I love Facebook, I really do, and not for the reasons you think. Yeah it’s great to reconnect with a bunch of high school and college buddies as well as making it easy for old ex-girlfriends to stalk me as I willingly lay out my entire life for them. That’s a huge bonus. But why I really love Facebook is because of the opportunity it’s given me to reach out to the indie horror community. I have a ton of “friends” from the indie horror scene from writer-directors to actors to special f/x artists, and everything in between. This is how I got into contact with actor Marv Blauvelt. After I included Anthony Sumner’s short film, LEWIS, on my Best Horror Shorts of 2011, Blauvelt reached out to me on Facebook to thank me. After chatting back and forth for a little while, Blauvelt then asked if I was interested in watching and reviewing another short film he made back in 2010 titled, COME. I’m sure glad he offered because this is a short horror film that I never heard of or came across, but I feel as though I’m a better horror reviewer for watching it!!
In COME, Blauvelt stars as Dr. Conduit, a surgeon who has a taste for the macabre (that’s putting it lightly). Conduit seems to have a particular fetish where he likes to go out at night, prowl around for women, seduce and drug them, and then surgically remove their vaginas and sew them onto their faces. Hey; I told you it was a specific fetich!! As we join up with Conduit he’s visiting an underground fetish store that prides itself on catering to the warped desires of all it’s clients. It’s obvious the good doctor has been here before because the owner of the shop put aside a little something special for him. Conduit buys an unmarked brown paper bag, without looking into it, for $75 and is promised that he’s gonna love it. Inside the package is what appears to be a ‘dead’ creature of some sort that looks like a vagina monster. At this point the short gets pretty damn bizarre and leaves behind the standard narrative in favor of a trippy, nightmarish style that really adds a lot of atmosphere to the film.
Upon looking at the creature in the jar, Conduit seems to go into some kind of trance or ‘altered state.’ He seems to hallucinate various scenarios about what the creature is or might be. In one scene he dissects the creature and ends up jerking off in front of it (hey; we’ve all been there, am I right??). In other “trip” he imagines the creature, which has a very distinctive Lovecraftian influence about it, growing large and looking more vagina-ie. And let me tell ya folks, considering it only has a 28 minute run time, COME has the highest vagina-per-minute ratio I’ve ever seen. Even more than most porno’s!! Usually there’s a lot of come in vagina, but here there’s a whole lotta vagina in COME (sorry; that was too easy to pass up). Kidding aside, I really loved the trippy, nightmarish atmosphere directors Kirk Chastain and Arthur Cullipher created (Chastain also wrote the short). There’s even hints of a vagina-monster cult (again, very Lovecraftian) that is using Dr. Conduit in order to bring their god back to life. This material could have easily gotten away from less experienced or talented directors, but Chastain and Cullipher never get lost in the trippy atmosphere and do a great job keeping the film focused and really fucked up!!
The cast does a really good job here. Marv Blauvelt is alone on screen for most of the time, and he pulls off the lead role beautifully. He does a great job with his role that happens to have very little dialogue and a lot of body language that convey’s what Blauvelt is thinking and doing. I haven’t seen Blauvelt in a bad role yet, but this is the first short where he has a starring role and he proves he can effortlessly carry an entire film as the lead.
I don’t wanna give away too much more of COME’s story, but if you like Cronenberg, Lovecraft, David Lynch’s style of filmmaking, the threat of the Vagina Dentata, and watching a film whereby you feel as though you’re tripping your balls off, then you’re gonna love COME. This is one of those shorts that leaves you wanting more. Even though the ending is completely satisfying you’ll want more explanation about the creature and more details on Dr. Conduit himself. I’d love to see this one turned into a feature. But for now check out COME … you’ll never look at vagina the same way again!!
My Summary:
Directors: Kirk Chastain & Arthur Cullipher (Chastain also wrote the story)
Plot: 4 out of 5 stars
Gore: 4 out of 10 skulls
VAGINA Mayhem: 5 out of 5 pubic hairs (seriously; there’s a lot of vagina in this one)
Reviewed by Scott Shoyer