Pig Death Machine (2013)

Day-glo low-budget underground headcase comedy that tells the parallel stories of two women and their bizarre reactions to some tainted pork. One is a rank idiot (Amy Davis, sporting an impressive mane of long grey hair) who becomes a super-genius and struggles with the weight of her new perceptions. The other (Hannah Levbarg) is a plant lover who develops the ability to hear flowers and shrubs talk, up to and including grass that winces in pain when she walks on it and lettuce that screams when sliced (shades of an old Roald Dahl story called “The Sound Machine”). It’s the first feature film in over a decade from the husband and wife team of Jon Moritsugu and Amy Davis. He directs, she stars, both write and do other hands-on jobs in this raw DIY production shot in the adobe-lined streets of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The two became vegetarians during the making and that’s no surprise. This is not a preachy or political film, but underneath its artsy camp and screwball surrealism it meditates on the anxiety of food consumption (from a health conscious point of view rather than a moral one). Moritsugu makes pork products look anything but appetizing here. It’s either creepily pink and so raw that you can smell the salmonella or fried up in grotesque cholesterol puddles of sizzling fat. Recommended for those with adventurous tastes. Just expect to feel greasy afterward.