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Joe Blevins 
"Don't I look handsome?"
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 Posted - 01/11/2009 : 19:34:57
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Turner Classic Movies recently aired a rather obscure David Carradine film called Sonny Boy (1989), which is a violent, surreal B-movie about a gangster and his moll (Carradine plays that moll -- in drag!) who kidnap a baby and raise it as their own. They essentially treat the kid like an animal, and the movie eventually becomes a variation on Frankenstein, with the misunderstood "monster" breaking free and causing havoc. The whole thing is set out in the desert, and it got me to thinking that it might be part of an unidentified sub-genre of movies: desert gothic.
It seems to me that between the 1970s and 1990s, there were a lot of weird, dark films -- mainly low-budget and independent flicks -- set in the Southwestern United States, i.e. New Mexico, Arizona, and the more barren parts of Texas, etc. These films are either horror flicks or (like Sonny Boy) have horror-level violence. What sets the genre apart is that these films are typically campy and surreal and peopled with bizarre and grotesque characters. The Southwest is depicted in these films as a kind of hell on earth where the normal rules of society don't apply, and the heat and isolation have turned seemingly everyone into monsters.
I'd say the "desert gothic" genre got its start with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes, and eventually encompassed such diverse films as Sonny Boy, John Carpenter's Vampires, Wild at Heart and even Raising Arizona, which definitely has violence and grotesque characters.
My questions are: has anyone else noticed this "desert gothic" trend and, better yet, can anyone add to the list of films that might fall under this banner? Thanks. |
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Unidentified genre: Desert Gothic?
