THE CARPENTER (1988)
The Carpenter is a threadbare slasher and a wry, oblique black comedy collimated as one chief constituent. It doesn't quite know how to enmesh the genres. Horror and comedy merely play "hot potato" with the script and you never get the sense that you're watching a cohesive whole. I'm not throwing this b-lumber under the bus (or into a proverbial woodchipper...man, I should have just went with that awful joke). No, I had a decent time with The Carpenter, and yes, the plot is as gangly as it sounds. A couple is renovating their home, but the bulk of the carpentry work is completed at the bewitching hour by a phantom artisan. Is it Jesus Christ or is it Wings Hauser? Same difference, stupid!
If the titular madman were played by anyone else, this flick wouldn't have eked out a passing grade. Wings Hauser is so--let me rephrase myself. Wings Hauser fundamentally Wings Hausers the fuck out of this thing. He steals all of his scenes. Through cruel mockery of God's animus, he even steals scenes that he does not appear in (i.e. filler). You haven't lived until you've witnessed Wings Hauser woo and butter up a forlorn housewife while frazzling the intestines of a corpse with a power drill. It's charming! Unfortunately, half of The Carpenter is a shambolic study in stagnation. For a bloody ordeal where circular saws and belt sanders are weaponized, it's pretty damn sleepy. Wings Hauser, tho!
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