CANDY LAND
(director/writer: John Swab; cinematographer: Will Stone; editors: John David Allen/Ace Andrew Anderson; music: David Sardy; cast: Olivia Luccardi (Remy), Sam Quartin (Sadie), Eden Brolin (Riley), Owen Campbell (Levi), Virginia Rand (Liv), William Baldwin (Sheriff Rex), Brad Carter (Theo), Guinevere Turner (Nora); Runtime: 93; MPAA Rating: NR; producers: Jeremy M. Rosen/John Swab; Quiver Distribution; 2022)
“A sleazy slasher film.”
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
A sleazy slasher film directed and written by John Swab (“Ida Red”/”Body Brokers”). It tells a damning story about a naive young woman Remy (Olivia Luccardi) who becomes a sex worker in the underworld of truck stops. It shifts in tone from a first half of sex romps and worker intimacies to a second half of gruesome violence.
Sadie (Sam Quartin) is a sex worker (aka lot lizard) living in a motel near a truck stop. She’s part of a sex business set-up at the truck stop ranging from one-night stands to truck quickies or public bathroom sex. The participants communicate with private radio frequencies for arranging such meetings. The other lot lizards, also living at the motel, include Liv (Virginia Rand), Riley (Eden Brolin), Levi (Owen Campbell) and the madam, Nora (Guinevere Turner).
Sadie’s romantic partner is Riley, who live together in a room at the motel.
Levi handles the requests of the gay/bi truckers. One of his customers is Sheriff Rex (William Baldwin), who is locked into a loveless marriage. He’s serviced for free in exchange for looking the other way.
One day a religious doomsday cult led by the local evangelist Theo (Brad Carter) shows up and one of their members, the virgin Remy, is abandoned there. She’s taken in by the sex workers but told by their matriarch, Nora, that she’ll have to earn her keep by servicing the truckers. She’s happy to become a sex worker.
The story takes a poke at religious crackpots, and relates how dangerous it is to be a sex worker.
After the cult leaves, a number of johns turn up dead at the truck stop.
Some viewers loved the film’s first half but were turned off by the bloodshed of the second half, that happens when Remy comes on the scene. I just viewed it as another pointless slasher pic, finding some entertainment value in its nastiness.
It played at the Locarno Film Festival.
REVIEWED ON 1/8/2023 GRADE: C+