Drop Dead Sexy [2005]

Now, here’s a little obscure and underrated flick. Drop Dead Sexy is a dark humor comedy starring Jason Lee and Crispin Glover (George McFly from Back To The Future) that never reaches its climax. It’s like the whole movie is just one big foreplay without the actual pleasure of sex. Sure we can enjoy foreplay and some hints of a blowjob, but to go without any of those two things is a crime with a girl (story) like that.

Again, it seems that macabre and black humor comedies always resort to dead people for a source of laughs, and as you probably guessed this is the case here. This isn’t Bernie, but a hot chick so there’s that love-is-in-the-air vibe to spice things up. Characters are relatively developed and very stereotypical, adding more to the mediocrity of the movie. Still, this should be enough to keep you entertained for an hour and a half. Especially if you like this type of humor and bizarre situations.

Frank and Eddy are two dumbasses without money or any respect for the law. Frank being the smart one, accepts a job from a local mafia boss Spider to smuggle $250.000 worth of cigarettes, but after a little accident on the road, the truck with them explodes. Two of them are now in quite a pickle, and again Frank thinks of a way to get some money: he decides that they go grave-robbing.

I’ve always found stories about your classic losers scheming with disastrous results adorable and let’s face it, relatable. We all know someone who either tried or talked about some crazy get-rich plan, ultimately expectedly failing. Drop Dead Sexy isn’t some low-budget production and it looks pretty good featuring sharp and saturated cinematography.

Apart from our two leads, we also have the opportunity to see young Amber Heard playing a stripper named Candy. And what to say about Pruitt Taylor Vince, Xander Berkeley, and fucking Brad Dourif as the city mortician. I mean, they got the casting part right.

When they end up on the lam with an impossible debt, they decide to dig up the dead rich wife of the richest man in town for the priceless necklace that Eddie remembers her wearing at her wake. Things get complicated, Crispin can't rebury her, cuz now he's attached to her, he cares for her and doesn't want her to be lonely. Heh. This is where as the narrator of stage mysteries would say... the plot thickens!

Now - if this description doesn't have you twitching like a cadaver struck by lightning, let me add one last image in your mind. In Frank & Eddie's fumbling investigation of the gorgeous corpse, they decide to bother Herman the Mortician to find out for sure how she died. Now Herman is played by none other than Brad Dourif. Yes, CHUCKY! And on his slab at the moment is a 22 year old hot as hell nude lady, whose husband shot her dead. And he's having a candlelit evening with her. Yes, this is one of those movies. Maybe I'm eager to like movies at SXSW this year, but I really dug this film. Jason and Crispin make a helluva team. It looks a bit cheap, but hell... so did all the Abbott & Costello flicks or even those Bowery Boy flicks. This is in that spirit, only more risque'! Cool flick!

So if you’re in the mood for a silly but entertaining dark comedy check out Drop Dead Sexy. And if you want to continue in the same fashion here are some more recommendations: Very Bad Things, Fargo, Death at a Funeral, and In Bruges. And I just have to mention John Dahl’s Red Rock West, Tarantino’s True Romance and Scorched starring Woody Harrelson, while we’re at the subject of small cities and schemes.