SEWER CHEWER (2010)
Director, writer, editor, cinematographer, and SFX artist Jack Acid/James Hawley’s SEWER CHEWER is a creature feature that really pays homage to the flicks that one would find in a drive-in theater on a Saturday night on a double-bill with another monster flick with things that go “bump in the night”. A theater littered with young, horny, teenage boys who have brought their dates to a creepy horror flick with the hopes that she will be terrified and he will be able to snuggle up to her and get some action. Sewer Chewer is a throwback to the films of the ’70s and ’80s, a time that was rife with such lovely horror films that played upon the world’s fear of any number of ecological disasters from numerous military and governmental plots that were ever so secretive.
Like any number of run-ins with radioactivity or toxic wastes will prove…Let’s cite some examples from some of my favorite eco-anger flicks that are on par with Sewer Chewer for rampaging eco-disaster creature gone wild. First, we have Melvin the mop boy jumping out into a window into a truck carrying toxic waste garbage cans in The Toxic Avenger and mutating into a crime-fighting mutant with extraordinary strength. Then in C.H.U.D. we have the Contamination Hazard Urban Disposal dumping toxic wastes into N.Y. sewers and an underground clan living there known as C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers) become infected by the radioactivity and start eating the non-infected sewer dwellers or what about in Humanoids From The Deep where scientific experiments have backfired creating monsters that are half man and half fish but all sexual high-octane raping machines as they rape beautiful women on the beaches and kill all the men of the fishing village.
Next up we have the aforementioned film, Sewer Chewer, which plays off more like a film hybrid of an experimental film that is a cross between something David Lynch and Nathan Schiff could have quite possibly created had they ever collaborated on a movie together. The film begins with some really tripped-out graphics with some “facts” (not actually sure if all scrolling down the screen was true fact or not) stating that the U.S., as well as other countries launch quite a few satellites into space, quite a number of which end up re-entering (5,400 tons of debris) right back into the Earth’s atmosphere, rife with radiation and God knows what the hell else. Also, in 1997, we are told that a woman in Iowa was struck by a piece of metal from a disintegrating Delta rocket.
Ed. note: With all the things that can kill a human being, from suicide bombers and atomic bombs to car crashes and medical sicknesses, I can now add one more tragedy that could take my life through an absurd stroke of bad luck. Oh well, I shall try not to dwell on this.
Following the uber-cool title sequence and credits, complemented by a seriously wicked experimental-abstract techno sounding soundtrack, I was thinking to myself that Jack Acid (James Hawley) was going to show me something very original and a complete showcase of some of the most unorthodox filmmaking. I was right. The reason I mention Lynch and Schiff in the same sentence earlier is that Sewer Chewer has the bizarre and experimental production styles that Lynch utilizes in so many of his films, but the film has the budget of one of Nathan Schiff’s film, next to nothing. There is so much creativity in this film that one can see that Hawley is just oozing with talent. Give this man some more bread and lets really see what he can do!
These films all have murder, mutilation, blood and guts lying within them with a scientific, military, or ecological disaster as the culprit. Although I felt Sewer Chewer had more similarities to Splinter or even Carpenter’s The Thing (as far as the creature went), one also may be reminded of scenes from Evil Dead 2 as the creature in this film, which I can’t even begin to fully-describe, is hell-bent on killing everyone that comes across its path with its branch-like arms/tentacles-and I mean EVERYONE! While viewing this film, after the body-count had hit three in record time, I decided to do a death tally. Along with that death tally I recorded how the victim dies and if there was any unique gore or method to the carnage. If I did not mess up my count, there were EIGHTEEN victims that are killed, all in a very graphic manner that was so much fun to watch.
Now, I have seen hundreds of films that look like utter shit because they have a small budget, but mostly because the director and filmmakers lack creativity in making shots work. When one does not have a big budget, it’s time to think outside the box. Jack Acid/James Hawley does exactly that. In fact, I think it’s even safe to say that Hawley thinks completely out of the box, the planet, and the universe because his film is so strange, fresh, unorthodox, cult-like, and looks as if it came off the dusty shelves of a N.Y. Grindhouse Theater or an abandoned drive-thru. I instantly felt that this film is a modern-day cult oddity.
