"A Death Sandwich" At The Crest Theater

(Left) Valerie Battenfeld, playing vixen Vivian Devereux, in "A Death Sandwich"


Midnight Madness, Saturday midnight, at the Crest Theater. About 25 people were in attendance, widely-scattered among the 400-or-so seats there.

Most of the short films were of a film-noir type. I entered late, managing to miss two (what must have been quite brief) short films. I caught the tail-end of a strange film about murder and deviant sexuality of some sort called Marionette (Director: Holly Paige Joyner). There was another gritty, violence-filled urban film called Voodoo Doll (Director: Roberto Minervini), which was even more disturbing - addicts poking themselves with needles was the least of it. 'Voodoo Doll' nevertheless made quite an impression on me - I recall it too vividly.

The most-colorful film of the program was
Confessions of a Drag Queen (Director: Darren McAllister), a frolicking interview full of fun energy. The Drag Queen liked to shock: his boyfriend was gay, but his girlfriend wasn't - that sort of thing. A good dancer too! But it wasn't film noir, so if that was the theme of the program, 'Drag Queen' was in the wrong pigeonhole.

Of course, I was there to see the film noir satire film A Death Sandwich (Director: Daniel Gurewitch), featuring Walt's friend, Valerie Battenfeld. Indeed, when the movie started running, I said (loud enough for all to hear) "Yay Death Sandwich!" Even in the near-vacuum of the sleepy audience, there was a little ripple, and I heard a faint, cynical 'yay' from across the hall: so hard-boiled you could almost imagine Humphrey Bogart himself had uttered it.

At first, I thought the audience ripple occurred because enthusiasm was so scarce at that late hour, but later, at the end of the evening, a Master of Ceremonies announced we could deposit ballots on the way out the door. Then, I realized there was a formal process of some sort at work, and people might have taken my 'Yay!' as an effort to campaign for a favorite - maybe a bit of a faux pas under the circumstances. Oh well, the laughter from the audience was real enough!

I thought the folks who produced this movie did a fine job. It struck me as juvenile (in a good way), meaning it was done by young people from a young person's perspective. I thought it was interesting that the songs were not obvious imitations of Broadway stuff, meaning they took the singing stuff rather seriously - it wasn't cobbled together in a bad Broadway imitation, in the manner of 'Family Guy.' Instead, it was original music, nevertheless using the 'Family Guy' over-the-top approach, but with an older 'South Park' edge to the humor.

There were other touches too. The chief becoming an angel at the end comes directly from 'Hudsucker Proxy': not an obvious film-noir reference, but the cinematography of that movie was captivating, and it clearly had an big impact here (it's funny how we learn about the past from movies, even the fantasy art deco past of Gotham) - I bet there are Coen Brothers fans among the film's creators. 'Double Indemnity' had its fingerprints all over this movie (Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck), and Humphrey Bogart, of course, as well as Dashiell Hammett's now-classic stories of murder and mayhem in San Francisco, where this all started!

I wonder which short film found the judge's favor? If you are Quentin Tarantino, 'Voodoo Doll' would be your choice, but if you like interviews, 'Confessions of a Drag Queen' would be the one. And if you like musical comedy - 'A Death Sandwich!'