Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Go Down Death (2013)

 

I was reminded of what Jerry Lewis said when he finally gave in and spoke openly about The Day the Clown Cried. He said it was bad...bad...bad. But, he added, it could have been wonderful.

Go Down Death was filmed in an abandoned paint factory in Brooklyn. It was set in a town somewhere maybe during World War One. We hear artillery in the background.

The director said in an interview that there WAS a plot---every scene made perfect sense to him---but he withheld information. There was a plot, but the audience didn't get to know what it was.

He also said that the actors didn't get paid, but one thing I've noticed with low budget movies made in New York is that the actors are often very good, and when you look them up on imdb.com, a lot of them have pretty good careers going even though they're working for free. I don't know how they get unpaid actors to do nude scenes.

Filmed in grainy black and white, something like a Guy Maddin movie although the cinematography was more conventional, which may not be a bad thing. It looked great.

According to the director, they had to Fed Ex the film to LA to get it processed. It took a week to get it back, so by the time they got their "dailies", the sets for those scenes had already been torn down. It's too bad they couldn't have left the sets up and filmed another movie on them. One where you could follow the plot.

Available on Fandor.Watch it and judge for yourself.


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