Sonny Boy (1989)

It's 1970 in a small New Mexico town. Dressed for the 1980s, a young couple checks into a motel room and squirrelly Brad Dourif (as Weasel) steals their reddish orange Lincoln Continental and some other stuff. He brings the booty to aggressive Paul L. Smith (as Slue) and his transvestite lover David Carradine (as Pearl). They don't like the black-and-white TV much, but discover a baby in the back seat of the car. After beating up the delivery man, Mr. Smith decides to feed the baby to his hogs. Threatening to leave him if he does, Ms. Carradine wants to keep the baby. They raise him as a son, but cut out his tongue as a precaution against too much crying, whining and backtalk. The kid grows up to be handsome Michael Griffin aka Michael Boston (as Sonny Boy)...Mainly, the story involves Mr. Griffin's problems adjusting. Given his upbringing, it's not surprising Griffin has issues. We get skylines, ceilings and lingering close-ups from director Robert Martin Carroll and his crew. One of Mr. Carroll's more interesting and effective segments has Griffin symbolically accepting Jesus Christ, "the blood of a good man," as his savior. Shortly after this, he starts acting like a doggie chimp. The dog-play is short-lived and the story proceeds as if no religious meaning was intended. Occasional narration and old TV movie-type soundtrack does not enlighten. The characters are memorable, but they don't tell us anything we don't already know. With time taking away this film's power to shock, there isn't much left.**** Sonny Boy (3/22/89) Robert Martin Carroll ~ Michael Boston, Paul L. Smith, David Carradine, Brad Dourif

If you take the backwoods inbred rednecks from "Deliverance" and place them in the desert, add some "Frankenstein", and a little something from John Waters, you would be pretty close to describing "Sonny Boy". Sonny's behemoth monstrous father "Slue" is (Paul L. Smith), his mother, "Pearl", is none other than David Carradine dressed as a woman, and their number one henchman is Brad Dourif (Weasel). No wonder "Sonny Boy" is so screwed up. This 'black comedy' is infinitely quotable. "Oh the shame of being an unwed mother is too much to bare" (David Carradine). "Howdy Doc, put any more monkey parts in unsuspecting patients?" (Brad Dourif). Weirdly entertaining. - MERK

Paul L. Smith plays a local crook "Who has the town under his thumb" however things get extremely bizarre when in the opening sequences we see Brad Dourif kill a couple and steal the car with a baby inside, to which Smith wants to kill but his "wife" David Carradine(!) wants to keep, Smith compromises and raises the boy as a geek and through out we see a blackly comic, utterly bizarre, daft and overall daring movie to say the least. First of all the thought of having David Carradine as your mother, Smith as your dad and Dourif as your uncle would guarantee any kid's trip to insanity. The movie is indeed quite strange but it's all surprisingly well acted, with effective black comedy and surreality that verges on true greatness. I mean you have to be extremely talented to make a movie this bizarre. And yet in it's own way Sonny Boy is ingenious in it's story. A movie that is unpredictable, jaw dropping (Seriously anyone known to remembering Carradine for his role on Kung Fu, will have their jaw drop whenever he's on screen, which is pretty often) and at times somewhat tragic. This is a movie for the adventurous who have grown tired of predictable blockbusters, and unpredictable Sonny Boy is. This is a cult classic and for my money, needs a DVD release.* * *1/2 out of 4-(Very Good)

Get hold of this film, any way you can (not illegally, of course). Scream its name from the rooftops of buildings everywhere, high or small, and offer prayers to your God for a fully-featured special edition DVD release. There is no film like Sonny Boy: even Leonard Maltin was moved to call it (I quote verbatim) "A repulsive, socially irredeemable waste of celluloid ... filmed for no apparent reason other to offend and appal", and if that isn't a recommendation for a cult movie, I don't know what is. Critics said similar things about Peeping Tom, A Clockwork Orange, Reservoir Dogs, and so many more ... those films are amazing and entirely individual, and so is this. It's pitiful that Sonny Boy has so little recognition apart from a few right-thinking die hards - you don't have to like it, just admit you've never seen its like before or since. Get on the bandwagon speedily, because if I am human this film will, in the near future, be recognised for the angry, iconoclastic, unclassifiable explosion it really is. And you can be among those who educated the world. Feel the adrenaline. There.