The Greasy Strangler
or “did a horribly abused 12-year-old make a movie with his middle school friends and a Casio keyboard?”
So, I really didn’t want to watch this one. But I wasn’t going to high school this by not watching it and hope the teacher didn’t notice I was there, thereby not asking me my thoughts. Lady ShaSha sees all. Master Chaos sees all. He sees inside my underwear drawer; he’s told me as much.
“No, I’m a different Julian. This is my first stream. Also, you look good today. New glasses?”
Flattery usually wins the day, but with Greasy I used my childhood approach of “eat my least favorite part of my meal first.” Much like brussel sprouts, I ate The Greasy Strangler at 6am on a Saturday morning, leaving Bunny the Killer Thing for lunch.
Greasy wasted *no* time making my morning uncomfortable with a morning coffee father and son speedo routine scene where we meet Big Ronnie and Big Brayden. There was no easing into strange. Not setting a tone. The tone sucker punches right at the bell. It was the earliest into a movie I ever checked the time remaining.
Though while I wasn’t immediately aware, there was something strange and unique on display in this films’ fingerprint. Something I didn’t start to vaguely understand until halfway through, celebrate by the end, and kept me thinking about the movie through the next two movies I watched and 24 hours later: this wild, cringy, upsetting movie is filled with symbolism, unchecked emotions, patterns of abuse and primal natures.
I’m on the fence about the film’s funniness. It’s got a strong Tim and Eric vibe, so much so that it made me check the wiki. The movie didn’t make me laugh really, but there are plenty of quote I can’t wait to slip into conversation with friends who’ve seen the movie with “King Penguin Shit” and “Porto” coming to mind. Is it the movie? Is it us mocking the movie? I don’t know. I’ll just leave that one in the air rather than try to pin it down.
Unchecked Emotions
All three of our main characters dealt with major unchecked emotions, just continuing to power through their heavily problematic lives without regard for others they come into contact with.
Ronnie is the most evident. He’s a violent narcissist who’s entirely unable to stand down or see himself as wrong. He’s filled with rage, lust, vanity, self-importance and his speed to satiate those desires is always maximum. He tells wild stories about Michael Jackson and John Travolta to satiate vanity and self-importance, Brayden believing the JohnTra story. Devastating his son’s love life to satiate his lust for Janet. Satiating his rage by killing whoever slights him.
Brayden’s unchecked emotions are those of someone abused, and they’re harder to give names to. He’s eternally unsure of himself, whether it’s in bed with Janet (“I don’t know if I’m doing it right, Janet”) or in how he so feebly defends himself from his dad. He cries loudly at the sound of Ronnie and Janet making love, and when he bursts into the room to confront them, he’s mocked by both with chants of “Hootie Tootie Disco Cutie.” To which, instead of confronting them, he just runs off and out into the middle of the street, where he sobs and wails and falls to the ground. He starts to address his emotions when he tells Janet how he really feels, but it’s a confession that’s begging her to take him back rather than confronting her about leaving him the way she did. And he doesn’t have the guts to even consider confronting his dad, as evidenced by the smile/scowl scene I mention below in the primal natures section. He’s deeply affected, probably broken, by his emotions. But he’ll sooner become a greasy strangler like his father than see through his initial decision to take the greasy strangler down himself.
And Janet. Poor Janet but also not entirely innocent Janet. There’s a problem with Janet. She mentions once or twice how she’s fresh out of what seemed like a bad relationship. I didn’t note it down and don’t want to rewatch to get the specifics, but I don’t think I need to. The movie didn’t dwell on it as a plot point much, and I think that’s a shame. It plays Janet as a woman written by a man. She’s nude often, but her nudity is a showcase, it isn’t a joke like Ronnie’s giant prosthetic dick is. Or a joke like Brayden’s tiny prosthetic dick is. (Their sizes are probably not jokes, and are likely more representative of the power Ronnie has over Brayden, but come on … we’re talking about Janet here. Jerks)
Janet is the sexual vehicle that carries Ronnie and Brayden’s dysfunction through the film. Though, I will give small kudos to including the scene where she takes her top off, Brayden tries to lick, and Janet says “I didn’t say you could do that.” Consent was demanded! Go Janet!
All this to say that what little I learned about Janet was that she was broken when pursuing Brayden, was wooed away by his father, then charmed back by Brayden in a game of dysfunctional sexual ping pong. With any other couple she would have eventually walked away with their “fuck off, Janet,” but she played in a sandbox of fucked up murderers.
Patterns of Abuse
Before talking about the particular kinds of abuse, I think it’s important to note how the greasy strangler wasn’t a killer uncontrollable. It wasn’t Hyde’s Mr. to Jekyll’s Doc. Ronnie chose to constantly eat grease. He made oil in his room and kept a barrel in his closet (where Brayden would eventually himself dip himself to choose to be a greasy strangler).
