“I’m taking reality and making it look like make-believe. That’s a special effect too.”

Josh’s review: Mary Jean abandoned her family in a small rural town and ran away to New York to pursue her dream of fame. Only, like so many before her, that dream didn’t come true. When we meet MJ, played by Zoë Lund (Ms. 45), she is going by the name Andrea, and while she is not star of stage and screen, she is performing. At this sleazy show Andrea poses mostly nude for a bunch of salivating men with K-Mart cameras. Where are they developing that film?!

Enter Brad Rijn (Perfect Strangers), who Andrea immediately recognizes as her husband Keefe. He has come to The Big Apple to forcibly return his wife to domesticity.

After giving her man the slip, she ends up in the arms of a recently out of work film director named Chris Neville played by Eric Bogosian (Talk Radio, Law & Order: Criminal Intent). It is at the hands of Mr. Neville that Andrea meets her demise… and it is all on film!

What follows is the story of a killer who is uniquely positioned to recreate the thrill of his first kill whilst making a feature film that blurs the lines of reality and fantasy.

When I was a kid I was infatuated with the Gotham aesthetic of ’80s and ’90s New York City. There are two movies I have to thank for that, Ghostbusters and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The gritty, perpetually wet, haze-laden streets depicted in those films called to me. Sadly, I never got to see the city while it was shaped by boxy brick buildings and fully metal vehicles. All that to say, Larry Cohen’s New York movies scratch a very specific itch for me and 1984’s Special Effects got me behind the ears.

While more intimate than some other Cohen films like Black Caesar or Q: The Winged Serpent, New York is still a very present character. When we aren’t in one of two wildly different apartments, a production studio, or the biggest freight elevator I have ever seen, we are watching our characters drive through busy streets (almost hitting pedestrians) from a patented Larry Cohen fire escape shot or passing theater marquees and busy sidewalks with gaggles of people who don’t know they are in a movie. We get to meet a helpful cabbie who is obsessed with prostitutes. There is even a big ol’ abandoned building on Coney Island with its windows busted and a sign with the phrase “no ball playing” among other things. This is where the body of Mary Jean will be found nude in the front seat of a beautiful station wagon.

Regarding the interiors, the most energetic scenes take place in Neville’s apartment. This vast eclectic maze of a building was the residence of real-life artist Lowell Nesbitt, who allowed its use in the production. Adorned with numerous works of art (most depicting flowers, all by Nesbitt), large plants, and multiple in-floor water features, this really looks the part of a place a weirdo with too much money would live.

If you told me the owner already had a two way mirror with a camera behind it before Cohen even came in, I wouldn’t bat an eye. The place really does have character and is certainly off-putting. It feels like what I think the living quarters of Thoth-Amon’s castle would have looked like if we saw a bit more of that interior in Conan the Destroyer.

At least to my eyes, the cast does a decent job, with Bogosian’s command of his character and his unblinking gaze being on the top shelf and Lund’s atrocious southern accent being right at the bottom. I found Brad Rijn’s performance better in Perfect Strangers, which was filmed back-to-back with this film, using a lot of the same actors. In some scenes he brings the energy, but in others it just looks like his heart isn’t in it.

Occasionally, some of the character’s motivations for doing the things they do left me with the Jackie Chan hands up meme front and center in my mind. For instance, why would Elaine leave her busy schedule to go with a strange man she had openly mocked only seconds before to meet another unknown man in an undisclosed place? Didn’t her feminist group teach her anything? She also decides she is going to sign a contract without even looking at it. Also, why is Detective Delroy touching suspected murder weapons with his bare hands? Is it normal to have a bunch of actresses audition in front of each other? WHO THE HELL describes their two-year-old as being 31 months old?!

As far as kills go, don’t come looking for a high body count. There are only two to be seen, with the second being a somewhat “fresh” strangulation via film strip.

The overall feel of this movie is somewhat uncomfortable. I’m not sure that’s the tone for which they were striving, but the mix of the non-pro talent, handheld, guerrilla-style shooting, the synth-y drone of the ever-present score, and the moody light, not to mention Bogosian’s penetrating stare, made me feel a little off my center for the entire hour forty-five. It felt like an extra long episode of Twin Peaks.

One thing I never felt was suspense. There are some parallels to Hitchcock, particularly Vertigo, but the film is never able to get its chin to that bar. If anything, it just kind of hangs on it and kicks its feet a bit.

I like Special Effects for its style and mood, and that is mostly because of the setting and Bogosian, but it fell flat in originality and provocativeness. My recommendation would be to check out one of Larry Cohen’s other movies like The Stuff or Black Caesar.

Intermission!

• What does it mean to not have beat/hit someone in “all your married life?” Did Keefe hit her prior to marriage?
• Loved the scene with the discarded Christmas tree blowing down the road like a tumbleweed. I gotta believe that was a found object that Larry decided to shoot. Because, New York.
• The film developer guy looks like Charles Bronson’s younger brother.
• I hope my mom tells people she has a 471-month-old baby boy.