Every so often, a director steps forward and exceeds the boundaries of our expectations, showing us a new and startling vision of how bad a film can be. Such a film is David DeCoteau's Speed Demon. Even now, I'm not sure what to make of it. What about it leaves me with this feeling that it's one of the worst films I've ever seen? Let's go back to the beginning.
Speed Demon looks, on the face of it, like a simple exploitation concept: "Let's do The Fast & The Furious as a horror film!" Ah, if only they had stopped there and left well enough alone. It would have been a nice little time-killer, a one-off on the video store shelf waiting for a week where no new big actioner is released.
The plot, while inane, at least does us the favor of staying fairly simple. Evil Otto wants to be the Fastest Man Alive (I always thought that was the Flash), and to that end he practices Satanism and collects gothy pentagram pendants. This gives him control over a Speed Demon (yep, they actually call 'em that), an ancient Sumerian bogie with power over all things speedy.
Our Hero, Jesse, also has a pendant, that he inherited from his daddy. (I guess that makes him a Satanist, too. Huh.) So, Otto kills Jesse's little brother in the only real car-racing scene in, like, the entire picture, and sets his sites on Jesse. He does this by performing a semi-naked "Rite of Purification" on one after another of his underlings, and sending them out to do his dirty work. Unfortunately, each time he does, the poor stooge is slaughtered by a mysterious driver in head-to-toe black pleather whom we'll call Racer X. No one seems particularly disturbed by the killing spree, and the gang members go one by one to their deaths as calmly and willingly as any third-world dictator could wish for in a presidential guard.
Meanwhile, Jesse's kinda half-dating Otto's blonde girlfriend, a development so inconsequential to the rest of the plot that I can't even recall her name now. With Otto rapidly running out of minions thanks to Racer X, soon Jesse and Otto have to come together for their climactic battle. Who will get the pendants? What is the true identity of Racer X? If, at this point, you care, you're way ahead of me.
But what makes this movie transcendently, even innovatively bad, are the small touches. Things like the lack of continuity, the stating-the-obvious narration, and the plodding, numbing pace combine so that the strangeness of this movie descends on you in stages, like a series of blows to the head.
The first thing you notice is that none of the guys wear shirts. Well, OK, sometimes they put on a t-shirt, but they make up for it by taking every opportunity to dance around in their Michael Jordans. Oh, and there are a couple of women in this film, but apparently someone forgot to tell the cameraman. I'm not trying to make any trouble, but let's just say that Speed Demon makes Jeepers Creepers look like Barb Wire, and leave it at that.
Next, the setting starts to sink in. Everything happens in industrial parks - heavy, concrete buildings surrounded by undesirable scrub land, with chain-link fences, stairways carved into hillsides, and random mechanical debris. No houses anywhere to be seen; Jesse has a place that is either an apartment above his father's garage, or a very cheap motel room, or a family homestead with what looks like a nice patio outside the window; you couldn't really tell from one shot to the next. On the whole, it's nicely filmed, all gray and geometrical in the noonday sun, but after a while, the stark monotony brings a new meaning to the word "oppressive."
But the strangest thing is, apart from Our Hero and Evil Otto's racing gang, there's no one else in this film. And I don't mean no secondary characters; I mean no signs of human life whatsoever - no extras, no cars on the streets, no signs of movement caught in the background. OK, there are two diners in a restaurant scene, and I may have blinked and missed a waitress. So that makes, let's see - about a dozen people LEFT ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH?!? And yet, rather than live in the nice, empty houses of the... oh, let's say, raptured public, most of these people choose to make their homes in abandoned tool & die plants at the edge of town?
All of this is served up on a big, steamy bed of rock-video style direction, with impossible intercuts, swooping pans, and the by-now-inevitable twitchy-head stop motion effect. This, combined with the staggering awfulness of this film, made me want to chalk it all up to a lack of experience on the director's part. But, I looked up David DeCoteau's filmography, and found an impressive amount of work in B-movie horror and softcore fare, under half a dozen names, dating back to the mid-eighties. Final Stab, the Brotherhood series, several Puppetmasters, and even Dr. Alien. (Anybody else remember good ol' Dr. Alien?) Now, many if not all of these movies are pretty bad, but Speed Demon stands alone as a terrifying leap into new and dizzying realms of badness. If you share my masochistic streak, track this movie down and watch it immediately. Otherwise, don't say I didn't warn you.
