There’s a post going around on tumblr this week about a lot of movies try to imitate 80s cult classic by doing a self conscious, intentional, so bad its good thing. These movies, in trying to imitate original creative passion that fell short because of budgetary, execution, or other contestants, often come off as soulless imitators of a genre that, despite its flaws, had real creativity in it. That’s what I was getting ready to write They Call Her Death as. And then an eldritch horror dimension puppets the corpse of the protagonist’s dead husband to get her to ‘deliver souls’ to it.
Because They Call Her Death is a loving homage to spaghetti westerns, down to the bad costumes, clunky dialogue, and wooden acting. The movie is constantly aware of its own artifice in a way that is sometimes off putting, and almost made me turn it off a couple times. A lot of people, rightfully, ask: ‘why would I watch a modern homage to a genre when I could just watch the real thing?’ And for a while there, I was wondering that myself.
And then Molly Pray, our drunken, foul mouthed, grieving widow of a protagonist pins a guy’s ballsack to a wood board and starts pistol whipping it. And by that point it’s like ‘okay. I get it. Modern hyper violence and some admittedly fun gore effects to make a statement about misogyny in the genre. Would’ve been more effective if you were nastier to her but I get it.’ And I was so focused on that that I didn’t even pay any mind to the repeated hallucinations of her husbands corpse and the weird grim reaper figure that kept popping up.
In fact! They annoyed me! I was thinking ‘yes, yes, symbolic grief hallucinations we get it. Spare me please.’ But no. I was being an asshole. That shit was real. There are otherworldly forces at play, and they want Molly Pray to act as their hand in the living world, delivering the corrupt souls of the racist politician sheriff and his cronies directly to them. The only problem is we don’t know this til there’s only 30 minutes left in the movie.
But man what a last thirty minutes it is. Molly Pray resurrected, standing in an all black outfit with a mask that blacks out her face, standing in front of a bloodstained American flag with a pile of bodies at her feet is almost worth the whole rest of the movie. I also want to give the movie props for making the black sheriffs deputy the only honest authority figure in town, and, eventually join in on Molly’s killing spree. That is the sort of genre update that’s legitimately fun instead of eye rolling.
I spent a lot of watching this trying to figure out what this movie was trying to Say About Genre. You kind of have to when they shoot on Kodak film and claim to be an Homage. But I actually don’t think it is saying anything about genre. I think it really is just going ‘hey what if your husband got killed as part of a conspiracy and then you killed a bunch of guys and then died but a Thing puppeting your husband brought you back for Revenge would that be fucked up or what?’
And that, I think, is actually a truer homage than a lot of modern homages of older, Weird genres. It’s not trying to make a statement about Genre or America or any of it. It is the product of some filmmakers who had more ambition than budget, and then spent most the budget they Did have on cool film and gore effects. Which is what we love about the 70s shit this wants to copy anyways. That’s what made those magic. And I think it, ultimately, is what made this work.
I write these reviews often as part of a process to decide how I Feel about a movie. I went into this intending to say it was interesting but not good. But I was wrong. I talked myself into loving it. Because I do. I do think those last 30 minutes redeemed it for me. I don’t know if I rec it. It does start slow, a guy does get his intestines ripped out, and it does not make a whole lot of sense. But. I had fun. Maybe you will too.
Signing off,
Marlowe
Marlowe Writes 