I really wanted to like this one, since I'm fascinated by the photographic works of its director, Carlos Batts. His amazingly bizarre photography and mixed-media projects are both celebrated around the world for their originality and criticized for their porn-like vulgarity; his images often tread the line between slick advertising layouts and nightmarish funhouse reflections. I respect Batts' eagerness to push the boundaries of traditional composition and standards of beauty, and his amazing ability to find sublime sensuality in seemingly horrific subjects while often uncovering ugliness beneath the sheen of physical perfection - sometimes simultaneously in the same images. It's with this heightened expectation of a visual feast that I approached his new DVD venture, and for this reason I was more than a little disappointed.

AMERICAN GOTHIC is a brief (under 25 minutes) companion piece to a photo collection and music CD of the same name, and is described in the press materials (and by Batts himself, looking bored in his brief intro) as a fantasy based on the darkly iconic 1930 painting by Grant Wood, depicting the gaunt, corpse-like visages of a pitchfork-wielding farmer and his sullen-looking wife (not to be confused with the end of the "Green Acres" opening sequence it inspired, which is more lighthearted but just as creepy). Batts explains that he wanted to tell the story of the farmer, who he imagines murdered his wife before the painting was completed, and is damned to wander the unnatural landscape of the farm depicted in the background. It's a really cool concept... one which unfortunately fails to make any sense onscreen.

In Batts' defense, I will say that every shot of this DV production is superbly composed, lit and arranged - often employing elaborate digital painting techniques to replicate the multi-layered effect of his photo-based works. It's in the other necessary aspects of a filmmaker's craft that GOTHIC leaves quite a bit to be desired, indicating all the earmarks of a young artist bursting with ideas but lacking focus or control of his medium.

Chief among the cinematic sins committed here is an obviously clumsy use of sound. In the right hands, the overlapping montage of eerie ambient effects, hard-driving Metal riffs (from the likes of Mastodon and Dog Fashion Disco) and surreal voice-overs would have served as a macabre tour guide into the depths of despair and horror on display. Instead, we get songs that just fade in and out of one another with no emotional arc or climax, and endlessly repeating voice-over lines treated with so much reverb and low-frequency rumble that the words are almost unintelligible.

Another unfortunate annoyance is Batts' seeming unwillingness to trim his scenes down to a comfortable length. Since each scene is essentially a live-action version of a similar photograph from the collection of the same title, there is little for the subjects to do beyond the borders of their claustrophobic, aesthetically staged worlds; therefore, it often becomes a bit uncomfortable watching the actors/models cycle through what amounts to a moebius loop of the same repeated actions, often for several minutes at a stretch, while a garbled voice-over mumbles in the background. I'd wager that there is a basic purpose behind this approach - no doubt to convey the endless purgatory the central character inhabits, in which he is forced to relive his horrific acts again and again through all eternity. That's a suitably Gothic concept, but subjecting the viewer through similar torment is hardly the way to drive this point home. I would have preferred developing some sort of empathy with the characters in order to truly share their despair. Instead, I was just mildly annoyed, and finally relieved that the film clocked in at less than half an hour.

Hoping to learn more about Batts' creative process in the hope of deciphering the dense oddity I'd just seen, I delved into the collection of his other short films kindly provided by Cult Epics in the supplemental section. The three shorts, shot on varying film stocks and transferred to primitive video (notes indicate that all original print materials have been lost, leaving us with crude but adequate VHS dupes), represent his earliest foray into the motion picture medium... and managed to enforce my belief that moving images are not Batts' strong suit.

The first of these, PUPPADERE, managed to garner a review in the late, lamented FILM THREAT VIDEO GUIDE back in 1992 - an event that the filmmaker looks upon with great pride in his introductory commentary, despite the fact that the FTVG editors lambasted the film as incomprehensible and begged him to seek therapy at once. (This article is included on the disc.) If PUPPADERE - a solarized 8mm B&W reel of a marionette composed of dead animal parts being dragged around a forest - were my only sample of Batts' cinematic output, I'd be inclined to agree. But at least that project features something weird and gross to look at. The painfully awful short CLONE, however, contains nothing of interest - unless you think clowns striking pensive poses to the accompaniment of pretentious scrolling text represents high art. The third film, CHOKE, is an anti-smoking PSA of sorts, and is fairly effective as such (if maybe a tad elitist), and demonstrates the value of tight editing - something Batts apparently forgot in the decade to follow. The most valuable supplement included is a gallery of stills taken in tandem with the film - images which are far more compelling than the film itself, and which reinforce Batts' amazing sense of visual composition.

AMERICAN GOTHIC the film does little to augment or illuminate the concepts presented in those wonderfully grotesque still images, and in that respect I'd classify it as an interesting failure. However, because Batts' visual sensibility is both unique and haunting - aspects that the film does capture very well - I'd suggest that it would make a really cool projected backdrop in a gothic-themed dance club, or at your next absinthe-fueled Halloween party.