Movies That Suck: Bruiser (2000)

I can't express just how much it pains me to rag on a director whom I have tremendous respect for, such as the late Mr. George Romero. I loved the guy not only for his movies but also his unflinching independent spirit and determination to make them outside of the Hollywood system, which led to classics like the original Living Dead trilogy and Creepshow. To me, those movies feel less like theatrical releases meant to make money and more like stuff that he made for himself, with his friends. In that regard, they're akin to all of those no-budget, shot-on-video/digital flicks that you see everywhere now. The major difference, aside from Romero's movies actually being good (most of the time, anyway), is that they managed to accrue bigger budgets than those latter films could ever hope for, with backing from the kind of independent financiers that don't really exist anymore, and were also fortunate enough to be seen in theaters. However, as much as I love how he was always in there, pitching as hard as he could, I'd be lying if I said Romero's filmography is spotless. While I haven't seen all of his very early films (i.e. pre-Dawn of the Dead) by this point, I have seen The Crazies, which I didn't like at all, and Martin, which I thought, if nothing else, was fair and quite unique. I also don't think he made a truly good movie following his heyday in the late 70's and 80's, and I don't out-and-out love any of the films he made in the 2000's. Land of the Dead was okay, but a far cry from the greatness of the original trilogy; I couldn't stand Diary of the Dead, which I found to be horribly pretentious and misguided, with awful actors; and while I don't hate Survival of the Dead like most, it sucks that that ended up being his final film. 

 

That finally brings us to our topic today: Bruiser. I'm sure I first heard of it on the audio commentary for the original theatrical version of Dawn of the Dead in that four-disc Anchor Bay DVD set, with Romero, Christine Forrest, and Michael Felsher. While I didn't know what to make of the title, Forrest, who was still married to Romero at the time, used it as an example of how Romero could do much more than just blood and guts, if given the opportunity. After that, I didn't actually see anything of Bruiser until I came across the DVD, bundled with another movie (it might've been the remake of Dawn of the Dead) at Walmart some time afterward. Like the title, the cover (the one up above) was perplexing, with the blank, white face, with two tiny black holes for eyes, reminiscent of Michael Myers' mask, and a tagline that read, "Meet the new face of terror." And what little I'd heard about it by that point came from a certain horror podcast that I was a part of, with the hosts describing it as very boring and unremarkable. But, always needing to form my own opinion, I eventually bought the DVD for very cheap at McKay's in Chattanooga, in early 2012. After seeing it, I had to agree that there was very little about it that I liked, and after multiple viewings, it hasn't got much better. Rather than finding it boring, what I don't like about Bruiser is how it's such an utterly mean-spirited, downbeat, and vulgar movie. Few of the characters are all that likable, the visual style is unappealing, and, worst of all for me, it comes across as so blatant and pretentious in its attempt at darkly funny, social satire. Maybe I'm cheating a bit by posting it here as part of Schlocktober 2, as the technical filmmaking is fair enough and most of the actors do fair jobs with what they're given. But because everything else misses the mark so badly, and the whole thing is little more than 95 minutes of sheer unpleasantness for me, I think it deserves to be included.

Henry Creedlow's life sucks. His wife, Janine, is utterly contemptuous towards him; her little poodle annoys him to no end; his very successful friend, Jimmy Larson, invests some money for him, only for the return to come back insultingly low; and his boss, Milo Styles, the owner of a magazine called Bruiser, is a disgusting, reprehensible man who makes everyone who works for him feel like trash. Though meek and downtrodden, Henry often has very dark fantasies, sometimes about committing suicide, and other times about violently killing those who walk all over him. During a company pool party at their house, Milo's wife, Rosie, makes a blank mask out of a plaster mold of Henry's face and tells him to give it an identity by painting it, but Henry can't think of anything. Later, he sees Janine playing with Milo's... "yardstick" at the bar, and when he confronts her about it on the way home, she not only doesn't deny it but says that his not doing anything is another example of how weak-willed and pathetic she finds him, and that he's going nowhere. Left at home by himself that night, Henry drinks heavily and, the next morning, goes through his same old morning routine... until he looks in the mirror and sees that his face has been replaced by the white, feature-less mask Rosie made. When Katie Saldano, their once-a-week maid, shows up and begins stealing valuable items from the house, as well as money from his wallet, he confronts her and fatally hits her with the bag. As he hides the body, Janine returns home and he overhears her planning to leave him for someone else. Following her to the Bruiser office, Henry learns that the other man is none other than Milo. Before he can kill them both, Rosie catches them having sex in the conference room and photographs them. While Milo chases after her, Henry confronts and murders Janine, then manages to elude the police. Heading back home, he learns that Jimmy has been secretly stealing money from him, and with that, Henry decides he's had enough. He then embarks on a revenge spree against all those who have ruined his life.

Despite what I may personally think of it, Bruiser is a notable film in the context of George Romero's career, for two reasons. It's the first one he made in Canada, where he would live and work for the rest of his life, becoming an official Canadian citizen in 2009. More significantly, it was his first feature film after a long absence (eight years, to be exact; although it was released in 1993, The Dark Half was filmed in 1990 and into 1991), with the exception being the Japanese commercial for Resident Evil 2 in 1998. Speaking of which, this was also not long after he came close to directing the first Resident Evil movie, only for his screenplay ideas to be rejected. As a result, I've read some theories that the film's nasty, vitriolic nature was possibly a projection of the anger and frustration that Romero himself possibly felt about the state of his career and personal life at the time, specifically his struggles to stay independent and keep his own identity from being nearly swallowed up by the studio system. His brief dealings with it, specifically in the guise of Orion Pictures, who mishandled the production and release of both Monkey Shines and The Dark Half, clearly left a bad taste in his mouth and are likely why he dropped off the filmmaking map for a while afterward. And I'm sure the Resident Evil fiasco only exacerbated his contempt for the system. This is all conjecture, mind you, as Romero himself described the filming of Bruiser as enjoyable and liberating. But if that is why the movie is what it is, then I can understand, and I also agree with writer Scooter McCrae, who notes in his article on the film in the Fangoria Legends issue about Romero, that it's a good thing he had a creative way to vent any anger he may have had. But, it also makes the movie so unpleasant to sit through.

