Deceit

MOVIE #1,742 •🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿• 06.20.24 ALBERT & AKERMAN: AN AUTEURIST STUDY IN CONTRAST + CONTINUUM Well before I wrote in my notes “I think I hear a didgeridoo in this soundtrack,” it was abundantly clear that I was watching my favorite — and probably the best — Albert Pyun film to date. (This distinction between best and favorite is fodder for a larger discussion re ‘the masses’, but the good thing about having impeccable taste is that they’re always one and the same.) The lore of this film’s production is, perhaps, well-known: forced into doing reshoots for Cyborg, Pyun cobbled together a script and a cast and used the same locations to produce a whole other movie in a matter of days on a $22,000 budget. And I’m sorry, but if you don’t like that story (and the corresponding feature that has no business being as good as it is), then you simply don’t like cinema.

Disguised behind the tagline “A dangerous alien sex fiend has come to earth” is a story with an environmental message and a tale of female empowerment, all intertwined with themes juxtaposing the ideas that A) we’re never quite the people we present to the world AND B), fuck that! we can be anything we want! further wrapped around deceptively meta elements that seem to suggest Pyun is commenting on the very act of filmmaking and both the creators’ and viewers’ expectations for what the final product is supposed to deliver…


(This opening text crawl is presented so fast that it’s impossible to digest in full: the first of many A+ in-jokes.)

Next to nothing happens in this film: it’s essentially a small handful of characters speaking in a room for the bulk of the 90-minute run-time. But with expert lighting and creative shots — and a lot of Samantha Phillips, Norbert Weisser and Scott Paulin eating up ALL the sparse scenery — Pyun has crafted a picture that’s constantly engaging, a fascinating and multifaceted experience that you never quite get a feel for before it all makes perfect sense. It’s really one of the greatest cinematic magic tricks I’ve seen pulled off in a while: the epitome of making something out of nothing.

There is a running gag in the background where a sign in this warehouse room reads “WORLD ECOLOGICAL PRODUCTS” is slowly revealed to actually read “WORLD ASBESTOS PRODUCTS”...


This seems like a metaphor for the proceedings, for the trick: Pyun is covering up big, bold ideas under the guise of a nothing-budget sci-fi flick. He seems content with being seen as the equivalent of celluloid asbestos because the real heads know.

There are cut-ins to a car radio that seem to be broadcasting directly to the viewer…


And this exchange seems to work as a dialogue about what it is we want to get out of the movies…


Albert inserts several more personal meta nods into the proceedings as well, with oblique, off-hand references to both Vicious Lips and Alien from L.A. And it all ends on an extremely hopeful, fourth-wall-breaking turn to the camera…


There have been plenty of times leading up to this moment when it was clear that Pyun was a great filmmaker. But, where before his intentions were always centered around the idea of entertaining, he’s clearly striving for something more with the medium. So of course he would follow this up with the infamous Cannon Films production of Captain America.

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CHRONOLOGICALLY
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Deceit is a 1989 minimalist science fiction film. Some sources cite a 1990, 1992 or a 1993 release date. It was released on July 10, 1990.