DVD REVIEW
Dir. Mark Eisenstein
Wild Eye Releasing
“If it makes sense, it must not be real,” muses Victor Argo from the stage of a dimly lit comedy club. Taking his maxim into account, 1985’s The Electric Chair couldn’t be farther from the real thing. Argo, in what is widely believed to be his only starring role, plays a failed stand-up comic in Mark Eisenstein’s Lynchian adaptation of his own one-man stage play. Eventually, the titular chair is introduced, apropos of nothing, and as Argo proceeds to strap himself in, his act becomes more the existential ramblings of a broken man; half Harvey Keitel, half Alan Arkin, Argo doesn’t so much talk to his audience as yells at them. The DVD release of this “lost film” includes a bevy of other films from Eisenstein as well as a feature-length commentary (which isn’t so much a commentary as it is a Q&A that replaces the film’s audio). The Electric Chair is a surreal picture that manages to create a gritty atmosphere with the help of its eponymous prop, and as such, deserves to be re-discovered. (Tyler Davidson)
