Why remake Herschell Gordon Lewis' inspired reality-bending inept masterpiece? Because with a little bit more of a budget and the influence of Videodrome and Philip K. Dick (and maybe William Burroughs) they actually made a movie that makes its own kind of sense and actually hangs together a lot better than most recent outings. It would sound totally crappy if I described the plot, but somehow they got it right.
A trust fund cat who runs an underground newspaper and looks like young William Burroughs (except with a neck tattoo) lives in a weird loft apartment, has Bijou Philips as a girlfriend. A lot of this movie is inscrutable. Brad Dourif is the pony tailed Vietnam Vet who puts leeches on himself. Crispin Glover is the effeminate pompadoured Montag who does his show is what looks like a gutted building filled with curtains and trash. It's not as gory as the original, but the speeches are somehow dead-on AND there are some smokin' hot suicide girls who have nude scenes.
It turns out there's a rational explanation this time, but it doesn't take away from the total sense of weirdness and disorientation. Plus the depiction of the urban bohemian underground rings very true and that's why this film has something about it that works when a lot of films don't.
I want to hate remakes, but I found this to be mind-bending in its own way. Sorry, I can't slam it.