If nothing else, the motives for Henry Creedlow's (Jason Flemyng) actions are absolutely clear and understandable. I don't condone murder, mind you (although, all of the people who die here are so loathsome that they did have it coming), but I do get why he does it, After years of being used and abused in both his personal and professional life, he decides enough is enough and enacts his frequent, often homicidal fantasies on everyone who's made him feel like garbage. In the process, he gradually reclaims his identity, as the white, feature-less mask that has suddenly become his face gets its own, personal design, first by being splattered with blood on its upper, left side, then when he paints it flesh-colored, and later adds lurid colors on top of that. Henry's situation is also relatable. Admit it, we've all felt like we wanted to explode and beat the living hell out of someone who's made us angry or screwed us over, often to the point of death. Some may see Henry's fantasies about doing so as evidence of an already deranged mind, but I see it as somebody who just wishes he had the gumption to stand up for himself. 

I used to think that the switchover to Henry's homicidal nature when he wakes up the morning after that first, particularly bad day, to find that his face is blank, comes about rather suddenly, as his first murder, that of their maid, Katie Saldano, feels unexpected and impulsive. At first, I felt that you could chalk it up to it simply being the straw that breaks the camel's back when he catches Katie stealing from him, as well as insulting him under her breath in Spanish, unaware that he knows what she's saying. He even says, after he whacks her, "It's just,

you made me so angry." But, upon re-watching the movie, I've realized I was quite wrong. Up to that point, he thinks he's dreaming, as he did when he first saw himself in the mirror and put his clothes on. It's only after he's whacked Katie that he realizes it's real, even saying as much. He then tries to dispose of the body, only for Janine to come home, and he hides just out of sight, when he overhears her plans to leave him. That's what really sends Henry down this path of revenge, as he discovers Janine's affair with Milo and, before he kills her, tells her that he's developing a

taste for murder. He goes back to his house to, again, try to dispose of Katie's body, when Detectives McClearly and Rakowski show up to tell him of his wife's death. Loading a gun, he at first seems ready to shoot it out with them, then prepares to kill himself, when he hears McClearly say that he suspects Rosie of murdering Janine. Not wanting her, one of the few decent people in his life, to be arrested for something she didn't do, and then learning that Jimmy has been stealing money from him, that's when Henry truly

decides enough is enough. He creates a fake crime scene in the house, making it seem as though he killed himself, then disposes of Katie's body by dumping her in the river, calls her agency in order to stop them from searching for her for the time being, and embarks on the rest of his killing spree. 

As much of a bloodlust as he now has, Henry doesn't become a complete lunatic. He spares the life of Tom Burtram, one of his co-workers, after he witnesses Janine's murder, despite knowing Tom could rat him out to the police. Henry, in fact, follows Tom home after he's been questioned but, when he overhears that he not only didn't sell him out but now considers him a friend, Henry leaves his property without shooting him. Moreover, he later calls into the popular radio program, The Larry Case Show, and not only tells them who he is and what he's done, but makes sure

that the media and everyone else knows Tom had nothing to do with Janine's murder. He also does the same for Rosie, whom he called earlier when the police showed up at her and Milo's house, trying to warn her that they suspect her. And in the end, despite his being frustrated over how she's continued to live with Milo despite what a scumbag he is, especially when she admits that she's known of the affair for a while, Henry goes to Milo's costume party not only to get revenge on him but to release Rosie.

Henry's "mask" is definitely the film's most memorable image, as well as the heart of its main theme. It is a striking and unsettling image, even more so when he paints it in various ways over the course of the movie. During the climax at the costume party, he's wearing an actual mask to cover up his painted "face," which goes well with the cape and hat he wears, giving him a distinctive Phantom of the Opera feel. More importantly, it represents how he's been stripped of his identity by everyone around him and, as he takes his life back, he's painting on the look that

he couldn't think of when Rosie first tasked him with it. How exactly it went from just a mask that she made from a mold to his actual face is never explained, and was something I pondered for a while. I thought maybe it was all in his head, that the revelation of Janine's affair and her pure contempt for him caused a fantasy to take permanent hold. That initially seemed to fit as, while people acknowledge that he looks different, they don't note the mask itself at first, suggesting they might be commenting on an anger and rage they haven't seen in him before. And

there's a moment when, while he's talking to Tom after he's killed Janine, Henry sees in the mirror that a chunk of the mask over his right eye has disappeared. But then, when he looks in another mirror, it's completely white again, further suggesting that this change is all in his mind. However, the police see the "mask" on the surveillance footage of him at the Bruiser offices, and when Rosie finally sees him, she says, "That's not a mold I made," to which he retorts, "Nope. It's all me." In other words, he really did lose 

his face, has been rebuilding it, and literally gets it back at the end, after he's killed Milo. This is a notion I really don't like because it makes the core theme, which is already shoved in your face repeatedly, way too literal. But you know what's really frustrating? At the end of the movie, after everything he's done, Henry is once again working for a loathsome employer, and after he's yelled at and insulted, the last shot is him turning around to face his boss, revealing that the blank mask is back. This seems to suggest

that he now has to do it all over again (in the DVD scene index, the scene is titled, "The Cycle Continues") and that his taking a stand before was all for nothing. He does seem to have more guts now, given how he talks back to the boss, but it still feels like it's saying that not much was accomplished. Maybe that's the point, that you always have to fight to keep your identity, but I think it begs the question, "Is this going to happen every time somebody acts like a dick to him?" If so, there are

going to be a lot of dead bodies lying around by the end of his life! I think it would've been more effective had it been a completely different person deciding not to take this kind of crap anymore, possibly inspired by Henry's story (the same way Henry was possibly inspired by a caller on The Larry Case Show, which I'll get into later).

