President's Day (2010) Starring Bennie Mack McCoy IV, Lizzy Denning, Nicolette le Faye, Ryan Thomas, George Stover, Shawn C. Phillips & Ruby Larocca Directed by Chris LaMartina Written by Jimmy George & Chris LaMartina

I may be getting the exact quotation wrong, just a little bit, but I do believe that's how The Gettysburg Address began, right?

Eh, who cares?!? This isn't Geometry class, or History, or Sex Ed. Whichever one is the one where you learn about old dead dudes signing treaties or some such shit. This isn't that class. This is Sleaze N' Cheese 101, suckers! And your instructor today is Chris LaMartina.

That name, I'm sure, will probably soar over the heads of most layfolk, but for diehard z-movie junkies it might actually ring a few bells. Chris LaMartina is the man responsible for DEAD TEENAGERS (available now from Brain Damage Films), GRAVE MISTAKES, and BOOK OF LORE (those last two are available on a double-feature D.V.D. from Pop Cinema, and come highly recommended... check 'em out). He also worked on FACES OF SCHLOCK, directing one of the short horror-comedy tales that make up the trashy microbudget anthology. Most buzzworthy, though, was his contribution of two fake grindhouse-style movie trailers to the SHOCK FESTIVAL D.V.D. that was released just a short while ago to tie in with Stephen Romano's book of the same name.

PRESIDENT'S DAY, LaMartina's latest feature-length project, is a semi-serious slasher spoof that takes both the holiday-themed and high school-themed horror subgenres and blends 'em together with a post-modern, self-aware sense of humor that skewers the conventions of the masked madman movie formula while simultaneously having a ball fulfilling those very, self-same conventions. All this, and it never once feels like a SCREAM retread. In fact, I'd rather watch this picture over SCREAM any day. Glory glory, hallelujah!

The flick starts exactly the way you want a "dead teenagers" movie to start. With wanton sex, graphic nudity, hokey dialogue, and a cheesy, bloody, quirky kill scene. After that, we're introduced to the students and faculty of Lincoln High School (home of the Lincoln Lambs... go Lambs!). It's campaign season, as the student council elections are coming up and everyone's buzzing about who's going to be the next student council president. What seems like just a normal school day, however, is anything but, when the villain of the piece (oh, and what a villain he is! ...this is a bad guy so bad he's even vicious enough to waste an innocent widdle puppy!), hunts down the school's resident cripple and hacks off her useless footsies before ending her too-short life. Alas, that death is neither the first nor the last. One-by-one, the candidates find themselves getting taken out by a merciless maniac in a stovepipe hat. Who will survive, and what will be left of them? More importantly, who will win that goldarn election?!?

Spoofing the ol' slasher cliche' of holiday-themed horrors is not exactly a new idea, but that doesn't mean it doesn't still hold up just the same. It remains funny, and will continue on thusly until every last damn holiday is exhausted. I'm personally holding my breath in anticipation for an Arbor Day-themed stalk-and-stab flick.

With a hilarious plot bolstered by dryly, deliriously absurdist dialogue (such as the scene where Chelsea complains that the wheelchair-bound Maxine might win the student presidency simply because her legs don't work), and several noteworthy sex-and-violence set-pieces, PRESIDENT'S DAY is a raucous, riotous affair designed to keep you in stitches and fulfill your bloodlust with equal enthusiasm. It plays like a gonzo-bizarro hybrid of ELECTION, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, MEAN GIRLS, and RETURN TO HORROR HIGH. From hell.

The picture's greatest strength is probably the assortment of colorful, offbeat characters that it boasts (keep an eye out for John Waters/Don Dohler veteran George Stover!), including a sinister creepazoid janitor ("I wanna put cyanide... in their cheesesteaks."), a melodramatic alcoholic homicide detective who sips his booze from a Big Gulp, a bald-headed school cop determined to get to the bottom of the killings, a guitar-strumming B.B. King clone principal, a grim n' gothy (but eminently porkable) school newpaper reporter (played by Ruby LaRocca, who you might recognize from SHADOW: DEAD RIOT, FLESH FOR THE BEAST, or BATBABE: THE DARK NIGHTIE, amongst other titles), a jolly high school sports mascot and Hawaiian shirt enthusiast (played by modern day b-movie mainstay Shawn C. Phillips, of Don & Murph, Coolduder, and ASSAULT OF THE SASQUATCH fame), a catty cunt named Chelsea who seems to spend all her time in the bathroom and who would do anything (anything?) to become student council president, and, last but not least, our hero Barry, a slightly rebellious slacker kid whose kooky, class clown self only joins the race in hopes that it might give him a shot at knockin' boots with the cute, civic duty-minded new girl Joanna (who just so happens to have an obligatory "suspicious past"). My favorite character, though, is the lovely Miss Heath. Sure this bubble-headed/bubble-chested educational tutor/Mary Kay Letourneau wanna-be (played by professional lust object/model Jesse Layne) only has about five minutes total of screentime, but neither me nor my carpal tunnel-ravaged wrist will ever forget the very special moment we shared with this blisteringly babelicious bimbo and her perfect, pendulous, melon-heavy hooters. Seriously, that is one mouth-watering rack! Those suckpuppies will put your eye out, son! Hoo-doggy, I'm getting whack-attack flashbacks just writin' these words.

