There were several instances while watching Pat Higgins's latest movie, "The Devil's Music", when I completely forgot that the film was anything less than the reality-style documentary it purports to be, so accurately does it mirror (and by implication, satirise) the conventions of that particular genre of tv rock expose. Cleverly, Higgins (who also wrote as well as directed the film) pitches the screenplay somewhere between parody and imitation; thus, this tale of the strange events surrounding rock singer Erika Spawn (played by Victoria Hopkins as a kind of female Marylin Manson spiced with a dash of Hazel O' Conner) is dribbled out via sound-bites from a slew of "talking head" interviewees composed of her former associates (a former manager, members of her band, and a smarmy marketing guy who ruins any mystique Spawn may have once possessed with his antiseptic talk of "unit shifting") and her voluble detractors — most notably an all too believable representative of a media "watchdog" association, not a million miles removed from that of the late Mary Whitehouse.
Early on the film plays simply as a smart parody of a typical music documentary. But clips of Erica's band performing on stage (their highly theatrical stage act falls somewhere between the one-time antics of Ozzy Osbourne and Slipknot) are inter-cut with ominous snippets of the interviewees, which hint that something strange and tragic has occurred since the controversial singer first sprang to fame. The film has a few comic moments at the expense of Melvin True (Geoffrey Sleight), the representative of the "Good Media Group", who is shown musing on one of Spawn's bigger hits, 'Body of a Whore'. "The lyrics can be interpreted on at least three different levels," he concedes. "The trouble is ... all three are utterly repugnant!" There is also an amusing parody of the youth television show "The Word", called (rather prosaically, but accurately) "After the Pub", as well as an on the button piss-take of British daytime tv's often depressingly trite blandness.
Perhaps the film's one false note initially comes with the depiction of Erika Spawn's arch nemisis, Robin Harris. With the best will in the world, the actor playing this former boy band member-turned-solo-artist, doesn't really have the looks to make his role as a heartthrob who specialises in vapid middle-of-the-road romantic pap, all that convincing; but even worse is the fact that the guy cannot sing in key to save his life! And there is no way this middle-aged, tubby guy would have got to number one with a sub-par euro-ballad like the terrible "Simple Words of Love".
Still, after introducing the main players and dropping dark hints about the eventual fate of Erika Spawn — and the effect her band's music may or may not have had on the public — Higgins plays the "Blair Witch" card and a sizeable chunk of the film is then dedicated to some backstage video footage, shot by members of Erika's band or by Erika herself. Most of this stuff at first seems to hint at the possible corruption of one of the band's young fans, a girl called Steph Reagan (a believable performance by Lucy Dunn). Steph's first awkward meeting with her heroine is caught on tape, and a weird dominating influence at first seems to be exerted over the young girl by the singer. Then the dynamic seems to shift and Steph and Erika become inseparable, much to the annoyance of the band's moody, egotistical bass player, Adele (Jess-Luisa Flynn). Weird things begin to happen when members of the band video tape Steph talking in her sleep and she utters the oddly chilling phrase "He has teeth in his throat!" When Steph, in a trance, stabs Erika live on stage in the middle of a performance (the band play on, thinking the blood is part of the act!) and the singer is laid up in hospital, all hell breaks out as the Media turn on the singer. Matters are not helped when two of Erika Spawn fans go on a shooting spree in a club, and the oh-so-sincere Robin Harris responds by calling for a national debate under the banner "All Our Futures".
The film takes an unexpected turn in the final half when Erika comes out of hospital convinced that Robin Harris is the Anti-Christ taking revenge for the fact that "Body of a Whore" knocked one of his simpering ballads off the Number One spot! Even more stangely ... it eventually starts to look as though she might be right! So did Harris brainwash Steph Reagan into stabbing Erika? (It emerges that she was a former fan of his boy band, "Angel Boys", and the only surviving member of that band paints a very different picture of Harris's personality from that of the singer's public image). The film plays with the paranoia and hysteria worked up by the media whenever popular culture is accused of fostering violence in society, while having fun with the idea of the devil as a hideously innocuous purveyor of anodyne pop drivel. So carefully is the logic of all this expounded on screen, along with a chilling mythology surrounding Erika Spawn and her alleged disappearance after the stabbing incident, that one really starts to get involved in the strange events depicted as though they were real events — a fitting tribute to Higgins's skill and imagination.
Higgins's previous low budget gore pictures, such as "Trash House" haven't quite always been able to make their ideas work in the context of cheap Digital Video indie film making, but "The Devil's Music" is a well acted, smartly judged piece of parody-cum-psychological horror at its best that downplays any explicit horror content at all in favour of hints and rumours; it is, of course, perfectly suited to the new DV medium. This one is well worth looking out for in the future.
