American Mary
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | American Mary |
| Original title | American Mary |
| Country of production | Canada |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2012 |
| length | 81 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jen and Sylvia Soska |
| script | Jen and Sylvia Soska |
| production |
Evan Tylor John Curtis |
| music | Peter Allen |
| camera | Brian Pearson |
| cut | Bruce MacKinnon |
| occupation | |
| |
American Mary is a Canadian horror film by twins Jen and Sylvia Soska . Katharine Isabelle , a Canadian actress who specializes in horror films, embodies a medical student who has been trained as a surgeon, who begins to operate out of financial difficulties and thereby immerses herself in a world of bizarre customer requests for plastic body transformations.
action
The film begins to the sound of Schubert's Ave Maria , when medical student Mary Mason applies her basic surgical skills and cuts open and sews up a plucked turkey at home . Mary suffers from acute financial difficulties and therefore visits a strip club one evening to offer herself as a dancer. When Billy Barker, the club owner, learns that she is studying medicine and has some knowledge of surgical interventions, he asks Mary if she would be interested in earning $ 5,000 for a moment. In the basement of his club lies a blood-covered man who is obviously involved in criminal business and who urgently needs medical help. For the money, Mary should save him without asking big questions. Mary accepts the money, but initially has some problems with apparently working for a criminal and is also shocked by the horribly battered patient. Even days later, she followed this traumatic experience.
One day her phone starts ringing all the time. On the other side of the line, a young woman named Beatress Johnson answers. She has heard of Mary's unconventional commitment and now asks if she could help her with a delicate surgical matter. The dancer, who works for Billy, has undergone numerous plastic interventions, which she had optically adapted to the cartoon character Betty Boop . Beatress offers Mary $ 10,000 should she perform an illegal operation on her friend Ruby Realgirl. The operation site is to be a veterinary clinic that is not used at night. From now on Ruby only wants to look like a human doll and so far has not been able to find a surgeon who is ready to perform this madness. Ruby's nipples are to be removed and her vulva partially sewn shut. The blonde Ruby is a fashion designer and wants to be transformed into a mannequin so that she no longer has to be a sexual object. Mary performs the operation because she urgently needs the money and is convinced of Ruby's honest desire for this drastic change. With this Mary Mason begins to dive into an absurd world of extreme body transformations.
During one of Dr. Walsh organized a party with fellow surgeons, Mary is drugged and by a colleague, her university professor Dr. Alan Grant, raped and filmed. With that, Mary herself begins to throw all inhibitions overboard and take revenge. First she kidnaps and "operates" Dr. Grant. During the operation, she introduced him to a surgical fashion trend, an extreme form of body modification that Mary first read about on Ruby's website. To Grant, Mary says coldly, she wants to perform the most popular surgical procedures in the field, such as splitting the tongue , modifying the genitals, and amputation . Dr. Grant is fully conscious and off we go. When the next day a young man comes into her flourishing operating room with the request for piercing , she throws him out on edge because she does not want to deal with such foolish interventions. On the street, Mary is approached by a police detective by the name of Dolor (pain), who is responsible for the disappearance of Dr. Go after Grant. Mary pretends she doesn't know anything.
Mary's next assignment is much more interesting: she is visited by two Gothic-style sisters who want to be operated on by her. To the music of “I Want Your Body, You Want My Body”, she amputated the two young women's left arms in order to sew the arm of the other back on to one of them. Then she goes into her (torture) basement and takes some pictures of Dr. Grant, whom she hung on the skin of his shoulder and whose mouth she sewed up. Grant is just a pile of misery. During her one-sided conversation with him, Mary is surprised and dejected by a security guard. However, she quickly wakes up and kills the guard. When Detective Dolor found her because of the rape video that Dr. Walsh has spread, auditioned for her again, suspects Mary, who continues to pretend that they are on her trail. Because Dr. Grant has disappeared, as Dolor tells her, and Dr. Walsh claims that student Mary may have had a grudge against her college teacher.
Walsh also disappears without a trace, but this time it is Billy who has abducted the medic and beats him as soft as a diaper. He thinks he is doing a favor to Mary, for whom he has growing sympathy. Ruby's friend, appalled by Mary's surgical skills on his doll-turned-girl, ambushes Mary at home and stabs her angrily. Mary can put him out of action on the one hand, but on the other hand is so badly injured in this attack that she can only perform a single operation with the last of her strength: the one on herself. After sewing up her own wounds, she dies to the sound of the entrance from Schubert's “Ave Maria”. Detective Dolor discovers her body a little later and learns from the documents lying around there about American Mary's double life.
Production notes
American Mary , a horror film with thriller elements as a sub-genre “Body Horror”, was shot on a budget in just 15 days in Katharine Isabelle's hometown of Vancouver and had its world premiere on August 27, 2012 as part of the London FrightFest Film Festival . On October 18, 2012, the film ran in native Canada. The film was released on DVD in Germany on March 28, 2013 .
The directing sisters Jen and Sylvia Soska have a bizarre guest appearance as black-clad twins with a vampire touch, who ask Mary to amputate both of their left arms, so that after the extremities have been swapped, they can carry one part of the other's body with them until the end of their life to be connected forever.
Awards
The film received a wealth of awards at special festivals from 2012 to 2014:
- Toronto After Dark Film Festival: Best Director, Best Actress (Katherine Isabelle), Best Cinematography, among others
- Screamfest: Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup
- Fright Meter Awards: Best Actress, Best Screenplay
- Fangoria Chainsaw Awards: Best Actress
- Brussels International Festival of Fantasy Films: The Silver Raven for Jen and Sylvia Soska
- Austin Fantastic Fest: special mention to Katherine Isabelle
as well as numerous other nominations.
Reviews
" American Mary ... combines blood, quiet horror, feminist conviction and visual classicism ..."
" American Mary ... goes limp and aimless after a seductively horrific ... tight first half."
"This amateur, low-budget horror film doesn't fully realize its potential."
"The polished film is entertaining enough to please jaded horror fans."
On horrormagazin.de it says: “This film is entertaining and funny for a long time. It shows that the otherwise rather meaningless sub-genres with the refreshing names "Torture Porn" and "Rape & Revenge" can also be served intelligently. The two directors managed to do that here. With a lot of black humor they push the viewer into a completely absurd world of fetishists "
On filmstarts.de it says: "The result is a strangely cool, atmospheric masterpiece over long stretches, but which runs out of air towards the end."
On Filmbessprechungen.de you can read: “The mood is both gloomy and cheerful. Horror and cheerfulness get along well, but there is an art in making them harmonize with each other. The soskas succeed in the tightrope act. (…) Again it is Katherine Isabelle, in whose seemingly unmoved expression a wide range of often reluctant feelings can be recognized or projected. Although drastic effects are not saved, they are not in the foreground or even replace the story. "
On Filmosophie.com you can read: “There are many critical approaches which, due to a lack of consistency, tend to irritate the viewer instead of stimulating them to think. None of this seems to have been properly thought out. The film is a bit like one of Mary's patched up turkeys. Somehow all the pieces are there, but it still doesn't come to life. There is a lack of soul! "
Web links
- American Mary in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Full review in The Hollywood Reporter
- Interview with Jen and Sylvia Soska in The New York Times
Individual evidence
- ↑ American Mary on horrormagazin.de
- ↑ American Mary on filmstarts.de
- ↑ American Mary on filmbessprechungen.de
- ↑ American Mary on filmosophie.com