Our lucky streak of quality independent features is on the line with this week's film, Dry Eye Picture's Make a Killing: The husband and wife team of Chris and Vanessa Magyar's mini-opus about the behind the scenes operations of an assisted killing organization (and I'll explain that concept during the review.)

Now the first thing your going to see when you pop the DVD in is "Stomp Tokyo Presents" and you'll think -- isn't this clown a part of the Stomp Tokyo empire? Doesn't that make him a little biased? Well, if biased means I hope it doesn't suck then, yeah, I'm biased. 

Look, I've only met Chris twice, in passing, at B-Fest, and the first conversation basically consisted of him asking me what I thought of Heironymous Merkin -- to which I replied it monumentally sucked; and the second conversation consisted of me asking him if he had any jumper cables because some idiot, me, left the dome light on his car resulting in a dead battery. So I think that qualifies me as impartial. Don't you?

Let's get to it.

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We open in the thick of it. Three women are running from something, he said ominously, and take refuge in a barn. Their safety is short lived as a masked misanthrope breaks into the barn, knocks two of the girls unconscious with a brick and chases the other (producer Vanessa Magyar subbing in for a missing actress) deeper into the barn. After several twists and turns she's cornered and killed, stabbed in the guts.

Another man suddenly appears and encourages the killer to try stabbing her in the heart next time. Soon the scene is swarming with people decked out in blue jumpsuits. What the hell goes on here?

The first man orders the others to get to work staging the final scene. They scramble, quickly, to get it done before the girl wakes up. (What about the other girl? The one the killer missed with the brick by a noticeable mile? She was a ringer.) The killer takes his mask off and complains that he's hungry. Not to worry, there's a caterer.

The final girl (Marilyn Taylor) is placed in a circle of candles, complete with a (fake) bloody pentagram. She starts to come around so the jumpsuits scramble into hidden positions. The girl wakes up, starts her tour of the barn, finds the bodies of her friends and eventually runs into the killer. She bolts out the door. The killer is about to give chase but is stopped by his group of helpers and given a lawnmower. He cranks it up and happily gives chase. All the crew gathers and watches him go, nodding in approval of a job well done.

Again. What the hell goes on here?

Welcome to the world of Assisted Killing Amalgamated a/k/a AKA. 

What is Assisted Killing Amalgamated? I'll let them explain it for you and wait right here until you come back...

You didn't think all those psychotic killers pulled off all those intricate schemes by themselves did you? Of course not. They're practically impossible and improbable, and that's without even getting actual physics involved, to accomplish alone. That's where these guys come in:

• John Simpson (Brian Colonna): is the CEO of AKA and rounds up the clients.

• Sylvia Chase (Hanna Duggan): is in charge of operations. An ex-Marine she's in charge of the physical training and arming of the clients with just the right lethally sharp object. 

• Fran Gunderson (Jeni Reiner): takes care of make-up, costuming and props.

• Joshua George (Gregory Brown): also in the prop department but specializes in scene aesthetics.

• Steven Grabowalski (Evan Weissman): is in charge of transportation and logistics. He also gladly fills the role of virgin deflowerer so their clients need have no fear of the final girl.

• Bobby Bartleby (Ryan Trost): The latest in a long line of interns. (Think of the drummer in Spinal Tap.)

• Lisa Slade (Lodore Brown): The aforementioned ringer. An infiltration specialist who leads the victims into danger instead of out of it.

Sounds like a dangerous band of cutthroats, right?

Wrong.

They're all a bunch of bungling boobs or self-absorbed cretins. We haven't seen this much evil match this kind of ineptitude since the days of Dr. Clayton Forrester and TV's Frank in Deep 13. The film picks up as the camera documents the making of promotional video for AKA as they want to show how their operations work from beginning to the end.

We're introduced to their new client, Randall (Erik Edborg), who's a couple a cans short of a full six-pack. They have to keep Randall under control with a taser (and I just don't have the heart to tell them that when you're zapping someone with one of those, you really shouldn't grab them while doing it. The body being a conductor and all that. Ah, well.)

We get into the nuts and bolts of the daily operations of AKA as Randall is put through the paces, all the while stopping for one-on-ones with the crew as they explain their jobs and why they work for AKA. 

The camera doesn't flinch when things go awry and we don't either.

D-Day approaches and all the details of Randall's murder spree are worked out. (And, yes, I see this all ending in fire.) And since this is a slasher movie, expect the unexpected and a twist ending that comes straight out of nowhere and doesn't make a whole lot of sense which, in this case, makes it a perfect ending.

The End?

Murder may be a serious business but comedy, I believe, is infinitely harder to pull off. Mix those two things together and you've usually got a recipe for an unmitigated disaster. Add in the factors of first time filmmakers; a budget of about $36 dollars; a cast and crew paid in pizza and beer to this volatile mix -- and we're talking about the possibility of an unmitigated disasters of biblical proportions.

I'm happy to report that Make A Killing defies those odds. Rather deftly I might add. A miracle? Not really from what we see on film. It is by no means perfect but it's not that far off. They're at least in the same zip code. Honest.

It's my understanding that the origins of the picture can actually be traced back to B-Fest and a conversation during a lull about the age old argument of how do those masked killers in all those slasher movies pull off all those impossible schemes. Simple enough. They had help.

That idea was picked up, kicked around, pummeled, hammered out and committed to film somewhere in Colorado. It's easy to make fun of these kinds of films but very few of us actually try to make one ourselves. I tried, back in high school. It was such a complete logistical disaster that we never even shot one frame of video. That's why I'm pretty forgiving for the lack of budgets and polish in these things. As Ray Dennis Steckler once said "I spent $20 dollars on the movie and I can guarantee you'll see all $20 dollars on screen."

Most of the film's success can be attributed to the cast. The premise is thin but milked for all its worth. There's genuine comedy to be found here, not the poking it with a sharp stick kind of comedy because it sucks. 

Judging by the performances I'm guessing most of these folks aren't amateurs. Nothing can sink one of these things faster than a bad cast but, again, not the case here. (And the commentary track confirms our suspicions that most of the funnier lines were adlibbed. And I might also add that the commentary track by the battling Magyars was pretty funny as they argue over the difference between self-deprecating humor and self-defecation humor. Again with the poop jokes!)

Technically the film looks great. (I only saw one boom mike.) The hand held camera work, documentary style staging and person to person chat sessions invoke a Reno 911/Spinal Tap style of filmmaking. And if that is what they were going for, they pulled it off. There aren't any real gory kill shots. Why? They didn't know how -- and made the wise decision not to fake it. What little there is pulled off with the slight of hand, the old bait-n-switch and the directors best friend - the jump cut. 

I honestly think the best compliment I can give this film is that I laughed when I was supposed to and not when I wasn't supposed to. I hope sometime in the future, if the financial means ever present itself, that the filmmakers would revisit this production, fine-tune the script just a little bit, round up the cast and expand it to feature length. I want to see more disasters with earlier clients. I want to see more interns accidentally killed. I want to see more in house bickering. I want to see how many more poop jokes we can cram in here.

The talent is definitely there.

So maybe from this acorn there will spring a mighty oak?

We've already got a pretty solid sapling.