While She Was Out: A Kim & Alec Bedtime Story

Once in while, lovers of so-bad-it's-good cinema stumble upon a surprise specimen so juicily awful that their hands will shake, an excited sheen of perspiration will grace their brow, and a curious Peter Lorre expression consumes their animated visage, while a high pitched wheezing might be slightly audible due to an elevated heartbeat. Yes, that's often my reaction when I discover something so objectionably awful to the senses as a film like this week's DVD release of While She Was Out starring Oscar winning actress Kim Basinger, Craig Sheffer and Lukas Haas. First let me point you to the poster above (I also included a Peter Lorre pic. I don't look like that), and please look at what Kim is clutching to her bosom as a blonde wisp of hair escapes her strategically placed druid hood, petulantly peering out at us with an evil side-eye. No, it's not a lunch box. It's a tool box. You see, the plot of While She Was Out is this: Della Myers, an abused and disrespected suburban housewife needs to run to the local shopping mall at what appears to be around 10PM on Christmas Eve. The film opens with an angry Craig Sheffer coming home, screaming at Kim Basinger that the house is messy while he manhandles her. Please see the trailer I was able to retrieve below. Also is the terrifying parking lot scene, credited as the electrifying turning point where Lukas Haas sounds strangely prebuscent as he brandishes a gun while calling a police officer his bitch.

Trailer

Electrifying Turning Point

The scene is so hammy, it was at this point I rolled up my sleeves. The shit's gonna get dirty. Recovering from this outburst, Della remembers she has to go to the mall to get wrapping paper. It is Christmas Eve, after all. Why she waited until that evening is apparently not anything worth mentioning. Meanwhile, the mall is fucking packed and we are witness to Della panicking and flailing around while she tries to find a parking spot. Wouldn't you know it, some motherfucker in a menacing looking Plymouth has taken up two spots? Finally finding a place to park her rig, Della, angry at the world (we are supposed to presume) writes a (gasp) note that reads something like "You jerk, taking up 2 spaces. How selfish can you be?" and puts it on the windshield. We are then subject to Della wandering aimlessly around the mall, ordering a coffee from a young lady who she takes the pains to state that Della is spelled with two L's only to discover that the young lady still managed to misspell Della. She then immediately runs into an old college or high school acquaintance who seems like any other self righteous suburban mom in a nice, though obvious wig. The director's commentary informs us that this interaction is supposedly devastating to the Basinger character, humiliating, in fact. I disagree, as the entire film is quite humiliating to one's intelligence, rather.

