<< Back 10/16/02 Flicks By Hunter Pope The Salton Sea Director: D.J. Caruso (film debut) Cast: Val Kilmer, Vincent D’Onofrio, Peter Sarsgaard, Deborah Kara Unger Rating: R — strong violence, painful looking drug use, language, some sexuality, and a badger nibbling on genitals It takes a special kind of sickness to enjoy dark humor. One must have a penchant for laughter that borders on cruel. This breed enjoys laughing when their friend gets sick in a gorilla costume, or when a baseball player hurtles through a wall not meant for movement. As far as movies, this malicious group laughs at the perils of heroin in the extra stout “Trainspotting” and chortles when a husband and wife mutilate each other in “War of the Roses.” Foul? Perhaps, but wincing hurts a lot more. Being a long-time member, I’m always on the hunt for humor with a gamey scent. My quest was awarded recently with the cheesy/squirmy flick, “The Salton Sea.” It addresses the intensity of methamphetamine addiction, but it does it in a way that’s ... well ... sorta funny. Now before you use my article as toilet paper, hear me out. “Surely” — you’re yelling at the defenseless article — “he could find something better to chuckle at than a gutter drug made from basically anything under the kitchen sink.” But, here I found myself laughing at a movie whose central protagonist was a yellowish powder (bordering on a hue of jaundice) that keeps the body awake for days on end. But, I wasn’t laughing at the actual contact of chemical to nose. Nor was I laughing at the rampage it takes on a human’s immune system. I was laughing at the preposterousness of it all. I have never seen a movie this ridiculous or this incredibly stupid. But, somehow the seediness of the background combined with characters straight out of a colorful sewage tank made me like the film. And, oh did I snicker. It’s not really obvious where the creator (Director D.J. Caruso in his film debut) decided to go silly with “Salton Sea,” but I settled on the beginning. The opening line is the hammiest I’ve seen in a movie since yesterday’s soap operas. The film opens with our main character (Val Kilmer) sitting on the floor, playing a lonely trumpet. All around him is a blizzard of cash, photos and flames. The voice-over creeps on like unwanted second hand smoke: “Am I Danny Parker or Tom Van Allen? Avenging angel or Judas Iscariot. You decide who I am.” My eyes rolled, but so did my belly. This was going to be bad, but my funny bone told me to let the tape roll. After the fire scene, we are introduced to Danny Parker (Val our pal), a meth freak who lovingly calls his friends “tweakers,” a cadre of meth snorters. Their days consist of finding the next score so they can stay up for another week. Kind of like a degenerate slumber party. Danny, however, is also (where do they get these names?) Tom Van Allen, a jazz musician who likes sunsets, trumpets, and really bad looking fedoras. Baffled? You see; Danny used to be Tom. But Tom’s wife was killed by a hooded duo looking for drug money. Tom falls apart and the crumbles become Danny Parker, a guy who narcs for the cops while doing mega amounts of crank. Still mystified? Good, welcome to the world I was in for an hour and a half. There is a plot, but what I became more concerned (and entertained) with were the motley crew of characters that spackle the movie’s many holes. Kilmer’s dual role is good, but it’s the supporting freaks that really give this movie a much-needed shower. First off, there’s Bobby (Glenn Plummer), a big-time meth dealer who has a paranoia problem. He hallucinates spiders and keeps a three-pronged spear gun in his shaking hands. His love interest is some woman who is trapped underneath a soiled mattress. Her lines consist of muffled screams coupled with kicking legs. Bobby consoles her by pounding his fist on the mattress. Morgan (Doug Hutchison) and Garcetti (Anthony LaPaglia) are two macho cops that become as sickening as the people they’re busting. Their bravado is annoying, and their downward spiral is an entertaining thing to watch. Pooh Bear (the incredibly talented Vincent D’Onofrio) is one of the greatest screenplay villains to ever tumor the screen. Every pore of this pig is unsettling. Pooh has many dimensions. First off he’s a (drum roll please) drug dealer who lives in a compound with a horde of gun-wielding maniacs. His favorite pastime is recreating the JFK assassination with a remote control car full of rider pigeons. Disloyalty is Pooh’s pet peeve —one fella gets his brains hacksawed when he shorts Pooh $11, and another has his reproductive organs sampled by a surly badger. Better yet is the origin of his nickname. Pooh used to keep his sniffers in the “honey pot” and it soon ate away his nose. In its fleshy place is a plastic nose that Pooh takes off on a regular basis. Yum. Give “Salton Sea” a chance if you’re just a really odd person who enjoys humor darker than reception room coffee. Val Kilmer continues his adept streak at recreating uncanny characters, but it’s Vincent D’Onofrio (who also plays a sicko in “The Cell”) that keeps this film from detonating. He is the spirit of all that’s blasphemous about this movie. Furthermore, folks who enjoyed such gory comedies like “Pulp Fiction” and “Trainspotting” may also get a jolt out of renting “Salton Sea”. And for those of you who are disgusted with these kinds of movies? Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. You quit reading awhile back when you used my article for “cleaning purposes.” Now, that’s definitely not funny.