SATAN' S LITTLE HELPER: Should We Laugh Or Scream?
Knowing about Jeff Lieberman's films is the kind of thing that separates the true obsessives from the standard genre film fans. He's only made a handful of features, most of them between 1976 and 1988, but that roster includes titles that are revered in certain corners of cult movie fandom: Squirm, Blue Sunshine and Just Before Dawn, to name three. His films tend to stick with those who seek them out because they mix horror and sci-fi concepts with a uniquely quirky/satirical sensibility and surprise you with unexpected shocks after you've been softened up with humor.
Sadly, Lieberman moved on to other interests like screenwriting, documentary and television work after the '80s ended but he did make one more horror film in the early 2000's, Satan's Little Helper. In trademark style, its narrative concept is both witty and disturbing: on Halloween, a misfit kid named Douglas Whooly (Alexander Brickel) eagerly awaits his big sister Jenna (Katheryn Winnick) coming home from college to go trick-or-treating with him. Unfortunately, she's brought home her new beau Alex (Stephen Graham) and, being a possessive kid, Douglas is annoyed.
However, there's more to this fateful Halloween than just domestic drama. Douglas is obsessed with a video game called Satan's Little Helper, in which one helps Satan kill people to earn points. It just so happens a masked serial killer (Joshua Annex) is roaming through the neighborhood and Douglas mistakes him for his favorite game's antihero. Douglas offers to be his assistant and the mysterious, silent killer agrees. Douglas soon becomes an unwitting accomplice to murder, endangering not only Jenna and her boyfriend but also his mother, Merrill (Amanda Plummer), as Satan starts piling up the corpses.
The end result shows that Lieberman's satirical chops and killer instinct remained intact for the 21st century. The setup seems to lead in an obvious "dangers of violent media" thematic direction but Lieberman wisely sidesteps that dead end. Instead, you get a movie where people fall prey to danger because they are so caught up in their own concerns or fantasies that they aren't capable of perceiving the real dangers right under their noses.
Lieberman plays this concept for a mixture of macabre humor, establishing the violence of the masked killer as soon as he introduced and then making the audience fret over how soon he'll wreak havoc on the protagonists. He deftly deploys a lot of classic 'identity confusion' humor during these moments, particularly when Jenna mistakes the killer for her boyfriend and plays along with bemused surprise when he gets horny and handsy with her. This confuses some viewers who expect meat-and-potatoes horror filmmaking but it's actually a good way throw viewers off balance so when the horror hits, it has a newly queasy punch to it.
Lieberman also shows a deft hand at making the audience nervous as to whether a scene will tip over totally into horror or humor: a great example is when the killer impersonates Douglas' father at a costume party, taking along Merrill, who is bound in packing tape - including her mouth. All the drunken revelers think it's a wacky duo act and laugh, even as she's quietly trying to get help. You don't whether to laugh at the dark humor or squirm - and that gives the sequence its unique power.
On the downside, there are a few problems with the film. At 100 minutes, it runs about a reel too long and that means the occasional slack stretch mars the film's pacing. It was also shot on HD-CAM, an older, tape-based HD format that was often used in television in the early 2000's. Though the cinematography is nicely composed and lit with skill, it looks more like television than it does cinema and that hampers its ability to feel like cinema (Lieberman would later say he should've shot it on film).
Those issues aside, Satan's Little Helper still shows Lieberman's distinctive takes on satire and horror from beginning to end. He got an above-average cast for a low-budget effort, with Plummer convincing as a well-to-do but quirky mom that the audience can like and future t.v. star Winnick showing solid comedic and dramatic chops to keep up with the complex demands of her role. Brickel amuses as a believably bratty but still amusing misfit kid and Annex gives an excellent, shockingly complex turn using only body language as a devious, intelligent killer. It's also worth noting that the final stretch of the film shows Lieberman playing with slasher film conventions and staging some suburban stalk-and-slash that is more effective than what you see in the recent Halloween sequels.
In short, Satan's Little Helper proved that Lieberman could still put together a good mixture of shocks and social commentary. It would be nice to see him take the director's chair once more but if this is his last hurrah, it's got that signature style that his fanbase will appreciate.
Blu-Ray Notes: Synapse picked this title up and put out their own blu-ray in October. Keep your eyes peeled for a full disc review here next week.