If I were to make a list of “Feelings I Desire to Have,” a few
things come to mind. Comfort. Happiness. Fun times. Fright? Not on
there. Terror, discomfort, the suspicion one is about to be murdered in
one’s own home? These don’t even make the bottom 100. Not interested.
But it has come to my attention that there is a segment of the
population that not only relishes misery, but also is curious about
what exactly it looks and sounds like when someone is beaten to death
in the face with a bat. Who am I to deny those people their thrills ‘n’
chills?
So, in all fairness to Frayed (a locally produced horror
movie recently picked up for DVD distribution by Lionsgate), the actual
horror fan I brought to the Seattle premiere declared, “That movie was
greeeeeeat!!!”
Written, produced, and directed by Seattle area natives Rob
Portmann, Kurt Svennungsen, and Norbert Caoili (one of whom appears to
have named the lead psycho, Kurt, after himself) and filmed over 22
days in Washington State, Frayed is a loving, straightforward
homage to 1980s slasher-movie tropes. Along with the escaped mental
patient, there are also nubile teens, creepy children, sex in tents,
atrocious dialogue, clown makeup, an abandoned gas station, the forest,
and much slicing and dicing. People say things like “Be strong for me!”
and make preposterously bad choices (DO NOT CREEP DOWN THE FUCKING
HALLWAY! THAT IS A FOOL’S ERRAND!). “They’re fucked,” I scribbled in my
notes. “Night guard at the mental hospital is a fucking shitty
job.” And then: “STOP BREATHING SO LOUD, GARY!”
Even though the genre isn’t, as they say, my cup of recently
bludgeoned mom blood, the fact that three local film fans with day jobs
could pull off such a professional production is exciting. I wanted to
applaud a little bit at every successful effect. The
post-mom-bludgeoning wet sack of face, billed as “one of the most
brutally graphic scenes ever depicted on film,” comes to
mind—OMG! It really looks like what a pulverized face probably
looks like! I hate that it’s in my brain now, but I recognize the
accomplishment. That’s called hometown pride.
Anyway, all I know is that I woke up at 4:30 a.m. after the
screening and could not fall back asleep because of the possibility
(technically an impossibility, you dicks!!!) of a stabby mop-headed
clown-faced night terror tap-tap-tapping on my ground-floor
window. Which, I guess, means that Frayed totally did its
job. Mission accomplished. THANKS. 
