There’s one thing a couple of film like The Room, Troll 2, or Fateful Findings that I discover irresistible. These types of “so unhealthy they’re good” movies are marvelous curiosities the place ambition far outstrips assets, capability, and self-awareness to turn out to be one thing a lot higher than the sum of their components. Champagne and Bullets (additionally launched as GetEven and Highway to Revenge) is a movie on par with these classics of outsider cinema.
The film is sort of fully the work of 1 man, John De Hart. Hart wrote, directed, and stars as Rick Bode within the movie. He even performs a musical quantity early within the proceedings — The weird “Shimmy Slide.” Throughout the efficiency, Hart, who was reportedly pumped filled with painkillers after throwing out his again, is stiff and appears across the room as if he’s solely performing beneath risk of violence. And one way or the other, this lifeless efficiency of a cringy nation rocker isn’t essentially the most awkward scene within the film.
The relationships and interactions between characters in Champagne and Bullets are simply as inexplicable and unnatural as these in The Room. Bode and his accomplice Huck Finney are cops who lose their badges 5 minutes into the film. This precipitates the alarmingly fast psychological decline of Finney, who can be going via a divorce after discovering his spouse has been sleeping round. He fires a handgun via his payments, drinks bleach to get out of jail, and seemingly begins a cult.
Oh, and talking of cults, a superb portion of the plot revolves across the reemergence of Bode’s outdated girlfriend Cindy, who’s fleeing a satanic coven that “sacrificed a human child.”
Whereas ostensibly an motion movie, the combat scenes are few and much between, and staged with all of the believability of a theme park stunt present. Hart appeared way more desirous about cramming in as a lot gratuitous nudity as potential. There are three uncomfortably lengthy intercourse scenes with costar Pamela Bryant, who performs Cindy, all set to songs sung by Hart. In complete, they take up 12 minutes of runtime in a film that’s solely 90 minutes lengthy. One scene that takes place in a jacuzzi apparently even led Hart’s girlfriend on the time to interrupt up with him. (Warning: One scene not involving Hart and Bryant does depict a sexual assault.)
