Savage Instinct
(1989)
Director: Patrick G. Donohue
Cast: Deborah Sweaney, Rodger Arilson, Mike Donohue
(Special thanks to Mike over at Dante's
Inferno for providing this movie!)
One thing the makers of low budget and big budget movies
both find in common is that making a movies is tough work. If you don't
have that much money and resources, you have to rack your brain in
order to figure out how to
film everything you want. And though you may have more money and
resources on a big budget movie, big budgets bring more things on the
set to figure out and master, more so, since the audience is expecting
more from a big budget movie. It goes without saying that just about
anyone working on any kind of movie would want to cut their workload as
much as they could. Even your typical screenwriter would, I'm sure,
like to not be pressured to write characters with depth, backgrounds
explanations for events and setting, and a constantly evolving plot
that has at least one foot planted in plausibility. It's pretty likely
some action directors would like to have his movie be a string of
action sequences - after all, the stuntpeople essentially do all the
work setting up these sequences. Plus, he wouldn't have to worry so
much about making the characters and story attractive to the audience.
However, I'm also sure they know what we, the audience, know - that
movies that are made more or less in this fashion are almost always
terrible. Like it or not, the audience wants strong characters and
interesting and attractive premises, otherwise they simply won't care
about what's going on. Yes, care is needed to execute the action
sequences themselves, but the audience needs to be persuaded to plant a
personal stake. If we don't know what's going on, or if we don't give a
flip about the people involved, even superbly directed action will have
the audience asking, "Why bother to go to all that effort for so
little?" Still, that doesn't stop a lot of filmmakers from going the
easy way out, and that's why there are so many Z movies out there. One
such Z movie filmmaker is Patrick G. Donohue, the director behind the
legendary trash actioner Kill Squad, as well as the
movie being reviewed this week, Savage Instinct
When Donohue directed Savage Instinct, possibly due to
the fact that he had the extra job of being the screenwriter, he went
with this easy way out - with a vengeance. Think you've seen thin
characters and plots that are barely there? Well, wait until you see
this movie. Until the action kicks in, there is practically no
development to any of the characters, and the almost non-existent story
that is feebly released is simply that of putting a protagonist in the
wrong place at the wrong time - the rest of the movie is essentially
one long chase. Yet - and this is where the movie separates itself from
the rest of the pack - it manages to work. It works, because
Donohue obviously knew what a terrible excuse for a movie this was, and
decided to have some fun with it. Not by directing everything in an
obviously har-har manner, but choosing to give the movie a tone that
was hilarious yet with everything subtle and understated for the most
part - kind of how parts of some Troma movies like The Toxic
Avenger come across. To make an intentionally bad but hilarious
movie has been tried many times before, but it rarely succeeds... hey,
it's just occurred to me that since it takes a certain kind of genius
to do that, trash director Donahue therefore has to be some kind of
film genius. The mind boggles.
You better pay close attention to the first four minutes
of the movie, since this part of the movie contains practically all the
information about the villains, not just what kind of people they are,
but what they are up to. On second thought, you probably won't have to
pay that much attention. The movie opens with the villains at work in
some coke lab; we instantly know they must be experts, since they are
handling and packaging all that coke with their bare hands and without
masks. One guy has been secretly sampling the coke, but he's apparently
been able to hide it for a long time by pretending he has a cold,
constantly wiping his nose and snorting. But his co-workers finally
figure it out, and they pounce on him. Their bald leader "Mongo"
dispatches him with his favourite method of execution, wearing a spiked
headband and braining the cokehead. "One more week, and this band will
have all the money it needs!" he subsequently tells his cheering
partners in crime.
And that's pretty much all we ever learn about the bad
guys.
We then cut to somewhere nearby in this somewhere land,
at the "Real Estate" real estate agency. A sleazy real estate agent
named Cecil prepares to drive out into the boondocks show a Mrs. Morris
a piece of property. As they drive out, the screenplay does make a stab
at developing her character with a slick conversation Cecil initiates
in order to have her warm up to her:
CECIL: So Susan, you said your husband passed
away?
SUSAN: Two years ago.
CECIL: That's too bad.
And that's pretty much all we ever learn about this
movie's heroine.
Along their way to the property, they get a flat tire,
and while Cecil is changing the tire, Susan wanders off a little and
sees the bad guys at their ranch loading up a truck. What she doesn't
know is that they also see her, and they somehow come to the conclusion
that she knows what they are up to. So their first priority now is to
dispose of her, which they start trying to do almost immediately
afterwards. (Just eight minutes into the movie, not counting the
opening credits, and the central conflict is already starting to go -
how's that for speed?) They quickly get rid of Cecil, but Susan manages
to get away - for the moment. After spending much of the movie being
pursued, captured, pursued again, captured again, pursued once more,
and captured once again, Susan finally decides she's had enough, and
starts to makes plans to fight back against these brutal thugs. How
does Susan suddenly turned from a frightened fugitive to a determined
fighter? As one of the thugs subsequently puts it, "Because she's
pissed!"