A major reason why I find this film so unpleasant to watch is how utterly unlikable and contemptible nearly every character other than Henry is, and no one is more repulsive than his boss, Milo Styles (Peter Stormare). Right from his introduction, you know this guy is a sleazy, vulgar, and despicable excuse for a human being, one who treats his employees and everyone around him, including his own wife, Rosie, like crap, humiliating them out in the open for all to see. Case in point, he flat-out insults Henry and his choice of cover model for Bruiser's next issue, telling him, "Your taste is in your ass," then rubs the photo on his butt, calling the woman a "fucking skunk" and tosses it at Henry, saying, "You want her? Keep her?" He makes similarly nasty comments about the other losers, and even when a winner is picked, he has to insult her, too, outing himself as a racist, as he makes comments about how she's a mixture of Hispanic and Korean, saying, "She's a spick-nic? Or a pic-nic! I don't care! Can you imagine this face on a 'Be Like Me' cover, among all the white bread in the fuckin' supermarket?!" At the pool party which he and Rosie host for everyone, he continues to act like an obnoxious sleazeball, pushing one guy into the pool, yelling, "It's a fucking pool party! No hard feelings, eh?!", and calling Tom a "fucker" behind his back right after he tells him how to get with the winning model. When Janine asks why he has to fuck with people all the time, Milo says, "Because there's nothing else you can do with them. Can you look at them? Look at them. Fuckin' pathetic crowd. I don't even know half of them. Only thing I need to know... is that they're busy, and what's keepin' them busy is me: Milo Styles." This attitude is reinforced shortly before his death near the end. After Milo gets through banging a woman in a handicap porta-potty, saying he always insists that they bring one to events like these because it's roomy enough for such a thing, Henry calls him the lowest of the low, adding, "We all mean nothing to you." To that, Milo says, "That's right, you mean nothing to me. You know why? Because you are fucking nothing. An ant, a fucking ant, with no mind and small balls. That's what you all are, and I'm a fucking anteater!" 

Not only does Milo cheat on Rosie with Janine (he has no shame in doing it at the party, as he has her jerk him off), but he also humiliates her at every opportunity. During his first scene at the office, Milo announces that Rosie, who's a photographer, will be the one in charge of shooting the cover model from now on. When everyone applauds and Rosie demurs that it won't actually be her on the cover, he comments, "Oh, you oughta be, babe! You'd knock 'em dead!", then makes a face suggesting that would really happen. Even worse, at the party, when 

someone compliments him on the house, Milo says, very loudly so Rosie can hear, "She thinks I'm gonna give it up. Not a fuckin' inch of it, Rosie! I'd rather chop an inch off my dick!" When Rosie catches and photographs Milo and Janine doing it at the Bruiser offices, he has the gall, as he's chasing after her, to go, "Oh, come on! You spying on me? That's beneath you, honey." He also accuses her of trying to ruin him, and that what she saw was a private moment. The only decent thing he does is defend Rosie when 

she becomes a suspect in Janine's murder, saying she would never do that to anybody. But even then, he acts like an ass about it, not letting Rosie talk when Detective McCleary is trying to get a statement from her, and screaming at her when she tells him to shut up. Plus, again, he's probably only defending her in order to save face for himself. Fittingly, when he gets his comeuppance, it's literally right in the balls, as well as the head (his actual head, that is).

Almost as contemptible as Milo is Henry's bitch of a wife, Janine (Nina Garbiras). Like Milo, you know from the start that she's not a good person, given how she talks to Henry when he unintentionally wakes her up and completely ignores his pleas to call away her annoying little fart of a poodle while he's trying to eat breakfast (the dog literally almost kills him, as she knows how to push a button which activates the table-saw he's forced to eat on); instead, she just lies in bed, smoking a cigarette. This perceived contempt is all but confirmed at the pool party, when she strokes Milo at the bar. When Henry confronts her with it on their drive home, Janine, who's already drunk and venomous, unloads on him: "You noticed. Thank God, you're not brain-dead... You hear about women who fuck their way to the top. Me? I have been fucking my way to the bottom... When I first met you, I thought you were on the fast track. Man, was I wrong. You swallow all your emotions and eat whatever shit is served up... You saw me jerking a guy off, for Christ's sake! Did you slug him? No! Did you slug me? No!" She then adds, "I want to go someplace, Henry. You... are going no place. You're nothing. Nobody." And when they get back home, she makes him get out of the car and tells him not to wait up, before insulting him again and driving off into the night. After Henry kills Katie the next day and hides the body, Janine comes back home and badmouths him some more, unaware that he's hiding nearby. She also calls Milo, unknowingly letting Henry know that she's planning to go off with him. This tears it for him, as he follows her to the Bruiser office, where she has sex with Milo in the conference room. Henry corners her while Milo runs after Rosie, and she remains completely unrepentant, only noting how he seems to have lost his mind, as well as his look. This leads into him murdering her, in a manner that throws one of her last insults towards him back at her.