Speed Demon looks, on the face of it, like a simple exploitation concept: "Let's do The Fast & The Furious as a horror film!" Ah, if only they had stopped there and left well enough alone. It would have been a nice little time-killer, a one-off on the video store shelf waiting for a week where no new big actioner is released.
The plot, while inane, at least does us the favor of staying fairly simple. Evil Otto wants to be the Fastest Man Alive (I always thought that was the Flash), and to that end he practices Satanism and collects gothy pentagram pendants. This gives him control over a Speed Demon (yep, they actually call 'em that), an ancient Sumerian bogie with power over all things speedy.
Our Hero, Jesse, also has a pendant, that he inherited from his daddy. (I guess that makes him a Satanist, too. Huh.) So, Otto kills Jesse's little brother in the only real car-racing scene in, like, the entire picture, and sets his sites on Jesse. He does this by performing a semi-naked "Rite of Purification" on one after another of his underlings, and sending them out to do his dirty work. Unfortunately, each time he does, the poor stooge is slaughtered by a mysterious driver in head-to-toe black pleather whom we'll call Racer X. No one seems particularly disturbed by the killing spree, and the gang members go one by one to their deaths as calmly and willingly as any third-world dictator could wish for in a presidential guard.
Meanwhile, Jesse's kinda half-dating Otto's blonde girlfriend, a development so inconsequential to the rest of the plot that I can't even recall her name now. With Otto rapidly running out of minions thanks to Racer X, soon Jesse and Otto have to come together for their climactic battle. Who will get the pendants? What is the true identity of Racer X? If, at this point, you care, you're way ahead of me.
But what makes this movie transcendently, even innovatively bad, are the small touches. Things like the lack of continuity, the stating-the-obvious narration, and the plodding, numbing pace combine so that the strangeness of this movie descends on you in stages, like a series of blows to the head.
The first thing you notice is that none of the guys wear shirts. Well, OK, sometimes they put on a t-shirt, but they make up for it by taking every opportunity to dance around in their Michael Jordans. Oh, and there are a couple of women in this film, but apparently someone forgot to tell the cameraman. I'm not trying to make any trouble, but let's just say that Speed Demon makes Jeepers Creepers look like Barb Wire, and leave it at that.
Next, the setting starts to sink in. Everything happens in industrial parks - heavy, concrete buildings surrounded by undesirable scrub land, with chain-link fences, stairways carved into hillsides, and random mechanical debris. No houses anywhere to be seen; Jesse has a place that is either an apartment above his father's garage, or a very cheap motel room, or a family homestead with what looks like a nice patio outside the window; you couldn't really tell from one shot to the next. On the whole, it's nicely filmed, all gray and geometrical in the noonday sun, but after a while, the stark monotony brings a new meaning to the word "oppressive."
But the strangest thing is, apart from Our Hero and Evil Otto's racing gang, there's no one else in this film. And I don't mean no secondary characters; I mean no signs of human life whatsoever - no extras, no cars on the streets, no signs of movement caught in the background. OK, there are two diners in a restaurant scene, and I may have blinked and missed a waitress. So that makes, let's see - about a dozen people LEFT ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH?!? And yet, rather than live in the nice, empty houses of the... oh, let's say, raptured public, most of these people choose to make their homes in abandoned tool & die plants at the edge of town?
All of this is served up on a big, steamy bed of rock-video style direction, with impossible intercuts, swooping pans, and the by-now-inevitable twitchy-head stop motion effect. This, combined with the staggering awfulness of this film, made me want to chalk it all up to a lack of experience on the director's part. But, I looked up David DeCoteau's filmography, and found an impressive amount of work in B-movie horror and softcore fare, under half a dozen names, dating back to the mid-eighties. Final Stab, the Brotherhood series, several Puppetmasters, and even Dr. Alien. (Anybody else remember good ol' Dr. Alien?) Now, many if not all of these movies are pretty bad, but Speed Demon stands alone as a terrifying leap into new and dizzying realms of badness. If you share my masochistic streak, track this movie down and watch it immediately. Otherwise, don't say I didn't warn you.
