Movie Review: Chicago Rot will Infect Your Brain!

 

 
After being wrongfully locked up for years, a bad ass (giant bullet holes in his chest don’t even slow him down) with a violent streak a mile long named The Ghoul is a free man once more. No one is particularly thrilled about this fact, and soon G-man finds himself B.D. in a mad search for the ones that F’d up his life six ways to Sunday. What follows is a Grand Guignol bacchanal of bloodsoaked revenge as The Ghoul descends deep into the underworld of Chicago…which seems rather cut and dried until strange beings begin speaking to our hero from within a mirror. Oh, and The Ghoul apparently has lost his soul and he’s on a journey to get it back. Along his journey we experience a multitude of surreal dimensions which characters can traverse with ease (and each time their appearance changes drastically…for example dig; this is a film where a street thug can hop through a portal in an elevator, and after a few jaunts end up in a hubcap strewn arena (where he now appears as a punk rock barbarian) fighting an elephant man whose head he rips clean off as blood sprays willy-nilly. That is not the strangest thing in this film. Want a few more examples? How about the mob boss who is stabbed with a rather large knife and then has the wound repeatedly penetrated by a large black dildo (at least The Ghoul lubed it up with chicken grease from a rotisserie chicken first) as blood showers a bevy of half naked women? Still with me? Good, because I will say no more except that the climax of this film is one of the greatest things I have ever seen; seriously, it feels like my brain was in an orgy with Tron at a power metal concert. That is a huge compliment.
 
I can’t even begin to tell you how breathtaking Chicago Rot is in it’s sheer of-the-wall lunacy. I can guarantee you have never seen anything like it, and that is a wonderful thing. If I had to describe the experience of watching this film I would explain it thus; picture if Terry Gilliam, Takashi Miike, and Lloyd Kaufman melded together into one being and then made a fumetti of what they erroneously imagined The Punisher to be about for Heavy Metal magazine…like that? You bet your ever-loving ass you do! I do have to mention, as eye meltingly, brain blisteringly weird this flick gets, the entire thing is infinitely watchable and gorgeously realized.
The only things negative I am going to say about Chicago Rot is that it takes a bit to get to the off-kilter outrgeousness; I was so in love with how manic this film gets that I wanted more of it…but the fact that it takes a half hour to really get cooking is a minor complaint (and only relevant in light of the absolute magnificence that follows).
I adore Chicago Rot; it’s a fully realized comic book freak show brought kicking and screaming to brutal, beautiful life and it comes with my highest possible recommendation! I’m calling it now; Writer/Director  Dorian Weinzimmer (along with co-writer/star  Brant McCrea) are flat out Grade-A F’n cinematic geniuses and I love them for bringing this feature into my life! Now, let’s see what these maniacal mad men bring us next!