THE FOREIGNER

(director/writer: Amos Poe; cinematographer: Chirine El Khadem; editor: Johanna Heer/ Amos Poe/Michael Penland; music: Ivan Kral; cast: Eric Mitchell (Max Menace), Anya Phillips (Doll), Patti Astor (Fili Harlow), Susan Morris (Mo Bag), Deborah Harry (Dee Trik), Steven Kramer (Mouse), Duncan Hannah (Shake); Runtime: 77; MPAA Rating: NR; producer: Amos Poe; TCM; 1978)

“The pic is so bad that it’s worth seeing for just how bad.”

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

The amateurish Underground thriller with Punk Rock sensibility is written and directed by Amos Poe (“Unmade Beds”/”Frogs for Snakes”/”Subway Riders”). He shoots it on a marginal budget, in black-and-white, on a grainy hand-held video camera. The experimental indie deals with street-life and the club scene in NYC’s hipster SoHo, as its characters are the infantile lowlifes one would expect to see in an Andy Warhol film. The pic is so bad that it’s worth seeing for just how bad.

A mysterious Frenchman, with bleached-blond hair and dressed in a white suit, named Max Menace (Eric Mitchell), is tailed as a possible spy by a group of thuggish misfits the moment his plane lands in New York and he takes a room at Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel. All that becomes clarified after an intensive tail is that he’s on some mission but can’t make any contacts here to help. In the pursuit we take in the punk scene at the rock club CBGB,one fast cameo of Deborah Harry singing in a foreign language a rendition of Brecht’s “Bilbao Song”and the Erasers making an appearance.

This one is strictly nostalgia for hipster fans of these punks and for future filmmakers to observe that it’s not enough to just point a camera and think you made a movie.

REVIEWED ON 1/26/2013 GRADE: C-    https://dennisschwartzreviews.com/