CockHammer (2009)
Starring Kevin Strange, Joe Hammerstone &
Erik A. Williams
Directed by Kevin Strange
Written by Kevin Strange

 

Demon: “BOTH, MOTHERFUCKER!!”

The above quote should serve to illustrate that you might not want to put Cockhammer on at your next extended family get-together, unless you know for a fact that Grandma’s into that kind of stuff. But then, when a movie has the word ‘cock’ in the title, and the very first shot is of a pair of tits, you should probably have a fair idea of the kind of movie you’re going to get. However, lest you expect something stale and predictable, witness how the whole thing is put together with a level of professionalism and attention to detail not generally associated with Z-grade schlock, and features some of the most astonishingly verbose, machine gun fast and relentlessly vulgar dialogue you’ve ever heard, and you just might have to concede that Cockhammer is a bit more than your average no-budget DV splatstick movie.

How best to sum up writer/director/actor/producer (and more besides) Kevin Strange: let me see if I can approximate him in a manner befitting his own sensibilities. Imagine if Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon, Rob Zombie, Russ Meyer and Lloyd Kaufman all got together, got fucked up on weed and shrooms, and gangbanged the motherloving shit out of Diablo Cody. Let us then suppose that the resulting mewling progeny was locked in a dank sunless basement for the first twenty-odd years of its existence, on a diet of sugary breakfast cereals, KFC buckets and chronic, with no source of intellectual stimulation but a TV/VHS combo and an endless supply of splatter and porno tapes. And when at last the bastard freak broke free to unleash the workings of his movie-warped mindset on a fragile and unsuspecting world, his visage led folk to ponder whether Black Francis might also have been present at that drug-charged Diablo Cody clusterfuck. There, possibly, is the origin story of Kevin Strange, the mastermind behind Hack Movies. And as befits any visionary, he looks to be a complete egomaniac given that as well as writing, directing, editing and playing the lead he also plays a second speaking part (as pothead Hogan, alongside Montoya’s Nixon). On top of which there can be little doubt that he’s also a shameless self-publicist, given by how at every possible opportunity he splashes the screen with Hack Movies memorabilia, with posters and hats and T-shirts screaming the brand name, web address and titles of previous movies left right and centre; fuck, the man’s even got the Hack Movies logo tattooed on his forearm. But what the hell, more power to him, we’ve all got mouths to feed and this shit doesn’t just sell itself.

But I digress; back to Cockhammer. Shortly after being introduced to the titular mass-murdering snuff porn occultist and his hitman henchman Wolfram (Thaddeus Starbuckle), we meet our good guys Terrence (Hammerstone) and Perrander (Williams), and their girlfriends Marybeth (Deerest) and Gertrude (Donahue). Now, in a more typical movie, as by and large the audience is meant to identify with the young ‘uns, characters of this ilk tend to wind up boring as shit. Cockhammer deals with this problem in a most inspired fashion: by making them all pathological sex addicts and drug fiends. The key plot point driving their action in the story is the girls’ mission to a) score weed and b) purchase new dildos with which to sodomise their boyfriends. This leads the girls into the path of Wolfram and his partner Windgate (David Wayne Black), who are duty bound to get Cockhammer more hookers to sacrifice, but are also starting to question their employer’s sanity and wondering if they might be better off foiling his diabolic scheme instead. As such, they conspire to seek out a sacred ancient artefact which will penetrate his mystical aura of protection and end the reign of terror of this fanatical, sadistic, not to mention OCD-addled maniac. I hope you’re keeping up, because we’re still only about twenty minutes in...

It’s only fitting that such an absurd and excessive story populated by absurd and excessive characters should be conveyed with suitably absurd and excessive dialogue, and it’s here that Strange the screenwriter is truly in his element. I’m not kidding, the shit that regularly drops out of the mouths of these characters is enough to make your average David Mamet male lead sound like Holly Hunter in The Piano. Take this choice dialogue from Katie Deerest: “I swear to God Gert, I don’t know what’s worse, sitting here in this cold damp room waiting to be butchered on film by a fucking lunatic, or the fact that I haven’t had a hard dick in my ass, mouth or vag in hours!” This from the same woman who earlier in the movie says, “I don’t know Gert, I mean sure Terrence and Perrander are jobless fucking losers who spend all day jerking off to tranny porn, playing video games and taking copious amounts of illegal drugs, but they are the kinkiest damn blokes I’ve ever met in my life. Where else are we going to find two well hung stud puppies willing to swap us back and forth while fucking our asses and vages backwards, upside down and inside out at the drop of a hat like those two fuckwads?”

Pretty much every sentence uttered in the entire movie is along these lines. Seriously.

But in case you’re not so big on talk, rest assured there’s also a hearty helping of gore (mostly pretty well done considering the budget), a decent portion of home-grown boobage, and - though even the ladies might not necessarily be grateful for this - a side order of man sausage. But make no mistake, while the movie itself does not in any way ask the viewer to take this inane bullshit seriously, there can be no doubt that some serious work has gone into Cockhammer. That it has such a genuinely witty and well-written script is shocking enough for a no-budget splatter flick, but also – shocker number two – it’s really well acted. The cast rattle off the overloaded dialogue so fluently it seems effortless, when it must undoubtedly have been anything but. And, shocker number three for a no-budget flick, every line uttered can be clearly heard thanks to the well-mixed sound, complimented by a great synth-driven score that’s heavily reminiscent of everyone’s favourite genre classics of the 70’s and 80’s. And as if that wasn’t enough, shocker number four – it looks good too. Sure, there’s no mistaking that it’s DV, but it’s well lit and well edited. All this from a movie that was written, shot, cut and released in the space of a few months, for less money than the average family spends monthly on groceries. Beat that, Rodriguez. Hack Movies they may be called, but hack jobs they sure as shit off a shovel are not.

Of course Cockhammer is puerile, juvenile, and going out of its way to be wilfully distasteful and offensive, but I should have thought all that would go without saying by this point. You might adore it, you might despise it, but you can’t dismiss it as just another shitty amateur movie. There’s no denying that there is a truly unique and intelligent personality behind this 90 minute dick and fart joke, and given that Strange declares this their most ‘epic’ movie yet and has pledged to unleash four movies a year from this point on, I for one am looking forward to the next Hack Movies production more than Avatar. In short – get on over to hackmovies.com and check this motherfucker out, bitches. (Though it really never sounds convincing when us Brits try to speak in that manner...)