This
month marks the 20th
anniversary of Uncle
Scoopy's Fun House.
2001
I
only watched this film
because it was lensed in
Rochester, NY, my home
town, and it includes
some scenes picturing
landmarks from my
boyhood that I miss,
some of which no longer
exist. There seemed to
be some positive
comments about it the
film IMDb so, in a
perfect world, it would
have been a watchable
movie, but in this most
imperfect of worlds, it
is just awful. After I
watched the film, I went
back to look at the good
comments and realized
they were all bogus.
Every single positive
submission was from
somebody who created an
account in 2002 just to
comment on this film,
then never wrote another
review.
I was had.
After Image is marketed
on the DVD box as a
heady thriller in the
tradition of Inception,
but the only thing it
has in common with
Inception is that I
often couldn't figure
out what was going on.
The difference is that
in Inception something
actually was going on,
while this film is so
slow that it's
essentially static. It's
basically just an
incoherent, weird,
pretentiously arty mess.
Some characters serve no
purpose and could have
been cut altogether,
while the essential
characters are
completely lacking in
motivation and/or the
acting skills to convey
their attitudes.
Unfortunately, the
actors have to carry the
load almost entirely
with their facial
expressions, because the
screenplay features very
little dialogue to
assist audience
comprehension. One of
the main characters is a
deaf mute, but her
scenes don't seem
especially silent
compared to the others.
Maybe everybody else
stopped talking to make
her feel more
comfortable.
Or maybe the actors were
being paid by the word.
The star of the film,
and I use that term very
loosely, is John
Mellencamp, the artist
formerly known as Johnny
Cougar, as a crime scene
photographer who has
seen too many crime
scenes and just can't
continue in that career.
I think his character is
supposed to be a man of
world-weary integrity,
but instead just comes
off as a seedy lowlife.
Part of the blame for
this characterization
goes to Mellencamp, who
is no Daniel Day-Lewis
in the acting
department, but an equal
share must go to the
make-up and wardrobe
people who made him look
like a weaker, sleazier
version of Elisha Cook,
Jr., the small guy who
always played a
spineless worm in the
old Warner Brother
movies. I expected
Bogart to come back from
the dead at any moment
to start slapping
Mellencamp around and
telling him to spill the
beans about the dingus.
According to IMDb, this
is the only full-length
film ever directed by
Robert Manganelli. He
also co-wrote this film,
and no other full-length
films before or since.
So what has he done in
the last fifteen
years?
His IMDb bio says the
following (I'm not sure
when it was written):
"He is
currently in
pre-production on a
film entitled 'Man in
the Maze,' executive
produced by Alexander
Payne (Academy Award -
'Sideways' and 'The
Descendants').
Robert's production
company is also
adapting a novel by TM
Wright, 'Strange
Seed,' into a motion
picture, screenplay by
Tony Schillaci."
(Scoop's note: Schillaci
is the other co-author
of After Image.
T.M.
Wright, who just
passed away this
Halloween (2015), is the
author of one of the
most famous unproduced
projects in Hollywood
history, A Manhattan
Ghost Story. Ron Bass,
the Oscar-winning author
of Rain Main was paid
two million dollars to
write the screenplay
from Wright's novel.
That was more than 30
years ago and the film
is still waiting to be
made.)
Now back to Manganelli's
IMDb bio:
"Relativity
Studios in Los Angeles
has recently optioned
Robert's reality-based
television series,
'Miss Mobile Home'
which is an expose on
trailer park culture
across America."
So he's got that goin'
for 'im ...
... and one other thing:
a wife who loves him
enough to run around
naked in his film. The
deaf woman, played by a
genuinely deaf actress
named Terrylene
Sacchetti, is the
writer/director's wife,
and took off her clothes
a lot, including full
frontal and rear nudity.