South of Heaven, West of Hell
If you've never heard ofSouth of Heaven, West of Hell, there's  an excellent reason. If you have heard of it, it's probably because you stumbled  upon the information that it marks the directorial debut of singer-actor Dwight  Yoakam, who managed to sweet-talk a spectacularly quirky cast into abetting the  enterprise: current girlfriend Bridget Fonda and her papa Peter; indie-world  luminaries Vince Vaughn and Billy Bob Thornton (for whom Yoakam made a memorably  loathsome villain inSling Blade); character-acting stalwarts Bo Hopkins,  Matt Clark, Luke Askew, and Scott Wilson; and such icons of the florid fringe as  Bud Cort, Paul Reubens, and Michael Jeter. All should file for workman's compandalienation of audience affection because they got themselves mired in  one of the dumbest, most inept, most tediously self-indulgent messes in the  history of showbiz hubris.Yoakam stars (you guessed?) as a U.S. marshal whose tiny Arizona town is  literally annihilated by a clan of outlaws from his past. He and they used to be  family. Now he has to track them down, even as they go on making life hell on  earth for anyone in their path. That includes a hapless government man (B. Cort)  whom they're keeping alive for sport, and a traveling lady (B. Fonda) who ...  well, who's blonde and is mostly photographed in slow motion because she's the  director's girlfriend (see above). It is beyond the scope of mortal man to  describe how primitive are Yoakam's notions of dramaturgy (mostly there is just  shouting and hair), how any coherent grasp of time or geography eludes him, how  little difference it makes whether these gargoyles start killing each other in  any given scene. It's just awful. And while we're at it, offal.--Richard T.  Jameson