Five repulsive young losers are in a basement, one with an "unloaded" gun. And then there were four.

Gravesend (1997) finds our four dumbasses driving around Brooklyn with a body in the trunk, trying to raise $500 so a junky named Jojo (Macky Aquilino) will get rid of the body for them. Being such stupid guys, they get themselves in deep & deeper making lame choices that lead to lamer choices.

The budget for Gravesend was a scant $5,000. The sound is good enough to patch through the visual simpleness. It obviously impressed Oliver Stone, who helped get it distributed. At the time of the film's initial release it was widely supposed that Salvatore Stabile was going to be the Next Big Thang, but waiting for a real budget meant it would be many years before he directed his second film.

Sick, funny, tense, loud, obnoxious, moronic, vulgar fun, before the night is over, there will be three corpses in the trunk. There are some great moments like when Sachmo is singing "What a Wonderful World" on the radio & the losers go weirdly sentimental in the midst of idiocy & horror.

Their biggest screw-up of the night is yet to come, in the morning shadows & silhouettes of Coney Island. This is one of the blackest of black comedies that finally is not funny at all, when Zane (Tony Tucci) decides the only way to keep his friends from talking is to kill them all.

copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl