RECTUMA
Review by Brent Simon
Is it a sign of things to come that the title card logo for Rectuma writer-director Mark Pirro’s company – the cheekily named Pirromount Pictures — resembles, to a more shallow mind, a silhouetted breast? You bet your sweet ass it is. An irreverent, super low-budget goofball confection that calls to mind the careening short film projects your younger brother and his friends put together in the summer to amuse themselves. Rectuma is gleefully un-politically correct but also inoffensive enough in its shaggy dog disposition and desire to please, that even Arianna Huffington could enjoy a good laugh while watching, curled up with a brew.
The story centers on naive Waldo Williams (Bill Devlin), a curly-haired schlub with an unfaithful wife named Valveeta (Dani Leon), and a most unusual problem. You see, Waldo returns from vacation to find he’s become the unwitting host of a Mexican butt-humping frog. (Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d type…). When he seeks treatment from an Eastern medicine specialist, Dr. Wansamsaki (Alex Chen), but fails to give himself salt water enemas to offset the nuclear rod he’s had shoved up his butt, well, the resultant consequences find Waldo’s detached ass wreaking caramelized poo havoc on his enemies, all of which makes him the object of dogged pursuit by two detectives, Cosacca (Jim Rainey) and Cipolla (a very funny Jean Black, proffering a spot-on send-up of Jodie Foster’s Agent Clarice Starling). And as for the stirring conclusion? Well, let’s just say it involves a giant rampaging ass, a monster-defying mercenary with a missle-launcher and a suicide-ready stand-in for Osama bin Laden.
As eccentric as it is ass-centric, Rectuma isn’t a spoof, per se, though Pirro (A Polish Vampire in Burbank, Deathrow Gameshow, Nudist Colony of the Dead) does work in passing references to Midnight Cowboy and Nell, and includes an Oriental female duo who serve as the movie’s ostensible Greek chorus. If low-class, high art is up your…alley (geez, what did you think I was gonna say?), head over to the Laemmle Sunset 5 for one of Rectuma’s Friday and Saturday midnight shows. For more information, visit www.pirromount.com (Pirromount, unrated, now playing, Laemmle Sunset 5)
April 2004
