Meet the consonant contestants: Up first, let's welcome Jason Behr in The Tattooist (2007). Alternate movie title: Everything your Mother Warned you About Tattoos (and Samoans). Behr faces off against faux competitor and fellow Rowsell "bad boy" alien, Brendan Fehr, who doesn't-quite-star in the forgettably named The Forsaken (2001). Yes, it's a Behr-Fehr duel to the depths of oblivion and disrepute.
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The Tattooist is off to a formidable start: it's incomprehensible, culturally insensitive, and the only thing the central romance has going for it over The Forsaken is that at least the lady love interest is conscious. We are introduced to Behr's character, who, as a child, demonstrates exceptional freehand tattoo skills. We see the character's first attempt at a tattoo here:
So ok, it's a little bit of a dated style what with the thorns, but the kid clearly has some artistic prowess. Which his father celebrates by saying The Lord's Prayer while slicing the design off of his son's arm. Cut to: present day. Behr's character is asleep in bed, and we see his scarred arm in the foreground. He proceeds to wake from his nightmare/flashback, get out of bed to get some air, and to let the camera linger lovingly on the massive tapestry of ink that spans most of his upper-body (and also his pale white ass). What follows is a variation on the Cultural Appropriation Curse story.
The Tattooist was produced by a prolific, if not award-winning Singapore production and distribution house. Behr's character, Jake, is a white American who likes to collect indigenous designs from across the world and sell them as medicine and hope to injured and sick people. He seems a little dead inside, as well he should, but much to my own disappointment, it's nothing that the whitest Pacific Islander lady-actor that the studio could find, can't fix. They meet in Singapore at a tattoo convention, where Jake exchanges one meaningful look with Sina (Mia Blake), and decides to follow her into a private area where some of her family are taking part in a traditional Samoan tattoo ritual.
The conversation that follows goes something like this:
Samoan Man: "Hey, man, why the fuck are you so entitled as to invite yourself in on our private, tented-off tribal ritual and sit down and watch us like we're television?"
Jake: "Oh, just always looking for new cultures to steal from!"
Samoan Man: "Yeah, fuck you."
Sina: "I don't have any dialog, except to vouch for you for no damn good reason, but I can tell that you are going to have sex with me later."
IMDB describes the movie as a story about "A young artist (who) unknowingly plays a role in releasing a deadly spirit as he attempts to learn the tatau, the Samoan tradition of tattooing." But no, IMDB, not true: Jake doesn't give a shit about learning Samoan tattooing. Jake is a spectator who leaves the tent when he learns there is nothing he can use for his healing ink scam. In fact, to show his level of cultural regard for the Samoans at the convention, Jake steals a traditional tattooing instrument from a case outside the tent.
So it's a classic story of boy meets girl, boy steals culturally significant object from girl, boy follows girl across international lines in the hopes of sleeping with and/or having a second line of dialog with girl, which is lucky for boy, because he's going to need girl to help him lift the curse he earned his pale white ass.
Not since the Brady boys found that Hawiian relic have the Pacific Islands seemed so darn creepy.
I could could further dissect this movie, pull out its inky bladder of latent terror of body modification culture AND indigenous ritual, but I will simply leave it at this: if you are a lover of supernaturally quick-acting infections, and scenes of people cutting off/otherwise removing patches of skin, this movie is a goldmine!
I would be remiss if I did not point out one thing about the sentient ghost-thing that drives the horror aspect of the film: when we finally see more than a flash of him, it is clear that despite the fact that the writing ostensibly calls for a member of the Samoan community to play the ghost, the thing shares no facial or bodily characteristics such with his numerous Samoan co-stars. I can't prove this, but he looks like a skinny white dude who has been painted ink black. So... definitely a fruitful addition to conversations about cultural sensitivity with that one.
Behr's main skill as an actor is his look of lovestruck concern. He gives the acting and dialog parts the old college try, but pretty much his only skill is reacting to things.
Let's see how Fehr lines up.
The Forsaken: Desert Vampires is not so much a vampire movie as it is a car commercial that argues the best way to kill a vampire is by driving a Mercedes.
Why? Because vampires like to drive around a lot in cars. They also like to shoot people with guns. Really, the bad guys in The Forsaken are less vampires than they are psychopaths who don't mind a lick of human blood every now and then. Speed? Strength? Mental powers? Biting? Who needs 'em? Not Desert Vampires. Desert Vampires live in car trunks, driven by a knife-wielding human who draws more blood than the vampires combined (this includes vampire gun usage). To be fair, the vampire king has exactly one moment of clever badassery in which he picks up a snake by the head and injects the thing's poison into his arm.