The camerawork is exciting to watch- there are no average shots in it. Cinematographer Jack Acid/James Hawley kept things interesting every second with some really cool close-up shots, angles, and lens effects most of the film, as well as having some very intense experimental/avante-garde music to create some serious moods throughout the movie. Next, Sewer Chewer actually focuses on the creature and its victims. Each scene in the film is set up for that characters’ death and gory demise, which brings up the next aspect of the film that I really got a kick out of: THE GORE.
The film has some really gory scenes, on a budget mind you, but very well executed. I was grinning like a little boy that just found his daddy’s porn stash each time a limb was torn off and geysers of blood sprayed in an arterial blast of hemoglobin glory. This film has eighteen kills in it so just do the math when I tell you that each kill has blood either spraying, splashing, or oozing down its victims via a river of plasma.
As for the Evil Dead 2 reference, that is in regards to the view of the creatures vine-like tentacles or arms that crawl across the surface as it hunts its prey. There also is a wonderful scene that made me sort of wince when I saw it that pays some serious homage to Chojin densetsu Urotsukidoji (Legend of the Overfiend), in which a woman is pinned down via the creature’s “arms” and then forces her legs open spread-eagle, followed by a larger arm or leg thrust into her vagina and exiting out her mouth in one of the most bizarre scenes of rape and death. There are also faces and arms ripped apart, a ripped open stomach cavity, a man’s ass chewed apart and eaten, and every other orifice on the human body being subject to the Sewer Chewer’s killing rampage. The nastiest death, aside from the violated vagina, was the bum taking a dump in the forest that gets his ass chewed up and eaten. Not only does one get to see this gnarly gore, one gets to see his feces as they exit his ass. It defines NASTY!
Lloyd Kaufman has a cameo in this, as well as most every indie horror flick coming out these days, and its probably one of his better ones if only because of this one line of dialogue that I found humorous:
“I want this thing tied up tighter than a nun’s cunt on Easter Sunday.”
Best…line…ever. It is almost topped by the police officer in the film who curses so much I had to start up a curse word count. The police officer, winner of the foul-mouth award, swore seventy-two times in just under ten minutes or so. It was pretty epic. After finding one of the victims’ eyeballs amongst a pile of gore, who before her death was a good-looking woman, he says,
“Well, she had pretty eyes!” and then goes on to say,“Ooh, hope that hot chicks don’t have A.I.D.S.!” as he smokes her left over joint laying on the ground. After the cop (Victim #17) dies, he says his dying last words to the Sewer Chewer which are, “FUCK YOU!”. That was the 72nd curse word uttered.
The film runs just under two hours (1:54:04) and is presented in an aspect ratio of 16:9 widescreen. I watched a screener of this film so it was just the film, but there were some outtakes and bloopers during the credits in the film.
As for the rest of the cast and crew, (Jiffy Houghton, Dan Hoganson, Michael Jimboy, Steve Jones, Theodore Drake, John Manson, Butch Canfield, Sean Dressler, Tandy Jones, Sky Splawn, Christopher George, Ash Barker, Kuper Banks, Christy Harper, Jack Acid, Jimmy Kennedy, Kyle Walker, and Matt Pierson), they are all well known Oklahoma musicians from the punk/rockabilly scene and from the bands Captain Eyeball and Billy Joe Winghead, as well as featuring members of the dj collective Pirate Audio Sound System. Pirate Audio began working on film projects in 2006 under the moniker PAX23, and carry the same artist collective philosophy that the filmmakers followed when releasing albums and throwing concerts. No one got payed and all profits go back into the next production, either spent on new gear, web maintenance, promotion, etc…Also, everything is self financed. There are no outside investors, and things are usually self distributed. Now that is some D.I.Y. filmmaking!
Viewers need to get past the low-production values, focus on the creative use of camera, gore, soundtrack, sound effects, and video imagery because this film was one of the best low-budget indie flicks that I have ever seen really integrating horror, gore, comedy, and experimentation all in one nice package. James Hawley is a filmmaker that everyone needs to keep an eye on. This piece of work displayed a great amount of passion and vigor- Sewer Chewer will not and should not be this man’s last piece of filmmaking and I, for one, am very anxious to see what can come of having more than the $6,000 budget he had to work with on SEWER CHEWER.
Here is some actual (real and not fake) news footage on the film due to a misunderstanding by citizens and the police.
Another news story, this time with the director Jack Acid/James Hawley himself!
