Cheap No Telling (DVD) (Miriam Healy-Louie, Stephen Ramsey (II)) (Larry Fessenden) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of No Telling

A new indie horror great has arrived
Larry Fessenden's NO TELLING is for fans of classic horror films, lovers of independent cinema and opponents of cruelty to animals -- 3 groups that don't often find themselves jostling for position in front of the same DVD shelf. Fessenden is best known for HABIT, a modern vampire story he wrote, directed and starred in; in NO TELLING he reinvents another classic horror genre, but it would spoil the tale's unfolding to say which one. Like HABIT, NO TELLING is convincingly rooted in a real present-day setting and situation: a married couple who have moved into an old farmhouse so that the husband can work on getting a research grant that will make them rich and help the human race. Cracks in the marriage appear when the wife meets a good-looking ecologist who raises troubling questions about her husband's devotion to science. Then step-by-step, what starts as an exceptionally well-done study of a modern couple shifts imperceptibly onto mythical territory which the horror movie aficianado will find him/herself revisiting with fresh eyes: NO TELLING makes its familiar tale totally, scarily believable and leaves us with a questions to take back with us into the real world. Every generation is marked by the talents of an indie horror filmmaker who reinvents the form, and Larry Fessenden is that filmmaker for the new millenium. An unusual making-of documentary shows the wise-cracking writer-director-editor and his collaborators at work, while talking to the camera about the implications of the highly original film they are making. NO TELLING and "The Making of NO TELLING" are the best introduction I know to a new filmmaker we will be hearing about a lot in the years to come. Those with weak stomachs have nothing to fear -- 90 percent of the horror is inside the characters, which makes it that much more creepily effective.

---

The unfortunate ending
Habit, Fessenden's masterpiece, is the film he should be remembered for--not this one. The premise of this film is fine--a latter-day Dr. Frankenstein is obsessed with "tinkering with Mother Nature", as the previous review indicates. The characterizations are, in fact, quite solid. The development of the film is also strong, playing up the conflict between the "mad" scientist and his wife, and this conflict definitely provides momentum to the film.

But the ending is so cheesy and ridiculous that, at least for me, it ruined the film. I won't give it away; suffice to say that Fessenden could, I am sure, have easily created a much stronger ending that would have dovetailed with the obvious husband-wife conflict infinitely more effectively and simultaneously provided the strong jolt required in dark films like this one. Habit, by contrast, does have a powerful closer as well as very strong characterizations and story development. No Telling is a film you really don't want to tell your friends about.

Stick with Habit; you can't go wrong.

---

NEAR MASTERPIECE
The first film in Larry Fessenden's unofficial "monster movie" trilogy (followed by "Habit" and the soon to be released "Wendigo"), "No Telling" may be the best kept secret of the contemporary American cinema. Though sometimes its themes are a little too overtly spoken through dialogue (it is after all a diatribe against animal experimentation and a cheesy horror flick at the same time) this is a boldly stylized, thoughtful exception to the typical Hollywood excesses of the 1990's. Had a chance to preview the DVD, which comes with a not-to-be missed "Making of.." made by Fessenden, with his customary wit and mock self deprecation, in itself worth the price of the disc.