THE VAGRANT. 1992Director: Chris WalasReviewed by Paghat the Ratgirl |
Bill Paxton plays a bumbling middleclass low-level executive who becomes obsessed with the horrifyingly ugly derelict who lives in the empty lot across from his house. Thus the office nerd descends into hallucinatory paranoia that seems, at first, totally unjustified. But as the saying goes, even paranoids have enemies, & the vagrant is more than he seems to be. A witty script & genuinely offbeat performances render most of the film an effectively twisted psychological study. Michael Ironside turns in a good performance as a parody of the type of police detective he is usually asked to play in earnest. And the vagrant as played by Marshall Bell is honestly vile to watch. If not for being punctuated by grisly murders one might not even realize it was a horror film, but mainly a black comedy, until the climax that is. Toward the end it's pretty much just a slasher movie. One of the most innovatively sicko slasher movies out there, but ultimately still a slasher movie -- one that is much more worthy of viewing than most. copyright © by Paghat the Ratgirl |
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