Shadow Hours is a scuzzy slice of nightmarish Los Angeles underground sleaze that plays like a disturbing cross between 1970's gutter poetry exploitation and grunge rock 1990's fever dream cinema that you'd be lucky to find at 4am on some obscure corner of cable TV. Balthazar Getty plays a recovering drug and alcohol addict trying to get his life straight, aided by his doting wife (ever gorgeous, underrated Rebecca Gayheart). He takes a crummy job at a run down 24/7 gas station in a part of town infested with every freak, creep and creature of the night imaginable. His paranoid loon of a boss (the inimitable Brad Dourif) carries a 357 on his shift and warns him of the impending danger the night offers. He's soon alone on night shift, and is visited by shadowy stranger Stuart Chappell (Peter Weller). Weller has always had a sly way with words and a dark, edgy restlessness that he puts to frightening use here. He leads Getty down a a black leather sinkhole of drug abuse, kinky sex clubs and depraved acts of inhuman despair. It's never really clear who Chappell is or why he morally corrupts poor Getty seemingly for no reason, but there's some interesting metaphysical implications near the end that makes one wonder. Badass character actor Peter Greene plays a weary detective on Weller's trail, and there's equally downbeat work from Johnny Whitworth, Corin Nemic and Frédéric Forrest. This is a stomach churning pool of nauseating excess, and is only for people who can swallow their cinema with a handful of sewage. Me being the crazy buff who's into all the weird cobweb infested corners that movies have to offer, loved every bodily fluid stained minute of it.
Review of Shadow Hours