And that's pretty much all the plot the rest of the
movie has to offer.
It goes without saying that Savage Instinct
is a movie that's extremely laughable, though you might
be surprised that a lot of the material that makes you laugh doesn't
come across in the manner that you might be expecting. Certainly a lot
of the movie is unintentionally bad, no doubt; among other things,
the instances of post-production looping are worse than in the
cheesiest kung fu movies, the movie is too cheap to even put siren
lights on a police car, and in one scene you can see the microphone guy
peeking into the frame. And there are some details that don't make a
lot of sense. For instance, I challenge anyone to make sense of the
sequence where some teenage louts are massacred by a noose. Also,
if the thugs were so quick to kill Cecil, why don't they also kill
Susan immediately whenever they have their hands on her? (Well, I guess
there is some kind of explanation with the fact that whenever they have
her, one of the members of the gang - male or female - masturbate her
before subsequently trying to rape her.) And there are other things,
like the fact that a major drug deal is done right out in the open on a
city's main street.
The fact that a drug deal is being done right out in the
open is funny enough, but what really makes this scene and many other
unbelievable scenes in the movie funny is the way Donohue and the
actors treat it. No matter (for the most part) how silly something
is, it is presented with as much seriousness as possible. Whether it is
someone trying to give a deep soul kiss to Susan while she has a gag on
her mouth, or when the surrounded Susan escapes from the top of a car
by running on top of the heads of her attackers (!), the way these
scenes are presented are so straight, you almost believe something like
this could happen in real life. It also makes these scenes funnier than
if they had been acted and directed in an obvious and extremely comic
fashion. That's not to say that there are some broadly comic moments in
this movie; for example, after Susan makes that great escape, she turns
around and insults her pursuers by grabbing her crotch. But Donohue
wisely makes such moments sporadic, so that the viewer won't be
pummelled by this overly jokey humour, knowing that a little of this
goes a long way. He also knows it far more pleasurable for the viewer
to find laughs by taking a closer look at what's happening, since the
viewer gets a feeling of accomplishment when he spies a subtle gag. In
the sequence when Susan commandeers and drives a police car down a
rough road, it's more funny to spot the energetically bouncing corpse
of the sheriff behind her, than had this background gag been given a
close-up shot.
Though the direction of these sequences has been given
care, they still wouldn't have worked had the actors in them not
bothered to perform with just the right tone for their character and
the particular scene. Lory-Michael Ringuette goes for the goofy as
Cecil, confidently yelling "They don't know who they are messing with!"
when the thugs start harassing her and Susan. Though since he doesn't
last for much longer than when he says that, I think he knew he could
afford to be goofy for a few minutes. Besides knowing that, he seems to
have known that too much goofiness even for a short time can be
overbearing, so he's careful to straddle just a little over the line
between seriousness and clowning around. His co-stars wisely play it
almost completely straight, since they are in the movie for a lot more
time. Despite one villain being a bald hulking brute with a spiked
headband, and another bad guy wearing a piece of jewellery that strings
his nose with an ear, they and their partners in crime seldom let out a
big sign that they realize how silly things are; the comic material
they do or say is subtle, like those previously mentioned hidden gags.
As Susan, Debra Sweaney has the difficult task of first playing a mousy
and panic-stricken woman, then after a impromptu MacGyver session
in a tool shed, suddenly transforming into a modern day Amazon
warrior(!) who throws axes and bolts at her attackers as if she's been
doing it for years. It's to her credit that she manages to be so
convincing in both roles, it's almost believable. The movie itself also
never quite manages to be convincing, but it sure manages to be a quite
amusing romp if you like this kind of thing.
UPDATE: I received this e-mail from Lory-Michael
Ringuette:
"Just wanted to say hello and let you know I just
read your review of Savage Instinct. Here's a couple of facts
you may not have known:
1. The original working title was The Edge Of Fear. When it was
first released to theaters, the title was changed to They Call Me
Mucho
Woman. Then it was released on video and to cable as Savage
Instinct.
2. Most of the movie was shot in the Santa Cruz mountains in northern
California.
"You're right, I was going for the goofy with my character, Cecil
Thorn. Are you a fan of the Little Rascals (Our Gang)? Just after I
delivered
the line "They don't know who they're messing with." I gave my version
of
the famous "Butch" face. Butch was the bully that would always beat-up
Alfalfa. I don't think anyone ever spotted it, though.
"Keep your eye out for my latest feature as writer/director/actor. It's
a homage to the 60's Roger Corman films, called Tele-Zombie
Check
for availability on Amazon (VHS)
See also: Bridge
Of Dragons, Crack House, Skinheads
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