The first time I watched the movie and saw Henry's friend, Jimmy Larson (Andrew Tarbet), or Jimbo, I found myself wondering why he seemed so familiar. Then, it suddenly hit me: it was Deputy Booker from The Famous Jett Jackson, this Disney Channel show I watched a lot when I was in middle school. However, the character Tarbet plays here is the exact opposite of the bumbling but likable deputy sheriff of Wilstead, North Carolina. At first, Jimmy seems like a decent enough guy, at least towards Henry. He does have some rather ugly aspects to his personality (one of his first lines, while showing his new car off to Henry, is, "If I could fuck a car, I'd never leave my garage,"), such as how he doesn't remember his secretary's name, and is rather flippant and unsympathetic about a man who seemingly shot himself on The Larry Case Show that morning. But, he promises to take care of Henry's money problems and, when he hears of Janine's death, repeatedly calls him and sounds genuinely concerned for him. However, early on, Jimmy makes a suspicious comment about an unexpectedly low return on an investment he handled for Henry: "You make it sound like I short-changed you." That turns out to be foreshadowing, as Henry later discovers that Jimmy has been stealing money from his bank accounts and mutual funds. He confronts him about it at the local tennis club and Jimmy says it was Janine's idea to steal the money, suggesting she was having an affair with him too, and that he took $30,000, while she kept the rest of it. He tries to make things even by writing Henry a check for all the money he's been cheated out of, but Henry asks him how he could do this after they've been friends for ten years, and also makes it clear that he's not interested in the money. After making miserable excuses like, "I fucked up," Jimmy resorts to victim-blaming, saying it's Henry's fault for not noticing sooner. It turns out that, in the end, the only good bit of advice he gave Henry was to shoot someone other than himself when he got really angry. Jimmy pulls a gun out of his briefcase and shoots at Henry, but he fires back, hitting him in the chest. Like Katie, he then dumps his body, and his new car, in the river.

One of the few characters who's always good to Henry and never betrays him is Milo's wife, Rosie (Leslie Hope). Besides her significance in that she creates the mask that later becomes Henry's real face, encouraging him to paint it in some manner that will allow him to stand out, she knows and is quite friendly with him, given how they both work at Bruiser. It's very clear that there's both mutual respect, as Henry picks his choice for Bruiser's September cover model based on her recommendation, and an attraction between them. Henry even tries to tell her early on what she means to him, but Milo interrupts him. Speaking of which, Rosie knows all too well what a piece of crap her husband is, having suspected his affair for a long time, and is planning on leaving him. She decides to get proof of his infidelity to help her case and takes a picture of him and Janine having sex in the Bruiser conference room (it's suggested by the looks she gives Janine at the pool party that Rosie knew she was Milo's lover). Things get complicated for her, though, when Janine is murdered shortly afterward and Rosie becomes a suspect. Henry tries to help her, eventually calling in to The Larry Case Show and clearing her name by admitting that he's the killer. He also intends to "finalize" her divorce at the costume party where the climax is set. 

During the third act, when Henry shows up at her house, saying that he has an "account to settle," Rosie admits she knew about the affair for a while and yet, continued to live with Milo. Henry then becomes really frustrated with her for this, but she says it's not as simple as murdering someone. She tells him, "I can understand what you did. I can't forgive it, and I can't forget it, but I can understand it. I know what it's like. I know what it's like to feel so betrayed" Henry, in turn, tells her, "If you let them betray you, you're betraying yourself," adding that that's exactly what

she'll be doing if she continues to stay with Milo. Rosie makes it clear that she herself thinks she's nothing, which Henry disagrees with, and that makes her realize that he does have feelings for her and tries to tell her of them in the office. After he makes the call to The Larry Case Show where he confesses to everything, Rosie follows him to Milo's party, trailed by Detective McCleary, and tries to keep him from killing Milo, insisting that there are other ways to get him out of their lives. She also says that any chance the two of them had of being together was destroyed

when she found he was a murderer. Still, she tries to convince him to leave with her, but Henry, knowing she's only doing this to save Milo, refuses, and also tells her to instead do what everyone else does and take advantage of the situation. In the end, after he's killed Milo, she takes Henry's advice and helps him to escape. She puts on the Phantom of the Opera-like costume he was wearing before, as well as her own mask, which is also blank like his once was, and proclaims to be the murderer. Between this, and so 

many other partygoers, who are also wearing similar masks, getting in on it and claiming to be the killer, Henry escapes into the night. Afterward, when McCleary asks her why she helped him, Rosie feigns total ignorance, gives him Henry's mask, and walks off as well.

