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Charlie (Fab Filippo) and Caril Ann (Melissa George) are this cute
young couple from Ohio who together with their sleazy friend Trey (Bodhi
Elfman) produce a TV-series in which they lure suspected killers into
traps. However, as sensationalist as their series might be, it has lost
bite over time, and now, to remain on the air, they decide to track down a
killer who preferably (but not exclusively) kills watchmen of a Hollywood
mall in quite gruesome ways. After much to and fro, our heroic threesome
think they have got the killer, Cutler, a man who has already spent time
in jail for a murder, and who lives conveniently near to the mall. Two
things though, Cutler is a bit of an idiot, and the killer seems to be a
computer genius. And the police have had him under observation, so he has
an almost airtight alibi for at least one murder. Charlie and Caril Ann
figure there is just one thing to do in a situation like this: Break into
Cutler's home. In his house, they find tons of evidence that points into
Cutler's direction, too much almost ... but then Cutler returns home, and
Charlie and Caril flee into the basement and find a tunnle that leads to
the mall, leads right into the elevator shaft. With Cutler in hot pursuit,
Charlie manages to push Caril Ann out of the shaft, but can't make it out
in time himself with the elevator approaching from one side, Cutler from
the other ... In terror, Caril Ann returns to Cutler's house with the
police, expecting her boyfriend to be dead, but she finds Cutler squashed
instead. Apparently he must have somehow stumbled into the shaft and this
way stopped the elevator with his body, in a bizarre twist giving his life
to save Charlie that way. Everything is good now, isn't it? Nope,
Charlie and Trey find the will of Cutler's deceased mother that suggests
Cutler had a adoptive brother living with him, and while some evidence
just didn't stick with Cutler, it might with the other guy - but where is
he? Why, at Caril Ann's place of course, preparing to kill her. But in
her TV-series she had played bait for killers often enough to know how to
trick one, and she keeps the killer - a wanna-be actor who has been
pesting our heroes all through the movie, desperately trying to get in on
their act - occupied long enough for Charlie and Trey to arrive and throw
him off the balcony. Case closed ... The success of the
genre-conscious and highly ironic post-modern Scream-series
on the big screen has no doubt encouraged Wes Craven and others to try
something vaguely similar and similarly ironic, macabre and self-aware on
the small screen ... and Hollyweird is actually pretty decent: It
doesn't take itself seriously for more than a minute, delivers in suspense
and shocks, pays hommage to half of horror history, is well paced and
features a likeable heroic trio. However, this pilot was never picked up
for a series ... basically because what works on the big screen doesn't
necessarily work on the small screen: For mainstream audiences, this pilot
was just a tad too macabre, at times even too gruesome, and the strong
satirical undercurrents didn't sit well with the average TV-viewer,
either. Too bad in a way, because Hollyweird is actually a pretty
likeable piece of TV - on the other hand though, its concept would have
probably worn off way too fast if serialized. Still, good fun!
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find Hollyweird at adultvideouniverse.com
