It’s Harold Blodgett’s (Pendleton) birthday, and the poor guy’s having a rough time of it. The alarm clock won’t shut off, his wife (Hyland) won’t wake up, the cleaner’s neglected to get that annoying stain out of his trousers, and so on. To cap it off, when he returns home from the office that same day, he finds a mysterious pair of shady characters (Fields, Massa) lounging around his apartment. According to them, Harold hired them to murder his wife, and they’ve done just that. Have they? Did he? What’s going on here? That’s the unusual jumping off point for Houston indie filmmaker Chason’s stylized, surreal black (and white) comedy that first screened in Austin during the SXSW Film and Media Conference last March. Chason has made what can only be called one of the strangest murder mysteries ever seen. Director of photography Claudia Raschke’s camerawork recalls everything from David Lynch’s Eraserhead to — in an extended chase sequence through the darkened industrial byways of greater Houston — Roger Corman’s poverty row quickies like Little Shop of Horrors and A Bucket of Blood. All four leads are excellent here, with Fields and Massa suitably sleazy as they play three-card monte with Harold’s whirling mind. Charlie’s Ear, however, is an excellent example of the type of film audiences are either going to “get” or “not get.” The jokes here are more consistently unsettling than they are laugh-out-loud funny, and the whole film has a dank, creepy feel to it. It seems like director Chason sometimes falls into the habit of employing strangeness for strangeness’ sake alone, when he should instead be shoring up the occasionally collapsible storyline. It’s a weird, wild ride, and while not for everyone, it remains one of the oddest films I’ve ever seen.
This article appears in May 20 • 1994 (Cover).