Imagine The Warriors, minus most of the plot and budget, and inexplicably transported to Dayton, Ohio. Well, that’s Deadbeat at Dawn, Jim Van Bebber’s trashy DIY cult classic. Aside from writing and directing duties, Van Bebber also stars as Goose, a wayward teen caught up in a turf battle between two warring gangs. What Van Bebber’s debut lacks in polish, he makes up for with audacious insanity (and lots of gruesome violence, drugs, sexual assault, occultism, and general depravity). Deadbeat at Dawn is an urban action movie at heart, and it’s certainly one of the most…unique of its kind. The fight scenes are one-of-a-kind bursts of punk rock freneticism – they’re crass, sloppy, and over before you know it (and, it should be noted, seemingly extremely dangerous for the performers involved).
Despite its flaws, Deadbeat at Dawn actually gets better as it goes along (it took Van Bebber three years to complete, so perhaps he learned on the job). Most of the film’s best set pieces – including a graveyard hallucination of corpse dismemberment and a ridiculous armed car robbery which features ninja stars and about 20 gang members somehow escaping in one very overloaded car – come in the second half. But Van Bebber saves the absolute pinnacle for last, as the final 20 minutes depict an increasingly outrageous orgy of brutal hand-to-hand combat, unrelenting blood and gore, and hazardous stunt work. Deadbeat at Dawn’s charms are more than occasionally diminished by amateur execution and a boorish (and unfortunately misogynistic) tone, but that climax is not to be denied, single-handedly making the film a must-see for fans of ‘80s genre madness.
arthousegrindhouse.wordpress.com 