Chattanooga Film Festival Reviews - Part 3
One of the most fun elements of the Chattanooga Film Festival is the series of “secret screenings” – obscure and/or hard-to-find crowd-pleasers whose titles aren’t listed in advance. This year’s entries included the 1992 religious vigilante flick The Divine Enforcer (starring Jan-Michael Vincent and Erik Estrada) and Troma’s 1986 disco thriller Club Life (with Michael Parks, Dee Wallace, and Tony Curtis). I had a chance to catch two secret screenings. Here’s a rundown:
Obsession: A Taste for Fear - This 1989 Italian movie is hilariously incoherent. The plot has something to do with a killer whose victims are all the subjects of a fashion photographer specializing in erotic photos. Instead of unfolding like a mystery, the movie features scene after scene after scene designed with the sole purpose of showing topless women. Seriously, there are so many bare breasts in this picture that even Russ Meyer would tell them to scale back a little bit. Director Piccio Raffanini goes for the kind of slick music video-style visuals that were popular in the ‘80s when he’s not inventing illogical reasons for women to disrobe. Adding to the madness are out-of-nowhere needle drops, as when Lou Gramm’s “Midnight Blue” inexplicably plays over a montage. Obsession: A Taste for Fear is no way a good movie. It is, however, amusingly tasteless cheese.
Campfire Tales - New Line Cinema picked up distribution rights to this horror anthology in 1997, presumably hoping to capitalize on the success of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. For whatever reason, they skipped a theatrical release, sending it to home video instead. The movie has become almost impossible to see, as it isn’t available for streaming and the DVD is long out of print. Those factors made its appearance at CFF exciting. A group of attractive young people wreck their car in the middle of nowhere, then sit around sharing scary stories while they wait for help to arrive. One involves horny newlyweds being terrorized from outside their RV. Another finds a young girl having her home invaded by a guy who kills her dog and licks her hand to creep her out. The segments in Campfire Tales tend to have a lot of buildup for very little payoff. They end just as they’re getting interesting. Still, the movie is notable for featuring early performances from Ron Livingston, Christine Taylor, Amy Smart, and James Marsden. Getting a chance to screen this obscure title was a treat.
For part one of my coverage from the Chattanooga Film Festival, click here. For part two, click here
