DEAD CELEBRITIES **** UK 2018 Dir: Michael Fausti. 11 mins
Writer-director-star Michael Fausti follows up impressive earlier shorts Z.A.F. and THE INGRESS TAPES with this broadly played, witty deconstruction of our culture’s fascination with celebrity deaths and the distorted facts employed to embellish our entertainment value of said fatalities. Narrated by a self-described “famous” corpse, it follows a pair of hotel maintenance guys, one of whom is a subscriber to Nude Dead Celebrities magazine and is fond of sharing anecdotes about the disproportionately high number of famous folk who have expired in the bathtub. The unpredictable story has engaging diversions into the occult connections to FREAKS director Tod Browning, a very amusing interlude about “The French Elvis” and insights into the premature demise of Lenny Bruce and Jim Morrison. It pays off in fine style with graphic gore, and Fausti himself is a splendidly dour guide to an audience (that’s you and me) who, in his words, “really want their celebrities dead”.
Review by Steven West
Dead Celebrities Trailer 2018 from Michael Fausti on Vimeo.
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