This is a surreal
and dryly hilarious low-budget film written and directed by Anthony Fankhauser,
who otherwise seems to have mostly prospered as a producer of SyFy Channel
style knock-off movies. A great and too underutilized
actor named Robert McAtee stars as Jorgensen, a guilt-ridden insurance
investigator looking into cases of botched lobotomies in Los Angeles and
discovering a conspiracy involving a mad scientist and a program called the
Human Urban Management Project, or H.U.M.P., which involves forcing poor people
to live in thin metal tubes so that unsightly slums can be swept under the
carpet by city governments. That’s about
as much of the plot as I can articulate; past that, all bets are off. There’s a definite, maybe shameless, David
Lynch quality to the mix of humor and mystery/thriller elements; but it all
kinda works despite the periodic collapse of logic, especially towards the
end. Fankhauser admirably compensates
for his meager budget with a surprising amount of care paid to lighting and
composition in the interior shots.
Outdoors, it’s a different story; strictly guerrilla time; but that’s
fun too. So, the intriguing premise, the
director’s intermittent aesthetic flourishes, the effective deadpan comedy, and
McAtee’s sardonic lead performance all make for a thought-provoking and
entertaining movie worth checking out.
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