Bow To The Brilliance Of GetEven

One of the most astonishing ego trips of all time, GETEVEN (sic) is inept in every department, right down to its semantically confused title. I bet the food at the craft service table was crummy too.

Taking the blame is one-and-done amateur filmmaker John De Hart, a Los Angeles attorney who thought he was handsome, talented, and charismatic enough to carry an action movie. Boy, was he wrong. Not only does De Hart serve as producer, director, writer, and star of GETEVEN, he wrote himself three love scenes with naked former Playmate Pamela Jean Bryant (DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE) and jumped onto a phony-looking stage to sing an awful country-western song with all the passion and stage presence of Rockin’ Mel Slurrup.

It’s doubtful a finished script ever existed. Half the movie plays like poor improvisation and usually in excruciatingly long takes. It helps explain how De Hart convinced pros William Smith (CONAN THE BARBARIAN) and Wings Hauser (DEADLY FORCE) to sign on, since they didn’t have to spend time memorizing lines and working on characterization. Sets, costumes, sound, music, casting, and photography are the pits, but thankfully just bad enough to be hysterical under the right circumstances.

Normad (Smith) was a corrupt cop who framed partners Finney (Hauser) and Bodie (De Hart) as drug dealers and got them kicked off the force. A year later, Normad is a Superior Court judge (!) and the drug-dealing leader of a Satanic cult (!!) which once counted Bodie’s estranged girlfriend Cindy (Bryant) among its flock. Most of this backstory is not only shown (albeit on in a competent manner), but also redundantly recited by Bodie during some sunset soul-searching.

Eventually, after De Hart discovered he was making a vengeance flick with no action, no drama, and no structure, Normad gets around to sending his goons to kill Cindy, which sets Bodie off on a road to revenge (which is also an alternate title for GETEVEN). De Hart, so wooden he makes Jim Mitchum look like Ace Ventura, is a hilarious counterpart to the coked-out Hauser, who seems to be channeling Dennis Hopper’s APOCALYPSE NOW performance, rambling for minutes on end about nothing, inexplicably splashing fully clothed in a pool with two thonged beauties, and showing up at Bodie and Cindy’s wedding in an amazing orange suit.

It’s rare to see filmmaking this incompetent, and like a pearl within an oyster, it should be treasured. One of Normad’s thugs is played by an actor who was also in SAMURAI COP…and this is a step down.