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Rampage (2006)

Rampage is yet another film about the Hillside Strangler murders. The last one, which featured C. Thomas Howell as Kenneth Bianchi, was a straightforward and accurate account of the crimes and the apprehension of the killers, seasoned by a bit of back story about the relationship of the killers to their families. It was, more or less, a docudrama.

This film takes a radically different approach.  In essence, it tries to view the stranglers in the context of LA in the seventies. It is a fictional story which blends in elements of the real Hillside Strangler investigation, but even those real details are presented with a great deal of dramatic license. The principal character in the film is not Kenneth Bianchi, but a fictional psychiatrist who was called in the by the D.A. to evaluate Bianchi's story. The shrink first believes that Bianchi is not capable of multiple murders. As time goes on, her head begins to clear and she begins to suspect that Bianchi is a skillful phony. She gets him to agree to hypnosis and sets some traps to see if he is faking his hypnotic trance.

The real Bianchi was (actually IS - he is still alive in person) a very complicated man. He was intelligent, and a pathological liar. He was a self-pitying fraud who faked such things as cancer. He was both a good family man and a mass murderer. He was a charlatan who set up a phony counseling practice. He was a pimp, but he wanted to be a cop. In addition to faking multiple personality disorder while in custody, he also talked a crime groupie into attempting some copycat murders while he was imprisoned, in a wild scheme to exonerate him. His story is one of the most fascinating of all the tales of 20th century criminals.

This particular film focuses in solely on his attempt to simulate multiple personality disorder, and the script consolidates the evaluations of five different mental health professionals (a psychiatric social worker and four psychiatrists) into one person, the psychiatrist played by Brittany Daniel. Since these five people formed vastly different opinions about Bianchi, it was necessary to make the film's psychiatrist undergo a somewhat improbable change of heart, starting with one conclusion and eventually experiencing an epiphany and reversing her earlier opinions. In order for this to work, the script had to change the relationship(s) between Bianchi and the mental health professionals, so that his erratic actions outside of the clinical interview setting would lead her to change her mind. To my knowledge, Bianchi never interacted with any of the psychiatric professionals outside of clinical visits during his incarceration. In the film, Bianchi makes visits to the psychiatrist's home, and even kills a woman who had been in a threesome with the swinging shrink earlier on the same night before her murder. Bianchi even makes a pass at the fictional shrink! Her change of heart is based at least in part on the observations she is able to make in these completely fabricated situations. To add some credibility to her mental transformation, the script gave her a bizarre drug-addled social life which could be seen to contribute to her early misdiagnosis. When she got rid of her abusive, sex-crazed, drug-dealing boyfriend and the debauched lifestyle she shared with him, the Bianchi case seemed to come into better focus.

The script wanders so far from the true story that it really becomes a fictional story which uses some real names and events. Bianchi was not brought in by the police as pictured here. The L.A. investigation proceeded nothing like the film's version. Bianchi was not caught twice in L.A. and released over the objections of the investigating officers. He was caught in Washington State, where he had settled down into a routine job with his girlfriend and their child, and he might have escaped prosecution forever except that he killed two more girls in Washington, and certain clues led the police in Washington to contact L.A. The fact that Bianchi really did have some form of split personality, if not the type he pretended to, was indicated by the reaction of his girlfriend when he was arrested. She attested that he was an ideal husband and father - not exactly the typical serial killer profile! Bianchi's court-appointed lawyer was the first to sense that he might have mental problems, and that there might be grounds for an insanity plea, so he asked for the opinion of a psychiatric social worker. The sympathetic social worker was probably the single real-life character who most closely inspired the initial reaction of the film's psychiatrist, but all of that happened in Washington.

There was some real-life basis for the film's portrayal of the tension between the police and the psychiatrist. One of the first psychiatrists to interview Bianchi in Washington fell for the multiple personality ruse, a fact which stunned the L.A. detective who observed the same interview and saw many clues that Bianchi was faking. That detective's observations, combined with the clever work of the last psychiatrist to evaluate Bianchi, formed the basis for the methods used by the film's psychiatrist to expose Bianchi in the film's climax.

What does all this prove? I honestly have no idea. I sure didn't gain any insights from it.

The seemingly pointless script was matched by some irritating and nauseating camera work. The early part of the film is filled with all sorts of camera techniques which simulate the drug-addled fog of the psychiatrist. The two most common gimmicks are circling the camera around the subject and multiple dissolves. Sometimes these gimmicks are used together. In one scene in which the psychiatrist interviews Bianchi, the final screen images have been created from three separate sequences dissolved together - and the camera is circling in all three of the sub-images. To make matters worse, some of the sub-images include start-stop tricks to simulate the kind of image trails seen by pot smokers. If you are prone to motion sickness, this film could actually induce vomiting. Literally. The camera crew also seemed to be short of light bulbs, and the few they had seemed to be red. I can't recall when I have seen a more difficult film to watch.