It's always nice to see Tom Atkins and, fortunately, he's likable and charismatic enough here as Detective McCleary, the lead investigator of Henry's killing spree. While his presence still isn't enough to make me like the movie, especially since he doesn't show up until 45 minutes in and isn't in it that much anyway, it is fun to watch him play an old-fashioned, hard-nosed detective, one who uses terms like "dame" and "a cup of Joe," as if we're in the 40's. As expected, Atkins does bring in the sense of coolness and dry wit that made him so beloved in the genre. Outside the Bruiser office building following Janine's death, when Milo gets indignant with him when he asks what happened, McCleary says, "Aside from the obvious." Then, when he breaks it to Milo that it's believed Janine was murdered rather than killed herself, Milo tries to get him to talk to some of the bystanders, but McCleary insists, "I'd rather talk to you." Following that, one of the officers tosses some of Janine's discarded clothing down from the window (McCleary snarks, "Oh, that was good! See if you can mess up the crime scene some more,"), and McClearly says, "I'm embarrassed to ask this, sir, but... do you recognize either one of those garments?" Speaking of which, what's really awesome is how McClearly doesn't take any crap from Milo. As he questions him, he simply lets him say what he wants and doesn't lose his patience with him, even when Milo protests when McClearly suggests Rosie may be the killer. Two of my favorite moments and lines from McClearly come later on, when he talks with Milo and Rosie at their home. When Milo suggests that McClearly, in his job, has probably been "salaming around on the side," the detective, barely containing his contempt for him, says, "No. Of course, if I had cutie-pies hanging all over me the way you do..." He also makes it clear that he's disgusted with his infidelity, which Milo is also indignant about. But better than that is when Milo keeps interrupting Rosie while McClearly is questioning her and she yells at him to shut up. Milo starts to scream at her for this and McClearly exclaims, "Styles! The lady just asked you to shut the fuck up!", which is just so badass. 

Throughout the movie, McClearly has a nice back and forth with his partner, Detective Rakowski (Jonathan Higgins), particularly over who the killer is. Initially, McClearly does mistakenly think it's Rosie, while Rakowski is sure that, if nothing else, Janine was not killed by another woman. McClearly goes so far as to bet money on it, saying, "The dame did it!", while Rakowski insists, "No, the dame did not do it." Even when they're looking at security camera footage of Henry at the Bruiser offices, McClearly argues that it could still be a "dame," especially since he knows

Rosie makes those kinds of masks. Then, when another detective, Fadush, jokes that their only "witness" as to what happened at the Creedlow house, which they found shot up upon exercising a search warrant, is Janine's little poodle, Rakowski tells McClearly to read her rights. And he does: "You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, Fadush will finance your attorney." I especially love McClearly for pointing out how bizarre and disgusting the climactic costume party is, 

asking, "What the fuck is wrong with you people?!"  In any case, when he and everyone else learn that Rosie is innocent, he and Rakowski trail her to the party, hoping to catch Henry before he can kill Milo. They come close a few times, but Henry disappears into the crowd when Rosie gives him the opportunity to escape. Regardless, McClearly is determined to hunt Henry down, wherever he is. He also talks to Rosie, getting no answer as to why she helped Henry escape, and asks her to give him a call if she ever finds Henry before he can. Though, he likely knows that will probably never happen.

One other noteworthy character is another of Henry's coworkers who's actually decent to him, Tom Burtram (Jeff Monahan). Even though they are friendly enough, to the point where they make private small-talk, they barely know each other. But, even so, there is something of a kinship between them, as they share a dislike for Milo (when he's going on about how he only wants people with "balls" to work for him, Tom whispers to Henry, "Show any balls around here, you get a pink slip,"), and are both trotted on by him at the office. Tom later gets dumped on by Milo at the party when he shows an interest in the model chosen for September's cover, as Milo tells him to get to it with her immediately, as she'll be "everybody's girl" by the time the magazine hits the stands. He then stumbles across the aftermath of Janine's murder and, while Henry does threaten him not to say anything to the police, he also gives Tom some advice, telling him not to be like him and take any more crap. Tom gives Henry his word that he won't say anything and he keeps it, even when he's brought in for questioning as a potential suspect. Seeing the police taking him home afterward, Henry follows Tom. He spies on him and that model while they're in the hot tub, with the model finding that Tom's too distracted to enjoy the blow-job she's trying to give him. He tells her that, because he's a murder suspect, he's decided to get out of town while the getting's good. He also says he knows who the killer is but doesn't name Henry, and also says he didn't rat him out to the cops. Moreover, he says, "I barely know him. In the end, he might turn out to be the best friend I ever had." Hearing this, Henry spares his life, and when he later calls The Larry Case Show, he makes it known that, like Rosie, Tom is completely innocent. In any case, Tom is never seen again after that scene, suggesting he did get out of town. He also leaves the model behind, despite her thinking he'd want her to come with him, protesting that she can't because she's going to be on Bruiser's cover. He keeps telling her that he didn't ask her, but doesn't hear a word he says.

Bruiser's look is something else that makes it personally unpleasant for me to watch. Like all of George Romero's films after the Millennium, it was filmed in Canada, specifically Toronto, where Romero had relocated (as well as Waterloo), and, while it's never specified, is also possibly where the movie is set. While I think it has gotten better since, during this time, films shot up there, especially those with small budgets, tended to have a bland, generic look to them, and that's definitely true here. It looks

like a TV movie, and a rather murky one, at that. While both the nighttime and daytime exterior scenes look okay (fortunately, the latter are often nice and sunny, rather than gray, overcast, and depressing, as it can get in Canada), the interiors are often filmed in a dark, kind of ugly manner, with highlights of a nasty, amber-brown color. The scene at the pool party also has this same murky look and feel, both inside and outside the mansion, but I guess the sort of seedy feel it gives off does fit well with Milo's scummy character. And that's another thing: the movie's color

palette is very desaturated, and it feels like there's a filter of white drabness to it all, especially in most of the interiors. Again, I get that it feeds into the mood that Romero was going for, but it doesn't make for a fun viewing experience. 

