Carnal Fear rocks! But apparently not hard enough. The band’s first single, “Spread Eagle,” went “top chart,” but the album failed to go platinum. That puts a lot of pressure on their follow-up record, so the foursome convenes at their manager’s Oklahoma lake house to finish the album, Death Whispers, within a three-day deadline.
In other words, it’s a terrible time for the lead singer, Mitch (Trey Fillmore), to suffer bizarre recurring visions, no matter how many frozen treats, toy monkeys and bare breasts they contain. It’s also a terrible time for a masked serial killer to prey on beautiful women in the area. It’s Branded — the title speaking to the sizzlin’-hot drug spoon pressed against the victims’ left boob.
The first sign of trouble arrives with drummer Crash (Jamie Sworski), he of the heavy eyeliner, pubic goatee, dog collar, UPC code tattoo and raging heroin problem. He even brings his junkie groupie of choice, Skat Kat (Tulsa-based director Darla Enlow), whose bobbing corpse attracts police suspicion. It’s enough to drive Carnal Fear’s MILFy manager (Dana Pike, The Last Trick or Treater) into a wine-swilling tizzy, what with their upcoming European tour and all.
Branded captures a special time in American culture. Not when men dressed like a nu-metal venereal disease (although there’s that), but when sales of DVDs rivaled that of smack, created a hunger for content that allowed homegrown Hitchcocks like Enlow to crank out their low-budget takes on the slasher. In her case, Branded comes sandwiched between Toe Tags and The Stitcher, and I’m all for her casting herself in each. Here, Enlow’s first line — spoken while rubbing her trashy lingerie-clad hindquarters against Crash’s crotch — is, “Hey, baby, up for a little sport fucking?” (He is, as am I.)
Speaking of speaking, screenwriter Gigi Phillips helps lift Branded above the fray with the gift of lively dialogue. As the Carnal Fear manager, Pike gets to deliver one memorable putdown (“You couldn’t follow the instructions on a cereal box”) after another (“I would’ve aborted you”). And this being shot on video in Oklahoma, every utterance of “told” is pronounced by Pike as “toad.”
Phillips doesn’t leave the boys empty-mouthed, either, especially when demonstrating the friction between band members. Mitch berates Crash for neglecting band duties, saying work is “a stretch in your vocabulary, since you probably never made it quite that far in the alphabet!” A livid Crash responds, “You’re right, muh-muh-Mitch! I only made it to the Ps: ‘party’ and ‘pussy!’ You should be so lucky!”
You know who also should be so lucky? The killer’s other victims, particularly the Carnal Fear fans at the bait shop. One of them (Angie Knowlton) makes the pink bikini sexier than it’s ever been since Heather Thomas, while her friend (Bonnie Stribling) gets a teddy bar duct-taped to her chest, because why the hell not. I wonder if that touch comes straight from the novel.
Yes, Branded is based on a novel — exactly whose, though, is a mystery tougher than crack than the killer’s identity, as the credits don’t credit anyone for it. —Rod Lott