But let's get to the real point here: boobs. The movie opens with a dazed Megan (played by Izabella Miko), who stands under the spray of a shower, slowly rinsing a curtain of blood off of her naked torso. Everybody with me? Good, because once one of those titties gets clean, this movie is not wasting any time. The main character, cash-strapped Sean (Kerr Smith), is headed to his sister's wedding, and he has figured out that instead of paying for transportation, he can deliver a sexy convertible across a few states for cash. Of course, he mustn't pick up hitchhikers, the car mustn't be soiled in any way, and MOST of all, he mustn't play chicken with vampires. (Beuller? Anyone?)
He gets right onto the road, where he has a conversation with two girls in a convertible who invite him to something (I can't tell what; I was pretending those were real people in real convertibles, who wouldn't have been able to have a minute-long conversation consisting of anything other than screaming "WHAT!?" at one another really loudly). And then there are some more boobs. The movie pulls a spooky fake-out here; the girls in the other convertible disappear preternaturally, and in that instant, Sean's tire blows.
His stipend runs out immediately when he is forced to replace the tire. Forced to spend the night in a hotel, Sean lies around in his boxers listening to the strange, half-erotic, half-dangerous sounds coming from the next room. The next morning, the other occupants (and their dusty car) are long gone, and just as Sean is ready to pull out of town, enter "Nick" (Brendan Fehr), in the form of an acerbic hitchhiker with a secret (a VAMPIRE HUNTER sort of secret). Reluctantly, Sean takes on the self-described slacker, who offers to pay for gas. Hijinks ensue as hijinks are known to do, setting the tone for a very slightly bloodier-than-usual road trip bromance.
Along the way they pick up the tits from the first scene, who is in full-on Naked Lunch mode. They stuff her in the back seat of the car, where she remains for most of the movie, junkying out from a vampire infection (Seriously. Her first line of dialog is not until roughly the third act). Fehr's character instinctively knows what is happening to her, and quickly gets her into a hotel room where he strip searches her for bite marks (bite marks: always in the last place you look on a naked girl!). Poor Sean is still clueless, but he's just a nice guy driving a really sweet car, caught in the gravity of Fehr's charisma. Finally Nick takes Sean
Sean develops some sort of affection for Megan, despite never learning her name or having any sort of conversation with her whatsoever. Attempting to keep her quiet at one point, he gets bitten on the hand, receiving the infection as well. The infection acts as a homing device to the King vampire, who, for reasons that are never explained, can't stop chasing the bromance on wheels, despite the fact that they kill off his entire hunting party, with the exception of his one hyper-violent, hypersexualized consort, whose feral nature is credited to her being a new vampire and not, you know, because the writing and direction was racist as fuck.
There are some subplots. One is about Sean trying to sacrifice his health to keep Megan sane. Ok, I guess there was only one subplot. Oh, also, vampires disguise their kills as "gang war." In the middle of no-name towns in northern-central Texas. In case you were wondering.
Also: Fehr's character spends most of the movie trying to get to hallowed grounds (because vampires can only be killed on hallowed grounds, despite the fact that he already killed one or two of them on the road). Chased and out of gas, they are finally forced to seek refuge in a former taxidermist's house, inhabited by the only woman in the entire movie who does not get called, "bitch," "skank," "slut," etc. by someone. Luckily for all involved, the old woman's house is on a cemetery: hallowed ground, BINGO! A last stand is made, stuff happens, the old woman, who was so ready to use her rifle on trespassers, is incapable of using it on vampires (because, too scary), and hands it off to Fehr instead. There's a shootout (a VAMPIRE shootout), Fehr takes a bullet, and Sean finally manages to kill the King Vampire by driving a Mercedes through his heart.
Sean finally has an intelligible conversation with Megan at the hospital, and then finds that Fehr/Nick is gone; Nick explains, in a touching note, that killing that last guy didn't cure him, so he's doomed to blah blah blah until he kills another vampire.
Cut to three months later: Fehr is hitchhiking and a familiar-looking car stops up ahead: It's Sean! He's put a new engine in the vampire's old car, he's been reading about "gang shootings" and tracking vampire movements, he quit his desk job, and now he wants to help Fehr/Nick kill the next King Vampire and cure his infection!
I promised you a bromance, didn't I?
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So how do the Jason Behr and the Brendan Fehr stack up? Tattooist has a slightly better love story, unless you take into account the gay subtext in Forsaken, which, when it comes to scoring points, I do not (too much T&A to have any real subversive value). It's really up for grabs as to which is more racist; Tattooist is internationally racist, whereas Forsaken is a little more USA homegrown. The vampire movie is funnier, but vampires usually have a little more levity, a little more panache than ghosts. Neither actor delivers more than his signature Roswell emotion (for Behr, that's concerned and lovestruck, for Fehr, it's bad boy on the run), but at least the movie didn't ask as much from the latter. And I think that's ultimately the tie-breaker here: At least I didn't have to watch Brendan Fehr act out of his range. Forsaken for the win.
Also, just for the record, for the producers of The Tattooist: you should really make sure the hip-hop song that starts the credits on your awful film doesn't mention five better films in under sixty seconds. Just a thought.
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