Anyhow, finally collecting wrapping paper in what appears to be the dollar store in the mall, Della's credit card is declined (but, wise girl, she only has one card!) and, thankfully, she manages to scrape up the cash--lord, life is just so tenuous sometimes! Getting to her car, it's immediately obvious that the parking lot is supposed to appear abandoned and the mysterious Plymouth blocks Della in---they didn't like that fucking nasty note she left. As she gets out of the car, we are introduced to the gang of miscreants, led by Haas, and apparently covering all the colors of the rainbow. There's Huey, the African American -- he doesn't like it when all the other not-black gang members continually drop the N word. There's Vingh, the Vietnamese gang member, who believes in spirits ("Ain't no gun gonna kill spirit gone bad," is in fact one of the lovely pieces of dialogue) and last, but not least, is Tomas, the Hispanic gang member with the heavy accent. Jumping out of their car, they berate Della, calling her a cunt and a bitch and something about sucking dick, etc, the usual epithets. Strangely, Della ("What game are you playing? I don't know this game") actually tells them to fuck off and pushes two of them. A police officer comes out of nowhere and licketysplit, before you know it, Haas shoots the cop in the head. And you only know this catastrophic piece will only get worse. Della tears off in her vehicle and the chase is on! Crashing her car into what appears to be a pile of lumber, Della grabs her trusty toolbox and heads for the hills with the Culture Club right on her heels. Chasing her through the woods, with Haas screaming Della over and over again in what sounds like a mimicry of Brando shouting Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire, the gang exchanges atrociously written dialogue concerning what type of perfume Basinger is wearing ("I think it's that number 5 shit, Chanel") and, wouldn't you know it, Haas can smell that she's bleeding and sense when one of his own is hurt. Thankfully, Della is not on her period as I'm sure he would have been able to smell that, too, as is always the case in films that try this hard to be grotesque and thrilling. One by one, Della uses a tool to pick off every minority until, alone with Haas, the only white gang member, we are treated to some extremely awkward scenery in which Basinger gets all sexual with Haas, using her other box, so to speak, as a tool before she kills him, with the assistance of a flare that looks like a glowstick. Since it was alluded that Basinger's housewife character has been taking classes in Mechanics, we are treated to Basinger skipping back to her vehicle impaled by a tree (though she was seemingly chased miles into the forest) where she fiddles with the battery and with a spark and a sizzle she backs that baby up and heads home to wrap some presents, badly singing some Christmas carols ("I'll Be Home For Christmas" of course) along the way. (I think "Blue Christmas" would have been more funny, but since I can't take credit for this awesome concept film....). The ending, of course, is predictable as all get out, considering she has discovered her primordial ferocity in the primeval woods so is now ready to defend herself from her comically abusive husband. Let Craig Sheffer's presence here be a lesson to all of you once successful actors---if you take a job in a poorly written television series (ahem, "One Tree Hill) it will affect your decision making skills to such an extent that you may very well end up in the stinky armpit of bad cinema. Urine Runs Through It (1992), was that the Brad Pitt/Craig Sheffer movie that got all that attention?

Yes, that's the plot to While She Was Out. I am not even fibbing one bit. Not only did it receive a theatrical release, but some people even gave it decent reviews! I don't think I've seen something so gloriously unintentionally bad since Showgirls (1995), in which there was such a convergence of hammy acting, dialogue, music, and a behind the scenes extra that takes the cake. I am writing this in between my slowly gestating film festival coverage because I felt the world needed to know about this stupefying specimen just begging to be loved and taken seriously. I attempted to find people commenting on the behind the scenes footage and am disappointed to have found little written. If you are reading this and happen to see the movie you have to watch the behind the scenes footage in which all the cast members, the director (Susan Montford, an Irish woman wearing costume jewelry and a crooked wig), and a producer that looks like gas station attendant, are all incessantly raving about how deep and serious this film is. The gas station attendant producer actually calls the first half of the film "gruelling" and that it is overall "electrifying." The real treat, however, is Basinger herself, who seems to have taken a mixture of prescription drugs directly before the behind the scene interview began. Several times she trails off, speaks loudly, doesn't complete her sentences before randomly changing the subject while her unfocused eyes look wide and vacant as she speaks about her chemistry with Haas as an actor. And speaking of Haas, he goes on and on about how much fun he had with the role, how challenging it was to be filming (in what the director referred to as the primeval feeling woods of Vancouver) with rocks and streams and steep inclines, and how much he appreciates portraying multifaceted characters. I wanted whoever the interviewer was to ask him what he though was multifaceted. And Basinger, of course, had the typical "I had to reach inside to such a deep place in myself" monologue about her abused housewife role, exclaiming how wondrous it was to reach inside and find the "ferociousness" of this woman ("I love that word!" she states, but in such a way that sounds like saying it gave her an orgasm). And, speaking of abused housewives and Kim Basinger, yup, you guessed it --- gas station mechanic producer man states in the director's commentary that he though Basinger was so good she must have been channeling her relationship with Alec Baldwin. Wow.

So, if you like trashy fun or just see something tragically wrong with Kim Basinger, watch this film. I actually am a Basinger fan and she looks extraordinary still, but she's acting like Sharon Stone right around the time she had that aneurysm. While she was in, she was a victim. While she was out, she was hunted! Oh lord, I love it! If I was pitching the concept: Della Myers -- Touched By a ToolBox. Or While She Was Out: A Lobotomy Tale or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Appear In Any Old Silly Moving Picture.