Jim Hosk­ing on the mak­ing of this year’s most revolt­ing comedy

Jim Hosk­ing, direc­tor and co-writer of The Greasy Stran­gler, wasn’t expect­ing peo­ple to be quite so dis­gust­ed by his film. ​“In the States, audi­ences said they found the grease to be real­ly, real­ly revolt­ing,” he says, cack­ling to him­self. ​“I can’t say that I even real­ly thought that much about the grease.” This vis­cer­al response wasn’t lim­it­ed to view­ers, either. ​“When I was mak­ing it, I was feel­ing like I was mak­ing a com­e­dy,” Hosk­ing recalls, ​“and a lot of the crew, who were Amer­i­can, were blanch­ing while we were film­ing var­i­ous scenes. It just doesn’t feel that strange to me.”

When your film fea­tures scenes of grease being slathered over sausages, extend­ed dog­gy style sex between two over­weight mis­fits, and an ele­phan­tine pros­thet­ic penis, these things are a mat­ter of per­spec­tive. ​“I remem­ber think­ing, ​‘For a film that’s got the word ​‘greasy’ in the title, there’s not very much grease in this film,” says Hosk­ing. ​“It was quite an arbi­trary con­cept, it wasn’t like I had a fas­ci­na­tion for grease and real­ly want­ed to film some.”

Dis­gust­ing or not, The Greasy Stran­gler is a weird film. It tells the sto­ry of dis­co-lov­ing geri­atric Big Ron­nie (Michael St Michaels) and his odd­ly-endear­ing son Big Bray­den (Sky Elo­bar), two men liv­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty of odd­balls and deviants, one of whom is being pur­sued by a mur­der­er known as the Greasy Stran­gler, a lard­ed-up sociopath who shrieks and grunts as he chokes his victims.

The Greasy Strangler’s iden­ti­ty isn’t exact­ly a secret; this isn’t a mur­der mys­tery. But in a film filled with obvi­ous lies and strange rep­e­ti­tion, it’s not entire­ly clear what is true and what is not – that is, until you see Ron­nie, grease and all, bru­tal­ly dis­patch a group of mis­cre­ants out­side a motel. The old man lives a dou­ble life for most of the movie: mur­der­ing drifters and a hap­less hot dog sales­man one moment, and tak­ing baf­fled tourists on irrel­e­vant tours of alleged ​“dis­co land­marks” with his son the next.

It’s on one of these tours that Bray­den meets the flir­ta­tious Janet (a bril­liant­ly cringey Eliz­a­beth De Raz­zo), the film’s only female char­ac­ter and de fac­to love inter­est. The two begin a strange love affair, until Ron­nie steals Janet from his hap­less son. While Bray­den is heart­bro­ken, he doesn’t seem to feel all that betrayed, grudg­ing­ly putting up with the sounds of his father and his girl­friend nois­i­ly cop­u­lat­ing next door. ​“She’s prob­a­bly the first woman that they’ve met in three-and-a-half years,” Hosk­ing explains. ​“We real­ly enjoyed writ­ing a female char­ac­ter who was so lib­er­at­ed and brazen and manip­u­la­tive. Maybe there aren’t enough female char­ac­ters who just don’t give a fuck, who are just fun.”

“Brazen” is a good way to describe the film’s gen­er­al ide­o­log­i­cal out­look. Noth­ing real­ly mat­ters all that much in this world: instead of call­ing the police when he finds out his father is a mur­der­er, Bray­den calls Janet, and the first detec­tive on the scene is Ron­nie in an uncon­vinc­ing dis­guise. As Hosk­ing puts it: ​“There’s just a lack of self-con­scious­ness in all the char­ac­ters that’s just fun­ny to us, like it’s a com­plete­ly amoral world where nobody bears any grudges.” The bleak land­scape does a lot to height­en the odd­ness: run down hous­es, grimy desert­ed dis­co clubs and grot­ty RUVs all fea­ture, and there’s a lin­ger­ing sense that this band of mis­fits could actu­al­ly be the last peo­ple on earth. It’s almost a lit­tle trag­ic. ​“I def­i­nite­ly want­ed it to feel quite sad,” says Hosking.

Despite this, he is ful­ly aware that his film is a dif­fi­cult watch: scenes go on longer than they should and the pace of the plot, com­bined with an unnerv­ing sound­track by Fuck But­tons’ Andrew Hong, makes for a view­ing expe­ri­ence that will leave you ques­tion­ing your choic­es in life. ​“The joke is in the fact that it keeps going and keeps going and keeps going, but then you either enjoy that, or you don’t. I want­ed it to feel more like an immer­sion in a pecu­liar world and a style of speak­ing, it’s kind of pur­pose­ful­ly claus­tro­pho­bic and mad­den­ing and frus­trat­ing and irri­tat­ing or even bor­ing or alienating.”

Con­verse­ly, Hosk­ing admits he’s not all that con­cerned about how the film is received. ​“Part of the appeal was to make some­thing that out­stayed its wel­come,” says Jim. ​“Stretch­ing scenes or stretch­ing mate­r­i­al fur­ther than it should. When I was writ­ing it I would have been think­ing, ​‘God, how much can peo­ple take?’” In an age where com­e­dy seems increas­ing­ly focused on social com­men­tary and meta pop cul­ture ref­er­ences, there’s some­thing almost lib­er­at­ing about the film’s anar­chic approach. Hosking’s work has been com­pared to Tim and Eric, but there’s also some­thing of The Eric Andre Show in its aggres­sive sur­re­al­ism. Greasy Stran­gler is absolute­ly ridicu­lous, some­times infu­ri­at­ing, some­times baf­fling, but it’s also loads of fun. Go see it – and make sure your pop­corn is extra greasy.

Look out for Hal­loween screen­ings of The Greasy Stran­gler or buy it on Blu-ray and DVD now.