It is quite pleasant to see Brittany Daniel naked. She proves that the combination of nudity and physical fitness can provide a very stimulating and beautiful contribution to a film. Unfortunately, this particular film didn't have  much else, and even that was ruined by crazy lighting. If I were you, I would skip it.

 

Brittany Daniel Joleigh Fioreavanti Valerie Stodghill Unknowns Michelle Borth For reference , here's Michelle Borth in another film called Silent Warnings, in which she can be seen more clearly.

Other Crap:

Movie Reviews:

Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format. Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.

"Bizarre Lust of a Sexual Deviant"

Bizarre Lust of a Sexual Deviant (2001) began life as a short, and the first film from Sub Rosa Extreme Wicked Pixel. Eric Stanze directed under a pseudonym. It was released to VHS and did sell enough copies to make back the infinitesimal budget. Now that the studio is in the black, they decided to shoot some additional footage, and expand it into a feature. The expanded version is now available on DVD. Scott Loomis plays a fetishist who surprises women in the apartments, knocks them out with chloroform, takes nude Polaroids of them, leaving one for them to find, then goes home. We see three such episodes with Nas (in a dream sequence), Emily Haack, and Lisa A. Morrison.

We eventually learn that he has had this particular fetish for some time, and that is stems from a poor self image. Haack and aned Nas both show breasts. Morrison shows all three Bs. Other than an interlude with Haack and her boyfriend romping through St. Louis that seems to have little or nothing to do with the story, most of the screen time is occupied by Scott Loomis and one unconscious woman or another.

17 IMDb voters have this at 5.3. This was an ultra low budget, and is as Indie as you can possibly get. The new and original film elements do not match up well, but, based on the commentary from Loomis, it is much better than the short was. It is roughly the quality of a student film, but has an edginess that most student films would not have. For me, at least, it was a mercifully short curiosity. I enjoy Haack when she is conscious, but, unfortunately, she wasn't this time. I suppose this is a D or worse, by I applaud the film makers, who are doing this for love of film, and daring to break all current conventions in doing so. Perhaps we will, someday, get back to the point where innovation is prised in mainstream cinema and the nude body is seen as healthy in mainstream films, but, until that happens, that sort of thing will come from film makers like these.

Emily Haak Lisa A Morrison Nas

Scoops,

For today...how about we show some babes caught by the cameras of our friends, the paparazzi.

Adrianne Curry	Claire Sweeney	Jennifer Lopez	Kirsty Gallacher

Marisa Miller	Nell McAndrew	Paris Hilton	Rachel Stevens

Sean Young	Toni Collette

SOAP OPERA COMAS UNREALISTIC
Reading That Put Them In A Coma - It's now official: soap operas are ridiculous. In the British medical journal BMJ, a group of coma researchers report that they read 10 years of plot synopses of US soaps such as "General Hospital" and "Days of Our Lives" and examined 64 stories involving comas. In real life, patients in non-traumatic comas have a one-month survival rate of just 15 percent. But in soaps, 89 percent of coma patients made a full recovery, and two patients who "died" were later revealed to still be alive. They said this gives viewers wrong ideas about medicine, and soaps should occasionally air compelling, realistic stories about coma patients who die with dignity.

* And their evil twins.
* It's also not true that after you come out of a coma, you have to wear an eye patch.
* Also, when real people are in comas, they don't get daily hair and makeup sessions.
* The problem with soaps is that their writers are in comas.

GUYS LIKE PARKING WITH HOT CHICKS
They Make $10,000 A Night In Tips - Just six months after it launched, Los Angeles-based Girls Valet Parking is buying out competitors and expanding to four new cities. The service provides car parking by struggling actresses and models. Founder Brad Saltzman said, "Given the option of hiring acne-riddled teenage boys in red vests, or beautiful and sexy models and actresses trained in safety and hospitality," restaurants, hotels, clubs and celebrity party hosts choose the women. Clients can even pick their "uniforms," including bikinis, miniskirts or lingerie, but Saltzman said, "We draw the line at nudity or topless."

* Can they at least go topless when they're parking convertibles?
* Something tells me he got this idea while watching '80s drive-in movies on Cinemax.
* Of course, the REAL struggling actresses are all over 50.

ROLLING STONES TOO OLD TO WATCH THEMSELVES
Can I Bring My Walker? - The Detroit Free Press reports that 2,000 people will be allowed onto the field during the Super Bowl Halftime show by the Rolling Stones. But they will be expected to dance and cheer, and they must attend several long rehearsals and stand in the tunnels throughout the first half. It's so physically demanding, only people age 18-45 are eligible. That means the Stones, whose youngest member is 58, are too old to be in their own audience.

* So are most of their fans.
* And Mick's girlfriends aren't old enough.
* That's okay, they prefer ragtime music anyway.