TV & Film :
"American Gothic"
Fiona Hutchison
(Jenna, Guiding Light)
SPW: 1993
American Gothic (1988)
Hutchison's character was teaking a cigarette
break in the woods when she was nabbed.
Hutchison's character was teaking a cigarette
break in the woods when she was nabbed.
| "We
had to take a boat ride everyday to an island near Vancouver, where we
shot the film in a haunted house that was built on a hill. The problem
was that the weather was really stormy, so we would endure seas with about
six-foot swells. A couple of times I lost it on the boat
going over. I worked with Rod Steiger, Yvonne DeCarlo and Michael
J Pollard, and we all had great fun doing the film.
"I played a bitch, so [the audience] couldn't wait for me to get it, and boy did I get it in a sickening way! In my final scene, I'm hanging from a tree over a cliff, and there's blood coming out of my eyes and my mouth, so they had me up there actually hanging about 20 feet in the air. Later, the crew played a joke on me: They wrapped up, and they all walked away and left me hanging from the tree. "American Gothic" was the one piece of work that my mom never saw. She refused to watch it. I told her it was fake, but she still didn't want to see it. She said it didn't matter: It's your child, and you didn't want to see anything horrible happen to them." *
Reviews This eccentric, amusingly sick Canadian production involves a group of annoying yuppies who charter a plane for a camping getaway, only to find themselves making an emergency landing on an isolated, forest-covered island. They are taken in by the only inhabitants, the rabidly-religious "Ma & Pa" (Yvonne De Carlo and Rod Steiger), who seem trapped in a Norman Rockwellian time-warp and are invited to stay the night. This proves to be every bit as unpleasant as it seems -- especially after the hapless campers are introduced to the psychotic, middle-aged "children" (Michael J. Pollard and Janet Wright) -- who appear to be pushing 50. Before long, it's crazed crackers 1, campers 0 and counting, as the warped, scripture-spouting yokels take sharp objects in hand... until one of the campers (Sarah Torgov) reveals her own homicidal potential and goes completely berserk. Despite delightfully weird performances from a top-drawer cast, this campy romp is slightly spoiled by a poorly-scripted climax that suggests a sudden loss of creative inspiration. -- Cavett Binion |
|
|
|
