FINAL STAGE – GLASS BRICK PORTAL
FEBRUARY 1991
Fatal Pulse (2018) announces itself as operating within the Yuppie Fear thriller mode, using clips and trailers of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Pacific Heights, Deceived, etc. The actual experience of Fatal Pulse itself is comparable to Tim and Eric, Inland Empire, and Southland Tales. An evisceration of a cultural era – the early 1990s in America – communicated through a network of references, actors playing celebrities and political figures, sampling of music lyrics and film dialogue, sub-genre coding and stolen street footage. Continual power derives from filming on the sunset strip in the dead of night, casting a character in bisexual neon lighting, with a super-imposed film poster from 1991 in the background as a billboard (Sleeping With The Enemy).
A corporate lawyer Trent Dupont (Mike Hickey) who is cognitively associated as a James Spader type by cutting between him, the way he’s styled in his suit and glasses, and scenes of Bad Influence starring James Spader as a yuppie played on a TV next to our main character. He touts his considerable influence on laws being made, strategies in the entertainment industry, and yet, as he complains, “I can’t get my brother-in-law off of my couch!” The movie gains expansive dimensions through the parade of 1991 commercials and trailers played throughout (Mac Tonight anyone?) and intercut, as the brother-in-law continually snacks and stares silently at the boob tube; when he’s not on the couch, he prowls the streets tranquillising women and wrapping them in alfoil.
Fatale Pulse is very weird and very funny, piling on pop culture references as a nocturnal portrait of a soul deadening landscape. Often the references are so oblique and obscure, such as having William Friedkin appear on the eve of releasing his forgotten 1990s horror film The Guardian, and yet there is a logic to the madness. It’s exhausting, and also hilarious, with unforgettable sequences like the yuppie James Spader type running through the streets at night by a creepy break dancing street performer menacing him as Public Enemy’s ‘You’re Gonna Get Yours’ blasts on the soundtrack. Independently produced and shot over several years, writer-director Damon Packard is a distinctive, singular voice. The poster on Tubi – which looks like a generic action movie of a guy blasting away two hand guns – has nothing to do with the movie itself.
VHS Tracking 