Hectic Knife (2016)

Sometimes I don’t know what to write. I sit down in front of the screen of my computer, I stare at the blank Word page, and have no idea where to start. This is one of those times. I know I need to write a Sunday “Bad” Movies post. It has to be finished for this Sunday because every post has a Sunday deadline. That’s the way this blog works. If I don’t start writing something, I won’t have anything for this week’s post, and there’s a problem.

I’m going to write this. At the very least, you will be getting a post. You will have something to read. Will it be good? I don’t know. I never know how these things are going to turn out this early in the post. All I know is that the post will be done. It will feel a little different because I’m basically just going to freeform the entire thing. I’m going to write whatever I think of. I don’t have a structure I’m going with. The only thing I know is that I’ll be writing about this week’s movie. There would be no other reason to be here.

This week’s movie is Hectic Knife. If you don’t know what Hectic Knife is, that’s okay. I’m about to go over the details. Don’t worry. Released in 2016, Hectic Knife was directed by Greg DeLiso. It was about a vigilante named Hectic Knife (Peter Litvin). That was his birth name. It was also a descriptor of his vigilante style. He had two kitchen knives that he frantically wielded and attacked with. Hectic Knife went up against Piggly Doctor (J.J. Brine), an evil doctor who wanted to get people hooked on “the drugs.” Piggly Doctor was also blowing up children. Hectic Knife had to stop him.

Hectic Knife was a dark comedy that was as hectic as the titular character. Absurd things were happening to move the story forward to an admittedly anti-climactic point. The movie was self-aware of how ridiculous it was and played into it, becoming more ridiculous. The characters were zany. The action was filled with blood and people who should be dead coming back to life. Anything went in Hectic Knife. There were no rules.

You probably want a few examples of how hectic things got in Hectic Knife. I’ll begin at the beginning, which was actually placed in the middle of the movie. Hectic Knife was trained in the ways of the hectic knife in India. That’s right. He was born with the name Hectic Knife and he learned the ways of the hectic knife, which involved waving knives in a hectic manner. Those are layers of hectic knifage. The training happened in an India that very much looked like some sort of small park in a city. They were sitting on concrete next to a basketball court. That was their India.

The training sequence showed some major examples of violence not meaning much of anything half the time. The teacher showed his students that their weapon was only a knife by stabbing himself over and over in the heart. It didn’t kill him or really injure him at all. Then there was a fight to the death between Hectic Knife and the other student. He stabbed the other student through the head and killed him. Only, the student ended up alive again as they both got their blank diplomas upon graduation. The movie was hectic, I tell you!

Now let’s get to the actual beginning of the movie, the opening scene. There was a woman. A man approached. He repeatedly said that he was a junkie. He was going to give her the drugs because he was a junkie. That was a weird thing for a junkie to do, since a junkie would typically be addicted to drugs. Wouldn’t the junkie want the drugs for himself? Anyway, Hectic Knife showed up and slaughtered the junkie. Blood went everywhere. The woman screamed, then thanked Hectic Knife.

The next time Hectic Knife tried to save someone, she ended up becoming his girlfriend. Frannie Glooper (Georgia Kate Haege) stood by making commentary about how bad both Hectic Knife and her mugger were at fighting. She complained about needing to be somewhere else. She was thankless in being saved, instead criticizing everything about the rescue. The scene ended with Hectic Knife handing her a business card while narration said he didn’t have business cards except for in that scene.

Frannie Glooper had her eccentricities as well. She spent the entire movie trying to find and steal Hectic Knife’s money. She tried to seduce Hectic’s roommate, Link (John Munnelly), to which Link repeatedly responded “Really?” in a high-pitched voice. Before that, though, she introduced herself to Link by saying the same thing over and over in different accents. The whole movie came to a stop so that she could try out several accents. It was a weird scene.

Another strange scene that brought everything to a standstill was a scene with a couple important beats, but a lot of filler. Hectic Knife mentioned throughout the movie that he only had two friends. One of them was a police officer who was in one scene before he was killed off. The other was an older gentleman who kind of gave Hectic Knife a pep talk earlier in the movie. The reason I say all that is that the scene I want to discuss involves the return of the old gentleman.

The scene at hand involved Hectic Knife being captured by a trio of bad guy henchmen. One of them just happened to be that friend in a twist that left everyone reeling. It wasn’t that revelation that made the scene crazy, though. It was the asides that kept happening. The entire scene involved bagels. It began with one of the henchmen trying to give another henchman bagels and the other one hating the bagels for not being fresh enough. They argued about spreads for bagels. They broke the fourth wall. All sorts of things unrelated to the Hectic Knife story were in the scene. These things were unnecessary to the story and only helped slow things down.

Hectic Knife was as hectic as the name implied. There were a bunch of scenes that made little to no sense. There were scenes that slowed the story down to have asides that were irrelevant to anything. Characters who got killed were miraculously, and without explanation, brought back to life. Other characters who should have been killed by their injuries were unphased and lived on to see another day. Character motivations were non-existent. It was a movie that certainly lived up to the idea of Hectic Knife.

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Hectic Knife. I wrote about it once before, a few years ago, for a horror website. I don’t remember much of what I wrote. I didn’t go back and check over that post. This is a different beast anyway. I didn’t know what to write here, but I wrote something. It might not be the best thing I’ve ever written. It’s not. It’s not even close. But it’s something. I hope it was entertaining because I’m done writing.

Aside from these notes, that is:

• There are no acting/directing connections between Hectic Knife and any other Sunday “Bad” Movies, so I’m just going to link to a few other movies distributed by Troma. Here’s a post for the four Toxic Avenger movies (week 110). Here’s a post for Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (week 259). Here’s a post for Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (week 84). And here’s a post for Killer Condom (week 205).
• Have you seen Hectic Knife? Have you even heard of it? What did you think? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• Is there a movie that you think I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies? Tell me what it is. You can find me in the comments or on Twitter.
• If you head on over to Instagram, be sure to check out Sunday “Bad” Movies. There’s always some fun stuff going on over there.
• With that, it’s time to look forward to what will be coming up next week. I will be venturing back to 1986 for a movie about BMX biking from the guy that brought the world Smokey and the Bandit. Have you figured out what movie? I’ll be watching Rad. Come on back next week to see what I write about that one. I’ll see you then. I’ll be here. Have a good week!