EFFECTS

Directed by Dusty Nelson. United States. 1979.

If you stumbled into the room while EFFECTS was playing on the television, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were watching a long-lost George Romero film. Like his pre-DAWN OF THE DEAD work, EFFECTS is flatly lit and filled with oblique camera placements. Its sound is naturalistic, sometimes to the detriment of audibility, and its visual structure is loose and fluid. Look, there’s Joe Pilato and John Harrison! I recognize them. And was that Tom Savini? Once we leave the confines of the main location and get a little deeper into town, we can see that, yes, this is a Pittsburgh film, alright. It wouldn’t look out of place next to MARTIN.

But apart from a ‘special thanks’ mention in the closing credits, Romero has absolutely nothing to do with EFFECTS. It just looks and sounds the part. I’ve spent years trying to track down the source novel, a fictional thriller called Snuff by William Mooney. No dice. I can’t tell you if this is a worthy adaptation. I can’t imagine it isn’t. This is the kind of story that is told best on celluloid.

We begin with a random assemblage of shots. We see men smoking cigarettes and looking at monitors. Soundboards, knobs, dials, TVs, and oscilloscopes. There’s a placeholder title card on a screen: Duped: The Snuff Movie, produced and directed by Lacey Bickel. From this baffling grab bag of imagery, we move to a nice house where we see an even nicer woman showering. As piano music plays, we take in the gratuitous sights. The woman slips on a robe and lights a joint, catching sight of a crazed man in the shower behind her, straight razor in hand. She spins around, just in time for the same man, her husband, to open up the bathroom door. An odd thing to imagine, eh? Your husband threatening you with a straight razor?

But then we hear a voice call “cut”. We’re now standing in the doorway with two men: Dominic, the cinematographer and sometimes cameraman, and Lacey, the director. They talk about the scene. “It’s fine”, Dominic reassures everyone. The actress, Rita, is confused about her motivation. Her scene partner is her real-life husband, Barney. We meet Celeste, the gaffer, who once had a relationship with Lacey. The actors gripe about early call times. Lacey’s large country home is doubling as a film set for this shoot.

But wait a second... That whole bathroom sequence was presented to us as if it were an actual film. There were edits. There were cutaways. It would have required multiple set-ups and tear-downs. Yet the film and the off-camera ‘reality’ we’re currently experiencing are not presented any differently. We’re not given visual cues or auditory differences to clue us in. This layering of presentations - the false and the ‘real’ - becomes a major element in the movie going forward, especially after we learn about the hidden cameras strewn throughout the house. Barney and Rita, our unhappily married couple, are playing exactly that on camera. This blurs the lines even further. What is real and what is unreal? Whose motivations are natural and whose are scripted?

We go to a downtown bar where Nicky, a loudmouth local, puts the moves on an uninterested Celeste. She’s much more interested in getting to know Dominic. When Dominic protests Nicky’s incessant flirting, he socks him in the jaw, causing a bar fight. Later, Nicky visits the set. Turns out, he’s a friend of Lacey’s and is involved in some capacity with the film’s production. We are never told exactly what that role is. All we know is he delivers Lacey some cocaine and is tight with another mysterious member of the crew, Lobo.

The next day, Dominic prepares a major effects gag, a false leg that spurts blood when sliced open by a straight razor. This is Rita’s fake leg, and the man holding the razor will be her husband. Their off-camera bickering is getting worse, almost like one reality is affecting another (but which one?). Come to think of it, things are getting a little strange. Lacey is supposedly independently wealthy, which leads Dominic to ask Celeste, “If he’s so rich, how come I’m shooting 16 millimeter with a one-man crew?” Late at night, Nicky brings an aspiring actress over to dance for them. The noise wakes up Dominic, but he heads back to bed after seeing Lacey and Nicky taking pictures of the young woman. She never comes back around.

Lacey records Dominic and Celeste having sex, and the men in the opening scene are finally revealed to us. They’re somewhere in the house, editing on the fly as dozens of hidden cameras, stashed behind mirrors and god knows where else, capture every movement in the residence. Lacey invites Dominic, Barney, and Lobo to snort some coke with them. When Celeste’s name is brought up in conversation, Lacey cryptically mentions that “she’s going to be very good in this film” despite her not being an actress. Dominic casually mentions the film needing a chase scene.

As the drugs kick in, Lacey pulls out an 8mm film reel and laces it onto a projector. A woman is on screen, stripping to her underwear. A masked, muscular man comes into frame carrying rope. He ties her to the chair. There’s a cut. The man reenters the frame with a large knife. He cuts her bra off, lightly dragging the blade across the woman’s skin as she squirms with delight. Then the masked man draws a straight razor and the woman’s demeanor changes. He drags the razor across her stomach and chest, slicing through her flesh. Blood rolls down her torso as she begins to thrash around. Finally, he slices open her throat and the woman topples forward, dead.

Dominic is appalled by the film. The others don’t seem nearly as bothered. Is it fake? “Do you think people would pay to see something like that?” Lacey asks. Dominic believes the film is real, but Lacey reassures him that it is just a put-on. He made that film as a student. The girl is fine. Dominic doesn’t believe him, and as for me, well... I’m not so sure I believe him either.

The next morning, Dominic finds a series of Polaroids in Barney’s room. They show the dancer from the other night, tied up to a chair like the woman in the snuff film. After a long shoot, Dominic tries to talk Celeste into giving their relationship a real shot. What he doesn’t know is that Celeste is in on the plan. She’s been working with Lacey to make a movie, alright. Just not the film Dominic had signed up for.

At that moment, EFFECTS stops being a little film about aspiring indie filmmakers and becomes a taut survival film. Like the bastard child of THE TRUMAN SHOW and 8MM, this snuff-fueled little chiller consistently plays with the idea of manufactured reality and the manipulative quality of entertainment. It’s not a film about film, per se, nor is it really about on-screen violence or the twinned artistic impulses of creation and destruction. No, it’s more about the commodification of artists in an industry that sees them as little vehicles made of daydreams and flesh, all the better for figurative slaughter and exploitation. That is, after all, what ‘snuff’ is all about: the complete reduction of a living, breathing human being into a bloody, flayed fetish object for weirdos.

EFFECTS will be glacially paced for people just wanting some thrills and chills, and far too anemic for the gore crowd. The patient, however, will be rewarded with an extended chase scene and a final ironic twist that caps off the film wonderfully. I adore this little movie with all its awkward framing and stilted weirdness. The performances are spot on, and the tone is wickedly sardonic. It also rewards close attention and repeat viewings. This thing is packed with foreshadowing and pay-offs, and positively riddled with wonderful little moments of dark humor.

This is a dark horse film, begging for rediscovery. Odd, as the film keeps getting sporadic physical media releases and has been available on streaming for what feels like ages. Yet no one mentions it. It’s a real shame. EFFECTS might not be an out-of-the-box stunner that wows you with gorgeous visuals and immaculate production quality, but it quietly and methodically works its way under your skin. You devote so much attention to figuring out what is live and what is Memorex that you never notice the film pulling its arm back. By the time you notice, it’s too late. It’s socked you right in the gut.