Death Spa (dir. Michael Fischa, 1989)
If the avant-garde British filmmaker Peter Greenaway had suffered brain damage in the middle of shooting The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, fired all the cast for Angeleno nobodies and switched gears to make a supernatural slasher set at a high tech gym, then Death Spa might be the result.
It is the greatest piece of garbage released in 1989: an accidental Jacobean revenge drama with a killer sauna, exercise equipment of death, and a walk-in freezer of doom.
Seeing it for the first time last year was my Saul of Tarsus moment. Now I am dedicated to spreading the good news that even when Death Spa isn’t streaming on Amazon Prime, you can find an HD copy of it on just about any dubious site.
Because it must be seen to be truly experienced, I will instead write about a few of the characters that populate the Starbody Health Spa.
- Michael Evans: the owner and proprietor of Starbody and a tragedy magnet. His wife Catherine had a miscarriage and in her grief immolated herself. In real life, this is among the worst things that could possibly happen to someone. Here, it is just something that happens.
- Laura: Michael’s girlfriend, who is temporarily blinded from steam burns in the sauna in the opening scene. She is treated to sensuous meals from Michael where he feeds her some pretty phallic asparagus.
- David Avery: the Starbody’s computer specialist, brother-in-law to Michael, and red herring personified. He’s resentful to Michael after the death of his sister, is vaguely sinister, and prints off logs of his hacking sessions at home as an alibi.
- Dr. Lido Moray: a psychometrer, paranormal detective, and ex-seminarian. This is the sum total of characterization he gets.
- Freddie: a British emigre to Los Angeles who is less Christopher Isherwood and more Mark from Peep Show.
- Marvin: a trainer at the Starbody. There’s not a whole lot else to him, but he’s played by Ken Foree, which is enough.
- Sgt. Stone and Lt. Fletcher: the pastel-clad LAPD detectives investigating the deaths at the Starbody Health Spa. They are only marginally more adept at this task than obvious fraud Lido Moray.
If none of this is enticing to you, then I don’t know what else to tell you. The final twenty minutes at the Mardi Gras party are extraordinary. This is a cinema of excess and something that only could have been made in the dying days of the neon 1980s.
October 4, 2018
oliveresque 