"On my sixth birthday, Father cut my tongue loose. The gift of silence.  Pearl put it in the freezer and ate sweet cake."

Before I discuss the film Sonny Boy, I want to heap as much praise as I can muster on Turner Classic Movies.  The institution of TCM Underground is one of the best decisions ever by a cable network.  They show the most offbeat and underseen bits of weirdness ,and I am often flabbergasted at the ones I have missed.  I have a fantasy that involves Robert Osbourne waking up after a bender on a Sunday morning and realizing what was broadcast the night before in abject horror.  I  implore anyone with a sense of adventure and no access to venues such as the New Beverly to set their DVR, VCR, or stay up late on Friday night for these mini feasts of wrong headedness and true grindhouse film making.

 Sonny Boy is a film that feels like a dream someone might have after a rowdy night out with too many beers and a spinning room.  That is a compliment.  This is what authentic grindhouse-style filmmaking feels like.  As much as I admired and had fun with Tarantino and Rodriguez's attempt to make films in this vein, their films still feel like the work of filmmakers who should be doing something else.  Sonny Boy and its ilk feel like the best the filmmakers could manage and thus the off kilter world view makes sense and the viewer becomes acclimated to a world that just might exist if you squint just a little bit.

Sonny Boy's plot doesn't seem odd to me, but , perhaps, that's because I've spent one or tw o hours too man ywatching Italian rip-offs of popular films, and my taste has been  ruined.   It follows the life of a boy who is raised from infanthood by a deranged group of criminals after his parents were killed in a robbery attempt.  This "family" resides in a scrapyar with a glass pyramid in the middle.  His "Father" is  Slue, played by Paul Smith from Altman's underrated Popeye, a sociopathic criminal who has aspirations in the art world.  Slue's wife is Pearl, Played by David Carradine, a hairy woman who may be transgendered or may actually be a woman.  The film is not entirely clear on this point, and that is one of the coolest things in a tub of celluloid cool.  Brad Dourif also appears as Weasel , an associate who becomes a deeper character as the film progresses.  The child dubbed Sonny Boy is raised to be a killer.  He has his tongue cut out at six and sepends the rest of his youth being burned and pulled behind truckas,  All the while, he lives ina water tower and is fed live chuckens.  As he becomes a man, he becomes Slue's secret weapon.  He dispatches his father's enemies by tearing out their throats and then he is locked back up until Pearl comes to comfort him.  The fit hits the sham when he gets curious about the world and gets out.  this upsets the people of Harmony, New Mexico, who turn against Slue and finally stand up for themselves.

Sonny Boy isn't going to win any awards, and there are people who think it's irredeemable.  However, it may well be a lost classic.  The cinematography rivals the work of Leone, and the score would make Morricone jealous.  In addition to that Dourif, Carradine, and Smith form a trifecta of incredible acting.  Smith's Slue is a one note character, but smith plays it like a maestro.  His Slue is a force of nature, an Id unleashed.  Whether he is killeing a cop with a howitzer or ordering Sonny Boy to kill a priest, he is a character whose cruelty is fascinating.  a grunt from him is worth a rant from another actor.  Dourif also makes a character that coould grow tiresome infinitely watchable.  Weasel could have been a standard crazy henchman, but this character grows and matures and by the film's end may actually have developed a conscience.  Caradine's Pearl is the character that truly makes this film sing.  Carradine completely gives himself over tot he character.   this isn't a winking burlesque.  Carradine plays a woman.  He invests Pearl with a twisted kindness that ultimately does her "son" no favors.  I particularly found older Pearl engaging.  The factthat the actor lost his top teeth filming another film and chose to perform without them for Pearl's later scenes is brave and lends Pearl a gravitas.  Truly, this is one of Carradine's finest hours.

 Sonny Boy is the kind of film that David lynch has tried to make repeatedly, but here the oddnesss feels organic and not throuwn in for the sake of makeing a strange film.  If you are a viewer disgusted with the pablum currently available. seek this out and see almost greatness that was sacrificed to the vhs gods.