Sam and Diane? Dr Crane and Lilith? Why is everyone in Hanky Panky named after characters in Cheers? The answer would appear to be that writer Nick Roth and his co-director/wife Lindsey Haun thought it was funny. Nothing deep, nothing meta, just good old-fashioned funny. The film’s title logo is styled like the Cheers one too, giving absolutely no indication that comedy horror is on the menu (though the Cheers set-up of a bunch of characters trapped together in a bar isn’t that far from horror).
How to describe this? An inventive lo-fi gonzo comedy set out in a remote log cabin where Stephen King and Eli Roth might once have stayed. That might just about cover the familiar end – a bunch of friends gathering for booze, laughs, some drugs, with attritional slaughter eventually rearing its head and a “who’s next?” dynamic providing the plot. But that doesn’t quite cover the bizarro avenues that Hanky Panky dives up. And this is a genre already given to the bizarro (think of Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon’s The Cabin in the Woods).
So, Sam (Jacob DeMonte-Finn), a socially awkward man with a sentient handkerchief called Woody (voiced by Robot Chicken’s Toby Bryan) which Sam relies on as a prop. Diane (Ashley Holliday Tavares), an oversharing New Ager, who is, like Sam, single! Carla (Christina Laskay) and Cliff (Anthony Rutowicz), a couple who intend to bang each other to bits over the weekend, if they can stop drinking long enough to get their clothes off. Dr Crane (Roth himself, no relation to Eli, I don’t think), a doctor of medieval hagiography, and his partner, the multi-faceted Lilith (Azure Parsons). Later, the possibly-dumb-possibly-psychopathic Norm (Toby Bryan again, and very funny too) and sister Rebecca (co-director Haun), siblings whose unnatural closeness bespeaks inbreeding but the truth is even stranger than that. And, finally, the over-perky neighbour, Kelly (Clare Grant), who suspiciously arrives with a welcome basket of baked goods almost the instant the new arrivals show up.
And an evil extraterrestrial flying hat called Harry (voiced by Robot Chicken’s Seth Green), just because.
I’d been listening to the UK comedian Milton Jones on the radio before watching Hanky Panky, and there are a lot of similarities – fast pace, out-there leaps of logic, the surreal mixed with the good old dad joke, and an acceptance that not every gag will land. If you don’t like this one, seven more will be along in no time.
This is a funny film. Wobbly, not technically perfect by a long stretch – the sound is a bit echoey, there are moments of unsteady acting – but it makes a virtue of its cheapness. At one point there is a fight between Woody the hanky and Harry the Hat. This is funny until it outstays its welcome, but it then becomes funny again simply because it just keeps going – and all the time you can see the strings.
It’s a reworking of a short from 2014, which I haven’t seen, but I presume the gonzo stoner vibe was also strong in the original. Though in fact the guiding principle here is more 1930s screwball comedy – the logic does hold up if interrogated, just about, and where it doesn’t the whipcrack delivery covers the gaps.
Fans of the The Shining, there are some almost subterranean references, and fans of Chekhov’s Gun – the something which, once seen, must inevitably become a decisive part of the action – will like how Roth and Haun drop three “Guns” in early on and just leave them there to simmer.
This is the sort of film made on goodwill where the actors are probably wearing their own clothes and where all sorts of favours have been called in. Half the cast is related to the other half and everyone is multitasking – the actors are also the producers, the music is by the co-director’s dad. You get the idea. Yet, for all the ramshackleness, Hanky Panky bounces along like an evil demented extraterrestrial hat. It is funny. Perhaps most of all, everyone seems to be having fun. Which is infectious.
Hanky Panky – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
