A gory sci fi action/comedy shot right here in Sacramento with a local cast. A girl named Sam’s slacker neighbor Artie and his buddy Lenny are the only thing between an army of clonebots over-running the planet and killing people for their DNA. Sam is stealing Artie’s wi-fi signal and soon finds she is in contact with him as he’s trapped in another dimension, and helps him save the World. “Are you the hot blond one or the one that’s a bitch?”says Artie from his other-dimensional skype account. Sam (Alita Humor) assists him (he shows her where the cold spot maker is, which creates inter-dimensional doorways, if you will.) There’s a playful sexual tension present between the two leads, but thankfully they don’t jump into bed at the end of the flick, rom com style.
A goggled clonebot killls a few people in our world. It seems the previous samples were contaminated, meaning he has to kill even more after injecting them with a mechanism. Throws in someother sidestories, like Sam’s bad luck with a bad date stalker who just won’t take no for an answer. It’s a bit hard to keep up with the story, but that’s OK.
Low-budget, but reasonably engaging and fun, Cold Spot keeps moving, and has periodic gory alien attacks to keep you alert and break up the “people talking in rooms” aspect of low-budget films. (No boobs past the opening teaser, however.)
It could have benefited from a little judicious editing. Some parts seem overlong, like the silly scenes of Sam searching for hidden keys in boxes in different rooms, which seems to exist mainly to have an excuse to see her bouncing up and down the stairs several times.
And while I do love psycho killers and zombies, it’s nice to see something a little different in small-gauge filmmaking. The direction is confident and competent and the special effects are pretty good considering the low budget this was made on. And it’s in focus and lit well enough to see what’s going on. I don’t know how many films I see that might be OK, but I can’t tell, because their film is so underlit. It’s actually refreshing to see a low-budget filmmaker attempt a sci-fi movie with aliens, SFX and all that and see how well they can accomplish that on the indie budget. Cold Spot does that unusually well. Which makes up for its shortcomings in other areas. Too long is taken in getting to know our characters and their little quirks. Too much story getting in the way of the plot, as Joe Bob Briggs would say. Instead of over-explaining, he under-explains vastly, and so we haven’t really figured out what’s going on in the movie until more than half way through.
As with any indie film, there is some less-than-great acting, but for the most part, the natural performances, especially the delightfully deadpan Radmanich himself, really help sell the film. The lead girl Sam was appealing, and the interplay between her and Artie was good, flirty and caustic. Why am I seeing Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts in the roles for the Hollywood remake? Of interest to fans of TFO’s own Monster From Bikini Beach, are two actresses from that cinematic epic. Cold Spot boasts a brief appearance from Laura Stahl, the “I hate crime…so much” girl, and the lovely Melissa Melancon (go-go dancer in MFBB) has a co-starring role as Sam’s roomie Amy. (Melancon was also Miss Trash July 2007!)
Murders often appear offscreen, with a splash of blood thrown onscreen. Besides that, it looks OK, and has pretty gory murders, although looks mostly like someone’s smearing around strawberry jelly (not that there’s anything wrong with that) That guy looks OK, and the clonebots look OK once you realize it’s just a guy in overalls, whose arms and legs come off much too easily. The music is very adequate, done by fellow collaborator Phil Mohr and his band Candy Bullet. And the use of technology and FX comes off well. Wisely choosing a prudent use of CGI, this type of film is available to low-budget filmmakers and Radman does it better than many would.
At on point in the movie the nerdy guy is told by his lame roomies to get good beer, and he returns with MGD!Is that a continuity error, or just an in-joke?
For more info, check out Ed Radmanich’s myspace page at: http://www.myspace.com/artieguy.
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