...

Ahem. I apologize. That was inappropriate. Let's move on, yes? Yes.

Alright, straying away, far far away, from the subject of bulging, bouncing, milk-full mammaries. Let's talk about the technical proficiencies of PRESIDENT'S DAY, yes? Yes.

One of the things that blew me away immediately when I viewed this screener (which a very drunken Chris LaMartina himself shoved into my hand within about, oh, seven seconds of having met me... shameless self-promotion is alive and well, people!) was the skill LaMartina has as a director. He clearly understands the actual craft of film directing better than the majority of clods clogging the microcinema scene these days, and he shows off his impressive talents subtly, through the movie's incredibly professional look. Brought to life with atmospheric lighting and evocative cinematography, PRESIDENT'S DAY showcases a certain attention to visual detail that one doesn't normally see on a regular basis in the microcinema world.

The writing is similarly laudable. Whether I was watching Barry (who plasters his bedroom walls with posters for ROCK & ROLL FRANKENSTEIN and THE SCREAMING DEAD) play amateur sleuth and stubbornly defy all impulses of self-preservation his brain may be blaring at him, or listening to some doomed cornball horndog profess his lust to a gal pal by explaining how an unassuming postcard of Mount Rushmore routinely drives him to tickle his pickle (you'll have to watch the movie if you're wondering how that sentence makes any kind of sense whatsoever), I was pleasantly surprised by how I never once considered jamming knives into my eyes or ears (something that happens a lot when you've seen too many poorly made shot-on-video indie horror-comedies, as I have). In fact, PRESIDENT'S DAY made me consider throwing my eye/ear-stabbin' knives away entirely. But then I remembered that crap like the CLASH OF THE TITANS remake still exists, and I recanted. In any case, I can now proudly declare that Chris LaMartina's PRESIDENT'S DAY is a movie that not only never, ever tried to deliver a massive amount of agony into my eyes and ears, but instead succeeded in delivering a massive amount of pleasure to my brain. Again I say... glory glory, hallelujah!

In addition to providing many a quotable one-liner, the script also does a great job of building mystery, even in the midst of all the tongue-in-cheek camp silliness, ultimately producing a well-made whodunnit story with some nifty twists n' turns scattered throughout, very much in the mold of such high school-centric hunt-and-kill gems of yesteryear as CUTTING CLASS, PROM NIGHT, and GRADUATION DAY. And for people looking for something a little "deeper" with which to justify their consumption of serio-comic schlock, you'll be pleased to see that there's some bona fide between-the-lines socio-political commentary content to be mined here. No, I'm not kidding! For instance, note that both Barry and Chelsea are essentially just (thinly) veiled caricatures of two of the most talked-about figures involved in the last U.S. presidential election. Indeed, between all the scenes of poontang and cranium-crushing, PRESIDENT'S DAY takes on, with mocking vitriol, both the American political system (admittedly in microcosm) and the hormonal breeding machine/drama factory/gossip mill that is high school. All without trying too hard to distract you with flashy not-so-subliminal subtext, or losing sight of the core purpose of the picture itself, which is to have fun. Lots of fun. Dumb fun. A fuck load of brainless, brilliant, delightfully dopey, dumb, dumb fuckin' fun.

The structure and pacing is well-devised. It does, on occasion, get a little shaky, but it nevertheless holds up well despite itself, thanks to the fact that the movie is never boring or unengrossing. Never. Meanwhile, though I must confess that the acting is far from great, I must also point out that, considering that the cast of PRESIDENT'S DAY doesn't subscribe to the over-the-top hamminess typical of microcinema histrionics, ya gotta give 'em credit... it's better than you'd expect. At times, it reaches truly exceptional levels, and, happily, it never falls to any genuinely embarrassingly nadirs.