This was a monster of Ronnie’s conscious creation, as well as a monster he consciously uncreates by going through a car wash. Interestingly specific, but still not sure what to make of it. Does he see his greasy strangler persona as a vehicle for his baser urges? Does he just need a powerful commercial grade cleaning? Or, like many other serial killers, does he operate somewhat under cover (at night, at a car wash with a blind owner) but still enough in public because he’s twistedly proud of his murder work? The pride commonly found in serial killers that also has Ronnie openly asking people “You think I’m the greasy strangler? Well, I’m not!” A kind of hiding in plain sight. Who knows, but it’s a credit to the movie that it got me at least to think about things.
Knowing Ronnie is creating his own monster consciously makes his patterns of abuse over Brayden all the scarier. Ronnie will constantly threaten Brayden with eviction throughout the movie to keep him in check. To keep him doing what Ronnie wants. Sometimes what he wants is simple like more grease on his food. Other times it was the stick in Ronnie’s overt manipulation of Brayden to get time with Janet. Ronnie ridiculed Brayden’s experience with women to carve out private time with Janet to woo her, or “be a smoothie.” Janet buys in, succumbs to Ronnie, and casually dismisses Brayden, which leaves him a wreck. Ronnie tells Brayden they’re exclusive, showcasing how brutally abusive Ronnie is in battering Brayden with how he stole Janet from him.
I was desperate for Brayden to stand up to Ronnie and fight back, but in one scene where father and son are pink clad and walking down the sidewalk, Ronnie scowls at Brayden. Brayden smiles, trying to be the good son, but Ronnie keeps scowling and Brayden looks worried. Very primal acting by Ronnie, which leads me to…
Primal Natures
The first thing that struck me about Ronnie’s primal nature was how all his kills were born of emotional responses. He killed the tourists at the beginning after they gave him a hard time about free drinks. He killed hot dog vendor after he refused Ronnie by not adding more grease.
Ronnie’s only kill not directed at the source of is rage was when he decapitates Paul at the car wash, dances with his head and shoots it like a basketball. That kill was misdirected rage for his son, but he couldn’t kill Brayden. It’s not evident until the end of the movie when Brayden embraces being a greasy killer himself, but Ronnie loves his son Brayden. It just has to be on Ronnie’s terms that Brayden earns his father’s love and respect. It’s not the unconditional love of an ideal father, and is just another pattern of abuse. Another pattern that Brayden fails to break and rather falls victim to. Brayden has become his father, for all its horror and primality.
So far do the two of them dip into their primal natures after killing Ricky Prickles that they’re seen watching over a literal execution of their human forms. Their saner selves they seem to be particularly celebratory with “killing off” as evidenced by confetti and what seems like champagne pouring from their popped skulls. And if that symbolism needed a finer point, they scowl at the camera in the final scene holding spears like cavemen.
Final Thoughts
This movie made me severely uncomfortable. Lady Shasha, you promised dick movies and holy shit did you deliver. Granted, grotesquely prosthetic dicks, but that’s kind of expected, right? As an aside, I think it’s interesting how nude women in horror are usually meant as sexual spectacle. Something to ogle and be aroused by. But nude men are usually a joke, particularly as shown in our other movie for this stream, Bunny the Killer Thing.
I think more than enjoying watching the movie itself, I’m much more enjoying thinking about deeper meanings after. I’m much more enjoying the writing about it and am looking forward to chatting with you all about it on stream. It’s a very uncomfortable movie to watch, but I think actually living through the kind of abuse Brayden lived through and eventually broken wholly by is worse. Way, way worse. So I almost wonder if Jim Hosking may have, in making this film, found an outlet for something similar he lived through. If he would have made a movie emotionally on the same level as the abuse Brayden experienced, putting the viewer in Brayden’s shoes, it would have been entirely unwatchable. But just turning it down a few notchs, and adding some comedy, albeit very dark comedy … has Hosking crafted a message that is more digestible than this film’s grease. In hopes that a conversation about abuse can be had, as horrifying as that might be, and in as “it’s so bad you just have to laugh” funny that might be.
The Greasy Strangler pulled me way out of my comfort zone, got me thinking, and gave me a few after-the-fact laughs. And I appreciate that. Check out our live stream below to see how I ultimately rate the movie:
P.S.: Still not sure what I think the eating of eyeballs was about. I know it’s *prime* for symbolic thinking. Eyes are the window to the soul, but how did these two guys relate to souls, theirs or anyone else’s? Was it just a cool, gory thing to add it for fun’s sake? Maybe. I think either just slightly misses a mark, and anyway … eyeball stuff weirds me out. I almost puked in the theater watching that eye scene in 28 Weeks Later after a few beers. Thanks, but no thanks.
Funniest moments
Tourist: “I couldn’t get a stiffy, then my balls were sucked into my abdomen.”
Big Ronnie: “King Penguin shit!”
Big Brayden: “Let’s have phone sex, quick.”
Oinker, on being complimented for his shoes: “I’m renting them and I love them!”
Terrifying moments
Big Ronnie massaging a greasy grapefruit in front of Janet.
Big Ronnie taking Oinker’s fake nose, poking Oinker’s bloody nose hole, sucking finger.