Now, that's not to say that there's nothing to compliment here in terms of technical filmmaking, because there is. The movie opens with a stylish, quickly-edited series of close-ups showing Henry going through his morning routine: doing pushups while listening to the radio via headphones, taking a shower, putting on deodorant, blow-drying his hair, brushing his teeth, shaving, etc. Also, during the first act, the transitions into Henry's fantasies about killing himself and then murdering those who push him 

around are nicely seamless (unfortunately, the transitions back to reality give it away too early, as they're overdone and make use of cheap-looking digital work). There are some okay examples of camerawork, too, like shots that are sustained longer than you would expect (such as in the foyer, when Milo comes down the stairs to speak with McClearly), and a nice moment where, when Henry leaves the garage to follow Janine, the camera pans to an almost black close-up of his car's back window when he gets into the driver's seat. It stays on that as 

he starts the engine and pulls out of the garage, with him and the car's interiors being illuminated by the daylight as he does. And, as much as I bashed on the overall look, there are some moments that are nicely shot, some of which accent how well Henry's white face comes off in certain lighting, like the bluish lighting in the Bruiser offices when he discovers that Tom witnessed him killing Janine. Also, when Henry confronts Jimmy at the tennis club, it's shot with a nice use of light and shadow, and the same goes for moments during the climax, such as when McClearly closes in on Henry in the backstage area.

By the start of the movie, Henry and Janine's large, upper middle-class house is being remodeled, which exacerbates the unpleasant mood, given how the place looks with all that plastic hanging up on the inside, one sheet of which separates the bedroom from other parts of the house. While it and the bathroom look okay, the combined living area and kitchen look really off-putting in how they're half-finished, with more plastic sheeting, paints and brushes, and shelves housing other such tools. What's more, Henry is

forced to eat his bowl of cereal on a table with a saw built into it, which Janine's little poodle has learned how to activate. His feeling of being so utterly middle class is emphasized all the more by how he doesn't even drive his own car to the train he uses to head into the city (which is not a monorail but a more old-fashioned type of train), but rather has Jimmy drive him there in his new, fancy car. The interiors of Bruiser's main offices come off as really oppressive, with the marble aesthetic and bland paint scheme, and

not to mention tacky, with the neon sign in the main lobby being a vivid red that gives off an ugly pinkish light on the wall, and a portrait of a woman in a sensuous pose hanging in the hall leading to the conference room. Said conference room is about as soul-sucking in its look as you would expect, and there are metal shutters that can be activated to close it off from the rest of the building, which Milo and Janine use when they have sex there. Milo's mansion is a very posh place: a large, three-story house with a great pool area, complete with a bar and large patio,

statues and fountains on the grounds near the front gate, and a garden near a pool-house where Rosie seemingly does her artwork, with the garden containing the masks she's done in the past. On the mansion's inside, it has a large, elegant foyer, a home gym that Milo uses, a marble area with an indoor pool fed by a constant stream of water, and an incredible-looking living area, with French windows, fancy pottery and glassware, good-looking furniture, and such. And we get some other looks at the rich, high-

class life when we see the tennis club that Jimmy frequents, with a big interior court and a posh restaurant (which, as you can see, is also nauseatingly white), and Tom's home. We never see the latter's interiors, and he doesn't live in quite as much luxury as Milo, but it is still a fairly nice place, with a front gate and jacuzzi.

We do, however, definitely get into the lower-class and seedier sides of this setting. When Henry disposes of Katie's body, he makes a call from the waterfront (from a very randomly-placed payphone), amid numerous big cargo containers and equipment like big truck tires, wooden crates, and the like. And when he dumps her into the river, we see the city skyline in the background. We also get a look at the police precinct and the kind of seedy downtown area it's located in, with graffiti here and there. But the

scummiest place, by far, is the setting for the climactic costume, which is down in the ghetto, in some old warehouse (it might actually be an old slaughterhouse, given some of the "decorations") that's been remade to look like a demonic-looking theater. The main area, which everyone reaches by walking through some creepy tunnels, is basically an underground concert venue, with spotlights and lasers going every which way, as the band The Misfits plays on the stage (Romero directed one of their music videos and asked that they appear here in exchange).

There are nauseating touches like a waitress serving drinks and food on a platter with plastic skulls as cups, drinks being siphoned into cups using an IV-tube, and a punch bowl full of fake eyeballs and plastic dead babies, and a platter with food made to look like severed fingers. There's also a backstage-like area with something akin to a freight elevator, rafters like those of a theater, a spot in the ceiling where people are lowered down in harnesses while dressed in leather, and the DJ booth, where Henry activates the laser he uses to kill Milo.

The bizarre costumes make this sequence feel even more surreal and nightmarish than it already is. You see sights such as a woman whose costume is a face on her torso, with a pair of large glasses for the eyes in place of her boobs (she comments, "I wanted contacts but they didn't have my size,"), which also light up, a bow-tie around her crotch, and a big top hat and cane; another woman wearing what looks like a birdcage on her head; a glimpse of a guy wearing a diaper; another guy dressed up as a jester, with blue

face-paint (Boyd Banks, who had a role in Jason X around this time, and would go on to appear in both the remake of Dawn of the Dead and Land of the Dead; incidentally, another Jason X actor, Peter Mensah, appears a bouncer); Milo dressed up in a red, Latino Lothario-type of shirt and, fittingly, with a devil horn sticking out of one side of his forehead; a woman who's practically naked, and has a real mustache to top it off; the winning model for Bruiser dressed up as a geisha (she overhears Milo planning to replace her as the September cover model with the 

mustached girl and is not happy about it); some leather-clad dancers who constantly have to fend off perverts; a person who's holding a snake; and so many others. All of this makes for such a weird as hell scene that Henry is able to walk around in his Phantom of the Opera costume without drawing much attention. Not surprisingly, one of Milo's wealthy friends isn't too keen on taking his family inside, but when he's told that Milo wants the names of everybody who doesn't attend, he opts to not risk offending him. 

