Sonny Boy (1989)

What's It About?

A desert criminal named Weasel (Brad Dourif) murders a young couple and steals their car, taking it to his boss Slue (Paul L. Smith of Crimewave), but to Weasel's surprise the young couple's 6-month old son is in the car.

Slue wants to feed the baby to the pigs but his transgendered girlfriend Pearl (David Carradine) falls in love with the child and insists they keep him.  Slue ultimately relents to the idea of keeping the baby but insists on raising him his way.  He keeps the child, whom he calls "Sonny Boy", in a box and on his sixth birthday cuts his tongue out.  He spends years conditioning the child to endure pain by dragging him through the dirt behind a car and lighting a ring of fire around him so he'll learn to endure extreme heat.  A weird bond of tenderness grows between "father" and "son" as we see Sonny Boy (Michael Boston) grow into a dirty beast of a man who Slue uses as a sort of attack dog.  But soon Sonny begins to discover his humanity and want to change, unfortunately the people of the town that live in fear of Slue see Sonny Boy as a menace and set out to kill him.

Is It Any Good?

There are a lot of weird movies out there, one of the things that attracted me to Trouble City's forebear Chud.com was a desire to dig up these old forgotten oddities but I dare say that there is nothing under the sun more positively strange than Sonny Boy.  I would like to say that this isn't really a horror movie but the moment I make that declaration I'm immediately plagued by the question of "well, what is it, then?"

Sonny Boy defies description, but let me attempt.  Take Tim Burton, Wes Craven, Rob Zombie, a lifetime movie about child abuse, an early '90s coming-of-age movie about a son connecting with his estranged father, the movie Nell, and What's Eating Gilbert Grape? and find a middle-ground between all of those movies and that's approximately where Sonny Boy sits.

There's no set mood or tone to this movie.  A lot of extremely fucked-up things happen in this movie yet it's weirdly heartwarming, a lot of heartwarming things happen in this movie yet it's weirdly upsetting, the characters are irredeemably despicable yet weirdly sympathetic.  For example: Paul L. Smith's character suggests feeding the baby to the pigs, he murders people without remorse, he abuses the child and even cuts out his tongue, he kills the deputy who comes to rescue Sonny as a baby by shooting him point blank with a howitzer and causing little bits of his body to rain down on Pearl and the baby and yet those moments where Slue stares at Sonny with a gleam of pride in his eye (and mind you, these moments are all in the midst of something horrible happening) it tugs all the right heart strings. 

I don't understand how a movie can be sickeningly saccharine while so many vile thing are happening onscreen.  You would think this would be a screwball dark comedy but no, not really.  There are moments of comedy but for the most part the movie plays as a straight drama taking place in a world that makes the world of Harmony Korine's Gummo seem like a pleasant place to be.  Weirdly David Carradine's character, who seems like she would be the subject of relentless mockery in a movie this old is played in a very dignified way.  Beyond Carradine having a visible five-o'clock shadow and his normal deep voice, it's never addressed that Pearl is not a biological woman and the movie never makes her the subject of a joke.  Carradine plays the character with a lot of compassion and tenderness, he's really the heart of the movie in a weird way.

I don't know if Sonny Boy is good or bad, I'm not sure what if any message it is meant to have.  I don't know if I want to watch it again but I feel like I have to own it because that's the only way I can prove to myself that it's real.  This movie may have broken me.

Watch, Toss, or Buy?

I can't answer that question with any real sureness, this movie may delight, confound, or disgust you depending on your personal preferences so I'll say give it a watch but if you're having a negative reaction then just go ahead and turn it off, it's not going to turn around for you.