We’re very excited that ALTAMONT NOW just received a really nice review from the underground film and comics website Bad Lit. Run by Mike Everleth, Bad Lit is an invaluable resource for finding out about great underground films and where to see them. So needless to say, we are… rather stoked/psyched/feeling warm all over!
If rock ‘n’ roll is all about sex and rebellion, then how fitting is it for Joshua von Brown to set his punk rock apocalypse, Altamont Now, in an actual nuclear missile silo?
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There are two truly great things about this extremely fun film. The first is that von Brown found an actual missile silo in which to shoot. In no-budget underground films, one is used to seeing ordinary locations having some cheap decorations strewn about to sub for unfilmable places, e.g. Mike Kuchar thowing up a couple of tawdry curtains in his Brooklyn bedroom to become a futuristic palace in Sins of the Fleshapoids. But being able to film in a real abandoned military installation gives a nice air of gravitas to Altamont Now. Based on the location alone, the film demands the audience to take everything seriously despite it being an outrageous comedy.
The other great thing about this film is the star-making lead performance by Daniel Louis Rivas as Richard Havoc. Again, the film is a comedy, but von Brown has his actors playing the entire thing straight and Havoc is a completely unsympathetic, ego-bloated lunatic. Rivas has a difficult line to walk. His character is supposed to be over-the-top ridiculous, but Rivas holds enough of himself back so that he’s not buffoonish. Much of the humor of the film comes from Rivas’ straight-laced, deadpan delivery. All the other actors — including Frankie Shaw, Teddy Eck, Matthew Humphreys and Raphael Nash Thompson — all put in superb performances, too, but Rivas has a real forceful charisma that makes him thoroughly compelling to watch.
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Although the movie kind of reminded me as a cross between Mike Z’s classic hoax film How to Start a Revolution in America and John Waters’ Cecil B. Demented, von Brown has a style all his own and has crafted a really nifty and funny social satire in Altamont Now.