Right from the beginning, with Night of the Living Dead, George Romero became known for often injecting political and social commentary into his films, and for the most part, it was something else that his fans loved about him. But, as he got older, it felt like he forgot about making his films entertaining, first and foremost, and only cared about the commentary itself. It got to the point where it felt like you were being preached to, making Romero come off as a pretentious and, in some ways, ignorant old 

man. Now, as much as I may not like such an approach, I'm not going to automatically dislike something just because it feels pretentious, mainly because that would be very hypocritical of me. I can admit that some of my personal favorite filmmakers, such as Christopher Nolan and David Cronenberg, have a tendency to veer way off into self-indulgence. What matters to me is if they entertain me or, at the very least, keep me interested enough to where I can deal with the pretentiousness, and Bruiser, 

which seemed to be the start of Romero's habit of bluntly whacking you over the head with what he's trying to say, doesn't. Obviously, the movie's theme is that of identity in the modern world, how we define ourselves, and how it can be both hard to obtain and easily taken away, especially when we do it through what we own materially... and boy, does Romero repeatedly shove that idea down your throat. There are so many lines of dialogue that allude to this: Henry raving at Janine about how he gave her everything and she took his identity, Rosie asking 

him if he can make others see him when she tells him to paint his mask, his comment that he's always been invisible, and on and on. While I do kind of like the idea of Henry slowly creating his own persona and identity as the film goes on by decorating his face with flesh-color makeup and then various, lurid colors, as I said earlier, the idea of his face actually becoming a blank mask in reality makes the main theme far more literal than I feel it should be. But I think what really got me is the moment where, as he makes himself up, Henry recites, "The man had

gone to market, to buy a diamond ring. The man who never noticed, that he was not a king. He choose the brightest sparkle, a diamond made of glass. The setting bright and gold, was crafted out of brass. The man spent all his money, the jeweler was a cheat. He told the man that royals, wore diamonds on their feet. The man went proudly walking, inside his shoe the ring. And no one ever told him, that he was not a king." By that point, I was so bored and irritated that I rolled my eyes and thought, "Romero, cut me a break."

It's especially frustrating because Romero perfectly alludes to the film's main theme early on, and again later. As the opening credits roll while Henry goes through his morning routine, he listens to The Larry Case Show, when a guy calls in and talks to the asshole titular host, saying he wants to kill himself, that Larry himself wouldn't care, and mentions how he lost the house he inherited from his father to the bank. He then says, "A guy spends his life working, paying what he owes, doing what he's supposed to do,

can't leave his house to his only kid. What kind of mark has he made? You shovel shit all your life, and you don't even leave a mark? It's like you shouldn't bother. It's like you've never been here at all." Then there's a gunshot. The man just followed through on his threat of suicide... which, as he said, doesn't affect Larry whatsoever. As this is going on, we see that Henry knows how the guy feels, as he has his first fantasy, about killing himself. Later, when Henry is going through his routine the morning after he learns

of Janine's infidelity, somebody calls in to the show and says the suicide did make an impression, that for the first time in his life, the man has been noticed. Then, the caller reveals himself to be that same person, having just pretended to shoot himself, and raves, "I'm risen from the dead, and this time around, I'm not taking any shit from rat bastards like you. You treat us like garbage. Like we're nothing. Like we're not even here. Well, you can't turn a man into nothing. You try, you're the one that's gonna pay." All of this is heard while Henry sees his now blank face and 

begins to embark on his murderous quest to retrieve his identity. And by the end of the movie, he, like the guy on the radio, has made his mark, as he becomes known to the media, with the shot of his white face from the Bruiser surveillance camera on the front page of the newspaper, and then calls in to Larry Case, admits who he is, what he's done, and that there's going to be one more death that night. He's made such a mark, in fact, that there are people at the costume party wearing masks like his, and they unknowingly aid Rosie in helping him escape from McClearly. Those two parallels were so perfect that it wasn't necessary for Romero to reinforce the theme any further.

The movie does go for some humor, although it's often very, very black humor, such as the very flippant way that Larry Case himself, as well as the various people whom Henry tries to talk to about it, react to the guy seemingly killing himself live on the radio, and how Janine's poodle activates the table saw when Henry is eating a bowl of cereal on it. As violent as some of his fantasies are, the one where he thinks about killing Janine does have a humorous edge to it in how he just suddenly says, "Fuck you,"

grabs an axe, and puts it through the car's windshield when she drives towards him. The humor becomes even darker when Henry, after killing Katie, has to hide, along with her body, when Janine comes home. He also has to deal with the poodle, who's barking and growling at him, threatening to potentially expose him. He lures her over to him with a piece of meat from the refrigerator and, amazingly, doesn't kill the annoying little shit but quiets her until Janine leaves. He leaves her unharmed in the garage with the steak. 

And Henry does make quips when he kills someone, like when he tells Janine, "Now, I may be a loser, but I know exactly what to do with an extension cord!", before hanging her outside the Bruiser office windows, and, as he pushes Jimmy's car into the river, with his body in the front seat, "Some things are worth it. Best money I ever spent," though those are mainly darkly ironic, as he throws stuff they said to him before back in their faces. There's a lot of raunchy humor too, mostly from what a perverted,

sex-obsessed pig Milo is (the way he gets aggravated with McClearly's questioning while he's standing out in the street in his underwear, calling out how it's obvious what was going on, is genuinely funny), as well as when the Bruiser model complains about how she can't get Tom excited enough to pleasure him. And there is some humor in how utterly bizarre and filled with deviancy the costume party is, like the one female dancer who constantly has to fight off perverts.

