Hanky Panky – Passion, but not Polish
Hanky Panky is a horror comedy set in a cabin in the woods, with mostly early-2000s TV movie production values, committed performances, absurd writing, and a final product that flits between “good” and “so bad it’s good” without ever settling into being boringly atrocious. This correlates with lighting and staging choices that make it feeling uneven and like it could have used another coat, but there is something admirable in the passion communicated by its amateurish qualities. I certainly laughed a lot, which is the main thing you want out of a comedy.
The stage is set when a couple’s romantic winter getaway turns into a friends-and-family affair. Sam (Jacob Demonte-Finn, with a talking handkerchief named Woody voiced by Toby Bryan) is already staying at the cabin when Diane (the cheerful and welcoming hippie played by Ashley Holliday Tavares) appears, soon thereafter finding it was supposed to be a couple’s getaway for Carla (Christina Laskay) and Cliff (Anthony Rutowicz), the former of whom is much more bothered than the latter. Her plan to ignore him while drinking is a bit upset, where his plans to get drunk and fish can go right along. Their marriage is in an acerbic place, and their friend Rebecca (co-director and production designer Linsdsay Haun) sought to bring them together with some friends, including Cliff’s brother Dr. Crane (writer and co-director Nick Roth) and his wife Lilith (Azure Parsons) who I wasn’t sure actually existed until her shocking and funny reveal. Chipper-and-odd neighbor Kelly (Clare Grant) shows up with a bunch of desserts and stays a spell. Toby Bryan, who led special effects on the movie, plays Rebecca’s brother Norm, with whom she has a weird relationship tied to a religion that’s initially only alluded to. We also see him fully frontally naked; it’s such an odd performance and I mean that in the best way. Awkward dinner conversation has Sam win over both Diane and Dr. Crane with his expertise in fabrics and clothier trades, while Carla broods.
Before long, there’s chaos, death, and Cliff and Diane on a psychic retreat where they meet an evil hat played by Seth Green. I don’t want to give it all away because, when I sat to down to write I was feeling uneven but now I just feel like this is a film you should experience as quickly as you can. It’s so bizarre, but clearly have a level of craft to it. It’s not especially sophisticated, but it’s nice when a group of people film a short and then come back together a decade later to make the feature-length version.
If I had to stretch, I’d say that Hanky Panky is a movie about the expectations we put on others and the harsh ways we can shape our perspectives, using judgment to create hierarchies of in- and out-groups, as well as how things like tangential shared passion or the pure guiding light of romantic attraction can build a bridge over the gaping metaphorical chasm of distance that can be ethnicity, religious background, or the extreme social awkwardness of a dinner party that seems accidental but was actually assembled by incestual alien-worshipping cultists. It’s a weird movie is what I’m saying in my mixed metaphors here. The main morals, in the few moments where the film is interested in those things, might be not to judge people and to be open to things, to care about people and let them care about you, and also to trust your gut. I don’t know, I really wouldn’t say this is a film concerned with a particular message besides “it’s fun to make movies with your friends” and “it’s good to get a little weird with it.”
Hanky Panky’s got a real Adult Swim, high-at-two-AM vibe, which is different from the initial Coen Brothers-adjacent vibe its opening scene gave me, with a man running through the snow and being murdered. Granted, I notice as you will that the actors’ names all have something like “demon” or “ghoul” interpolated into their name to let you know what kind of film you’re watching. The movie takes some odd turns, but it feels more like a throwback than something avant-garde. It’s a charming picture whose most structurally sinful scene might be a fight between inanimate objects on visible wires. That bugs me, mostly because I can’t tell if it was a matter of leaning into the rough edges or simply not caring to sand them down. Still, there are far too many untextured movies at our fingertips at all times; too few that look like what you and your friends would do with enough talent and effort.
Final Score – 3/5
Hanky Panky is available to purchase on Amazon Prime as of April 19.
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