The American Astronaut
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DVD Cover Information
DVD: Region Code 1Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Movie Reviews of The American Astronaut
Movie Review: only one episode in the many adventures of Samuel Curtis
Summary: 5 Stars
Directed by Corey McAbee of the rock/performance/art/film group The Billy Nayer Show (KETCHUP & MUSTARD MAN, reviewed in CdC #9), THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT is a cross-pollinated pastiche that plays as a science fiction/musical/comedy/western/road movie shot in beautiful black and white, with occasional low-tech animation, retro-futuristic art direction, and chocked full of catchy tunes, quirky characters, and pure originality.
Rakish pilot Samuel Curtis (McAbee) pilots his flying mobile-home spaceship through the galaxy, on several missions at once. When we first meet him, he's taking a cat to a run down bar on barren asteroid. He trades the cat for the ingredients of a "real live girl" clone. He meets up with his old dance partner, the Blueberry Pirate (producer Joshua Taylor) who proposes that Sam take the clone to Jupiter, an all male planet, in exchange for "The Boy Who Actually Saw A Woman's Breast" (Greg Russell Cook) before turning around and trading the boy for the former king of Venus, an all female planet. Corpse in tow, Sam could turn a hefty profit by bringing the deceased king back to his family on Earth. Got that? All the while, Sam is pursued by the insane Professor Hess (Rocco Sisto), a birthday boy who kills only those he has no reason to kill.
One of the things that make this film stand out among other musicals is that the songs are mere excuses for absurdity, rather than devices to progress the story. The music resembles avant-rock more than show tunes. The only exception is a song sung by a miner explaining how he and his clan ended up floating around space in a barn. Again, the song does not progress the film's story but explains the existence of some mostly insignificant characters and one minor character, and contains the only lyrics that sound specifically written for the film.
THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT feels like it is only one episode in the many adventures of Samuel Curtis. When the ending comes, it comes abruptly, as if McAbee is saying to the audience, "You already know how this is likely to end, so let's just stop here." McAbee's version of space, though, is one that deserves further exploration.
Summary of The American Astronaut
Written, directed, and starring Cory McAbee of The Billy Nayer Show, this space western musical uses flinty black-and-white photography, rugged Lo-Fi sets and the spirit of the final frontier to bring the film, set in the dirty, isolated vastness of outer space, to life. The film also stars Rocco Sisto and Gregory Russell Cook. THE AMERICAN ASTRONAUT follows the adventures of an interplanetary trader (McAbee) through his Homeric intergalactic journey to provide the all-female population of Venus with a suitable singular male, all the while being pursued by the cold-blooded and childish killer, Professor Hess (Sisto), an enigmatic figure from his past. The film features an original soundtrack by the The Billy Nayer Show.Literally out-of-this-world, The American Astronaut is a post-Eraserhead, black-and-white comedy set on an asteroid that serves as an outpost for desperadoes, mad scientists, and paranoid travelers. Director Cory McAbee, frontman for the dynamic, experimental rock band the Billy Nayer Show, has constructed a seedy, surreal vision of conquered space that includes rocket ships operated by junkyard parts, barflies with a increasingly pathological sense of humor, and handguns that reduce people to a bucket's worth of sand. In this nightmarish, sometimes funny, sometimes tedious fantasy noir, a distressed astronaut (McAbee) agrees to swap a caged, embryonic female for a captive male on one planet and deliver the latter to the man-hungry (if peculiarly antebellum) women of Venus. The film doesn't necessarily hold up as a singular work, but there are several remarkable sequences, including a dance number in a scummy restroom and an unsettling comedy routine. Special features include an interesting interview with McAbee. --Tom Keogh
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