Of course, if you're watching a no-budget horror flick about fresh-faced teenyboppers gettin' offed by a lunatic in an Honest Abe mask, you're probably not caring too much about the acting, pacing, or subtext. You're probably more in the market for sex, death, and stupid humor. There's plenty of all three, naturally. I've already mentioned, at length, the carnal powerhouse that is the depressingly underused Miss Heath character. And the fact that the entire plot itself sounds like one low brow gag with a lame (read: awesome) punchline should clear up any confusion about whether stupid humor is prevalent here. Granted, it's not as over-the-top or in-your-face as something like, say, TERROR AT BLOODFART LAKE or DREAM REAPER, but, in this case, playing the comedy dry was simply the right way to go. It helps cement PRESIDENT'S DAY as the facetious parody/homage combo that it successfully tries to be. Finally, when it comes to the morbid n' macabre, rest assured: there's killing n' carnage aplenty. Memorable murders include an axe to the back o' the skull whilst givin' cunnilingus, a guitar shoved down a gaping maw, a trophy through the face, a paper-cutter beheading, a hair-straightener schnoz-scorching, a mop-bucket head-squish, and an extremely juicy eyeball gouging that'd give Lucio Fulci a stiffie for sure. That's just the tip of the iceberg, my friends.

I know some people out there don't care much for the microbudget D.I.Y. subsect of filmmakers made up of guys like Chris LaMartina, Chris Seaver, or Mike Watt. I, for one, am a fan. I believe in the subversive punk power of this sort o' cinema, and I appreciate the way it continues the tradition of old school S.O.V. pioneers like Gary "VIDEO VIOLENCE" Cohen and Timothy "GHOUL SCHOOL" O'Rawe. Made for a measly five grand, PRESIDENT'S DAY has more wit, flair, and raw entertainment value packed into its slim 83-minute runtime than at least half the junk coming out of Hollywood today. Thank Beelzebub that we live in a day and age where Hollywood isn't our only option. Courtesy of the technological advances innovated by the digital revolution, the power's been taken out of the grubby, greasy hands of pretentious auteurs and those bloated media moguls who greenlight their derivative puke parties, such as TWILIGHT, or, even worse, their disappointing "comeback" attempts a la' DRAG ME TO HELL (I'm entitled to my opinion, goddammit, and my opinion says that DRAG ME TO HELL sucks shit). With the affordability of high-grade D.V. filming, editing, and publishing equipment increasing, there's no reason why we shouldn't all, as Lloyd Kaufman is so very prone to say, be making our own damn movies already.

Chris LaMartina knows this. He knows what he's doing, and he knows his shit. As psuedo-retro 80's hack-and-slash throwbacks go, PRESIDENT'S DAY is more honest, affectionate, legitimate, and entertaining than any of Adam Green, Eli Roth, or Joe Lynch's own attempts at capturing that elusive, effusive neo/nostalgic mash-up movie magic. LaMartina is easily one most promising filmmakers working in the trenches of no-budget genre cinema today. Just goes to show, the real talent exists in the blue collar underground, not the homogenized corporate millionaire's club that tries to pass itself off as an "independent" cinema scene.

Excuse me while I get down off my self-important soapbox.

Ahem.

Hopefully hitting store shelves soon, PRESIDENT'S DAY ought to make any inebriated Friday night get-together all the better. It's a cheeky funhouse ride replete with sex, splatter, sleaze, and cheese. A loving ode to the classic (and not-so-classic) teen slashers of the 1980's, it delivers all the boobs and bloodshed a horror fan could hope for, plus a raucous dose of hilarity as well. Tacky, tasteless, and totally terrific! So dim the lights, call up your rowdiest, funniest friends, hit up the liquor store, and place those pizza delivery orders now, 'cause a night with this flick playin' on the tube is gonna be a good dang time (pair PRESIDENT'S DAY with 1981's STUDENT BODIES, if you wanna feel what it's like to laugh so hard Jagermeister n' pepperoni blows out your nose).

Hail to the chief, baby.

Until next slime...
Stay sick!
Your pickled pal,
William Weird.

Rating: 4 out of 5 blood-splattered wheelchairs
Recommendation: buy it
Best moment: Honest Abe shows two young ladies the improper use of pin-on campaign buttons