reads, "the following movie was made with a lot of hard work and very little money. Don't be an asshole and put this on a torrent site." A sentiment so dear to his heart that LaMartina echoes it during the closing credits, and one so important to filmmakers all over, both independent and corporate, that it bears repeating here. While I seriously doubt that anyone running a torrent site could care less what I have to say, please don't be an asshole, especially not the asshole raping the cinematic dreams of a bunch of kids hoping to reap the financial rewards of distribution that might, at the very least, allow them to cover production costs. And if you are that sort of asshole, then on behalf of filmmakers everywhere a curse as sharp as a knife - "a virus on both your hard-drives!!!"
The curse at the center of WITCH'S BREW is bit less Shakespearean in that cursed beer kills people, and the brewers must stop the Witches from sacrificing some locals. You won't find much more plot than that, but it's more than enough to allow LaMartina the opportunity to tap into a number of various pop-culture zeitgeists. Primarily, the trend in micro-brewing that's exploded in the last decade; the rise in Wicca and Witchcraft that's taken place ever since BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER made it socially acceptable for outcasts everywhere; and the belief that everything must be ironic to be funny or hip.
The very title alone is the manifestation of punny irony and lends itself to the sort of pun-laden hyperbole championed by websites pimping their quotability. While the connection between beer and a cauldron's contents is an obvious one, the real brew is the cinematic concoction crafted by LaMartina that elevates the material from rancid hodgepodge of ideas and jokes merely thrown into the mix to get a laugh, to a palatable pastiche where those jokes and ideas complement and build upon one another in the sort of complex fashion that makes Sam Addams better than Budweiser, or Dog Fish Head better than Michelob.
The recipe starts with the two leads, the home-brewers of Slacker Lager. The slacker Jeff who has that sort of dazed, stone-like expression that suggests he's under herbal influence from the second he wakes until the moment he retires at night. While Jeff doesn't believe he's the spitting image of his father, who spends his days drunk from the second he wakes until the moment he retires at night, Jeff's just drowning in a river of denial. Jeff's better half in his home-brewing partnership is non-slacker Preston, and played Gary-Kayi Fletcher, who comes across like a young Blair Brown, he's full of drive, determination, and charisma - he's the flavor and fizz enhancing Jeff's bland base brewing mash. While it's hard to believe two such vastly different people clearly on different social paths would ever come together, they posses that indifference towards each other's flaws that only long-term friendships originating on the playground can provide.
While making their rounds delivering their latest batch, the pair run afoul of the local coven, a group of 4 women embodying most of the known archetypes from warted hag to the trashy progressive hottie looking for a thrill made popular in CHARMED (and one a dead ringer for the witch in Disney's SNOW WHITE). We're introduced to these ladies with the second best gag in the movie. One involving lies, lemonade, and a lippy prepubescent punk who deserves every bit of his impending comeuppance. After a spell goes awry, the lead witch, Brynn, played by the excellently menacing Helenmary Ball, sends Dolores, portrayed by the more-than-amply busty Seregon O'Dassey, to fetch some missing ingredients. Opting to travel as her familiar rather than in her human form, Dolores proves that even enchanted cats are just as dumb as regular cats when it comes to crossing the street as she's promptly creamed by Jeff and Preston. This bit of plot convenience allows for two things, the discovery of kitty Dolores' name tag, complete with address directing our boys back to the coven, and also a bit of nudity that's both completely gratuitous and greatly appreciated by fanboys everywhere.
Neither Jeff nor Preston are the sharpest tools in the social shed, and bring the kitty's corpse back in a paper sack. Offended at the offer of free beer as compensation for the loss of her spiritual sister, Brynn makes with the damning hex that finally gets the ball rolling. Whoever swigs the swill is doomed to die in the manner in which they lived. This is where LaMartina is at this most original and his most silly, showcasing his Baltimore horror roots combining the low-fi ingenuity of the late, great Don Dohler with the ribald tastelessness of brilliant John Waters.
At the risk of getting all Joe Bob Briggs and listing the film's best bits, some of the numerous gore gags include:
A beautiful model goes ugly. Real ugly. Claw your own face off ugly.
A vain, balding barfly is transformed into an ultra-hairy werewolf waiting to connect with something solid and silver.
A huffing hop-head hallucinates himself to death.
A booger-picking spaz is undone by the little pieces of gold he sticks to the back of his clipboard.
An obese man consumes himself to death after envisioning his lady-friend as his next meal - the single best gag in the movie that's provides not only the funniest moment, but the most memorable nudity as well. And in this day of dwindling disc sales and distribution nightmares, I'd bet dollars to donuts the money shot from this scene alone slapped on the cover would make it a best seller.
Once the dastardly plot is revealed, our dynamic duo enlists Jeff's former girlfriend, and Wiccan-in-training, Zoe, to foil ...er... the summer solstice? Or was it just the curse? Whatever, it's completely irrelevant. The only time the movie falters is when it tries to wrap everything up in a conventional climax of hells-a-poppin' chaos and effects. While it certainly allows LaMartina to grow as a filmmaker, especially in his depiction and coverage of action, it forces and unsatisfactory ending that's all too convenient as it works more to simply end various plot threads rather than work them through to any satisfying conclusions or resolutions. Case in point, Zoe.
Zoe is the sort of unpretentious pretty girl that embraces every generation's counter culture fads as a means to skirt her own insecurities preventing her from realizing her Earthy girl-next-door beauty and desirability. Her breakup with Jeff doesn't occur because she realizes she's too good for his slack-ass, which, let's face it, she is, but rather a fling she has with a sceevy sleaze of a photographer who's about 4 steps, in the wrong direction, removed from Jeff in the social pecking order. Any pop-psychologist would say the fling was a passive-aggressive action from a girl whose self-esteem is so low that's she's unable to facilitate the break-up on her own positive mental terms; she believes she's not good enough for Jeff and doesn't deserve him so she forces his hand at treating her like the whore-figure she believes herself to be (which also might explain her retreat into the pagan lifestyle allows for the Earth Mother to perfectly blend the whore figure with the motherly and virginal Madonna). Zoe can't openly verbalize her emotional complexities and vulnerabilities to Jeff, and he's far too dunderheaded to realize anything she might be trying to express.
Both Jeff and Zoe are characters whose flaws would seemingly provide perfect avenues for LaMartina to explore with some sort of arc, but by refusing to do so he's denying them that chance for introspection and growth that's satisfactory for both them and the audience investing their time. When their stories end, they're exactly the same people they were when we were introduced to them. Perhaps that's a bit of irony that I'm not hip enough to dig...
Would the casual micro-budget horror fan be disappointed? Not unless they were looking for something along the lines of AUGUST UNDERGROUND, which anyone who has seen a film from Chris LaMartina would know NOT to expect. WITCH'S BREW is a love letter from micro-budget gore fans to microbudget gore fans, and it's signed, sealed, and delivered with great affection.
