Ugly, The (1997)

reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten


THE UGLY

Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Triumph Releasing/Essential Films Director: Scott Reynolds Writer: Scott Reynolds Cast: Paolo Rotondo, Rebecca Hobbs, Jennifer Ward- Lealand, Roy Ward, Vanessa Byrnes, P. Glover, Christopher Graham, Jon Brazier

So you thought that New Zealand was a cute country whose chief concern was the contemplation of koalas and kiwis--a veritable Shangri-la far removed from the vexations of civilization? Appearances deceive. The most romantic hideaways have their closeted cadavers, the most placid faces their saturnine sides. In "The Ugly," first-time writer-director Scott Reynolds hones in on one of New Zealand's shadowy institutions, one far removed from the chief tourist centers of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

The picture about a serial killer who, like Ted Bundy, has his charming side, is Grand Guignol, a slasher film which is different from movies like "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" in that it takes itself with deadly seriousness. One of its characters, an unctuous doctor who directs an asylum that resembles Peter Weiss's anarchic shelter at Charenton, and two others who serve as guards, are so off-the-wall that they approach the borders of camp. Otherwise, "The Ugly" is an impressive, graphic, genuinely scary feature whose startlingly low budget belies its inventiveness and craft.

Viewing do-gooders with a satiric pen that could have been manipulated by a Rush Limbaugh or an Ayn Rand, Reynolds focuses on the relationship of a publicity-seeking psychiatrist, Dr. Karen Shoemaker (Rebecca Hobbs), and the imprisoned murderer whose psyche she seeks to unsheathe. As portrayed by the remarkable Paolo Rotondo, a Napoli-born actor who moved to New Zealand at the age of eleven, Simon Cartwright meets the ambitious woman whose audience has has requested. yet he does not seem at all like a guy who hopes the exchange will lead to his early release from the hideous mental hospital which has contained him for five years. Head down at first, he soon responds to Dr. Shoemaker's plea that he look her in the eye, while she probes the convict's obsession with killing. The more he simply describes in vivid detail the method he uses to terminate his quarry, the more the doctor insists on knowing his motivation. Not satisfied with the prisoner's glib assertion that he simply enjoyed killing for its own sake (but now considers himself cured and ready for release), Shoemaker frequently shucks her sympathetic front to shout and provoke her subject. As Simon describes his macabre activities, Reynolds dramatizes the action.

Like other horror films, the plot itself is not daringly original. Of course the psycho suffered from a traumatic childhood in the hands of an unhappy mother who alternately embraced him and made habitual use of the whip. Certainly he was taunted by his schoolmates, picked on mercilessly because as a dyslectic he could not read and therefore did not fit in with the crowd. Predictably he is sympathetically supported by one person, a self-assured, assertive girl who deplores the way her classmates beat up on the poor kid and who became his haven against the turmoil. What gives "The Ugly" its particular fascination, however, is its style. Reynolds lathers the screen for the most part in antiseptic blue, the color of a mint-flavored Scope, to emphasize the sterility of Simon's life, occasionally and most effectively shifting to red to highlight the violent blemishes which exist under Simon's composed veneer. When Simon slices his targets from ear to ear, the blood spurts and gushes, sometimes in naturalistic red, at other moments in green and black. Reynolds has great fun shifting from the present to Simon's past so instantaneously that we cannot help both marveling at the velocity of the changes while at the same moments wondering whether these are simply techniques exploited by recent graduates of film school. Especially effective is Reynolds' shoehorning Dr. Shoemaker into actual scenes of Simon's past, where she migrates suddenly from her chair in the hospital's interview chamber to a seat in the well-appointed restaurant to which he has taken his date.

The credibility is furthered by Paolo Rotondo's solid performance as the unsmiling killer who feels compelled to commit his crimes lest the furies he frequently sees in his schizoid hallucinations pester him unmercifully. Reynolds goes astray only in these moments of torment, conjuring Simon's victims in the juvenile manner of sophomoric horror films--women with blood dripping from their lips mouthing advice like "Kill the bitch." The wide-eyed, attractive and confident Karen Shoemaker is portrayed with a riveting intensity by Rebecca Hobbs, the brutal guards who habitually beat and harass the inmate are portrayed amusingly by Paul Glover and Chris Graham, while Roy Ward in the role of Dr. Marlowe, the warden, projects hostility and suavity with equal aplomb.

"The Ugly" may suggest to you an attenuated version of Lars von Trier's "The Kingdom" in conveying the hopelessness and corruption of a public hospital. Politically it makes a good case for locking up serial killers as incorrigible and throwing away the keys. Not Rated. Running time: 93 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998


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