TRENT HAAGA’S CHOP
July 14, 2011 
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Trent Haaga is no stranger to the Fantasia crowd from his turns as a screenwriter (Deadgirl, Citizen Toxie) and actor (Terror Firmer), and now he makes his debut as a director with the guinol-esque black comedy Chop, which makes its Canadian Premiere here at Fantasia on July cheap discount levitra 14th. Lance (Tromeo + Juliet’s Will Keenan, credited here as Billy Bakshi) is a (seemingly) regular guy who finds himself the victim of systematic physical and emotional torture at the hands of a psychotic stranger (Timothy Muskatell, Deadgirl). The stranger claims to be taking revenge for some past transgression Lance can’t recall, resulting in a protracted game of cat-and-mouse as the stranger tries to coax a confession out of the dumbfounded Lance order cialis on internet by any means possible.
It becomes clear within minutes that Chop is parody of the torture-centric films that have been flooding the market in recent years, and comedic timing is key. Haaga’s acting experience seemed to serve him well when casting the film, with a fantastic, frantic lead performance by Will Keenan and a perfect foil in the form of Timothy Muskatell, as well as the two stone-faced cops Roebuck (Tamil T. Rhee, in his first role) and Williams (Adam Minarovich of The Walking Dead, who also penned the script) who never miss a comedy beat and steal the show whenever they are onscreen.
With just the right amount of ludicrous exaggeration, stump gags galore, masochistic ZZ Top lookalikes, Diff’rent Strokes jokes (the ‘very special episode’ about the bicycle shop gets extended mention here) and even graced with a cameo by Camille Keaton (whose grandfather Buster was portrayed by Keenan in the Black Dahlia biopic The Devil’s Muse), Chop is an overload of gratuitous fun.
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CHOP has its Canadian Premiere July 14th at 9:25pm and screens again on generic propecia online within canada July 15th at 11:55pm, both in the Salle JA DeSeve. More details on the film page HERE!
About the author:
Kier-La Janisse is a film writer, publisher, producer, acquisitions executive for Severin Films and an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She is the author of Cockfight: A Fable of Failure (2024), House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films (2012/2022) and A Violent Professional: The Films of Luciano Rossi (2007) and has been an editor on numerous books including Warped & Faded: Weird Wednesday and the Birth of the American Genre Film Archive (2021) and Satanic Panic: Pop-Cultural Paranoia in the 1980s (2015). She wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021), and produced the acclaimed blu-ray box sets All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror (2021) and The Sensual World of Black Emanuelle (2023).