Many remember Romero as a master of truly gruesome horror but, if you think about it, outside of his living dead series, his films typically weren't that gory, and that goes for Bruiser. It's a violent movie, for sure, but the murders are almost completely bloodless. In fact, the first three "deaths" are actually Henry's fantasies, and the first, where he shoots himself through the bottom of his chin, is probably the bloodiest, with the splatter on the wall behind him. The second is him fantasizing about beating up

and tackling a woman who cut in line ahead of him while getting on the train, placing her head on the track. He proceeds to beat up her husband when he jumps him, as her head is crushed by the train. You hear a nasty crunch but don't see anything, as the transition back to reality obscures it. And the third fantasy, where he kills Janine as she drives her car into the garage by grabbing an axe and smashing it through the windshield at her, is also restrained, with only a partial shot of her head and bleeding scalp

through a hole in the windshield. The first actual murder is that of Katie the maid, whom Henry knocks over the couch by whacking her across the head with her bag of stolen items. As he hides her body and puts things back the way they were, you see that some blood was splattered on the couch cushions, and as he hides from Janine, having wrapped Katie in plastic, she starts to convulse before finally expiring. Janine's murder is one of the most brutal, as Henry wraps his tie around her neck after catching her underneath the

conference table and, after smashing out the window with a chair, throws her out while she's tied to an extension cord, breaking her neck and leaving her hanging. Jimmy's death is long and drawn out, as Henry first startles him from behind and causes him to trip over a stool in the tennis club locker room, which Jimmy says caused him to break something. Then, Henry helps him up, only to slam him against a locker, smack him across the face with one of his documents, and pull a gun on him, causing him to lose his balance and fall to the floor. Trying to save

save himself, Jimmy tells Henry to give him his briefcase so he can write him a check and Henry does... by flinging the briefcase at his broken leg. Jimmy eventually pulls his own gun out of his case and fires, but Henry dodges the shots and shoots him back, getting him square in the chest, leading him to slowly bleed to death. Fittingly, Milo's murder at his costume party is the most painful and elaborate, with Henry bribing some people into putting him into the harness that's lowered down from the ceiling above the dance floor. Milo enjoys himself, until Henry aims

a special laser, which he's told is meant to pop open pinatas, right at his balls. Defiant and rotten to the end, Milo sees Henry in the booth and, again, calls him an ant, prompting him to recite the Bruiser motto, "We make heat," and then shoot the laser right through Milo's head.

The laser itself is one of a handful of digital effects here, with most of the others being used to create those rather awkward transitions and segues I mentioned earlier. You see them when the movie goes out of Henry's fantasies and back into reality (which, as I said, were not necessary at all), and at the very end, in this sudden zoom-in to Henry's, once again, blank face, before going straight into the credits, and they all involve these awful-looking wavering effects and distortions. While I'm glad that Romero didn't

employ any crappy-looking digital blood effects (at least, not at this point), the CGI that he did use makes the movie come off all the more cheap and like it was made for cable, as opposed to something that was seen in theaters (it wasn't seen in many, God knows, but some)..

Not that you would expect anything truly amazing or thrilling, especially given how the movie's been beforehand, but the climax is pretty underwhelming. When it's not focusing on how hideous and out there the party is, it mostly consists of Henry preparing to kill Milo, trying to talk Rosie into getting out, getting chased around by McClearly and Rakowski (he actually fires on the former at one point), finally luring Milo into the harness and killing him, and then, thanks to Rosie's intervention, as well as that of the other partygoers, managing to escape. I'd complain about it more but, because of what an endurance it is to watch this movie, I was just glad it was drawing to a close.

The music score by Donald Rubinstein (brother of infamous producer and distributor Richard Rubinstein, and someone who worked on the music for some of George Romero's other directing and producing work: Martin, Knightriders, and Tales from the Darkside, both the show and the movie) is just as melancholic and downbeat as the movie itself, often sounding like bluesy jazz whenever it accentuates Henry's pitiable situation. Honestly, that's all I can actually say about it, as the rest of the music is rather soft and underplayed, has no memorable themes or leitmotifs, and all of the pieces run together for me. There are also a number of songs on the soundtrack, besides those by the Misfits that are performed during the costume party. But again, they all tend to run together to me and I can't tell one from another. That said, I don't think most of them sounded all that bad, especially the one that plays when Milo gets his. Otherwise, save for a pretty shitty cover of Take On Me by Wohlstandskinder, which plays during the first part of the ending credits, I can't tell you much about the soundtrack.

I'm not going to lie, this wasn't an easy review to write or update, as Bruiser is an unpleasant, vulgar (did you see how many times I wrote the word "fuck" while quoting it, especially Milo's dialogue?), and pretentious movie that just drains me. Other than the character of Henry, the look of his "mask," a couple of the supporting characters, and some occasional nice-looking instances of cinematography, location work, and art direction, there's not much about it that I like. Most of the characters are utterly loathsome; it has an unappealing, murky look most of the time and feels like a cheap, made-for-cable movie; it's often so vulgar and sleazy that it makes me roll my eyes; the music score and songs are forgettable; and, above everything else, it's so damn heavy-handed and pretentious in what it's trying to say. Maybe it's meant to be allegorical, but it's still too much for me. Since I haven't seen all of Romero's movies, I can't rightfully call this his absolute worst, especially since I've heard There's Always Vanilla, which even he called his worst, is pretty horrendous, but this is still a major low-point in my opinion. Given his cult status, I'm sure there are fans of Bruiser out there, who get more out of it than I do, and they're welcome to it. But I really hope this is the last time I ever have to revisit it.