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So I Married an Axe Murderer
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So I Married an Axe Murderer is eminently watchable, precisely
because it is so odd and out of control.
It received
a brief theatrical release, but the advance press on it had a killing effect. Here
(so the reports said) was a project doomed from the start: a romantic comedy
vehicle for Mike Myers (of Wayne's World [1992] fame) plagued by frantic
script rewrites and "creative disagreements" between the star and his
director Thomas Schlamme (Miss Firecracker,
1989).
Forget the
nasty gossip. The film has a fascinating premise, one that is almost an exact
male inversion of the Female Gothic stories of
the 1940s (like Hitchcock's Rebecca,
1940).
Charlie
(Myers), a ‘performance poet’, is absurdly paranoiac about every woman he
becomes attracted to – mainly because he is so scared of commitment. He puts
aside his fears for the sake of Harriet (Nancy Travis). But soon every
available piece of trashy media (Weekly
World News, Steve Dunleavy) convinces him that she is in fact a notorious
serial killer on the loose – and that he is her next victim.
The film is
a wild pot-pourri of elements – thriller, romance, parody, broad comedy with
memorable cameo appearances from Michael Richards (Seinfeld) and Charles Grodin among others.
As a
leading man Myers is completely charmless, and this is for a very specific reason.
Whenever he opens his mouth he cannot restrain himself from making a smarmy
joke about 1970s disco, Hollywood B movies or TV cartoons.
He is, in
short, a completely alienated, walking pop culture nightmare – a true man of
our times.
© Adrian Martin April 1994 |
