From the great white north a true modern cult clssick has awakened from the wonderfully warped, maple syrup-soaked minds that comprise the ranks of renegade filmmaking collective ASTRON-6. Made on a budget of only ten grand procured by lifelong practitioners of the cinematically perverse, Troma Pictures, Father's Day pays credence to the grisly and sleazier side of grindhouse and drive-in movies while pushing not only budgetary boundaries, but also the limits of bad taste, to new and often hilarious heights.
Hot on the bloody trail of vengeance is Ahab, a loner living in the Canadian wilderness whose lifelong pursuits involve making maple syrup and training to become a hell-bent vigilante out to settle the score with a cannibalistic, dad-raping, maniac named Chris Fuchman, who raped and murdered his father when Ahab was just a boy. Along the way, Ahab joins forces with Twink, a junkie and male prostitute who's father also met his untimely demise at the hands of The Father's Day killer, and Father John Sullivan, A Catholic priest who just wants to see an end to the madness. Caught in this web of revenge and insanity is Ahab's younger sister Chelsea who is currently working as a stripper, but also wants nothing more than to see The Father's Day Killer receive his final comeuppance. The group follows Chris Fuhman's path down the metaphorical and metaphysical rabbit hole into a world of reckless brutality and shocking depravity unlike anything you've ever seen before.
Upon Father's Day inception, the Astron-6 team had to have been aware of the armchair critic's obvious comparisons to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarentino's Grindhouse double feature as well as Jason Eisner's Hobo With A Shotgun. Visually, the trailer for Father's Day definitely sets the tone to capture the same high color saturation, grainy, damaged 16 mm film print look that the aforementioned movies above revel in. Also, like the Grindhouse double feature, Father's Day has fake bumper commercials for nonexistent (so far anyway) films that are mixed into the feature to give off the impression that the audience is watching a movie on late night cable. The lo-fi, synth heavy, electronic soundtrack for Father's Day is also a large part of the film's retro fabulous ambiance, sending nods to John Carpenter, Riz Ortalani, Fabio Frizzi, and Goblin. Stylistically speaking, Father's Day is without a doubt intentionally reaching for the same low rung on the artistic ladder that Grindhouse, and Hobo With A Shotgun, but the boys of Astron-6 go way further thematically and in terms of their own brand of overt toilet humor, subtle dry wit, and unflappable weirdness. Over the top doesn't even begin to describe Father's Day. Insofar as the KVLT can tell, there is no glass ceiling, top of the mountain, or end of the rainbow for Astron-6, every action sequence, gore gag, in-joke, and sexual situation get blown way out of proportion and into the solar system and The KVLT is grateful for it!
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Father's Day may be The KVLT's pick for best movie of 2012 and if that doesn't tickle your fancy, just remember it's a movie made from all the ingredients that a growing KVLT kid needs like; gritty action, violent revenge, drug use, male prostitution, pitch black humor, bucket loads of gore, cannibalism, ample nudity, incest, suicide, and DAD RAPE! Just think of all the rape/revenge movies that you've seen over the years in which the unfortunate victims have been 99% female. Isn't it time we reboot our collective psychotronic minds and watch the boys (Dads) take one for the team? To quote one of the greatest movie taglines in recent memory, "Sons, lock up your fathers." Father's Day has arrived!
Fun Facts About Father's Day:
Troma pictures gave The Astron-6 team a completetion fund of ten thousand dollars after someone at Troma saw the trailer for Father's Day.
Astron-6 is meant to be a nod to the popular 80's video company Vestron Video.
Astron-6 have another feature in the works called Fireman, and another titled Manborg.
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