CALL GIRL OF CTHULHU (2014)

Happy Fuckin' Valentine's Day.

It is really funny to me that this movie exists. Up until now I wasn't aware that "Lovecraftian Sex Comedy" was a viable sub-genre. I'm not going to lie. I feel seen.

At its best, CALL GIRL OF CTHULHU plays out like a really strange low-rent version of TRUE ROMANCE. A sort-of pathetic nerdy artist guy falls in love with a cool sex-worker from the wrong side of the tracks and invites the wrath of powerful forces beyond his understanding when he pursues a relationship. In TRUE ROMANCE, those forces were pimps and criminals. In this movie, it's otherwordly abominations and cultists in paper-mache tentacle masks. I think you could get some mileage from that idea. There's a lot of precedent out there for good stories about seedy, modern crimina/hipster types falling afoul of the unknown in the Lovecraft-verse. I think that, in the right hands, a concept like this has some real potential. There's also an attempt at some budgetless riffing on TOKYO GORE POLICE, and that sort of thing is always going to charm me.

At its worst, CALL GIRL OF CTHULHU is a terribly unfunny Troma-esque parade of sophomoric-at-best jokes about tentacle dicks and acid pee. It drags itself along excreable minute after excreable minute while bashing you repeatedly in the forebrain with the lamest, shittiest jokes you've ever heard this side of a 7th grade cafeteria. If you subtracted 100% of the shitty jokes from this movie, it would probably be about 20 minutes long and whole lot more fun to watch.

The creators obviously know at least the trappings of the lore well enough. There are a lot of neat references. I got a kick out of the various real-life band shout outs from the fliers all over the walls. I really get the idea that this team and I would be friends. We are, at the very least, allies. (A harsh-noise synth project composed by an alt-girl named "Erica Zahn" plays a major role in the plot, and it was around the time that her music caused a squid-man raver assassin's head to explode that I found myself wondering "Is...Is this my scene?")

Anyway, I am sympathetic to this creative team and I wish them well. Sometimes it's hard not to make dumb jokes in your zombie/cannibal/tentacle stripper movie. You can do better than this, CGOC team. I am pulling for you! (Not like that)

I give CALL GIRL OF CTHULHU 3/7 conveniently placed sinister birthmarks.