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. | Killer
Tongue, The (La Lengua Asesina)
(1996) |
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Overcooked attempt at a hip cult classic – this is a desperate effort at dragging out a 90 minute feature from a one gag joke and it fails quite miserably. The laughs are few and far between and soon the admittedly amusing idea of a killer tongue from outer space causing havoc soon begins to wear wafer thin. The movie begins with a heist going bad followed by a meteorite from space that Ed Wood would be proud of crash landing in a bowl of soup causing a woman and her poodles to transform into a latex wearing siren with a killer tongue accompanied by posse of four (ex-poodle) drag queens and this unlikely group sets on a mission to discover her beau with whom a heist had gone awry with him ending up in prison while she bided time as a nun. The two goons who had been stung by the heist are after her blood and thrown into the mix is Robert Englund as a twisted and sadistic prison warden. This is an attempt at producing a wild, wacky horror comedy that is designed to be hip, trendy and witty in the wake of Pulp Fiction and El Mariachi and From Dusk Till Dawn, however while those crackled and fizzed with freshness, humour and spark this one is about as livewire as a soggy cabbage left rotting at the back of the fridge for six months. The humour and situations are horribly forced and lack any charm or spontaneity. The characters likewise are dull caricatures loaded up with hip dialogues to camouflage the basic dreariness of proceedings. One or two scenes involving the tongue are capable of evoking some rare chuckles but even the rather resplendent tongue loses its appeal after a while. Should have worked far better had the film not been so deliberately jokey…perhaps such a ridiculous concept as this is ought to have been played somewhat straighter for maximum effect – as it is its very silly, but alas, not particularly amusing either. This may have won Melinda Clarke the Best Actress award at a top Film Festival a few years ago, but we reckon its unwatchable drivel and for the video cover to proclaim Quentin Tarantino’s quote of “Wow!!!” probably says it all. The director has aspired to produce something that would have set him apart as the John Waters for the 90’s, but while the Waters classics were full of surprises and spontaneity and shock, this film simply falls all over itself in its very noticeable and calculated effort at being funny, hip and cool. Must have looked like a funny idea on paper once, sadly the movie didn’t turn out that way by a long shot. One to go considerable lengths to avoid.
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