radio gives you the best picture

Rating: Null/10 (10 November 1999)

What people told me about BWP (before I went to see it) fell into four categories, namely:-
(i) [competitive chili eater type] "I wasn't scared in the slightest"
(ii) [sensitive/never seen a horror film] "I was REALLY scared"
(iii) [postmodern] "less is more, pass the homous....."; or . . . . . .
(iv) [jaded] "it didn't live up to all the hype"
I got the hype first from advance news of how it was going down in the states and then as the publicity machine clicked into effect on this side of the pond. I bet this spoilt the fun for a lot of the UK audience, as we had probably heard the entire plot several times before the thing got in front of our eyeballs.
I couldn't work out what to think about BWP when I came out of the cinema. But by random TV scheduling I saw "Sleepers" the following day, a highish budget "quality" Hollywood film dealing with serious issues (child abuse, revenge killing etc) and with the likes of De Niro and D.Hoffman in it. It dawned on me then that the experience of watching BWP was hardly linked at all with that of going to see a production like "Sleepers" or anything else released for mass markets. BWP is basically a home video. It almost delights in using the cheapest backdrop and plots ( - a wood - a killer! - Troma's favorites!!) and no SFX worth mentioning.
The fact is that BWP would certainly be worse or even pointless if these factors weren't present. The whole thing is about believability, and for that reason the film must be in the roughcut shape it is in or it couldn't be mistaken for a home video, which is the intention. Shame then that the thing still cost the same to watch as a proper film, which is about $14US here in London.
Secondly, BWP (like "Sleepers", incidentally) largely left the serious violence as intimated rather than explicit. Hitchcock laughed off complaints about "Psycho" being too violent/scary when it came out by saying that the film as it progressed got less and less explicit and towards the end he was showing practically nothing on screen, but that the audience found that the most frightening.
With BWP, Hitchcock's point is extrapolated to the point where nigh-on nothing is shown at all. For me, either the film or my imagination was not quite up to it, and I was not convinced. But it's a pretty good attempt.
Maybe it will be better on TV as there's nothing much about the cinema format which adds to the chill factor in this one, except being in a big dark room. In fact, watching pixels on a cinema screen is quite distracting for me. I think a dark night at home with this could prove that the home video format is the proper environment for it to work properly.