As it begins, Paul (William Dame) is an airplane mechanic who is suddenly accosted by two older crooks in trenchcoats. They knock him out. He awakens to find himself in an older mansion, where a woman, Stephanie (Catherine Dee), seems to know him despite the fact that he's never seen her before, and an older transvestite, "Roberta" (M.R. Murphy), is keeping Paul and Stephanie captive, apparently with the intent of watching them have sex. Just who is Roberta? Is that really her motive? How did Stephanie get there? How long has she been there? Why did they pick Paul?
Forget that the title is a misnomer and we never get to see Stephanie stuffed into an incinerator or even an attempt to do this. For fans of the ridiculous, this is a little gem resurrected by Troma and Brentwood/BCI Eclipse for their recent "Toxie's Triple Terror" DVD releases. To appreciate the film, you have to not only not mind filmmakers breaking their "generic (genre-related) contract" with the audience, but breaking any kind of implied contract about narrative forthrightness. The name of the game here is really "pulling the rug out from beneath the viewer", but amusingly, neither the apparent scenarios nor the rug-pulling are very sophisticated, making Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator usually play like a more pedestrian "so bad, it's good" horror film gone haywire after viewing far too many "rubber reality" films, ala Mulholland Drive (2001), The Butterfly Effect (2004), etc. That Stuff Stephanie in the Incinerator predates all of the rubber reality films, which could reasonably be said to begin with Jacob's Ladder (1990), doesn't make it prescient so much as retroactively, accidentally related. In 1989, this probably seemed like so much nonsense rather than anything groundbreaking or postmodernist.
Being less generous, it's easy to imagine instead that writer Peter Jones and writer/director Don Nardo continually didn't know where to go with their script, so every once in a while they used a variant of the old, "No, that was just a dream" tactic and basically started over. At least this variation on that ploy gives an "excuse" for bad acting, which is deliciously abundant in the film--delicious because it is bad enough to be hilarious. Maybe the script wasn't even done when they began, and as they were shooting they were continually unhappy with the tenor of their footage, so they periodically changed gears. Whatever the cause, if you've a taste for bizarreness, absurdity or camp, you're going to want to watch this film. In fact, it is a must-see for you.
While I'm sure other writers are giving away the nature of the "reveals", I think the film is a lot more fun if you do not know what to expect, so I'll refrain from describing the plot in any detail. That doesn't disallow describing some of the characterization.
Paul ranges from amusingly gruff to buffoonishly pompous to slightly sinister. Dame (as Paul) gets his best lines, with the funniest delivery, in the first section of the film, where he continually breaks the mood. From the audience's perspective, the beginning seems like a slightly pretentious low to no budget film, ala Insaniac (2002) or Last House on Hell Street (2002), for which Paul gets to voice the concerns and protests of the viewer, if the viewer drinks a lot of Budweiser and lives in a trailer.
Stephanie seems most concerned with continually getting laid, and later with money, no matter what level of reality is revealed. There is nary a male character she doesn't seem interested in at some point. This is made more amusing by the fact that while she's attractive enough, her facial structure makes her something like an attractive Neanderthal (I don't really mean that as insulting, but I'm sure it will be difficult to not take that way). At least the film was shot in the days before boob jobs were so ubiquitous. We can be thankful that Nardo didn't know any strippers well enough to talk them into doing the film--I actually like more "plain" and "interesting"-looking women like Dee (who plays Stephanie) better. The poster artist, who displays a very active imagination, might not agree. At any rate, at one point this character gets to provide an unconvincing "voice of sanity" for the audience, but it turns out to be just as much a false reality as the rest of the film.
Roberta, who turns out to be a more minor character, is most charming in transvestite mode, where s/he comes across like Tootsie (1982) with fewer acting lessons. Later, when s/he is just a guy, we keep hoping s/he'll put the bra and wig back on. Perhaps Murphy should have been given a bigger role, but maybe we should be glad he wasn't.
The actors, although not good in any traditional sense, are certainly fun to watch. The technical elements are more difficult to speak about so highly. Nardo's direction, in terms of staging, is sometimes competent but never impressive. Occasionally it's more incompetent. Some scenes are so dark you can't tell what is going on, and too often it's difficult for the viewer to piece one location's relationship to another location. That is important to get right for narrative flow. There are also a couple characters introduced but mysteriously just dropped (think of the gym scene). But maybe Nardo was concentrating on getting the "right" performances from the principals.
My rating may seem high to some given my comments, but for this one, I'm rating how fun it is to watch if you enjoy the ridiculous. Often, a film like this would get my "so bad, it's good" rating of 5, but I don't really think this is a bad film--there are too many signs of competence. It's a shame that none of the cast or crew seemed interested or able to pursue other films. There is a lot of potential here.
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