Lost in translation

An interesting curiousity if you're an American horror film fan who can take just about anything as long as there are a few juicy bits of butchery.

At first blush, you'd be tempted to think that, with a title like Harpoon: Whale Watching Massacre, you'd be dealing with a pretty over-the-top horror-comedy. Not quite.

I can't pretend to know jack-all about Icelandic culture, so I have no idea how representative this film is of their sensibility. I think it comes across like a foreign culture's attempt at creating an American genre film, like perhaps they made it mostly in English and featuring an American horror icon (the affordable Gunnar Hansen) with the hope of being able to tap the U.S. market. The results played for me like a weird culture-clash of oddly-drawn characters played fairly straight by the cast from a screenplay penned by a non-native English-language writer. It may be cultural differences that supply some of the non-PC moments and awkwardly shoehorned bits of politcal commentary. It has something vague to say about foreigners to Iceland and the whaling industry, but who knows what that is, really. The somewhat straight tone collides with looney character motivations at times. Throw in some comically low-quality old school practical latex gore effects, and it quickly becomes a sincerely off-kilter viewing experience.

If this had been an American effort, I'd call it batsh!t.

www.thefreething.com/indyruss