Tom Reviews "Serving Up Richard"

Here is a great review of Serving Up Richard, which is currently on its last theatrical day. So if you are in the New York City area, make sure you run check this out today before they are gone. Tickets and more about the theater can be found on their site:

Tom's Corner:

Serving Up Richard 

(2011, Henry Olek, dir)

Every once in a great while, your humble reviewer goes out and actually sees a film on the big screen, amongst the unwashed masses. Or I go to Cinema Village, where the masses are quite clean and perfumed. This time around, Cinema Village served up a delicious treat called Serving Up Richard.

The director, Henry Olek, has been an actor, producer and writer on a variety of films and television shows, but this is the first time he has graced us with his directorial talents. Henry, why’d you wait so long? This is a brilliant film, with excellent actors and a chilling concept: what if you were locked up by a nice couple, average in all respects save one: they are going to eat you. Yes, they’re cannibals.

Ross McCall plays Richard Reubens, a recent transplant to the west coast (from New York) who decides to go look at a car he saw in an ad. Innocent enough, right? Wrong! Richard meets Professor Everett Hutchins (Jude Ciccolella), an anthropologist who closes the garage door and shoots him with a dart that leaves him groggy, disoriented, and, oh yeah, now confined to an elegant cell behind a moving false wall in Everett’s house. Richard meets Glory (Susan Priver), Everett’s wife, the next morning. Richard attempts to escape, but fails repeatedly. When Everett leaves town, Richard sees his chance. But who is playing who? Is Glory as insane as she seems, or is she colder and craftier than her husband?

All three of these actors deserve high praise for their parts. Ciccolella is the black cloud of a coming storm over all the events, his return seeming more and more like the falling of an axe on Richard’s neck as the minutes pass on. Everett exudes a quiet, charming malice; the grinning fiend who has perpetrated unspeakable horrors. Priver carries much of the movie on her character’s psychotic, unstable shoulders. Glory is at once a monster and pitiable, like trying to argue with a china shop bull with a hurt hoof. It seems at times Richard’s suffering is a game to her, and she enjoys twisting him to see how far he will go. Or is she really just completely insane?

Ross McCall gets to play the man locked in the box, Richard Reubens. Richard worked for a Wall Street firm on the East Coast that went belly up, and kept his job with his silence. We get to watch Richard go through all the desperation we know we would ourselves. He is thwarted at his every attempt to escape…and partly gives in to Glory’s madness. The suspense ratchets up another notch when Everett returns home, leading to a thrilling and painful climax that I did NOT see coming.

Serving Up Richard is that rare horror suspense movie, in that it relies on minimal gore to stoke the fires of your imagination. The gore that is used will make you queasy, and only helps to enhance the suspense. Look out for this one, it’s a great viewing experience.

- Tom