Tammi Sutton | Through the Shattered Lens

Would you watch a reality show produced by Joe Estevez?

Of course not! Reality TV …. hey, that’s the form of entertainment that is destroying our culture and leaving viewers unable to think for themselves! Reality TV is a pox on our house. Thanks to reality TV, the Kardashians are more famous than they have any right to be. Jennifer Welch has become a political pundit despite having all the charm of a sour lemon. People now feel like they have to live every moment as if there’s a million people watching and as a result, it’s become difficult to connect in any meaningful way…..

Eh. Actually, I like reality TV more than I should and I probably would watch a reality show produced by Joe Estevez.

I mean, why not? The best reality shows are always kind of sleazy and there are few actors who are as talented at playing sleazy characters as Joe Estevez. If Martin Sheen often seems as if he’s auditioning to be the Pope, his brother Joe comes across as if he’s auditioning to be the tabloid reporter who writes a slanderous story about the Pope. The fact that Joe Estevez looks like a drunk version of his brother only serves to make him all the more effective as someone who you wouldn’t necessarily want to be associated with. (Unless, of course, he could make you a lot of money….)

In Hell Asylum, Joe Estevez plays Stan, a network television executive. The movie opens with a show being pitched to him. The pitch, like many of the scenes in Hell Asylum, goes on way too long. Basically, a group of models have been recruited to spend the night in a supposedly haunted asylum while being filmed. The pitch is nothing special but Stan needs a hit.

Of course, it turns out that the asylum really is haunted. It takes a while but eventually, the models and the television crew end up being stalked by a bunch of mysterious hooded figures. (Brinke Stevens is credited as being the “Head Spectre.”) The murders are filmed with a blue tint, which is creepy at first but eventually just hurts your eyes. There’s some gore, but it’s mostly just some red gloop and rope meant to stand-in for spilled intestines. It’s not particularly scary but at least it’s only 72 minutes.

Of course, Joe Estevez thinks that he has his hands on America’s hottest new reality show. At first, I thought the movie was being a bit too cynical but then I thought about all of the real-life deaths that I’ve seen posted to twitter and YouTube and I realized that I was probably being naive. We actually did have a reality show in which each episode ended with someone pretending to “die.” Murder in Small Town X was set up like Survivor, except that no one was voted off the island. Instead, they were voted to meet the killer. Even though no one actually died, I would have to think it would be more infinitely more traumatic to know that a bunch of people voted for you to be pretend-killed instead of pretend-exiled. That said, Murder In Small Town X was actually a lot of fun!

I wonder if Joe Estevez produced it.

No, this is not the slow-moving Wes Anderson film from a few years back.

Instead, this is a film about a London crime boss named — don’t laugh — Darius (Andrew Howard). Darius has an anger problem and it is not helped by all of the cocaine that he snorts at his club. He also has a Russian wife named Nadia (Barbara Nedeljakova), a former prostitute who Darius says that he rescued. Darius is insanely jealous. When he suspects Nadia is having an affair, he takes the man who he suspects was her lover out to the countryside and, after a lot of yelling, eventually gets around to executing him. The only problem is that Darius got the wrong guy!

Instead, Nadia’s lover is a low-level hood named Riley (Edward Hogg). Nadia is waiting for Riley to show up at Darius’s country estate and take her away from her life as the trophy wife of an abusive psycho. When a masked intruder shows up with a knife, things start to get more complicated.

Unfortunately, just because things get more complicated, that doesn’t mean that they get any more interesting. For a film featuring frequent violence, graphic gore, and more than a little sex, Isle of Dogs is a remarkably dull affair. A huge part of the problem is that the characters are never that interesting so you really don’t care when they lose a limb or are forced to commit a murder. Darius, Nadia, and Riley are all stereotypes who will be easily recognized from other, better British gangster films. At first, it seems like Andrew Howard’s energetic cursing might make bring some life to Darius but after a while, even Darius’s temper gets old. I was hoping that the film would at least make good use of London but instead, the majority of the film takes place at Darius’s country estate, which looks like every other country estate.

There are some twists to the plot. The film makes liberal use of flashbacks and flashforwards, though they don’t add up too much. For some reason, there’s a scene of a naked Darius practicing his golf swing. Someone loses an arm and barely flinches. The film probably would have been better if Wes Anderson had directed it. At least he would have brought along Bill Murray.