Filmic Friday 15

Movie: No Depo$it
Director & Pretty Much Everything Else: Frank D'Angelo

There's a reason people make fun of passion projects and self-serving vehicles for a director's own delusions of acting talent.

This movie is all of those reasons on film.

This movie also doesn't exist! Seriously, type it in on Google - between Z and I, we could only locate a grand total of four pictures. FOUR.

This is one of four recovered pictures from the internet.

My god. Look at those names. You know these horribly spaced names. And yes, the poster's a pretty good look at how that movie work. The tagline makes 0 sense. The special effects are meh. And... hey is he just leaning on the greenscreen they put the money filter on???

Here is the plot to No Depo$it:

Michael Paré plays loser Mickey Ryan whose life has gone to shit. We are shown this by him being told that he has to pay his home loan in full right now because he went and got a demand loan. And the bank (or at least Eric Roberts in a bank office) is demanding. Politely.

The dialog is rock stupid, but at least it gives you gold sometimes - like when Paré learns that he's going to be foreclosed on: "My house? But that's where I live! With my family!"

It's so dumb, guys. It's not The Room because even though its made with more understanding of film making and we actually know that everyone got paid (and got nice catering), it's somehow worse than both The Room and Birdemic combined.

But I digress. Mickey Ryan loses his house, his wife walks out on him because I guess she's too good to get a job while he's laid off? I don't know. This movie and film maker appear to hate women to death, so... don't expect any decent female characters. Except for Doris Roberts - her character is a sad angel. Maybe literally. I don't know. The movie is weird and confusing.

Mickey goes to the bar and bumps into Frank D'Angelo's character, Jimmy Valenti, who is a seriously wealthy... energy drink guru? I honestly thought he was the bank's president because he's talking to Eric Roberts on the phone in the middle of the conversation Roberts is having with Mickey regarding the house where he lives with his family.

Jimmy decides that Mickey, who has literally knocked him flat on his ass, is a nice guy for helping him up and says he'll pay him back. In another movie, he'd actually just be pissed at being knocked down. Or Mickey would offer to buy him a drink as apology and they'd have the "why are you sad, Mickey" conversation a half hour earlier. But no, they go their separate ways, and through a series of really stupid bar scenes and discovering that Mickey's mom is alcoholic bingo addict Maria Del Mar sitting at the same bingo hall as Sad Doris Roberts Whose Drug Addict Son Could Not Be Saved and Strung Out Aunt Margot Kidder, we find our "hero" sitting with Antisemitic Douchebags played by Daniel Baldwin and Michael Madsen.

Oh ladies. No.

The ASDBs con Mickey into joining them and, in a combination flashback/music video give him a neck tattoo in the bar. With his new hepatitis, Mickey now joins with the ASDBs to rob a bank. It just happens to be the same bank that he'd taken out the loan with. Which is filled with Jewish people for some reason? They beat the tar out of poor Eric Roberts, recreating a crappy version of that scene from Batman with the Joker's guys shooting out the banker's knees. They kill a guard, and Mickey has a change of heart. Then they also shoot Jimmy, who just happens to be there making... a deposit.

He has this look through the whole movie...

In a movie explicitly called NO DEPOSIT.

Ugh.

Anyway, Robert Loggia is killing it with his too-good performance of a survivor of Nazi Germany who has no time for these idiots. Eventually, The director - er, Jimmy - teams with Mickey to stop the bad guys, the police come in, Mickey is shot in the damn neck. Loggia gives the best line of the movie.

"Let's get a stretcher for this good man! And a trash bag for these pieces of shit."

The movie ends with everyone saying what a nice guy Mickey is for... robbing a bank and giving up halfway through?

It's stupid.

This movie is stupid.

You should track it down and watch it!

It's worth all 80 minutes of very Canadian "where the heck are we" nonsense, and I've cut out the worst scenes here - I didn't talk about Mickey's idiot brother and shrewish wife, or about how Jimmy's wife is a little controlling in the same way some boyfriends are but it's supposed to be sweet when guys do it, or about the ridiculous 1/4 of the movie that is actually just flashbacks to scenes you've just watched. It's absolutely a riot. This feels like a first movie, but it's very much not!

It's his third directorial, written, and acting movie.

He was a camera and electrical guy first (starting in the 1980s).

You'd think he'd have picked up on how to make a movie by now... At least he knows how to treat his actors, because if you think for a second that Doris Roberts and Robert Loggia would show up for bad pay and worse food you're bananas.

I think that'll be all for me, guys. I'm out of photos and out of ideas for how to drag out the experience of No Depo$it.

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

PS - that link goes to something utterly unrelated because I feel like that could be fun!