What The Hell Did I Just Watch? "Stitches" Movie Review

Netflix, you dirty ol' bastard!  Well, I have just been tricked again by Netflix to watch a movie that I have mixed feelings about.  Let me explain.

First, let me just get the plot of this movie called 'Stitches' out into the open so you have an idea from where I am coming.

******Spoiler Altert******

Stitches is, essentially, a movie about a party clown (Stitches), who is killed within the first 10 minutes of movie as a result of receiving a kitchen knife to the face.  The rest of the movie is about Stitches coming back to life, a clown zombie if you will, and exacting his revenge on all those who have wronged him; specifically, the kids who teased him at the birthday party where he died.  

I am going to highlight the plot a bit further now in order to explain my mixed feelings about this film.

The movie begins when Stitches arrives at a kid's birthday party. Stitches, then, attempts to entertain the kids with a variety of clown tricks.  The kids are not thrilled by the clown's antics.  So, they begin to tease the clown and give him a hard time.  Specifically, one kid ties Stitches' shoe strings together (classic prank), while another kid throws a ball at Stitches causing him
to go off-balance and fall directly onto a kitchen knife that was placed, by an adult, in a dishwasher with the blade sticking straight up.

Who puts a kitchen knife in the dishwasher with he blade sticking straight up and then leaves the dishwasher open, especially with kids hyped up on cake running around???

Anyway, as I said before, Stitches falls on the knife and it goes through his left eye and out the top of his skull.  Blood, brains, and gore spray everywhere (I mean everywhere). It's hilarious the amount of blood and brains that spew from this clown's head wound.  But this is only the beginning of the gore that ensues during the rest of the movie.

At this point, Stitches is "dead" and buried in a grave yard.  The kid, who was having the birthday party, goes to the grave yard and witnesses an ancient clown ritual being performed.  Apparently, when clown's receive their official induction into the 'clownship' they are given an egg with their clown faces painted on it.  This egg is symbolic of the eternal life as a clown.  It also is the thing that ends up destroying the zombie version of Stitches at the end of the movie.

We fast forward 6 years later when the kids are adolescences in middle-school.  The former birthday boy has a pretty severe case of PTSD from the incident 6 years before.  He hallucinates frequently of people around him turning into clowns and performing gruesome acts on other people around him.  For example, one hallucination is when he is sitting in a classroom with his classmates, the teacher turns into a murderous clown, walks up to a kid and rips his dick off in the middle of class.  Then, the clown, who now has a kid's dick in his hand, trots around the classroom displaying the dick to everyone.  Oh, and as the viewers to this spectacle, we are graciously awarded the opportunity to watch the clown rip the kid's dick off while the camera is zoomed in on the entire ordeal.  So, not only do we see the dick being ripped off, but we see it up close and personal and there is plenty of flesh ripping imagery to accompany it.

Shortly after that entertaining sequence (can I call it entertaining???), we learn that it is the hallucinating kid's birthday again.  So, the kid wants to have a birthday party.  He invites the entire school over to his house and a ton of people show up.

During the party, Stitches is magically resurrected from the grave and on a mission to kill all of the kids responsible for his death.  The rest of the movie is about Stitches cleverly and creatively killing a bunch of kids.  For example, he kicks a kid's head off, stabs a girl through the eye with an umbrella, uses a ice-cream scooper to scoop a kid's brains out of his head while simultaneously making an ice-cream sunday; only instead of ice-cream, Stitches uses brains, and disembowels a one guy turning the removed bowel in a balloon animal; specifically, a dog.  All of these acts are accompanied by exaggerated gore, blood spewing, raunchy carnage, screaming, and howling cries of pain by Stitches' victims as they are mutilated.

The movie ends with the birthday boy destroying the egg with Stitches' clown face drawn on it.  When the egg is destroyed, Stitches explodes, but get this, he explodes and the resulting carnage is egg yolk.  And once Stitches is dead, everybody lives happily ever after.

Or do they???

Alright, let me return to what I started this post out with; namely, that I have mixed feelings about this movie.  However, I must first make a confession.  While writing this post I realized something -- I love this movie.  The hyperbolic gore, blood, bad acting, and overall raunchiness speaks to me in a way that I want an independent B-horror movie to speak.  I don't expect this kind of movie to have a good plot or character depth.  I watch these movies because I want to be grossed out, but I also want laugh at the grossness.  Let's call Stitches what it is, a low budget gross out film, and, as such, I can assure you that it delivers.

I don't need to bother recommending this movie because if you are a fan of B-horror movies, then you already know what Stitches is all about.  And if you don't like B-horror movies, then there is no need to waste time trying to convince you that you should watch it.  This movie was made for a particular audience and they know who they are.  However, for those of you who are on the fence about it, give it 15 minutes and if after that you don't like it, turn it off because chances are that you won't like the rest.

As of 2/5/2016 'Stitches' is available on Netflix (US).

Queer Cinema: Coming to a Theater Near You?

Imagine Brad Pitt and Channing Tatum or Jennifer Lawerence and Salma Hayek acting out the plot of "When Harry Met Sally" or "You've Got Mail" or "Sleepless in Seattle" or even "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" as queer versions.  Is American society, or the world at large, ready for mainstream films casting big named stars in homosexual roles and acting in romantic comedies or any other genre? "When Harry Met Sally" all of the sudden becomes "When Brad Met Channing" or "When Jennifer Met Salma."    The sex scenes from "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" would have a very different imagery (I am specifically thinking of the scene where Steve Carell's character (Andy) and Catherine Keener's character (Trish) are about to have their first sexual encounter and Andy spends at least five minutes fumbling and struggling to get a condom on.)  Are we ready to see a queer version of the 40-Year-Old Virgin?  Of course, this all assumes that the aforementioned actors and actresses would participate in such an endeavor, but suppose they agreed -- are we ready?

There currently exists a queer cinema genre of film; however, it mostly exists outside of the mainstream media and scope of the general population.  We rarely see movie trailers for these kind of films or other kinds of promotional activity.  With the growing cultural support that homosexuals are gaining, not only in the U.S. but abroad as well, it is very likely that in the next five years or so we will see queer cinema come into the mainstream.  As a movie reviewist, interested in the impact that film has on culture and culture's impact on film, I will be paying close attention as this genre is rolled out to the public.

There is an important note that must be made here.  There have been films in the past that have brought the queer lifestyle into the mainstream.  For example, Brokeback Mountain released in 2005 spotlighted two homosexual cowboys.  This film, and many others like it, portray homosexuality as something shameful and/or an activity that is frowned upon.  However, in You've Got Mail, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are not ashamed of their heterosexuality.  The characters are not compelled to justify their sexuality to anyone at any time during the movie.  The heterosexual nature of Hanks' and Ryan's relationship is presupposed to fit a noncontroversial status quo.  My question, then, should be understood in this context.  Are we ready for queer films to go mainstream wherein the plot is not concerned with justifying the homosexual relationship, but instead homosexuality is presupposed to fit the cultural status quo, like in You've Got Mail?

So, what do you think, are you ready for queer cinema to go mainstream?  Let us know in the comment section.