Hectic Knife (2016) poster

Hectic Knife (2016)

Rating:


USA. 2016.

Crew

Director/Photography (b&w) – Greg DeLiso, Screenplay – Greg DeLiso & Peter Litvin, Producer – Peter Litvin. Production Company – Munrovia Pictures.

Cast

Peter Litvin (Hectic Knife), J.J. Brine (Piggly Doctor), Georgia Haege (Frannie Glooper), John Munnelly (Link), Traci Ann Wolfe (Porch), Richard Kohn (Harry), Richie Blackwood (The Indian Guru), Mindy Matijasevic (Farshey)


Plot

Hectic Knife is a full-time vigilante in New York City, using the two knives he carries to kill evildoers. He takes on a roommate in order to make ends meet with the rent. Frannie Glooper, one of the women he saved, becomes his girlfriend, although uses this as an opportunity to steal all his rent money. Hectic soon discovers that behind much of the evil in the city is Piggly Doctor. This sets the two on a path of confrontation.


Hectic Knife is a film produced, written by and starring Peter Litvin, who is known principally as a music producer in New York City. Litvin manages the Revolution Studios recording studio and has put out ten albums as a solo artist. This is his first film, one where he collaborates with Greg DeLiso, a director who has previously worked in documentary shorts and web series. DeLiso makes his feature film debut here. The film was eventually picked up for release by Troma.

Hectic Knife is one of those films that is mind-boggling in its awfulness. There are bad films such as Batman & Robin (1997), technically incompetent films like the works of Edward D. Wood Jr but there is a whole other special order of ineptitude reserved for filmmakers like Tony Watt, director of Frankenpimp (2010), and the makers of Hectic Knife, which are films made by people who have consciously given up all effort to even try and make a good film and instead inserted a veneer of cynicism by deliberately trying to make the film as bad as possible. Hectic Knife is a work where you just sit wondering what it was about the film that anybody even conceived as being something that another human being would want to watch. I did and I felt like it would have been a less agonising experience gouging my eyeballs out.

Peter Litvin as Hectic Knife (2016)
Peter Litvin as Hectic Knife

The film makes a virtue out of its wilful stupidity. The hero wears a very obvious long fake blonde wig – so too do all his family members when we meet them. The idea of a professional vigilante has a certain amusement but all the gore looks incredibly fake (it is hard to tell if this is intended or not). The hero (and others) is frequently stabbed and then gets up again as though nothing happened. People go on and on and on making jokes about bagels. Actors frequently puncture the fourth wall – “I’m the villain,” “I did leave a business card in this scene.” Even the crew’s after party scene that plays over the end credits is interrupted by a waitress doing some incredibly bad improv.

The whole film has the feel of being made under the influence of major drugs and everyone deciding to be silly, thinking that what they were doing was incredibly edgy. It is a film that is frequently interrupted by people making comments such as “this film sucks” or “this is terrible.” Maybe the filmmakers in their wildly misguided outlook thought this was being hilariously ironic.

(Winner for Worst Film in this site’s Worst Films of 2016 list).


Trailer here


Director:
Actors: , , , , , , ,
Category:
Themes: , , , , ,