Saint Francis

Dr. P. Bernard (Zalman King from Trip With The Teacher) is a hugely popular televangelist with millions to his name. He has three children: a sociopath, a coke-addicted man-child who never leaves his room (Charles Koutris) and a sister, who is also a porn producer (Dita Von Teese). Daddy’s money has turned his children into something less than Christian, and more into psychotic, greedy monsters. One particular night, in the search for money, the lives of the three will intersect, and as the night gets darker and the drugs become more common, soon they’ll be slowly losing their sanity, and their lives.
I was not expecting anything from this movie, not at all. I got it because Dita Von Teese, my future wife (fingers crossed) appears in all her beautiful glory. It turns out this is actually a very well done religious horror film that has a lot to say. The acting is superb. Charles Koutris, who plays Francis, gives an intense, drugged up performance that just gets more and more psychotic as the movie goes on. In the end you feel just like him, like you’re in the worst trip of your life. Dita Von Teese is also pretty damn good, although she isn’t very good at emoting, she still gave a solid performance, and looked beautiful in the process. I also got a kick out of seeing Zalman King, famous for his famous softcore erotic series “The Red Shoe Diaries” and roles in 70’s exploitation films like Trip With The Teacher and Blue Sunshine. Here he plays a character that is so powerfully corrupt, that he has nothing to fear, not even from God. It’s his greed, evil and refusal to acknowledge his children that drives them to the lifestyles they possess. We also get small cameos from porn stars Stormy and Stephanie Swift. They always look nice.
I give a ton of props to director Ezra Gould. His directing style mixes Argento with Abel Ferrara, giving a very hallucinatory feel but also giving you the catholic guilt of a Bad Lieutenant and Ms. 45. His script is very David Lynch, where you don’t know if what’s happening is truly occurring or if they’re all hallucinations in our drugged-up friend’s mind. Mr. Gould is obviously exorcising some demons in his film, and I hope he got some sort of relief, his film came out great and I hope to see more of his work from the future.