Sonny Boy

This was a bizarre film, is one way of putting it. A con artist, played by Brad Dourif, kills a couple then steals their car taking it to his friend who deals in stolen items. The car ends up having a baby in the back of which the man wants to get rid of but his wife played by David Carradine (who wears make-up and several dresses throughout) wants to keep the baby. If that's not weird enough they keep him in a box and on his sixth birthday the man cuts the boys tongue off! He calls it getting the gift of silence. The depravity doesn't end there. As he grows up he is dragged behind cars and just constantly abused. The father wants to groom him to be his secret weapon. He later takes his son (now a man) to kill people he needs killed.

Definitely a weird and dark film. You hear a cobbled version of the deliverance theme so as not to infringe on copyrights all the way through the film. The ending gets dull but entertaining until then.

Sonny Boy is a one of a kind horror/comedy with an exceptional cast. Paul L. Smith (Midnight Express, Crimewave) plays his usual over-the-top man/monster role, David Carradine his transvestite wife, Brad Dourif (legend!) the aptly named Weasel, and Dourif's Cuckoo's Nest co-star Sydney Lassick, the slimy Charlie P. Michael Griffin is exceptional in the title role. Pity he didn't go on to do anything else. Maybe making Sonny Boy scarred him for life?! I also liked veteran Conrad Janis as one of the few non-repulsive characters in this, an alcoholic doctor with a liking for surgery involving monkey parts(!) Janis has had one eclectic career, working with everyone from Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan to African bushman N!xau, from Mork And Mindy to The Cable Guy, but surely he must rate this as the weirdest project he's ever been involved in! And Brad Dourif has made more than his fair share of strange movies,not least of which Blue Velvet, but none as demented as this crazy mutha!

I recommend Sonny Boy to bizarre movie lovers everywhere, and fans of Garth Ennis comics will find much to enjoy here, as it shares a similar gonzo humour to Preacher et al.

I just lucked into seeing this in the 'something different' section of the video store and took it home, hoping it would live up to that promise. It did. You adventurous soul who is reading this, I envy you because as much as I intend on finding this movie and watching it until the tape wears through, you are going to be seeing it for the first time. If you have an open mind, this movie will blow it away. If you don't, stick with the mall movies, you'll hate this. This film has no category and plays by no rules, which explains the low rating here and the fact that it's practically unheard of. To put this in the category of David Lynch is an insult to this film because this is no 'I went to film school' art film. It has no pretensions and plays homage to no one, although I personally tasted a slight flavor of "Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia" in some of its humor. That too was a masterpiece that most audiences hissed at and called tasteless and offensive way back when. There's no doubt that there's something here to offend anyone who is jaded but I personally found the Christ/Frankenstein analogies extremely moving, and David Carradine is thus far the best Virgin Mary I've ever seen (I'm serious). One can read all sorts of stuff like that into this movie if they so desire. I liked the "Father, Son and Holy Ghost' quote in the middle of the film, and Paul L Smith's cartoonishly cruel yet fatherly image comfortably fits with my personal conceptions of God so I was happy to chose that route at times (anyone else see the sheriff as Pontius Pilate?). [Mel Gibson, eat your polyester heart out!!] This director, Robert Martin Carroll, has the most amazing gift for creating visuals to describe feelings. A red, ripe balloon lifting up into a turquoise sky for example, describes a first kiss as well as the shock that succeeds it, with dizzying precision [kudos to DP Roberto Pizzoli for capturing that balloon's ripeness - there's no other way to describe it!] The performances, as others here have mentioned, are superb. And the score is so pure and sincere that it took me nearly an hour before I realized that this film wasn't made thirty years ago. I don't use the word 'masterpiece' very often, and after seeing over 5,600 movies in my lifetime, the 'great' movies are becoming fewer and further between, so please excuse my unabashed need to scream from the rooftops, HALLELUJAH!

Let us now bow our heads and pray for a DVD release.

This is one of the most ignored and genuinely horrific horror films I've seen, and I consider myself a connoisseur of these type of films...

This ranks with Irreversible, I Spit on Your Grave, Last House on the Left, Hostel etc for pure nauseous shock - a child's tongue is cut out by his perverted 'parents' as a birthday present which is utterly normal in the context of the film...

Forget Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes - this is real US horror, like The Girl Next Door (though not that shocking).

Utterly nihilistic, very strange and well worth a look if you can find it!

Get hold of this film, any way you can (not illegally, of course). Scream its name from the rooftops of buildings everywhere, high or small, and offer prayers to your God for a fully-featured special edition DVD release. There is no film like Sonny Boy: even Leonard Maltin was moved to call it (I quote verbatim) "A repulsive, socially irredeemable waste of celluloid ... filmed for no apparent reason other to offend and appal", and if that isn't a recommendation for a cult movie, I don't know what is. Critics said similar things about Peeping Tom, A Clockwork Orange, Reservoir Dogs, and so many more ... those films are amazing and entirely individual, and so is this. It's pitiful that Sonny Boy has so little recognition apart from a few right-thinking die hards - you don't have to like it, just admit you've never seen its like before or since. Get on the bandwagon speedily, because if I am human this film will, in the near future, be recognised for the angry, iconoclastic, unclassifiable explosion it really is. And you can be among those who educated the world. Feel the adrenaline. There.