The Greasy Strangler

Occa­sion­al­ly, film mar­keters will pro­duce an TV adver­tise­ment which includes footage of cin­e­ma patrons watch­ing a movie. It’ll be in night-vision, and it’ll usu­al­ly cap­ture the moment of a jump scare where the crowd col­lec­tive­ly jolt in their seats. It would be inter­est­ing to see one of these adverts made for view­ers watch­ing Jim Hosking’s The Greasy Stran­gler. Col­lec­tive jolts might not appear. There would be lots of gri­mac­ing, dry-heav­ing, peo­ple look­ing away from the screen, maybe even walk­ing out in abject dis­gust. There would be laugh­ing too, but not big bel­ly laughs, ner­vous laugh­ter, like when some­one com­i­cal­ly spills soup over their legs.

Set in a con­crete Los Ange­les back­wa­ter, the film fol­lows Michael St Michaels’ Big Ron­nie and his son Big Bray­den (Sky Elo­bar) as they con­duct dis­co-themed tourist trap walk­ing tours (dressed in match­ing pink hot pants) and sub­sist on a diet of food doused in grease. A killer is on the loose – a grease-caked mon­ster who looks a whole lot like Big Ron­nie, with his lank white hair and bulging eyes. Eliz­a­beth De Razzo’s paunchy nymphette Janet enters the fray, ini­tial­ly declar­ing her love for Bray­den, and then trans­fer­ring over to her father. An Oedi­pal war of attri­tion ensues.

Every­thing in the film is anti-dra­mat­ic, more akin to Dadaist sketch com­e­dy intend­ed to exist in sin­gle, short frag­ments. Its com­mit­ment to incred­i­ble stu­pid­i­ty is laud­able, and just when you think a joke has been pushed to its absolute out­er lim­it, that it couldn’t pos­si­bly be any more sick or idi­ot­ic, direc­tor Hosk­ing will nudge it just that lit­tle bit fur­ther. It’s a film which proves that if you’re very cre­ative with make-up, cos­tumes and props, then you’re half way there. You don’t need to spend ages writ­ing clever jokes either. Michael St Michaels’ descrip­tion of pas­ta shapes is one of the film’s dia­logue highlights.

While the film isn’t about any­thing and has no struc­ture, there’s a crap-shoot intrigue know­ing that any­thing could hap­pen next. The Greasy Stran­gler defies genre, west­ern log­ic and it clasps good taste by the throat until its eyes pop out. Every­one involved in the pro­duc­tion is com­plete­ly on the lev­el – they know exact­ly what this is. And that’s why it works. And for all those grease fetishists out there: for you, this movie is a lit­tle like win­ning the lot­tery twice on one day.