Genre spoofs can be wearying affairs (take a look at Anne Biller’s Viva), but it’s the sustained lunatic pitch of this latest effort from Winnipeg’s Astron-6 collective that makes The Editor so much more than a rather brilliantly done fake Italian crapfest from the ’70s. Rey Ciso is the once-great film editor of the title—a true artist!—now reduced to working on actual Italian crapfests from the ’70s after a devastating breakdown costs him a bunch of fingers. His dirtbag producer calls him a cripple, his nympho wife’s an insane bitch, and now some hipster-doofus cop is convinced that he’s killing off the cast of his latest film. It’s a classic giallo setup, and The Editor nails the weird cinematic syntax of that style-drenched period, with all its sumptuous visuals, grandiose synth cues, and uniquely wrong dubbing. But it’s the freewheeling comic ideas and generous amounts of T&A (and C&B) that really count, landing The Editor somewhere between Lucio Fulci and a dirtier version of Mr. Show.

Georgia Straight, September 2014