Country: USA
Year: 2004
Duration: 85'
To the notes of the great Stax Records classics, Slasher documents one of the
working weekends of Michael Bennet, a restless and enterprising used car
salesman who travels from one car showroom to another, setting up noisy
clearance sales. In Memphis, a city that has been crushed by the economic slump,
Bennet surrounds himself with music, colored balloons and pretty girls as, with
theatrical emphasis, he slashes prices that have been inflated for the occasion
and butters up cash-strapped clients.
"Almost two years ago, when our president was selling us on this war, this whole
concept of attacking Iraq when it made no sense. I kept thinking, 'Saddam
Hussein and Osama bin Laden have nothing to do with each other.' […] Dick
Cheney, President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and even Colin Powell were clearly
lying, like used car salesmen. I thought, 'You know, they're selling us this war
like a used car.' What in stage magic is called misdirection. It's entirely
misdirection so you never look where - it's 'never mind that man behind the
curtain.', of The Wizard of Oz. I thought
I could use the slasher figure to demonstrate how he sells car, they're selling
us war. That was my original intention. Until I discovered that I would need to
buy news footage at an average of $90 a second and we didn't have the money.
Thought, and then, when we got to Memphis, the real events became so compelling
to me. Michael Bennett was so much more complex, and fascinating as a person.
And I was unaware we were going to such a depressed area of Memphis… So things
changed." (J. Landis)
Biography
film director
John Landis
John Landis was born on August 3, 1950 in Chicago, shortly before his family moved to Los Angeles. In 1966 he enrolled at UCLA, but the next year he abandoned his studies to become an errand boy at 20th Century Fox. He worked on various European productions as an odd-job man and stuntman, and in 1971 he debuted as a director with Schlok, a parody of B horror films which he financed himself and which made 6 million dollars in box office receipts. In 1977 the Zucker brothers and Jim Abrahams called on him to make a comedy based on their Kentucky Fried Theatre; the result was The Kentucky Fried Movie. Universal Studios noticed him and entrusted him with the college-humor comedy National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). The extraordinary success of the film, which he doubled with his next film, The Blues Brothers (1980), made Landis one of Hollywood's most famous young directors and the author of a new type of catastrophic and demented humor. In 1981 he produced and directed An American Werewolf in London, a contamination of horror and comedy, and in 1983 he directed the sophisticated comedy Trading Places, plus a homonymous tribute to the 1950's science fiction TV series Twilight Zone. Continuing his contamination of genres, and often working with trusted actors like Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy and Chevy Chase, he directed the comedy Into the Night (1985), the nuclear parody Spies Like Us (1985) and, with the "Saturday Night Live" crew, the western comedy ¡Three Amigos! (1986). His film Amazon Women on the Moon (1987) was an attempt to repeat the project of The Kentucky Fried Movie, and then success returned with Coming to America (1988), a comic fairy tale starring Eddie Murphy. In the early 1990's he exploited the Universal Studios for the TV series Dream On, which he produced. He directed several episodes of the series, that lasted until 1994. Then he made several very different films: the farce Oscar (1991), the horror film Innocent Blood (1992), the action movie Beverly Hills Cop III (1994) and the children's film The Stupids (1996). The sequel to The Blues Brothers, Blues Brothers 2000, is dated 1990, after which he made the independent production Susan's Plan (1998), his last fiction film before the documentary Slasher (2004).
FILMOGRAFIA
Schlok (Slok, 1971), The Kentucly Fried Movie (Ridere per ridere, 1977), National Lampoon's Animal House (Animal House, 1978), The Blues Brothers (id., 1980), An American Werewolf in London (Un lupo mannaro americano a Londra, 1981), Coming Soon! (TV, 1982), Trading Places (Una poltrona per due, 1983), Twilight Zone (Ai confini della realtà, co-regia Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, George Miller, 1983), Michael Jackson's Thriller (videoclip, 1983), Into the Night (Tutto in una notte, 1985), B.B. King - Keeping The Blues Alive (co-regia Jeff Okun, 1985), Spies Like Us (Spie come noi, 1985), ¡Three Amigos! (I tre Amigos, 1986), Amazon Women on the Women (Donne amazzoni sulla luna, co-regia Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, Joe Dante, Robert K. Weiss, 1987), Coming to America (Il principe cerca moglie, 1988), Disneyland 35th Anniversary Special (TV, 1990), «Dream On» - The First Episode (TV, 1990), Oscar (Oscar- Un fidanzato per due figlie, 1991), «Dream On» - The Second Greatest Story Ever Told (TV, 1991), Black or White (videoclip, 1991), Innocent Blood (Amore all'ultimo morso, 1992), «Dream On» - Nightmare on Bleecker Street; It Came From Beneath the Sink; Come and Knock on Our Door (TV, 1992), Beverly Hills Cop III (Beverly Hills Cop III - Un piedipiatti a Beverly Hills, 1994), «Dream On» - Oral Sex, Lies and Videotape; Portrait by an Artist on the Young Man; Martin Tupper in Magnum Farce (TV, 1993), «Dream On» - Attack of the 59" Woman; The Courtship of Martin's Father; I Never Promised You Charoses Martin; Off-Off-Broadway Bound; The Spirit of the 76th & Park; She Won't Do It, but Her Sister Will; Take Two Tablets and Get Me to Mount Sinai (TV, 1994), The Stupids (id., 1996), Blues Brothers 2000 (Blues Brothers - Il mito continua, 1998), Susan's Plan (Delitto imperfetto, 1998), Slasher (doc, 2004).