DVD Dead Hooker In A Trunk

1 Star

The first feature length film from Twisted Twins Productions (Jen and Sylvia Soska), Dead Hooker In A Trunk models itself on the exploitation films made famous by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’ 2007 double feature Grindhouse. These B-movies were made on low-budgets and featured liberal amounts of sex, violence and drugs, and the Soska sisters utilise all of these elements in Dead Hooker.

Jen Soska & Sylvia Soska's Dead Hooker In A Trunk

"It is not enough to watch every Tarantino or Rodriguez film ever made and then attempt to reproduce their genius by imitating the cruder elements."

The film tells the story of the Geek (Jen Soska) and the Badass (Sylvia Soska), twins who get involved in the cover up of a murder, along with their respective friends, the Goody Two Shoes (C.J. Wallis) and the Junkie (Rikki Gagne).

After a night of drunken, drug-taking debauchery, the Badass finds a dead prostitute in the boot of her car. Her recollection of the previous night is so clouded that she cannot recall if she and the Junkie are responsible for the murder, and so instead of reporting it to the police, they decide to dispose of the body. The Geek and the Goody Two Shoes are unable to escape involvement and the group decide to hide out in a motel, where a variety of implausible misadventures are had with the motel owner and the police.

After a restless night, the Junkie feels the need for more drugs, and so the foursome drive to her ex-boyfriend’s house. While the Junkie is in her old flat, a group of Chinese gang members come upon her and her boyfriend with a chainsaw and a machete, and scenes of dismemberment and disembowelling ensue. Even as nauseous scenes of a Chinese boy elbow deep in entrails are abandoned, the murderer sneaks up beside the Geek and hits her so hard her eye falls out, while a smoking cowboy looks on impassively.

With one member of the gang armless and another eyeless, the group continue on their quest to dispose of the body, with occasional detours into grisly torture. When the Badass is abducted, the Geek, Junkie and Goody Two Shoes must band together to come to her rescue…

Dead Hooker In A Trunk had the potential to be a really entertaining piece of independent cinema, but is, in reality, tasteless and tedious. Whereas most exploitation films are amusing because of the humour and talent of the people involved, this film lacks either of these essentials. It is badly acted, the dialogue is neither funny nor intelligent, and the plot lacks any credibility or continuity. The problems with sound and lighting can be ascribed to a low-budget, but the one thing that provides low-budget films with their coherence is a good script, which the Soska twins have sacrificed in their enthusiasm for gratuitous thrills and clichéd one-liners: “In a really f**ked up way, this is probably the most fun I’ve ever had.”

When the Chinese are mutilating the Junkie’s boyfriend, the camera lingers nauseatingly on their hands in his stomach.

Tarantino always makes the mistake of appearing in his own films, and however brief his roles, it is always apparent that he should stay behind the camera. It was doubtless economy rather than vanity which persuaded the Twisted Twins to take the leading roles in their first film, but surely another two friends could have been located, or the parts reassigned. The Badass strides about screaming at every other character, and appears to be under the assumption that ownership of breasts makes one invincible, while the Geek simpers or smoulders unconvincingly depending on the situation. The Junkie is a needlessly unpleasant character, and the Goodie Two Shoes is the most convincing, although the romantic subplot involving him and the Geek feels forced.

The abandoning of narrative logic at the beginning of the film is impressively sustained throughout the film, with no real motive for much of what the cast gets up to. Continuity is similarly forsaken: the hooker they find in the Badass’ boot is not bruised, even though her death was extensively violent, as we see in unnecessary detail. Nearly every scene involving blood is extreme. When the Chinese are mutilating the Junkie’s boyfriend, the camera lingers nauseatingly on their hands in his stomach; when the Goody Two Shoes is sewing up the Junkie’s arm, we are shown a sickening close-up of the bloodied stitches; and when the sisters are torturing the man they think is the killer, there is a massive spray of blood as they remove his teeth. However, none of these scenes are as gratuitous as the murder scene, despite attempts to artistically elevate it with an operatic soundtrack. For almost five uninterrupted minutes, we are shown the hooker being kicked, punched and strangled by the maniacal killer. As women working in the film industry and specialising in a genre where women are consistently objectified before being destroyed for their sexuality, the Soska sisters should know better.

The Killer Inside Me (Michael Winterbottom, 2010) is a good film because script, characters and plot are not surrendered to brutality but co-exist alongside it. Similarly, Planet Terror (Robert Rodriguez, 2007) is an entertaining film despite its absurdity, because it is well acted, well-written, and possesses a level of coherence utterly lacking in Dead Hooker. The Soska sisters seem so convinced of their skill that they have overlooked the basics, although the camerawork in the film cannot be faulted – perhaps, its one saving grace. The editing is fairly seamless and there are some really beautiful shots, full of light and colour, but these moments are rare, what with the screen being taken up with blood and guts – the script merely serves as a tenuous link between gruesome set pieces.

It is clear what Jen and Sylvia Soska were trying to achieve with Dead Hooker In A Trunk, as their influences are apparent in every part of the film – from the cowboy to the Chinese gang to the torture scene. But it is not enough to watch every Tarantino or Rodriguez film ever made and then attempt to reproduce their genius by imitating the cruder elements but ignoring the subtleties that make each director an auteur in his own right. The film that resulted from the twins’ study of exploitation is almost unwatchable, and though its excess is perhaps enough to grant it cult status among certain factions, it will never sit comfortably amongst the classics of exploitation cinema.