As a nearly 50-year-old, and still feeling and thinking at half that age, I am obviously not all that ensconced "in" that age bracket when I see something that grabs my attention as expediently and with such dominion that I sat up and took notice of the immediacy of what I was seeing and hearing in the trailer; Bless the Beasts and the Children, but even moreso the editor of this trailer, as it got my attention so quickly that my Centrum 50s' spilled and scattered over my glass tabletop by my reaction like so many albino hydrocodones falling tragically from a broken Pez dispenser. Once my vitamins (and temerity) had been successfully gathered, I watched it another 10-12X before finding the cheapest Blu-Ray I could find (through Amazon, of course), pushed the "Buy Now" button and awaited it's delivery daily to see if the film warranted my initial reaction. It did. Not since "Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus" has an Indy film had such a complementary soundtrack that both adds to and keeps the viewers on their collective toes to add to the benefit of the film and help to complete it, too. Far too many films today rely on big-budgeted royalty checks and generalized 'guesses' as to "well, this song might sound good dropped in here" in determining their placement, rather than to the overall feel and rhythm of the film, itself. These independent artists were pure fresh air to me, particularly the Small Town Zeros-"Secrets", which lent itself to the apocalyptic subtext succinctly. Let's face it, I was brought up on a diet of the Mad Max films in the mid-80's, where we would have all night Dusk 'til Dawn film festivals in my suburban basement where everyone became suitably lubricated for the festivities as the night wore on- the films' malevolent fight over "the gas", the irrefutably galvanizing car culture with it's host of poor-man's but righteous Bond-gadgets to disfigure and disable, and the man himself, "the Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla", Humongous, who led the pack with his choke-hold and "worse then Ahnold" elocution. The inventiveness and damn-straight honesty of the characters and dialogue (of Bellflower) were revivifying most of the time in the "best" way, with only the occasional freshman mistake to intrude. The markedly stylized cinematography was the other half (along with the soundtrack) to keep the audience's interest peaked throughout, and was the reason that my initial reaction was so markedly demonstrative and jettisoned me across the room to the computer to immediately buy the Blu-Ray. So to the cast, crew, and Mr. Glodell, Kudos! ...for getting this prematurely wizening hipster off his a%$- Holy carbuncle! And to the rest of you looking for something fresh and engaging, with a little 80's genre thrown in, and with what hopefully will become a new oeuvre unto itself, check it out. OR, if you're just a "car guy", you'll love it, too.
