Note: Penn and Teller work for the CIA

Starring Missi Pyle

Penn Jillette impresses, and repulses, as the clown-footed psycho Herbert Blount in this generally brilliant thriller, based on his own script. The premise here is that we’re watching the “director’s cut” of Knocked Off, a straight-to-DVD thriller starring Harry Hamlin (hilariously sucking on a vape for the entire movie), which really means an insane, vandalized re-edit complete with Blount’s name scrawled over the credit sequence. Gillette’s character is one of the (fake) production’s crowdfunders, allowing him to stalk the set with a video camera while director Adam Rifkin, playing himself, tries to placate an increasingly irritated Missi Pyle, the object of Blount’s mounting obsession. Mostly known for her extensive TV credits, Pyle is "the greatest actor of our time" in Blount's mind, and he might be right! The demented set-up eventually has Pyle playing herself, fantastically, and not in a flattering way, as the film circles closer to its meta-jokey nucleus and the kidnapped actor is forced to act in Blount’s graffiti-daubed recut of Rifkin’s enterprise.

It’s all very entertaining, thanks to Jillette’s smartass script and the total commitment of its stars and its director—whose career on the Hollywood fringes has coughed up such low-rent pleasure as The Dark Backward, Detroit Rock City, and the script for 1997’s MouseHunt. With this air-tight post-postmodern reworking of Peeping Tom, The Collector, King of Comedy, and, I dunno... Snuff, Rifkin is now free to say that he actually made a better film than Arthur Penn, the last guy who tried to commit a Gillette mindfuck to film with 1988’s okay Penn & Teller Get Killed. Reminding us that he's a good magician, Jillette also gives us a "how'd he do that...?" moment in the last few minutes, while partner Teller shows up for an impressively sick and unusually loquacious cameo.

Georgia Straight, March 2017