Blown (2005)
Dread Central Staff
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Starring Kevin Moyers, Carina Lira, Jeff Dolniak, Corey Busboom, David C. Hayes
Directed by David C. Hayes, Kevin Moyers, Bill Koning, & David Sabal
So yesterday I got blown. Hold on a moment… Let me clarify that statement. Yesterday I got a DVD of Blown, a new horror/comedy about a killer blow-up sex doll on a rampage; although, actually getting blown wouldn’t have been too bad either.
I digress. As it is, the film Blown is a sporadically funny bit of gonzo filmmaking based around the premise of a homicidal blow-up doll. I say sporadically funny because the problem with making a no-budget horror comedy where much of the script is improvised on the spot is that it you’re likely to also end with a lot of jokes that fall flat and moments where the film seems to be at a standstill while the people involved try to figure out where they want to go with this thing. Going into Blown I was expecting a Troma-esque take on Child’s Play. That’s not quite what it is although the film is definitely Troma-esque. Blown mostly feels like something a bunch of drunken friends got together and made to show off to their other drunken friends and I eventually ended up buying a copy of.
Here’s a little known fact: voodoo priestesses hate noise pollution to such a degree they’re willing to put a death curse on the people responsible. Who knew?
A voodoo priestess becomes so fed up with all the loud noise coming from the constant partying from her next door neighbors that she finally resorts to conjuring supernatural means by which to punish the rowdy bunch once and for all. This extreme response to her bad neighbor’s noisemaking results in her essentially giving up her own life to come back in the form of a blow-up sex doll they’ve purchased for a bachelor party. Amongst our potential victims are the fat guy, the guy with the mohawk, the average joe, the bachelor, the stripper they’ve hired, her bodyguards, and the bachelorette and her friends. There is no character development; just varying forms of boneheaded behavior.
Blown clocks in at only an hour in length yet really takes a good 25-minutes before it really gets going. Much of those first 25 minutes consists of the set-up: the voodoo priestess’ ceremony where a demonic severed head eggs her on during the ritual, the friends’ trip to the porno shop, and one of the lamest bachelors party ever. The makers of Blown know full well that they’re making an intentionally bad movie and choose to revel in its badness with good and bad results. Good results include the humorous use of an instant replay of an actor overacting accompanied by an on-air graphic acknowledging the moment of bad acting and the hilarious scenes involving the stripper’s entourage led by a guy with an indescribable accent that is constantly threatening to “punch you in the throat” if you break one of his rules. Bad results include some weak attempts at stoner humor and a few too many montages that go on way too long and often feel like they exist only to pad the movie. When a movie is only 60-minutes yet still feels like there’s some padding going on, you got some problems. When a comedy resorts to a sight gag involving a fat girl slipping and falling then you can’t help but wish a little more ingenuity went into the humor. And I really could have done without the scene where the guy eats his own feces, a gross out gag that crosses the line of just being outright vile.
The funniest moments take place during the film’s wraparound segments involving of a phony “Masterpiece Theater”-style PBS show, the host of which is initially mortified at the notion of having to show this cheap horror flick about a killer blow-up doll on his program. Blown frequently jumps back to these “Mastercrap Theater” segments, sometimes requiring the flabbergasted host to fill in the gaps of scenes that weren’t included in the film for a variety or reasons, even having to reenact one character’s death using an action figure and a photograph of the actor. Whether or not they didn’t include some of these scenes on purpose or because of production problems is a question I cannot answer, and given the nature of the film it could be either. Another gag involves him choosing to run about two full minutes of the original Night of the Living Dead rather than sit through another second of Blown.
As for the killer blow-up doll that bares a disturbing resemblance to Miss Hathaway from “The Beverly Hillbillies,” what can you say about a movie slasher that murders a stripper by strangling her with a giant dildo or deflates itself to squeeze under a door to get at another potential victim? And yes, there is a sex scene where the doll is put to use; the sex isn’t nearly as hard on the eyes as the sheer amount of hairy manflesh that’s simulating the act with it. On the plus side, the climactic backyard wrestling match between the soon-to-be-married couple and the inflatable psycho almost makes Blown a must see.
Ultimately, I wasn’t quite blown away; more like moderately amused by a few genuinely funny moments. I can’t fully recommend the film because despite some laugh out loud moments and some manic energy on display, overall, I found the humor in Blown too scattershot and the material is just way too flimsy to support even an hour long film.
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