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as my first glimpse at Chase Dudley’s work marvelous? This is the question I had to ask myself as I started my viewing experience. The Kentucky born filmmaker has directed seven feature length projects in the last eight years, which means he should be a pro at crafting a story and executing its various production processes. As I stated, Marvelous Mandy is the first time I’ve ever seen Dudley’s work outside of his previous movies’ trailers. The trailers were, obviously, independent and showed that quality of production, but I never saw anything that made me think “this is bad.” I was hoping Marvelous Mandy would have the same borderline charm as I headed further into the movie.
Pinning a particular genre on Marvelous Mandy is a tough job. It really is a smorgasbord of conflicting categories with thrills, drama and horror at the forefront. However, in between the lines of dialogue and the action on screen one can find an equal amount of psychological elements and a tale of love gone bad. You see, Marvelous Mandy follows the story of single father Harvey Fowler (Jonathan Stottmann) as he searches for discontinued issues in his daughter’s favorite children’s book – Marvelous Mandy. Visiting a used book store one afternoon, he finds the missing issues and Mandy herself (Paula Marcenaro Solinger of Blood Sombrero and “Salem” fame). Eventually the father and author strike up a relationship, but as their bond grows deeper – Mandy becomes more unwound and sinister. She’ll do anything to maintain the life she so desperately wants, the love she so greatly desires. Even if that means marvelous murder.
Describing Mandy as an animal is also a difficult task. At first I likened her to a black widow, wounding and killing any man unfortunate enough to fall into her web. However, Mandy is so much more than that – she’s a lot more cold and calculated. In the movie, she briefly dates a young man, Charlie (Spencer Korcz), and this is when we first get glimpses into her madness. She’s obviously toying with the young man’s emotions, but she also dares him – and later Harvey – to do dangerous tasks to impress her. She’s always lying, always scheming and appears to get a sick sense of joy out of toying with her victims. Of course, the murderous side of Many doesn’t come out until the last 25 minutes of the movie, meaning viewers are treated to a creepy, uncomfortable love story with danger and suspense until the bloodbath at the end. And the end is a bloodbath, indeed. It’s a good story with the “what will she do next” hook and it’s well acted, too.
My only problems with Marvelous Mandy appear when I examine it from a production standpoint. The audio is far and away my biggest complaint. At times it wasn’t loud enough. At times there wasn’t white noise in the background between cuts so the atmosphere is disrupted. I even caught a moment or two when characters are talking but their mouths weren’t moving. My next biggest complaint is the scene transitions. There’s no fades or b-roll, just really hard cuts to the next scene – often without the proper timing before a cut. It stood out to me as a person with a degree in film, but I understand not everything is always perfect in the world of indie filmmaking. Dudley wouldn’t can a whole project because of shotty audio, just like the editor could only work with what he was given. Despite these two aspects, though, Marvelous Mandy was much higher quality than I expected. Great camera work and the cinematography was better than I expected – dark in the right moments and vibrant in others. The gore at the end was pretty impressive, too. Not the most polished production, but definitely far from amateur.
Marvelous Mandy was written by Brentt Slabchuck and directed and produced by Chase Dudley with Samantha Stengel. Dudley, Jessica Paige York, R. Wayne Hogue Jr., Ryley Nicole and Kenna Hardin also appear alongside Stottmann, Solinger and Korcz. The film is premiering at The Village 8 Theater in Louisville, Kentucky on October 23, 2016. Movie starts at 7:30PM and tickets are only $5. Final Score: 6.5 out of 10.
