Short Takes: ‘Swallowed’ (2022) ★★★

Not to be confused with Swallow [NSFW].

A body horror movie written and directed by the same man who gave us Jamie Marks is Dead and The Passenger, with full frontal male nudity and featuring the star of Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge as a vicious queen? You don’t have to ask me twice.

Making Carter Smith’s Swallowed even more intriguing—for me, at least—is Smith makes his story decidedly queer. When we first meet one of its protagonists, Benjamin (Cooper Koch, recently in Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menedez Story), he’s celebrating his impending escape from his dead-end hometown in rural Canada, his joining an L.A. gay porn studio’s stable being his all-expense-paid ticket to a more exciting life. His best friend Dom (Jose Colon) thinks Ben is naïve (“Those guys are going to want all that money back, man”), but celebrates with him, nevertheless. Dom is supposedly straight, yet it’s obvious he’s not that straight. Just as obvious is Ben very much hoping tonight’s the night they take their friendship up a notch, or at the very least, Dom consents to a farewell BJ. Alas, despite pointing our minds in that direction, the movie’s title is not an oral sex reference.

On the drive home Dom takes a detour to check on his cousin, DiDi. He and Didi had worked out a deal to smuggle some drugs into the U.S, the money from which Dom was going to give to Ben as a going away present (dude, you could’ve just agreed to let Ben blow you). Except, Didi is now too stoned to act as the go-between, so Dom now must deal with her girlfriend Alice (Jena Malone), who is neither congenial nor compromising, pulling a gun when Dom balks at having to swallow condoms stuffed with product. That gun also comes in handy when Ben needs to be convinced to swallow some condoms as well.

Crossing the border into Maine is the easy part, it turns out. Complications arise when Dom attempts shitting out the contraband and discovers it’s not a drug—but its bite can induce a high. By the time Alice arrives to retrieve the product, she finds Dom catatonic and pants-less and Ben freaking the fuck out. Her boss Rich (Mark Patton) isn’t going to like this.

Though Swallowed is labeled a body horror, don’t go in expecting Cronenberg (David or Brandon) wrapped in a rainbow flag. It feels more like a homoerotic crime thriller, with the tension derived from the unpredictable situation Ben and Dom find themselves in, without any grotesque physical transformations (you can expect some blood and shit, however, as well as one prosthetic dick* that’s almost convincing). Smith has shown in his other films that he can get a lot from a limited budget, and he gets more than his money’s worth with Koch, Colon, Malone and Patton, all great in their roles. Unfortunately, Smith tacked on a silly epilogue that’s tonally at odds with everything that came before it and dismisses all Ben has gone through. It doesn’t ruin the movie, but it did leave a sour taste in my mouth.

*Not counted as the movie’s full-frontal male nudity.

Short Takes: ‘A Fever in the Blood’ (1961) ★★ 1/2

What’s the Fever in the Blood? Not
what this poster is selling.

Though the title (and poster for) A Fever in the Blood suggests a lurid melodrama about philandering husbands and horny housewives, it is actually a discount All the King’s Men, about three men—Judge Hoffman (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.), District Attorney Dan Callahan (Jack Kelly, quickly taking it up to 11), and Sen. Alex Simon (a smarmy Don Ameche)—vying for the governor’s seat of an unnamed state (but probably California). Also, Angie Dickinson is in this movie.

Hoffman and Callahan are friends at the beginning of the movie, with Hoffman asking the D.A. to join him on campaign trail as the lieutenant governor candidate. Callahan is flattered, saying he’d never really considered the office. That is, until Walter Thornwall (Rhodes Reason), the nephew of the former governor, is charged—wrongly—with murdering his adulterous wife. Prosecuting the high-profile case ignites Callahan’s political ambitions, only he is not content to be Hoffman’s running mate, he wants the governor’s office for himself. When Sen. Simon approaches him about supporting his campaign for governor—Simon wanting the seat so he can have more control over state delegates for a planned run for President—Callahan’s confidence in his electability is further bolstered and just like that he’s an asshole.

Thornwall’s trial ends up in Hoffman’s court (awk-ward). The avuncular judge does his best to keep politics out of the trial but it’s clear no one else got the memo. Callahan grandstands for the jury (and press), and Sen. Simon attempts to sway Hoffman with a quid pro quo offer if he declares a mistrial. Hoffman refuses the senator’s bribe but agrees to remain silent on the incident at the request of Simon’s trophy wife Cathy (Dickinson), who not-so-secretly loves the judge. Hoffman’s moral backbone develops scoliosis, however, and he decides to fight as dirty as his opponents.

A Fever in the Blood, based on William Pearson’s 1959 novel, has the makings of A Serious Movie with Important Themes—like The Young Philadelphians, helmed by the same director, Vincent Sherman. But Fever has more in common with the TV movies Sherman would direct later in his career, playing more like a two-hour pilot for a TV series than a big screen drama. The TV comparison is further exacerbated by the cast of TV regulars: Zimbalist (77 Sunset Strip), Kelly (Maverick), Dickinson (a movie star, but also future star of TV’s Police Woman), Robert Colbert (The Time Tunnel) and Carroll O’Connor (All in the Family).

Though it’s not as grand—or as sexy—as Warner Bros. wanted audiences to believe, A Fever in the Blood is still pretty damn entertaining (it’s not like a bad TV movie). The story about politics corrupting even the best of men is evergreen (no one will buy the ending though, especially today), and the script by Roy Huggins (also a TV veteran) and Harry Kleiner provides plenty of twists and turns, with a healthy amount of camp. Only Dickinson disappoints, cast as little more than set decoration, in one scene literally reduced to just sitting there and looking pretty while the men talk.