The Greasy Strangler

(Jim Hosking/2016/USA)

Serial killing, an obsession with grease laden hot dogs, lurid sex scenes and rampant dysfunction, The Greasy Strangler is an exercise in grotesquery that wilfully and gleefully attempts to churn audience’s sensibilities along with their stomachs. You can’t deny this film its quirk of style and definite sense of the absurd and surreal but it also provokes the question as to what it’s all about or what’s the point of it? Is it really worth trying to break it down to some sort of allegory for the disaffection of modern life or analysing it as a comic horror parable of modern America? Nope, you either go along with it for the kicks or you don’t and it works its churn on you. Hosking sets out his stall with no small degree of assuredness and competence as a film maker. He’s no John Waters though and you wonder what boundaries he’s pushing at exactly as he’s on old ground really. I’ll admit to a sense of relief when the end credits rolled.

(2/5)