Justin Price's mediocre genre-masher, WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME, hits home video

Well, it's not completely awful. You've seen plenty worse. 

And if that's damning with (not even) faint praise, so be it: WRONG PLACE WRONG TIME takes one oft-tried genre (the big-time heist) then couples it to another (the supernatural) with results that are consistently done in via mediocre dialog and performances that are made up of "attitude" rather than the "specifics" required by genuine acting. 

As written and directed by a fellow named Justin Price (shown at right; he is also the co-producer and cinematographer), the movie starts out with a bang (quite a few bangs, actually) as a bloody, never-before-managed theft of some major information occurs and is then interrupted by a major, terribly silly and sentimental moment between one of the killers and a little boy.

Our anti-heroes flee and finally take refuge in an off-the-beaten-track house that is full of nasty surprises, which will come as a surprise only to those who've not seen several of this type of genre mashing previously.

The near-constant, would-be suspenseful music does not help things much, nor does the fact that these supposedly super-smart, top-of-the-line criminals keep behaving so stupidly. (When one of their group suddenly disappears, this fact is mentioned yet nobody bothers to go look for the poor girl.)

The film vamps its way along, with us viewers far ahead of those poor, on-screen schmucks, while the dialog, which begins as merely mediocre, soon falls a bit below that. My favorite line is "Solomon, hey -- what's happening?" spoken to poor Solomon, as he is clearly in horrible pain and probably dying.

Finally all that is left is a lot of blood-letting and low-cost special effects. On the plus side is a real beast of a villain, played effectively, with pretty good prosthetics,  by -- yes! -- Mr. Price himself. But the finale goes on and on and on until you're ready to grab the one remaining gun on view, stick it in your mouth, and pull the trigger.  However, if you're into watching a person's intestines being pulled out of their body as they die, then this may be the movie for you.

From Uncork'd Entertainment and running 85 minutes, Wrong Place Wrong Time hit home video via On-Demand and DVD yesterday, May 4 -- for purchase and/or rental.

Tyler Cornack's BUTT BOY arrives for Easter Sunday. And, no, it's not a gay porno film.

It is, however, just about everything else you can imagine, should you decide you mash one genre into another into another into another until you've exhausted the field, yourself and perhaps your audience, as well. 

BUTT BOY, the new film directed and co-written (with Ryan Koch) by Tyler Cornack (who also co-stars) is an utterly weird combination of (all deadpan) comedy, workplace/business satire, fantasy, family movie, kidnap thriller, police procedural, and neo-noir featuring kinky-sexual-pleasure. There's no science-fiction, however (even if the publicity material suggests there is), because there's absolutely no science present here, just some bizarre fantasy.

Mr. Cornack, shown at right and in some of the stills below, has created something different, all right, and for a good portion of this 100-minute movie, his initial quiet, suggestive style -- perhaps due to a very low budget not allowing for many special effects, which he saves in any case for his finale -- keeps us guessing and often in thrall.

The story here takes us into the seemingly tired, boring workplace and marital life of a man named Chip (Cornack, below), who, during a routine visit to his urologist/proctologist. experiences something so life-changing that he discovers he is able, and so begins, to suck various items -- these grow larger and larger -- up his butt. When a local child goes missing, things come to a halt and suddenly it's nine years later, when Chip's s addiction re-surfaces.

Oddly enough, the movie Butt Boy most reminds me of is the very recent film, Swallow, in which a newly-married and wealthy housewife begins swallowing small-but-dangerous items until something needs to be done about this.  The style and theme of both films are quite different however, but the premise of a woman who inserts odd objects down her mouth and a man who does this up his butt seems bizarrely similar. (Even one or two of the swallowed/sucked-up objects are rather alike.) 

Swallow is a serious film, while Butt Boy is anything but, and so, for a while, the deadpan comedy -- as a suspicious detective (Tyler Rice, above) tracks our non-hero -- helps keep things afloat. How and why this detective has managed to put together his theory is neither intelligent nor believable (one single clue is all it takes?), but once past this point the movie opts for total fantasy and then, during the final third, the special effects kick in and the film becomes downright silly/crazy.

One must  give Butt Boy, along with Cornack, credit for doing something original, at least, even if his movie goes on for ten to twenty minutes too long. With this kind of thing, less is definitely more. And during the first half of the film, Cornack's elliptical, suggestive style works well with his deadpan humor; then the too-muchness takes over.

Those who prefer "too much" may embrace Butt Boy more easily than did TrustMovies. Either way, this is pretty much a one-off kind of film -- something you might have seen in days of yore from Troma Entertainment, but handled with more taste and subtlety (for awhile, at least.) And the film's final "they are risen!" moment makes it a shoo-in for coverage today, Easter Sunday.

From Epic Pictures and running 100 minutes, the movie makes its debut -- now that theaters seem a thing of the past -- via VOD, digital streaming and Blu-ray disc, beginning this Tuesday, April 14. Click here to learn how you can view.