In hindsight, the timing could not have been better. On the 5th of November 2011, the US indie film
Bellflower marked its UK premiere at the annual Leeds International Film Festival. As the closing credits rolled, the audience stumbled out of the dark and into the cold. It was misty. The air smelled of gunpowder. It was, of course, Bonfire Night, and the perfect environment for
Bellflower. With its incredible finale still thundering in my mind, I immediately anticipated its general release date. The bad news is I'm still waiting. A film festival breakthrough on both sides of the pond, it enjoyed a limited run in US cinemas but - barring that fortnight in November - is yet to grace the screens of our green and pleasant land. Fortunately, the film can look forward to a resurgence on Netflix (although, again, this is US only) and DVD (with Region 1 available now and Region 2 from this November) to capture the audience it so sorely deserves. Few films can claim to have been as independently funded as
Bellflower. Writer/director/actor Evan Glodell says that, for his feature-length debut, ''everyone who worked on the movie threw in money to keep it going''; with some quitting their jobs to work (and live) in the abandoned office building that became the film's production site. This was DIY filmmaking at its finest; not only did Glodell convert a '72 Buick Skylark into the film's central prop, a fire-spewing muscle car nicknamed 'Mother Medusa', but he also built his own
camera. The Coatwolf Model I (named after the film's production company) is truly one of a kind: the oversaturated colours, the hazy soft-focus...it's like gazing through a gas leak. Most of the exterior shots are tinged with a grindhouse yellow, with scratches and even dirt dotted across the lens. Glodell places the final budget at around $17,000, and that's including the small matter of fully-functioning flamethrowers... Part road movie, part buddy movie, part romance, part revenge: just what is
Bellflower? A twisted love story is too simple a synopsis. Instead, it's a powerful study of modern masculinity, mashing together the frenetic violence and fire-breathing fury of
MadMax and
FightClub. Indeed, the entire film plays like a petrolhead Project Mayhem. Click "next" to continue reading...