The Contraption (1977)

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

A stalwart feature on Saturday Nightmares, this seven minute short film stars Richard O'Brien, of "Rocky Horror" fame, as a man building… Something. I honestly can't talk about it much without spoiling it. I'll just say the film is all about the build-up to the climatic visual punch line and it does so fantastic.As for the presentation, the short is very well shot. In close angles, we see the man working with his tools. A saw rushed into our eyes, wires and steel rods assembled from odd angles. The construction is intentionally show so that we aren't entirely sure what we're looking at. This short's success rides a great deal on its excellent sound design. In the heavily shadow room, all we here is a distant leaky pipe and the clanking and grinding of the man at work. This is another fantastic short and it's great that the internet and streaming video sites make it so easy now to revisit this types of film, stuff we'd otherwise would never see again.

A balding and bespectacled man (well played with quiet intensity by Richard O'Brien; Riff Raff in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show") feverishly concentrates on putting together an elaborate contraption in his dank basement for an extremely bleak and shocking reason. Writer/director Richard Dearden does a sterling job of creating and sustaining a tremendously suffocating claustrophobic atmosphere and a pervasively cold, clammy, and ultimately chilling tone which culminates in a startling surprise bummer ending that's capped off with a perfectly harsh and snippy lone closing line. O'Brien's excellent acting really holds this offbeat short together; he's totally riveting and convincing as he works on his gloomy project with a certain grim resolve and unwavering sense of steely determination. Starkly shot in a single cramped and confined setting, further enhanced by a terrific use of amplified sound effects (the constant dripping water is genuinely unnerving), and done mostly in tight close-ups with a strong mood of compelling ambiguity and a spare'n'spacey score, this supremely freaky gem packs one hell of a wickedly potent and unsettling wallop.

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** I don't know much about who, what or why this was produced but it was cool. A small bit of drama, short (I think 15 minutes) and concise. Richard O'Brien whiles away his time at bulding a rather complex device, cutting and planing wood, drilling, bending metal pipes and such, and all for what? Well, I believe this little gem is lost in the annals of videoland, so it will probably never air again so I'll tell ya. He completes the device and we see a large and menacing mousetrap, just the right size for...him. And with that he lays himself down on the trigger and snaps his neck in the trap. Cold, chilling, and quick. I believe this was part of a group of shorts, but I cannot remember as it aired on HBO and a few other cable channels before it became completely lost to time.

This short film is one of my personal favorites to watch. It is well-shot, the atmosphere dingy and oppressive, and a natural tension builds as you watch "Man" (Richard "God" O'Brien) build his mysterious "Contraption". There is next to nothing to distract you, no dialogue, save a voice-over at the very end of the film, so you find yourself pulled into the world of the character for its duration.I'd recommend it to anyone, not only O'Brien fans, but to them of course, it is indeed a MUST.