The Greasy Strangler review: “Hilariously disgusting fun…”

The Greasy Strangler review: The film which will split audiences the most at this year’s Sundance London, Jim Hosking’s feature is hilarious, disgusting fun.

The Greasy Strangler review by Paul Heath, June 2016.

The Greasy Strangler review

I sit here baffled by what I have just witnessed. I also find myself weirdly chuckling to myself, a big shit-eating grin filling my face while shaking my head at the same time. The Greasy Strangler has just arrived in London.

Debuting as part of Sundance’s famous midnight screenings at the main festival over there back in January, Jim Hosking‘s massively off-beat comedy has finally hit Europe as part of Sundance’s annual Sundance: London fest.

The film revolves around two very odd Los Angeles inhabitants, Big Ronnie (Michael St. Michaels) and Big Brayden (Sky Elobar), a father and son who earn their living by running a disco tour in their home city. They stop their paying customers outside of old cafes or tobacco kiosks and make outlandish claims that “The Bee Gees wrote ‘Night Fever’ here,” or “The Earth Wind and Fire lived here…” On one particular tour very early on in the movie, Ronnie and Brayden meet Janet (Elizabeth De Razzo), a young woman who immediately flirts with the younger of the two, igniting a spark which will see the pair go on a date together, much to the annoyance of the father, Big Ronnie.

The Greasy Strangler review

Ronnie himself is actually the title character, The Greasy Strangler (a slightly obvious soiler), an apparent rubber-penis clad serial killer who sets to the streets at night, covered in grease, preying on acquaintances, including friends of his son, random hot dog vendors and even recent paying customers on his disco tour. No bullshit.

The film is out there. Way out there. It’s the kind of films that I usually dislike almost immediately, though in a weird way, I found myself laughing most of the way through this. Full of cartoon violence, funny, repetitive one liners that are so annoying that they are laugh-out-loud funny and disgusting, repulsive, very unpredictable characters, The Greasy Strangler is like nothing you’ll have ever seen before.

It is so unique, and so baffling… and also oh so brilliant. One can’t quite imagine how filmmaker Jim Hosking, who both actually worked a segment for the anthology movie The ABCs of Death 2, cam up with the idea for this. Think Tom and Jerry meets Reeves and Mortimer via John Waters and The Mighty Boosh and you may have a small hint of what kind of thing we’re dealing with here.

Far from a memorable classic (I hope I forget about it immediately – in the nicest way possible) – it really will divide audiences (which is no bad thing), The Greasy Strangler was movie that I expected to hate, but quite the opposite happened. I laughed, I heaved, I squirmed and I loved pretty much every minute of it. Hilariously disgusting fun.

The Greasy Strangler review by Paul Heath, June 2016.

The Greasy Strangler review will screen at the Sundance London Film Festival.