Review: The Taint

Dirty Phil

I watched The Taint last night. As soon as it was over, I wanted to write about it. The Taint is a low budget, independent "action/comedy/horror", per IMDb, film written and directed by Drew Bolduc. The plot centers around the water supply being "tainted" by a miraculous drug cooked up by two nerdy scientist-types who want to make their penises larger. What the drug actually does is to turn men into maniacal "misogynists" who run amok with their enhanced penises (literally dangling out of their pants) killing any woman they can find with large rocks or anything else that's lying around. One of the last non-enhanced men around is Phil O'Ginny (played by Drew Bolduc) who teams up with a recently widowed femme fatale Misandra (get it?) in a quest for untainted water. Along the way, more blood, semen, and viscera fly than I thought was available for purchase in the great state of Virginia (where the movie was filmed).

Not your thing? I certainly wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. That said, I'd like to pose a question: what would you rather watch? Transformers: Dark of the Moon or this? One is a labor of love created by people who seem to have a genuine interest and love of film. The other is a boring, pandering, vacuous, Hollywood money-pit whose only redeeming quality is... well, I can't think of any. I know my answer.

Something you'll immediately notice when watching The Taint is that, despite having a low budget and no studio backing, it's not filmed by amateurs. Drew Bolduc and Dan Nelson (credited for cinematography) make the film's shots interesting and exciting, full utilizing the cinematographer's toolbox. It's avant-garde, art-house and anything else you'd hear patrons of artsy indie theaters pontificate on outside after a viewing. The music (once again, I give you Mr. Drew Bolduc) is a well-made, interesting cross of house, chiptune-esque, and rock which I'm still listening to. The film's special effects and makeup are some of the best practical works I've ever seen.

DVD cover

The film itself jumps around and changes perspectives often and lampoons many topics. Cody Crenshaw plays an overenthusiastic high school physical education teacher with a penchant for "shirts and skins" activities (he's often yelling off-screen to a kid named "Anderson" whose probably overweight and picked on). His character is excellent parody of the kind of alpha-male douchebags we all know. We're treated to a sequence of his character working out while fitting 80s hair metal music plays and several shots of him displaying, what I call his "workout boner", bulge through tight and super-short shorts. The fact that the entire world ends in pursuit of a drug that makes your penis bigger just cracks me up to no end. Are men so insecure about the size of their dick that they'd collapse society to rectify this situation?

My only real gripe with the film is the way it constantly jumps in perspective and flashes back and forth from past to present. Perhaps it could have been more focused in this regard, but I'm not convinced it's really a problem. This film has already vigorous defied convention and what is considered "good taste" in many other respects, so why should I expect it to unfold in a conventional manner? Would it really benefit from that? 

But let me get back to my question. What would you rather watch? A movie like Dark of the Moon insults my intelligence and laughs at me as I exit the theater devoid of another $10. A movie like The Taint is silly and "distasteful", but has fun and is, ultimately, *gasp* more intellectually stimulating (in odd ways) than transforming robots and Shia La... whatever his last name is. Lest we forget Peter Jackson made Bad Taste and Braindead before he won 11 Oscars.