Studio: Pop Cinema
Director: Chris LaMartina
Writer: Jimmy George, Chris LaMartina
Producer: Jimmy George, Chris LaMartina
Stars: David Phillip Carollo, Melissa O’Brien, Nicolette le Faye, Dave Gamble, Helenmary Ball, Sabrina Taylor-Smith, Alex Mendez, George Stover, Leanna Chamish, Stephanie Anders, Ruby Larocca, Scarlett Storm
Review Score:
Summary:
A virginal artist falls in love with a call girl pursued by a murderous cult to bear the child of ancient god Cthulhu.
Review:
There’s little wonder why hopeless virgin Carter Wilcox is so sexually frustrated. When he doesn’t have his hand down his pants while camgirl Missy Katonixx verbally humiliates him, the nervous shyguy is constantly forced to hear his musician roommate Erica Zann carnally cavorting with insatiable manwhore Rick ‘The Dick’ Pickman.
Ensconced in pornography and the incessant sounds of his neighbors’ orgasms, Carter is still an optimistic romantic at heart. That’s why he perpetually keeps a Deep Ones condom in his pocket’s On Deck circle, waiting for a green light from that special someone to finally tear into the foil wrapper.
Carter just might have that chance, too. When the struggling artist spies sultry call girl Riley Whatley, it’s infatuation at first sight. Riley becomes Carter’s muse, model, and potential mistress in nearly one fell swoop. Trouble is, Riley is also the woman foretold by the Necronomicon to bear Cthulhu’s child. And the cult of The Church of Starry Wisdom is about to make sure that unholy prophecy comes true, no matter how many hookers end up mutated or mutilated along the way.
Not since Lawrence Watt-Evans’ prose short “Pickman’s Modem” has there been a punnier play on words of an H.P. Lovecraft work. With a title like “Call Girl of Cthulhu,” the notion cannot be discounted that this could be a case where a title comes first, and a story rushes up to morph a one-off joke into a full feature film.
Whether the shambler or the egg came first in this instance, the movie’s not-so-serious take on Elder Gods fiction is nonetheless literate in its inspirational sources. “Call Girl of Cthulhu” is rife with enough references to be a virtual Easter egg hunt for plentiful Lovecraftian in-jokes. Most come in the form of character names like a doctor named West or a detective named Legrassi. Though a name like Ashton Eibon suggests that filmmaker Chris LaMartina and creative collaborator Jimmy George have more than a mere surface familiarity with the Lovecraft Circle and their Cthulhu Mythos.
Read the story summary above and you’d be forgiven for presuming the movie to be a USA Up All Night sex comedy with a Charles Band bent for indie horror and a Lloyd Kaufman style for slime-covered raunch. Indeed, “Call Girl of Cthulhu” has an aesthetic that plays like the worst of Full Moon mashed with the best of Troma, or vice versa, what with its giallo-colored lighting and low-budget look. Surprisingly however, “Call Girl of Cthulhu” is not as over-the-top campy as it sounds, and even manages to lay puerile humor on thick without being obnoxiously condescending.
Part of the movie’s ability to remain happily lowbrow while avoiding outright insulting childishness is due to actors like David Phillip Carollo as Carter playing their parts with sincerity. There is an earnest heart beating somewhere, albeit softly, underneath gratuitous T&A and monsterized muppets that balances the excessively gory goop and bodily fluids spurting from mutated appendages. The people behind the camera clearly had fun making the film. Whether the people in front of movie screens and monitors will do the same while watching it depends on a disposition for dick jokes and syrup-soaked visual gags.
Don’t let the apologetic paragraph above lead you into believing “Call Girl of Cthulhu” is subtly sophisticated, though. This is a movie featuring death by dildo through the throat, acidic urine melting facial flesh on a call girl client expecting a golden shower, boobs turning into snarling slug creatures, and penises mutating into similarly vicious alien beasts. Such a strange brew is an acquired taste palatable only for those who measure expectations according to content, checkbook, and an often-juvenile brand of humor that won’t hit every funny bone.
With its crowdfunded roots and labor of love limitations, “Call Girl of Cthulhu” is not the most professionally-produced horror-comedy anyone is likely to see. But it is something that can be a snickering good time for Lovecraft fans who won’t find sacrilege in seeing the grandmaster’s literary oeuvre repurposed for salaciously sex-oriented horror hijinks.
Review Score: 65
“Kraven the Hunter” might as well be renamed “Kraven the Explainer,” as it’s much more of an unnecessarily tedious origin story than an action-intensive adventure.