KIller Tongue
(La Lengua Asesina)
A-Pix Entertainment
1996, 97 minutes

review by Lee Peterson

A comedy-horror transvestite road movie (finally!), the feature debut by 34-year-old Spanish writer/director Alberto Sciamma is campy and just a little twisted, but sounds better in description than it really is. Candy (Melinda Clarke from Return of The Living Dead 3) is an underworld desperado lying low in a Mexican convent/gas station after
she and boyfriend Johnny (Jason Durr
from Young Soul Rebels) double-cross their bankrobbing pals and make off with a carload of money, landing Johnny on a prison
chain-gang.

Cut to: four years later, and a few days before Johnny's release. A meteorite crash-lands in Candy's soup, and when she takes a bite, she suddenly becomes the unwilling host to a 10-foot mutant killer tongue with a mind of its own (and a voice like Harvey Fierstein's!). Her blonde hair turns black, she sprouts a skintight black latex bodysuit, and when the Killer Tongue pops out of her surprised mouth, she looks for all the world like LaToya Jackson in a John Holmes movie. After unsuccessfully trying to dispose of the embarrassing (and hungry) appendage with a carving knife and a hot steam iron, Candy learns that there are advantages to having a carniverous mutant killer tongue, especially when people are trying to fuck with you.

Oh—did I mention that Candy's (3) pet French poodles also eat the meteorite-laced soup and metamorphose into (4) drag queens that look like they sashayed right out of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert? Anyway, Johnny escapes from the chain-gang, teams up with one of Candy's nun pals, Rita (Mapi Galan from The City of Lost Children), and sets off in pursuit of Candy and the money.

If Pedro Almadovar worked for Troma, his films would look a lot like this one. A British/Spanish co-production, Killer Tongue's genre roots are decidedly Americana Trash and Spaghetti Western with a very Queer sensibility. After screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Catalonian International Film Festival (where Clarke won the Best Actress prize) Killer Tongue played theatrically in Spain in 1996, then in the United Kingdom in 1998, and now makes its long-overdue arrival in the U.S.

A-Pix Entertainment's VHS release (a DVD was announced, then cancelled) is a fullscreen, muddy-looking transfer that is way over-zoomed, with the framing locked dead-center, with no attempt made to keep the action in the center of the screen. It looks like a widescreen image with the left and right thirds lopped neatly off. Consequently, actors' faces are often cut in half, and sometimes disappear altogether while the frame is filled with the walls and furniture. It's a shame, no--a crime that there won't be a widescreen DVD release, because the picturesque desert vistas (photographed by Denis Crossan, who did great work on I Know What You Did Last Summer) cry out for a 2.35:1 viewing. Unfortunately, it's this or nothing.

Horror fans looking for over-the-top gore fx will have to be very patient, as it takes awhile to kick into high gear, but there's enough grue in Killer Tongue to satisfy. Thankfully, Sciamma resisted the easy puns (no "tongue-in-cheek"; no "feeling a little tongue-tied?", that American schlock directors would be unable to resist). That right there is reason enough to recommend it.

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