The Greasy Strangler (2016)

“BULLSHIT ARTIST”

The Greasy Strangler is one of those movies that defies criticism. To engage with its themes in any kind of sincere way would be to ignore its total absurdity, but to solely focus on its gross-out plot would be to ignore the intricate craft that created this weirdo masterpiece. The shades of mustard-yellow grease perfectly contrast the disco pinks and purples. Everything is deeply textured, from the many knitted costumes, to the creatively-sized prosthetic penises, to the multiple buckets of oozing, gloopy grease. Beneath the crass, juvenile dialogue lies a deep longing for connection, a visceral loneliness that we've all experienced, the kind of yearning that can only be satisfied by grease. And murder. And eyeballs.

In conversation with The Independent, writer-director Jim Hosking justified his creation better than anyone else ever could, saying he needed a break from writing serious stories. “It’s the opposite of Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and the curated lifestyle. It’s earthy and smelly. I think that’s why it resonates. I am fascinated by how people try to appear so clean and sophisticated in polite society. But we are all animals. We are all dirty. We have to excrete and reproduce. It’s not elegant. The Greasy Strangler deals with some truth about how a lot of people look, talk, behave. It holds a mirror up to our base animal side. It’s not bad taste. It’s real. It’s liberating.”

The ultimate question of The Greasy Strangler is - are you a hootie tootie disco cutie, or are you a bullshit artist?