Manuer - 2014
Synopsis (from IMDb):
Strange and surreal things happen when an alcoholic homeless man consumes a large bottle of fertilizer.
Synopsis (from Very Fine Crap Videos):
A homeless man drinks poison and then starts a company. i like the movie street trash a lot.
“WARNING: This film contains flowers”
Manuer, 2014, 24 minutes, USA. Written, directed, edited, produced, and effects by James Bell. Cast includes: James Bell (alcoholic homeless man), Amanda “Mae” Bell (mom), Tyler Bell (boy). Music by David Harroff. DVD art by Jeff Sample. From Very Fine Crap Videos (#002).
James Bell is a filmmaker from the Detroit, Michigan, area. He’s a writer, a director, an effects creator, a prop maker, a musician, and a goddamn artist. Along with his wife and collaborator Mae, he runs Very Fine Crap Videos, home to not only his DIY gore movies but also an amazing collection of homemade, very realistic props, and his band, Kids Kill Kids. If you go to almost any horror convention or Oddities & Curiosities Expo, you have probably seen his work on display. If you’ve watched movies by Nathan Rumler (Fangboner, Amityville Vibrator), Joe Meredith (Teratomorph, Variant), or SamHel (Let’s Stop at the Morgue, The Bizarre Art of Samantha), you have probably seen his work. If you were in Curse of the Weredeer, you probably handled his penis…one of his prop penises, you dirty bird! James is a mellow, soft-spoken, laid back kind of guy. His movies are anything but.
Manuer is the second movie put out through Very Fine Crap Videos, the first being the infamous Dog Dick, an experimental movie in the style of Gummo meets Giuseppe Andrews. This second release is much different from that. Manuer is essentially about a drunk homeless guy (played by James Bell) who steals a lawnmower and makes a little booze money by mowing lawns. One especially drunk day, he finds what he thinks is a 40 oz of liquor, but is actually fertilizer, and drinks it, causing him all kinds of intestinal issues. On the bright side, now wherever he shits, flowers suddenly bloom. This man is no dummy (I mean, aside from the drinking of fertilizer), and quickly realizes he can sell these flowers and then be drunk every fucking night! Hilarity ensues…kind of.
This movie is absolute chaos and sloppy debauchery from start to finish, 24 minutes of puking and shitting and gardening. James Bell as the alcoholic homeless entrepreneur is disgusting and vile and fantastic. He drinks on the steps of church, sleeps with a wasp nest on his face, finds a pig head in the garbage and keeps it as a friend and a confidante, and when he finds a painting of Bambi on a wall, he sniffs and licks it (wait, was “Lick Bambi’s Ass” a Wesley Willis song?). Of course, the real fun comes once he’s consumed that sweet nectar of the gods. Manuer is a family affair, as many of James Bell’s movies are—this one also features Mae Bell as a homeowner who hires the drunk to mow their lawn, as well as Tyler Bell, who plays Mae’s son, a boy who eventually gets bored of watching a video of a dead cat and decides to instead watch a man mow his front yard. Their roles are small, but important all the same. I suppose the fourth “character” in this movie is Bell’s special effects and prop work. Without spoiling anything, the finale is an absolute must-see gem of DIY effects mastery, bloody and gory and beautiful.
Scene highlights include:
*** Shitting on children
*** Plenty of puking and shitting and drinking
*** Fucking pig heads…no, sorry, fucking a pig’s head
For fans of DIY gore at its best; pulling oneself up by the bootstraps to make a positive change; that positive change going straight to shit; and, of course, shitting on children.
Manuer is everything that’s great about underground filmmaking. It’s funny, it’s dirty, it bloody, it’s unique, and it’s all done in a very independent, low budget, DIY kind of way. The DVD itself is handmade and numbered, with no extras on the disc itself, just the movie, in and out, done. The music, done by David Harroff, sometimes feels like the soundtrack to a Nintendo game, one of those fancier ones involving a quest of some kind, and sometimes feels like chaos, which fits the screen images perfectly. At only 24 minutes long, there is no unnecessary “filler” added. It’s like a perfect short story: every detail is needed in order to build to the climax, and there’s tons of disgusting burp/cough puking and explosive spraying shit and lots and lots of gore. James Bell has directed around 11 films to date (all of which are amazing, I can assure you), and while this was only his second, it already showed a ton of promise and vision. Go to his website, buy all of his movies (only $10 each), and enjoy the work of this underrated underground genius.