Otis

Last year, I caught an episode of Dateline NBC about this whackjob named John Jamelske, a crazy serial rapist who would kidnap young women and then take them to his Silence of the Lambs style basement/dungeon. He would force them to play act with him in a series of videos, sometimes pretending to be in a school classroom, or maybe doing aerobics together, or even singing karaoke. Oh, and this was always followed by a daily ritual of rape… right after the girls read their Bible passages. Then, after a certain amount of months had passed, some times even years, he would just let them go. I’m not sure if letting the girls live and walk free meant Mr. Jamelske was slightly less evil or slightly more stupid, because in doing so his ass was eventually caught and he now rots in jail. It was a truly, truly sick and twisted story, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see the potential for a movie in this bizarre series of events. I mean, it’s almost too absurd to be real. Well, it seems someone else saw the potential as well, because this past weekend I managed to see a film that was clearly inspired by this story, a great satirical horror flick by the name of Otis.

The movie begins with our title character, Otis Broth (Bostin Christopher), an overweight, slovenly and socially maladjusted pizza delivery guy, who of course also happens to be a serial killer. He kidnaps young women, and just like the real life John Jamelske, takes them to his own private dungeon underneath the house. Here he keeps them chained, and forces them to enact his twisted little fantasies, which include making movies about cheerleading, being the popular girl in high school, and eventually going to the Prom with him and “going all the way.” This fulfills Otis’ idea of the ideal high school life he never had, but that was had by his older brother Morton (Kevin Pollack), now nothing but an abusive and bitter washed up ex-jock, who has chosen to unleash his life’s frustrations on brother Otis.

After each girl fulfills her purpose for Otis, he then of course disposes of them, and they end up in various dumpsters around town. After going through several local girls, and causing a media frenzy, he targets young Riley Lawson (Ashley Johnson) after delivering a pizza to her family’s home. Riley has a bratty but smart younger brother named Reed (Jared Kusnitz) who seems to have his own creepy fixation with his sister, taking videos of her in various private moments and posting them on Youtube. Their parents are portrayed by the great Illeana Douglas from To Die For and Ghost World, and Daniel Stern from the City Slickers and Home Alone movies. Both parents nail their roles and are given some classic moments. Together with younger sibling Reed, they form a perfectly dysfunctional family unit.

After Riley is kidnapped, the authorities send Agent Hotchkiss to help track her down, played in perfect douche bag glory by Jere Burns, in what seems like a spoof of every smug, gum chewing cop ever played by David Caruso. And I’d be remiss not to mention the cameo role from Tracy Scoggins as the overly botoxed and insensitive anchorwoman on a FOX news style sensationalist network. The plot takes several hilarious twists and turns, and by the end you realize that this isn’t merely just a satire of the overdone and played out torture porn movies like Saw and Hostel and the like. It also calls us out on our own national obsession with tragedy in the news, which has become some kind of weird, invasive voyeurism into the pain of the grief stricken. There are even some under the radar references to our policy in Iraq, but it’s subtle and never hits you over the head. In fact, I would have missed it entirely if director Tony Krantz hadn’t brought it up in the Q&A after the movie was screened, but on further reflection it is so plain to see that I’m not sure how I missed it the first time.

Otis is going straight to DVD, although this movie really deserves a theatrical release in my opinion. I suppose that satire with this sort of subject matter might be a hard sell to the Joe and Jane Six Packs who frequent the American multiplex. Still, considering this movie had a very low budget, it’s shot very well and the acting and writing are spot on. There are several laugh out loud moments, yet there are also several scenes that work effectively as a straight up horror movie. It’s no small achievment to combine all of these approaches, but Krantz does a great job here. Otis comes out on DVD on June 10th, so be sure to check it out and not pass over it like you do so many other straight to video movies, where you’re assuming it’s just average crap. Otis is one that actually delivers.