Bang Bang Baby comes on like a
cross between Top Secret! And Psycho
Beach Party at first. It treats its
heroine’s dream to become a teen idol with absolutely sincerity while
surrounding her with goofy stock characters: the drunken yet eloquent father,
the creepy stalker intended to provide a counterpoint to the dreamy, perfect
hero; the scenery-chewing aw-shucks movie hero stuck in a small town; even a
folksy moonshine slinger.
Stepphy (played with deft skill by
Jane Levy) is a teenager in a sleepy Canadian town who dreams of escaping the
mendacity of it all to become a famous singer and actress. Held back by her booze-addicted dad, who
hasn’t gotten over his wife’s long-ago death, Stepphy’s dream of winning a
contest is crushed by her father’s negligence.
She attends the school dance and makes a scene, leaving drunk in the
front seat of school creep Fabian. His
attempt at making out with her passed-out body is averted when his chosen
make-out spot, the recently-automated town chemical plant, starts to spew
purple smoke.
Stepphy flees into the woods,
where she accidentally meets teen idol Bobby Shore, passing through town with
his German agent. Stepphy, a mechanic
who mostly takes care of the garage her father runs, offers to fix the car and
asks her father to let Bobby stay under their roof. Romance soon blooms, but as the purple smoke
gets thicker and something starts squirming in Stepphy’s stomach happiness
threatens to elude her.
A wacky sci-fi ending is nearly
assured by its set-up – which is when Bang Bang Baby shocks its audience by
turning on a dime and becoming a sincere melodrama.
WARNING: the spoiler zone is for
unloading of spoilers only. And I
seriously suggest you see this movie before reading that spoiler.
In which the audience will never
suspect that the mist, the town’s mutations – even Stepphy’s failed liaison
with Bobby – have all been delusions conjured to metaphorically explain and
support the self-delusion and depression Stepphy has been suffering ever since Fabian
raped her unconscious body the night of the dance, to survive their dull and
abusive marriage and unwanted pregnancy that resulted. She had been strongly considering suicide
until snapping out of it. The mist
lifts. Fabian realizes she’s going to
leave and take the baby and she apparently kills him in self-defense before
running away to the big city with the baby (surprisingly leaving her
still-alcoholic-in-reality father behind to find his body).
This meaty dramatic section packs quite a wallop, and Levy acts the holy hell out of every inch of it. It explains both the melancholy nature of even the sharpest bits of humor in the first section of the movie – and why Fabain sprouts a mouth on the side of his neck, double-talking to the very end. The end result is an eerie combination of the Zucker brothers and David Lynch, well worth a viewing if you’re in the mood for something unusual.
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