Otis

Made for very little cash, and aimed strictly at the home video viewing audience Otis is an unusual, often sick, and incredibly funny movie that creates a warped and bizarre synergy between the world of the Saw movies, and popular TV show Desperate Housewives. Having put off watching the movie for a couple of months a recent review caused me to dust off the disc and insert it in my player straight away.

 

Otis Broth (Bostin Christopher) is a bit of a simple man, a man with his head stuck in dreams of the past; most notably the vision that he can relive his missed prom night with head cheerleader Kim. Kim is of course long gone now, but Otis is still feeling deprived. As the movie opens we see a young woman chained to a bed having been subjected to several weeks of abuse in preparation for prom night. Realising that prom night also means that she will have to finally have sex with the overweight Otis, the woman feigns being weaker than she is in order to try and overpower Otis and make her escape. Initially looking like she has the winning hand, the young woman and a lamp fall into a filled bath, it’s curtains for this version of “Kim”.  Not content, and seemingly not the first time Otis has done this, Otis targets Riley Lawson (Dirt’s Ashley Johnson) and it’s not long before she fills the role of the new Kim. But Otis has not been as forward thinking as he likes to believe, can a strange twist of fate turn the lives of everyone upside down?

 

In this intense cheapness of the movie, as well as having the currently successful Ashley Johnson as joint lead the movie also stars Home Alone’s Daniel Stern and To Die For’s Illeana Douglas as the loving parents of Riley, Will and Kate. Comedian Kevin Pollack also stars as Otis’ abusive older brother Elmo. While these are hardly A-List actors, it is blatantly apparent as you sit and watch Otis is the fact that they all command more money than the movie could have been made for, this leads me to the conclusion that they all had great belief or maybe even love for this low budget comedy thriller. What’s more I can see why, appreciating its incredibly low budget, Otis is by far the wittiest movie I have seen for a considerable time, with some pretty harsh one liners that would only come from the mouth of the most prolific sicko.

 

I am not ruining the story (publicity everywhere spills this part of the story) by telling you that Riley becomes the one to get away, but what makes Otis is what happens after she gets away, this is almost where the movie really begins.

 

While compared to Saw in a few places including my opening paragraph, I need to say this is nowhere near so graphically horrific, characters that are enduring torture etc. are never actually seen receiving this, they are only shown after the event. But the wonder in the power of suggestion is that you kind of think you have seen something.

 

A familiar face in the movie, but a name I can’t pretend to have heard of is Jere Burns who plays FBI Agent Hotchkiss; it’s the character of Hotchkiss that really makes Otis what it is. Hotchkiss comes out with some of the most disturbing lines that you can possibly think of, the sort of sickening lines that if you were physically there you would need to bury your head in your hands. Hotchkiss consoles Will, Kate and Riley’s brother Reed (Jared Kusnitz) with witty quips like “We found his last victims behind a dumpster without her tits!”The sort of encouraging conversation you want to hear from the man investigating the case of your daughter disappearance. When asked by a TV Anchor what separates’ Hotchkiss from the rapist murderer Otis, he replies “A Condom”.

 

Granted Otis is not the sort of humour that everyone likes, but if you get the pleasure of seeing unfortunate things happen to people on hidden camera shows, or you enjoy seeing kids getting a good public dressing down by their parents then you are just sick enough to not only watch Otis, but love it.  From the excellent cast, all of whom are incredibly well picked for their respective roles, to the general piecing together of the movies story. For music lovers, the movie has the ultimate 80’s homage soundtrack with all those classic songs that any 30 something will have grown up with.