Depraved, disturbing, and demented, but never dreadful — (‘Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things’ review)
I love any movie where people spend the majority of the time screaming at each other especially over mundane stuff that’s driven by frustration caused by something else, like oh, you know, laying low in Miami after you and your gay lover commit a robbery-homicide in Baltimore and one of you dresses in drag posing as the other’s aunt to keep the friendly neighbors from asking too many questions. A well-intentioned attempt at keeping suspicion at bay that sounds more like a toxic marriage with a confused role-reversal dynamic, but hardly what I’d call an air-tight alibi.
Paul (Abe Zwick) and Stanley (Wayne Crawford, credited here as Scott Lawrence) have holed up in a rental down in weird, sunny Miami — where everyone is either just plain stupid or pleasantly unsuspecting of Paul’s fairly unconvincing but completely convicted drag role-play as Stanley’s Aunt Martha — after murdering a Mrs. Johnson and making off with a box of expensive jewelry. The next step in their big escape plan is to head to South America, which we only know because when Paul isn’t screaming at Stanley — “You know what you need? You need a broomstick up your ass!” — about getting a haircut and chasing him with scissors, or berating him about, God forbid, drinking from the faucet, or leaving the ice box open too long, he can be spotted boning up on travel brochures between beers.
Stanley, God love ‘im, who clearly isn’t with the program, is running all over town making friends with girls and bringing them and his pothead pals back to the house or the elaborate tool shed out back — complete with a wood-fire stove and twin-sized bed — which infuriates Paul not only as a jealous gay lover and accomplice, but also as a well-meaning aunt who doesn’t want to see her nephew fall in with the dregs of society. And while Stanley has no trouble enjoying bringing home babes who hardly mind taking off their clothes, he completely loses his mind anytime they want to get further than second base. If you’re confused, don’t worry, Paul and Stanley are too because this story is as much about running from the law as it is about these two trying to understand one another.
Anyway, for each new friend Stanley makes, Paul’s paranoia kicks up another notch throwing him into a murderous rage which subsequently finds the two being blackmailed by a sweaty heroin-addict who’s followed them all the way from Baltimore.
From the 1970 taboo of good old-fashioned homosexuality to loads of drug use, jealousy and murder, to a steak-knife c-section and a baby on a doorstep, this film’s energetic depravity delightfully knows no bounds. And whether you like it or not, it says more about the confused human condition of relationship roles than it probably ever intended.
Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things was writer-director Thomas Casey’s only film in the role of auteur, but he has one other writing credit on a film called Flesh Feast that sounds right up my alley. I also couldn’t get enough Abe Zwick as Paul/Aunt Martha in this, and sadly, Sometimes Aunt Martha is his only acting film credit. The chemistry and dynamic between Zwick and Crawford is anxiety-inducing fun that could only be matched by a John Waters remake of The Odd Couple.
And while we’re in Florida, if there was such a thing as a sleaze-film cinematic universe, this film could totally exist in the same reality as any Herschell Gordon Lewis film. In fact, keep your eyes peeled and you’ll spot HGL regular William Kerwin (a.k.a. Thomas Wood) as a cop just like in 1963’s Blood Feast. But let’s not go screwing up a good thing by bogging these low-budget gems down with anything like continuity. It’s a fun thought, but it doesn’t belong here.
Your pulse will be ticking at around 180 beats per minute by the end of the film, either from all the screaming or the insane plot itself, culminating in frenetic chase through an abandoned film studio. And if the metaphor of illusion wasn’t clear enough to this point, the abrupt and dreadful, if you will, conclusion on the set of what appears to be the interiors for an average American home as the final backdrop for the strange relationship between Paul and Stanley is enough to make you consider that some kind of symbolic intention is afoot.
Sometimes Aunt Martha does do dreadful things, up to and including murder, but the most dreadful thing Aunt Martha isn’t guilty of is being low-budget boredom.
Four stars.
(Available on home video from the American Genre Film Archive and Vinegar Syndrome)
