Though we could take issue with the pretentious nature of debut writer-director Hart’s own credit at the very end (“A Brett A Hart Vision” reads the legend like he‘s Kurosawa or something‘), BONE DRY is a first-rate latter-day B movie. It efficiently trots through a familiar but nicely sustained premise and displays style and inventiveness throughout.
In a whole different era – an era when Tiffany seemed the zenith of sexy pop music femmes – Luke Goss formed a crucial portion of an inexplicably popular British band named Bros. Pubescent girls loved their very slight bad boy appeal while music lovers expressed understandable disdain that a couple of guys who sang like their hands were caught in meat grinders could become a pop sensation. Now, Goss is making a name for himself as a movie star in the U.S., alternating between striking supporting roles for Guillermo Del Toro (BLADE II, HELLBOY II) and starring roles in straight to DVD genre flicks like BONE DRY.
He proves a charismatic hero here : his character is a family man and businessman put through the wringer in what is ostensibly an amped-up, SAW-era variation on the unmotivated persecution of Dennis Weaver in DUEL (some of the fast cut torments suffered by Goss are clearly stylistically inspired by the SAW franchise). For no immediately apparent reason, an unhinged Desert Storm veteran sporting a cowboy hat (face obscured until the end, voice unmistakably that of Lance Henriksen) takes delight in repeatedly, sadistically punishing Goss in the unforgiving realm of the Mojave desert.
Goss is pissed on, handcuffed naked to a cactus, buried up to his neck in the sand and has sharp objects shoved under his fingernails. All of which you can enjoy within a sexually arousing environment for around £200 at Madame Helga’s House Of Pain just off Regent Street any day of the week. (Mention The Horror Review and get 10% off your first foreskin thrashing)
“The only thing left is to peel your skin off and roll you in salt…” There’s not a great deal of dialogue in this pared-down, pleasingly cynical movie, but what there is fits the brutal, misanthropic overall tone of the movie. When it comes, the violence, although relatively discreet in visual terms, is quite startling and Henriksen reminds us of what a fine heavy he makes as the story’s deranged, determined puppet master.
The story allows for brief roles for Tiny Lister and a typically lovely Dee Wallace Stone (whose friendly waitress provides a nice punch line) as it briskly tracks its way to a fashionably twisting denouement that switches the audience’s allegiances in one devastating instant.
Sometimes the movie seems a tad over-stretched and slight for this running time : it may have made a particularly dynamic and taut 80 minute thriller. Nonetheless, it’s a nasty, suspenseful dark-hued thriller recommended especially to those who relished the 80’s output of Eric Red.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
