LITTLE BIG BOY

(A.k.a. LITTLE BIG BOY: THE RISE AND FALL OF JIMMY DUNCAN)

April Monique Burril, better known as Chainsaw Sally, addresses the screen in candid mode (albeit, done up in full character garb) to introduce us to a documentary on the making of one low budget horror filmmaker’s latest feature effort.

The subject in question is Jimmy Duncan (Kim Sonderholm) – whose previous efforts include OVERNIGHT VIXENS and SERIAL SLASHERS MURDER FRENZY – and his latest film was to be DEATH STALKER ...

"The film unfortunately never reached completion," April tells us, "and the director now sits in jail accused of multiple homicide ...".

From there, the true ("well, sort of") story of Jimmy’s descent into madness unfolds.

We first meet the initially mild-mannered director as he appears on the Jaynie Jane Show – a cable TV chat show – to discuss his latest feature, set to be based upon a celebrity who’s being stalked by a maniac. Jaynie (Gry Bay) is a sexy but dumb blonde who nevertheless coaxes plenty of telling titbits out of the modest star in seconds: details of how his mother was murdered when he was young, for instance.

Jaynie then introduces us to a succession of testimonies from people who know – or claim to at least know of – Jimmy. A wisecracking politician begins on a negative note, quickly followed by Lloyd Kaufman appearing as himself. He appears to approve of Jimmy, but only because he too thinks of him as a psychopath.

Most damning of all, Jimmy’s 14-year-old daughter Kira (Nicolette Michaela) comes on screen and slates him as an abusive, foul-mouthed father who she wishes to see no more – "I hate him so much". Check out the thinly veiled references to Charlie Sheen in this clip. His estranged ex-wife, Kira’s mother Marcia (Daniela Garcia), does little to temper Kira’s flames.

Then we meet Jimmy’s grandmother, who keeps turning up on the sets of his films to pester him for an answer to the mystery of his mother’s death, some 25 years earlier. There’s definitely a mystery building here, albeit almost insidiously beneath the endless sound-bites from Kaufman (a regular, who seems to ad lib whenever he returns to the screen), beleaguered actress Amy (Amy Lynn West) and rival director Don Holland (Brandon Slagle).

The bottom line is that Jimmy is portrayed as an aggressive, obsessive and dangerous director by all those who have worked or been close to him. He’s seen to be openly violent to those who question his visions, and old friends go on record to accuse him of having a "terrible temper".

All of which sets the scene for Jimmy’s filmed deterioration into mental breakdown, met with further asides to camera from those who were privy to his collapse. It doesn’t help that his attempts at casting his new film ended disastrously ...

Written and directed by Sonderholm (THE HORROR VAULT series; CRAIG), this is an occasionally clever, sporadically amusing film that uses the mockumentary format quite well. In fact, the film suffers the most from when Sonderholm is on screen. He can’t act for toffee.

But he directs reasonably well, offering a fast-paced mix of faux interview clips and surprisingly entertaining clips from fake films such as OUTER SPACE ZOMBIES.

For the most part, though, this is a fly-on-the-wall-type comedy that owes more to the style of Ricky Gervais than, say, THE LAST HORROR FILM or A CAT IN THE BRAIN. Perhaps the prominent figuring of Kaufman – he pops up at regular intervals – is suggestion enough of the tone this film takes.

It does get a little darker, as the mood is pretty uneven and Sonderholm clearly wants us to become disturbed by how events unfurl. But he lunges back into the comfort of bad sex gags and crappy one-liners all too often to find a comfortable middle ground.

A little nudity here, some mediocre gore there ... perhaps that’s enough to entice some?

The screener DVD-R provided for review kicked straight into the film – no extras, menus or chapters.

As for the film itself, it looked okay in this 1.85:1/16x9 presentation. As far as I’m aware, there is no official DVD release as yet. It can be bought for a nice price, however, on Amazon.com through their On Demand service.

English 2.0 audio was adequate.

While I respect Sonderholm’s ambition, I didn’t take much away from this lacklustre film.

By Stuart Willis