Special Effects

"Special Effects" is a thriller that delves into the darker aspects of Hollywood, where reality and illusion collide. The film tells the story of a megalomaniacal movie director, Neville, who murders a young actress and then casts her husband as the patsy in a film about the crime.

While the premise is intriguing, the execution falls short. The film's pacing is slow, and the acting is uneven. Zoe Tamerlis's performance is particularly cringe-worthy, making it difficult to watch her scenes without wincing.

However, Eric Bogosian and Brad Rijn fare better, bringing some much-needed depth to the film. Larry Cohen's direction is also noteworthy, as he attempts to emulate the style of Brian De Palma.

Despite its flaws, "Special Effects" is a thought-provoking commentary on the darker side of Hollywood. The film's exploration of the blurred lines between reality and illusion is both fascinating and unsettling.

Overall, "Special Effects" is a mixed bag. While it has its moments, the film's poor acting and slow pacing make it a chore to sit through. However, fans of Larry Cohen and those interested in a behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood's darker side may find it .

"Special Effects" follows a filmmaker who murders a naive, wannabe actress in his New York City home. After, he cons the woman's ex-husband into appearing in his film about her life and demise, attempting to recreate her murder with a lookalike actress.

Larry Cohen is alternately considered an auteur and utter hack depending on which critical circles you ask, and I frankly have not seen enough of his work to make a judgment call. That said, "Special Effects" is a bit of a tiresome thriller that juggles some interesting ideas surrounding self-reflexivity and voyeurism, but as a movie, never quite satisfies.

Part of this is due to the screenplay feeling lopsided and disorienting, and Eric Bogosian frankly does not make for an effective or menacing villain. The lack of threat and any sense of true danger legitimately strips the film of suspense, which is ironic given Cohen's clear admiration for Hitchcock. Zoe Lund's performance here is effective as Elaine (the second actress who becomes a vessel for Bogosian's replication of reality), but her turn as the naive Texas woman who first meets her demise is laughably bad. Brad Rijn is a serviceable and handsome leading man, though his chemistry with the other actors feels shaky. Like with most of the film, the pacing and tone of the finale is bizarre and feels rushed and slightly sloppy, though it is ostensibly the only moment where Cohen seems to ramp up toward something daring.

In the end, "Special Effects" feels like a lost opportunity. Its core thematic ideas are intriguing, but the execution is half-witted and feels quite sloppy at times. Save for Lund's turn as would-be-dead-girl-number-two and some time capsule photography of 1980s Manhattan, there is frankly not a whole lot to praise here. Worth a watch for hardcore genre fans, but that's about it. 5/10.

I'm a really big fan and admirer of writer/director Larry Cohen. Are cult, horror and exploitation fanatics even fully aware of all the things he did?!? Cohen co-created the super successful Blaxploitation genre, with milestones like "Bone", "Black Caesar" and "Hell up in Harlem". He also invented the bizarrely uniquely and blackly comical monster trilogy "It's Alive", as well as several other imaginative and unforgettable horror gems like "The Stuff", "Q – The Winged Serpent" and "The Ambulance". Larry Cohen is also a very versatile and experimental director who even tried out religious thriller ("God told me to"), werewolf comedy ("Full Moon High") and political biography ("The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover"). But I'll also tell you what Larry Cohen is not, though … He's not Brian DePalma. Cohen penned it down for himself to direct, but here's one script he maybe should have donated to De Palma… With its convoluted plot and an ambiance reminiscent to "Blow Out" and "Obsession", this film is straight up the alley of Brian De Palma and he presumably would have done more with it. "Special Effects" is a very Hitchcockian thriller about a flamboyant but failing NY movie director who goes berserk whilst seducing an aspiring young actress and strangles her on camera. He – Chris Neville – dumps her body on Coney Island but after meeting his victim's desperate husband he develops the brilliant idea of turning is crime into a movie! He casts the husband as the naive culprit, an unknown look-alike as the willing victims and he even hires the investigating police detective as counselor. Half dark satire and half serious thriller, "Special Effects" is overly talkative and quite often too dull. In sheer contrast to Cohen's other films, there's very little violence and bloodshed in this movie, but the two murder sequences that are shown are quite unsettling and macabre. Practically all characters are hateful and unidentifiable, even the ones that are supposed to be likable ones. I'm not a fan of Eric Bosogian, but he's ideally cast as the megalomaniac director, who lives in a bizarrely decorated loft full of flowers and ugly relics. Zoë Tamerlis stars in a double role, as the strangled actress and her dead ringer, but doesn't impress in either of them. Tamerlis is considered a cult heroine by many exploitation fanatics, but apart from her sole legendary role in Abel Ferrara's "Ms. 45" and dying far too young she didn't really accomplish a lot. Who knows, perhaps the whole "aspiring actresses dying whilst trying" premise was Larry Cohen's own personal tribute to Dorothy Stratten who tragically died at the age of 20 in 1980. Like Tamerlis' character in the beginning of the film, Stratten also was a naive and overly enthusiast young beauty who surrounded herself with the wrong men. By getting murdered at such a tender age, before her career even properly started, she became more famous and legendary that an actual long-running career ever could have made her.

Keefe Waterman (Brad Rijn) travels to New York to find his wife Mary-Jean (Zoë Lund), who has abandoned him and their young son to find fame and fortune as a movie actress. Mary-Jean, now going by the name of Andrea Wilcox, is none too pleased to see her husband, and escapes to the swanky pad of film director Christopher Neville (Eric Bogosian), who talks the woman into his bed. However, when the aspiring actress realises that Neville is filming their romp, she rejects him, which leads to the director strangling her to death.

The discovery of the strangled woman's body in her car on wasteland leads to the arrest of Keefe, but he is bailed out by Neville, who reveals that he is intending to make a film about the murder, with Keefe playing himself. All they need is someone to play Mary Jean. That person is Elaine Bernstein (also played by Lund), an exact double of the dead woman. The filming commences, with Neville planning to splice in the actual footage of the murder into his movie. His plan also involves setting up Keefe for an exciting final act in which the young man dies - for real!

Special Effects is B-movie director Larry Cohen's attempt at a sexy, sophisticated thriller al la Brian De Palma, a film that attempts to say something meaningful about the world of movie-making, in particular the way in which film-makers can use the medium to break down the boundaries between reality and make-believe. Perhaps if Cohen had employed better actors than Zoë Lund and Brad Rijn as his protagonists, the theme of blurring of illusion and real life might have been more effective, but at no point are his performers remotely believable. Eric Bogosian, as murderous director Christopher Neville, is a much better actor, but even he can't make this trite nonsense bearable, his character insufferable (he would have been more chilling had he been more charismatic).

True to his B-movie roots, Cohen ensures there's some nudity, sex and a modicum of violence, and one can't help but feel that, in trying to be stylish and classy, the director is punching way above his weight, and that things would have been much better had he just been out and out exploitative in his approach.

3.5/10, rounded down to 3 for the extremely intrusive and irritating synth score.

Larry Cohen's "Special Effects" is an average snuff-themed horror film.Eric Bogosian plays here an on-the-decline director who murders a starlet(brilliant Zoe Tamerlis,who sadly died in 1999)on camera and decides to use a dead ringer to make a film about the killing."Special Effects" is average-the script is mediocre and the action is dull at times.Still the snuff/murder scene(the strangling)is pretty nasty!The ending is also effective.All in all I'd recommend this film for undemanding horror fans-it's really nothing special,but if you want a passable time-killer...