The husband and I saw Mad God by Phil Tippet at Nitehawk Cinema, and I have to say: Wow, What a journey! It took him and his crew 30 years to make this hybrid of mostly stop motion/live action movie. It was 83 minutes of dark, graphic, repulsive, disturbing, nightmarish images. Plot (with no voices or narration, but amazing sound!) Spoilers Below! A soldier known as The Assassin descends into a ruined labyrinth like city full of monsters, electric torture victims, shitmen, and other hellish creatures via a diving bell. The assassin walks deeper into this nightmare world and we see along with him murder, chaos, and destruction. He carries a deteriorating map and a suitcase. In my mind, what is in the suitcase and what is his objective? He finally makes it to the sticky staircase which leads to the city bowels and finds mountains full of other suitcases. He opens his own suitcase and there is a bomb which he preps. But before the bomb detonates, the assassin is viscously dragged away by a mechanical mutant monster. Then we see the bomb's countdown fingers stop right before it is supposed to go off. The next part is you see the assassin being tortured in front of an audience. He is on an exam table wrapped in old, soiled bandages and a surgeon and nurse starts to perform a lengthy, bloody procedure. The surgeon cuts open the assassin's chest and blood, coins, jewelry, and books are removed. Finally, a screaming worm baby is pulled out and is placed into the nurse's hands. The nurse brings the worm baby to a black figure. The baby gets carried away by this mysterious, floating, Black Death plague mask wearing, long fingered hand creature. The floating creature bring the baby through another gruesome world towards the alchemist lair. We see more scary monsters along the way. Finally at the lair, the alchemist grinds the screaming worm baby, smelts the liquid into metal, crushes the metal into sparkling dust and hands it back to the floating creature. The creature tosses the dust into a fiery portal and another ruined universe is created.
After this, the story and plot go into a weird, non-sensical direction. The "last man" is seen receiving other deteriorating skin maps which he gives to other assassins thus repeating the cycle over and over again? All in all I love the stop motion, dystopian landscapes, lighting, and sound. But this movie isn't for everyone. It gives you strange feelings such as isolation, dread, fear, and lastly, madness!
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My short blog topics include: photography, music, science, crafts, vacation photos, movies, events in NYC, and of course stop motion animation.
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