Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on November 6, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
Perhaps only New York City dwellers will truly appreciate all the satiric contours of Murder Party, but fans everywhere who appreciate a good gore-gushing giggle will have a great old time watching this debut feature from writer/director Jeremy Saulnier and his partners in the “Lab of Madness.” Like this year’s Mulberry Street, Murder Party possesses a true downtown-Manhattan flavor, and feels like the kind of underground production that would be right at home screened in the media room of a gallery in that area. Except, of course, that the movie literally takes a chainsaw to pretentious artistic types and leaves the screen bathed in “hipster” blood.
The premise is simple in the best indie-filmmaking manner: Chris (Chris Sharp), who lives alone and has what can only be described as a passive-aggressive relationship with his cat, has nothing to do on Halloween night but a planned evening of watching cheesy horror flicks. But while walking the streets, he comes upon a strange black invitation to a “murder party” in Brooklyn, and decides to suit up in a homemade knight’s costume and check it out. Had he watched enough of those B-chillers, he might have known what to expect: The shindig is being held by a bunch of attitudinal art students who want to capture a slaying on camera, and Chris is the only person foolish enough to have responded to their randomly strewn invites. He winds up bound to a chair as the group (themselves done up as characters from The Warriors, Blade Runner, etc.) await the arrival of their guru, Alexander (Sandy Barnett), but Chris does have a bit of luck on his side. This bunch are so full of themselves and empty of real smarts that they might just wind up dispatching each other before they get around to their intended victim.
In other hands, setting much of the film in its one warehouse location might have smacked of a theater piece translated to film, but Saulnier (who also served as director of photography) avoids staginess with a constantly prowling camera and by frequently sending the action into odd back areas of the building. The attention is also held by the very amusing characterizations, with the whole ensemble bringing odd quirks to their scripted roles. Or vice versa—Magnolia Pictures’ DVD reveals that Saulnier wrote all the parts for his Lab of Madness buddies, and there’s a give-and-take among them on screen that feels like the result of years spent in friendship and collaboration. Several of those who appear before the camera also had roles behind it: Sharp and Saulnier’s wife Skei were the producers, and Paul Goldblatt handled the impressively splattery makeup FX. Saulnier’s cinematography sports a polish that belies the low budget, and is replicated with rich colors and satisfying sharpness in the disc’s 1.78:1 transfer.
A commentary by Saulnier, Sharp and co-star Macon Blair reveals that two characters were killed off early to free the actors up for their production duties, and offers plenty more anecdotes about this cinematic labor of love. From the difficulties of finding Halloween candy corn and pumpkins in May to an actor who passed out (costing the team half a day of shooting) after performing a hypodermic-needle scene, there are plenty of great anecdotes here, along with a strong sense of the camaraderie this collective needed to get through the time- and budget-challenged shoot. As often happens on such indie efforts, necessity was the mother of invention: Saulnier reveals that he reverted from the more formal visual style of the early sequences to heavy use of Steadicam simply because it saved time.
Just as entertaining is Extreme Truth: The Making of “Murder Party”, a 25-minute featurette highlighted by clips from the filmmakers’ youthful endeavors (produced under the banner of “Butt Stupid Films,” and pertinently including an adaptation of Beowulf undertaken as a class project). Saulnier, who is said here to be “the only one who [had] the patience” to direct the feature among his cohorts, and his cast/crew dish in a sometimes profane, occasionally playfully insulting and always amusing manner about each other and the filming of Murder Party, intercut with on-set and creation-of-the-FX footage, including before-and-after bits of a CGI-enhanced chainsaw mangling.
The disc is rounded out by funny outtakes and bloopers—you’d never know a line about “f**king pizza” could require so many retakes—and the full version of the Lexi character’s “art installation” (which is deserving of some kind of punishment, if not actual death). Plus, there’s a video instruction on how to create your own cardboard armor, and a text recipe for pumpkin bread—just in case you’re ever invited to a murder party yourself, and are silly enough to accept.
