Sorry about the delay – had a bit of a Trojan problem on my computer, then the weekly D&D game, then some other stuff.

Real life gets in the way a lot.

Ahh, Thinner. Rarely has a movie relied more on its special effects, and even more rarely have those effects so unambiguously succeeded.

But let’s back up. Thinner is our twenty-fifth SwS film; it stars Robert John Burke as Billy Halleck, Joe Mantegna as, surprise, a mobster, and Michael Constantine as Tadzu Lempke, a superpowered Gyspy. It was directed by Tom Holland, who apparently did a couple of King tv miniseries.

Thinner is one of the simplest and most straightforward horror movies we’ve seen so far in Sundays with Stephen. What I mean by that is that Thinner is almost pure ‘horror’ as a subject; it eschews family drama, or comedy, or, for the most part, action sequences, and instead follows a single horrifying thread all the way through in a very low-key manner. Thinner puts the audience on a long slow slide toward something awful, and then it guides you there, but slowly, without a lot of unnecessary flashiness or cheap tricks.

Thinner concerns one Billy Halleck, a very talented lawyer in a small Massachusetts town, who also happens to be morbidly obese. Halleck’s a compulsive eater, and he’s half-heartedly trying to lose weight at the start of the film, but to little avail. He’s far more successful at getting his latest client, Ritchie Ginelli (Mantegna) off on an attempted murder for hire rap, a feat that earns him Ginelli’s considerable gratitude.

Unfortunately for Billy, on the way home from a celebratory dinner out, he and his wife make the mistake of getting frisky in a moving vehicle, and Halleck runs down an old Gypsy woman who was in town with her traveling troupe. Whoops.

Halleck’s friends in the police and local judiciary quickly fix matters, and he gets off without so much as a warning, until the leader of the Gypsies, Tadzu Lempke, puts an ominous curse on Billy: “Thinner”.

Billy begins rapidly shedding weight, and then more rapidly, uncontrollably, and is forced to seek out and confront Tadzu in an attempt to save his life.

Thinner‘s a pretty great movie, really. I wasn’t expecting that back when I originally purchased it. The performances are solid, the directing is low key, and the special effects work, especially regarding Halleck’s dramatic transformation over the course of the film.. is amazing. And very, very believable too. You could bill Thinner and The Machinist as a double billing in Dramatic Weight Loss Theatre, though after sitting through both I think everyone in your audience would be ill.

The acting, as I said, is pretty good here. Mantegna even gets to put an interesting spin on his mobster du jour; Ritchie is a very likable murderer, a man who’s good at his job and takes pride in his work, and is extremely loyal to his friends. It’s not often that a Mafia killer is the most sympathetic character in a film (outside of the Goodfellas-Casino-Godfather constellation of movies).

There are lots of nice little touches in the movie, twists on what the movie itself references (gypsy curses) as something of a cliche storyline. Halleck’s an interesting figure, a loving father but also a selfish and vindictive individual, and half the time you’re not sure whether to root for or against him. I usually like that kind of moral ambiguity in my movies, and Thinner is no exception.

Thinner‘s quite short, coming in at just about 90 minutes, and it’s a solid picture, so if you have a spare evening and want some straight horror without the silly splatter and buckets of blood, by all means, give it a try.

Next Week: Night Flier
Last Week: Delores Claiborne with Kathy Bates and a lot of blue