HORROR

Named in honor of a theater once owned and operated by Herschell Gordon Lewis, The Blood Shed is jam packed with films dealing with horrifying subject matters, scares, terror and gore. Remember to tell yourself as you read these articles, “It’s only a movie review... It’s only a movie reveiw.”

“ASPIRING PSYCHOPATH” (2007)

Starring: Danielle Donahue, Eddie Benevich, Peter Blessel, Courtney Winkler, Todd Proesl, Michael David, Melissa Franklin, Joel D. Wynkoop & Catherine Wynkoop
Story by Danielle Donahue, Ryan Cavalline & Eddie Benevich
Directed by Ryan Cavalline
4th Floor Pictures
Sub Rosa Studios Underground

Polly Staffle Rating: ****

It’s hard enough being a fulltime college student, much less one that plays on a school athletic team. With practice and studies, it surely doesn’t leave much time to be a serial killer. It takes a certain mindset and discipline for homework and tests, and a different one for sports. So how the hell someone can squeeze in time for stalking victims, torturing and slaughtering them is beyond me. Even if it is just pretending to do so in a low budget movie. But some how Danielle Donahue pulled off such a feat while acting in Ryan Cavalline’s intensely raw and outstanding film “Aspiring Psychopath.”

While playing the lead character in the 4th Floor Pictures production, Donahue was also finishing her senior year and pitching for the playoff-bound Penn State New Kensington softball team. “It was difficult,” said Donahue, who also did some of the film’s cinematography and shares a story credit with Cavalline and Eddie Benevich. “I was pretty busy. It was difficult to switch from college athlete to sadistic killer. But I’ve always had a dark side as far back as I can remember.”

And in “Aspiring Psychopath” that dark side engulfs Donahue. She is unbelievably good as Lucinda. Despite the film’s title, Lucinda isn’t exactly aspiring to be a psychopath. She’s actually a full blown one that wants to be the best psychopath she can be. Seeing as how she’s killed 20 people over the course of five years, psychotic homicidal maniac is perhaps a better description for her.

Lucinda’s favorite victims are fellow serial killers. She enjoys watching their every move, studying them and filming them from a far. She learns their strengths and weaknesses, and eventually uses any knowledge she has acquired from the cold-blooded psychos against them.

She also thinks she gains more than just tricks of the trade and what not to do from her victims. When she takes a life, Lucinda believes there is a direct transference of energy from the dead to her. From a Las Vegas hooker she gains beauty. Taking a child’s life gives her innocence. Snuffing out a drug dealer gives her authority. Executing a potential killer’s victim gives her power.

Those that she terminates are also being done a favor, according to Lucinda. Many of her victims are lowlifes and psychopaths (ie: prostitutes, pushers, rapists and killers) that lack senses of guilt or remorse and are void of a conscience or empathy. In taking their life, Lucinda feels she is giving them the gift of humanity by making them feel pain. Her reasoning for the innocent lives she takes is so they do not have to suffer another moment in our ugly world.

We learn these beliefs and more from Lucinda via video diaries and Charles Manson-esque rambles to her victims. We also learn she feels she was born with the need to kill and that she can not stop. Cavalline’s film hints at genetics playing a role in the development of Lucinda’s mental illness and it seems the death of her mother pushed her towards her downward spiral. Lucinda’s mother was wrongfully shot by a police officer when she was eight. The event traumatized Lucinda so much that she started fantasizing about killing during her elementary school years. She got satisfaction in imagining the death of those around her. However, by the time she got to college, the fantasies were not enough and Lucinda began to kill.

Her first victim was a clean kill – the old poison in a drink trick. By the time we catch up with her, Lucinda has become a master at taking every day objects and using them in torturous way. A hot iron, sugar, a hammer, a kitchen knife, a drill and even her mouth are some of the simple tools of this femme fatale’s trade.

Though Lucinda commits unspeakable acts, somehow we root for her. There’s a certain charm about her, which is why she is such a brilliant anti-hero. This seems mostly due to Donahue’s brilliant performance. She acts her ass off. The bulk of her screen time is essentially a continuous monologue, which was mostly improvised. All of the video diary segments were made up on the spot. Donahue says she paced around her apartment listening to music prior to shooting, and then turned the camera on and became the character. To keep things interesting Donahue uses an arsenal of weapons just as vast as Lucinda. Aside from channeling her inner dark side to a scary extent, Donahue uses her beauty and sexual allure in some scenes, screams at the top of her lungs at other times and also shows vulnerability via tears and anxiety-like actions.

Donahue admits she was working on a senior research project titled “Serial Killer Superstar” that was based around H.H. Holmes while filming “Aspiring Psychopath.” The paper discussed the interaction of serial killers and the media, and how it has progressed throughout history. Though she says it wasn’t a direct inspiration, it probably didn’t hurt. Marilyn Manson and Mother Goose also seemed to have factored in. In one of the film’s best torture scenes, Donahue recites part of the nursery rhyme “This Little Piggy,” while slicing off someone’s fingers. Later she quotes the line “When I’m god everyone dies” from Manson’s “Reflecting God.”

Clearly Donahue carries the film, but she gets a lot of good help. Cavalline’s editing and direction are top notch. He works wonders with his $2,000 budget. The death scenes, even the ones that use digital effects, are pretty solid. But one of my favorite touches of Cavalline is how he weaves cutaways to static and blurry television footage throughout. This not only helps to carry out the whole video camera theme, but also gives the film a bit of commentary on television - specifically reality shows and news programming.

The film also features a soundtrack with an extremely effective score by Tony Diana and a solid supporting cast. The always entertaining Eddie Benevich, the star of the “Dead Body Man” trilogy, is here as a grungy serial killer and the B-movie husband and wife team of Joel and Catherine Wynkoop (both of “All Wrapped Up” and “The Bite”) appear as a cop and a doctor. The characters played by the Wynkoops meet in what is clearly a kitchen despite a subtitle that claims it is a police station. That moment provides a bit of unintentional humor, but the film also has a slight dark comedy tinge bubbling below its surface.

All and all, I’d say “Aspiring Psychopath” was a pleasant surprise. It has elements of so-called “torture porn,” but labeling it that would be an insult. Though Lucinda is pure evil, she’s convinced what she is doing is the way it has to be. In her eyes, she not only gains something positive from the film’s body count, but her victims do as well. Her thinking is horribly askew, but we can relate to her because she isn’t just some mean-spirited movie villain that gets off to hurting others. She seems like a living and breathing being with feelings, hopes and aspirations. That’s a humanistic element that is missing in most “torture porn,” which is precisely why most of it sucks and Cavalline’s film doesn’t.

- CCF, November 2007