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"Mother, you had me but I never had you..." Kitschville, North Carolina, land of neon palm trees and spandex leotards and the private realm of miniature locomotives. The hausfrau (Theresa Russell) is a damaged lynx deflowered at a carnival in "the summer of rock and free love," her baby was snatched away at birth. Hubby (Christopher Lloyd) is no help, his true passions gravitate toward model trains in the attic and clandestine spankings at the geriatric clinic. Return of the hellion, a Méliès cut gives Gary Oldman on Cape Fear bridge, with cowboy hat over leather jacket and tie. His conception is seen through a shower of bumper-car sparks, his reunion with mommy takes place by a swimming pool that might as well be filled with amniotic fluid. "Did I hear the word bastard from your fair lips? It's not a word I care to hear, myself. Gets too personal." The Dennis Potter constellation shaped by Nicolas Roeg as a pendant of The Man Who Fell to Earth, the British visitor and the need to go off the rails, as it were. (Altman's Images is a crucial fountain of imagery.) "Intellectual hygiene" is celebrated at the Trainorama convention as a midpoint between political rally and revival meeting, the orgiastic satire is scored to "Chattanooga Choo Choo" and intercut with the interloper's gleeful stomping back home. Drippy tunes on the piano and old cartoons on the telly, the bloody stain of emancipation is closely observed. "Being a kid again is as good an occupation as any. In fact, it's a pretty good career." Friedkin in Bug picks up the blistering line of thought. With Colleen Camp, Sandra Bernhard, Seymour Cassel, Leon Rippy, and Vance Colvig.
--- Fernando F. Croce |