By Terry Sherwood
Surrealism with touches of humour in the film has always been a tough sell as few can do it right. Some of the works of David Lynch, Canadian Guy Maddin, French Provocateur Jean Rollin, and Jess Franco come to mind. When done well the work provokes thought and reaction leaving lasting images for intriguing reasons however Joseph Badon’s The Wheel of Heaven does the same thing for the wrong reasons.
Co-writer/director/producer Joseph Badon and co-writer Jason Kruppa have crafted a film which they say is in poster art is a homage to the 90s Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. What comes across is a mess of images, ideas, and idiotic dialogue with no single point except to waste one’s eyes and balls on and download capacity. The filmmakers and I use the term loosely fall into the fatal mistake of trying to make a ‘cult’ that some audience will grab, get played at festivals, rent on video or some other platform without having a single idea of what they are doing. Ed Wood, Russ Meyer, Roger Corman and others did not know how to make a cult film, their motivation was money and audience appeal. A cult film becomes one because of the people, not the filmmakers.
The Wheel of Heaven is composed of small parts presented like shorts, as shown on a public access television station, that comes together to form one blot on the landscape. It looks like a project for young people learning the craft of building work in a studio or production company. One sequence is when the camera shows a table read of the script with people reciting this moronic material and trying to make sense of it including actors.
It’s a lot to take in with many film clips being spliced together in rapid succession, THE WHEEL OF HEAVEN. Joseph Badon being “interviewed,” admitting that even the star Kali Russell doesn’t. Hard comment on the actors with the possible exception of to interesting black-and-white horror sequences similar to Carnival Of Souls that is marred by idiotic acting by a supposed villain. Musical numbers for no reason, people in strange costumes just taking up time on a screen.
As a whole or hole: The Wheel of Heaven looks like people made a bunch of material that one tosses it against the wall to see if any of it is a stick or is memorable and that is inexcusable. The trouble is that this drek is somehow supported by people who will give these people money. I would challenge the makers of this garbage to say why one made this other than to gave employment to actors and technicians trapped with it. Shite, Merde, or what some people think is Art is what it is. Nothing to see here except filmmakers having fun at the expense of the audience. I have seen other examples of this in genre films being ‘festival favourites’ that find an audience, The trouble is sometimes those same filmmakers laugh all the way to the bank.
Bloody Flicks 