“SOMEONE’S KNOCKING AT THE DOOR” (2009)

Starring Noah Segan, Andrea Rueda, Ezra Buzzington, Elina Madison, Jon Budinoff, Ricardo Gray, Silvia Spross, Timothy Muskatell, Lew Temple, Vernon Wells, Jordan
Lawson, Trent Haaga & Sean Cain
Written by Chad Ferrin, Roham Ghodsi & Rosie Roberts
Directed by Chad Ferrin

Polly Staffle Rating: ****

“Don’t do drugs, don’t have unprotected sex, don’t be violent.
Leave that to me.” - Emenim

Knock! Knock! Who’s there? It’s Chad ‘the bad mother’ Ferrin and he’s got a twisted cult classic in the making called “Someone’s Knocking at the Door” with him. “That ‘70s Show” on speed meets “A Clockwork Orange” and “Jacob's Ladder” in this excellent surreal and hallucinatory film that makes you want to stay away from drugs and never answer your door again.

It’s been called “brilliant,” it’s been called “the most depraved film of the 21st century,” it’s been called “genre-defying” and a “grind-house throwback.” Ferrin’s film has even been said to be a cross between the works of Dario Argento and Russ Meyer. So how does it stack up? Well, it’s got drugs. It’s got nudity. It’s got full frontal male and female nudity. There’s a 15-inch long, four-inch wide murder weapon and a murderous female sex organ as well. There’s male on male rape. There’s a female with a strapon. Needless to say, there are sexual deviants. There are psychotic serial killers. There’s a wild Halloween party. There’s blood. There’s more drugs and also a few laughs. An official selection of Toronto After Dark and the Arizona Underground Film Festival, one thing is clear about Ferrin’s film, it’s a unique mesh of debauchery and decadence, sure to please and shock many a viewer.

Things start off innocent enough with a little retro title sequence by production designer Lourdes Corugedo. A theme that sounds like a music box lullaby plays, and pills, syringes and such rain down as the credits crosscut between old footage of hippies getting high and innocent young children at school. Then the opening scene shows college drug dealer Ray (Jordan Lawson) shooting up in his room. There is a knock at his door. Ray opens it to find a fully nude woman he’s never met. She starts to kiss him and things instantly become hot and heavy. Sure that might sound like a godsend, but a naked woman you don’t know beating down your door in the middle of the night will probably never lead to anything good. Guess what? It doesn’t turn out well for Ray. Insanity occurs and he ends up dead.

Soon the police are rounding up all the people that most recently saw Ray. The group of medical students say they’re not friends of his; just people he sometimes gets high with. Eventually it is revealed that the group did a little experimenting with a drug called Taldon, which is described as an extraterrestrial cross between PCP and DMT. The drug, which users have reportedly received visits from demonic entities while taking it, was used in the past as part of therapy on the evil husband and wife team of John and Wilma Hopper. Said to be one of the most bizarre in American crime, the Hoppers went on a killing spree during the 1970s. They were sort of like an even more twisted version of the real life Lonely Hearts Killers (Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck) as this duo raped their victims to death.

Sex, violence and nightmares ensue and more people from the group end up dead. Slowly things get pieced together, but as the film plays out the audience is left in the dark as to what the hell is going on. Are the college students who took the drugs going crazy? Have they opened up some sort of portal to hell by playing old reel to reel therapy session tapes? Have the ghosts of John and Wilma Hopper returned from the grave? Is one of the med students picking off the others one-by-one? Is one of the cops the killer? All I’m going to say is watch this super fast 80-minute shocker and find out.

But more than being a shockfest, “Someone’s Knocking at the Door” is extremely well executed. Shot by Niklas Larsson, with the RED ONE, and edited by Sean Cain (the filmmaker behind “Silent Night, Zombie Night” and “Breath of Hate”) and Jahad Ferif, the film spins, twitches and tweaks its audience into cinematic convulsions. After watching this bad boy, I had to take a coma of nap to rest my senses. I felt like the victim being described by the uptight coroner played Lew Temple (“The Devil’s Rejects”) in the film. The “nervous system was so overstimulated that the fast twitch muscles were just going like a second hand on a clock.” In addition to the visuals, experimental band The Mae Shi and Brad Joseph Breeck provide a fitting soundtrack. I especially like The Mae Shi’s “Divine Harvest,” which closes the film.

Not only that, the cast is top notch. Noah Segan, who I didn’t like in the lesser film “Deadgirl,” leads the ensemble of players. Segan is reminiscent at times of Michael Pitt, and at other times Vincent Gallo, making me interested in him as an actor, though I hadn’t been before. Ricardo Gray (“Chop”), as a stuttering and nerdy doper, sort of like Stevie from “Malcolm in the Middle” on crack, and a mostly nude Ezra Buzzington (“The Hills Have Eyes”), creepy as usual, were the other big highlights for me.

Silvia Spross (“Giallo”), Andrea Rueda, who reminds me of Mila Kunis, and Jon Budinoff, as a dirtbag sexual freak, were good too. Genre regulars Vernon Wells (“The Dead Undead”), Joseph Pilato (“Pulp Fiction”), Timothy Muskatell (“Hell Asylum”) and Elina Madison (“Ding Dong Dead”) make appearances as well. I also got a big kick out of Cain as a police officer, accidentally shooting his partner, played by Trent Haaga (who wrote “Deadgirl”).

Yeah, “Someone’s Knocking at the Door.” Be forewarned, it ain’t Dennis Leary (“I think you hear me knockin’ and I think I’m comin’ in...”) and it ain’t a former member of The Beatles. So despite what your Uncle Paul might say - sister Susie, brother John, Martin Luther, Phil ‘n’ Don, brother Michael, and auntie Gin - don’t open the door, and let ‘em in.

- CCF, July 2010