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★★
Directed by: Ivan Malekin
Written by: Ivan Malekin
Starring: Tom Vogel, Stevie Hall, Heath Novkovic
Dace Decklan: Private Eye is made by a crew that dedicates itself to the film’s ridiculousness. Everyone is in on the jokes, which mostly (or only) consists of dicks, sex, and female anatomy. It uses Star Wars-type crawls filled with gibberish to introduce us to its galaxy far far away because this level of absurdity cannot exist in our reality. Take a look at the opening credits featuring animated penises floating around the screen. The film is unabashedly crude and has no intentions of deviating from its route.
Dace Decklan sets its plot in motion in the typical film noir format. A sultry femme fatale like figure enters the office of Dace Decklan (Tom Vogel). She is Lena (Stevie Hall), and she wants Dace to track down her missing father. Dace is sexually aroused by Lena as he imagines her doing a sensual dance for him. His fantasies are cut short by his girlfriend Pollyanna (Heath Novkovic). Furthermore, Dave knows Lena’s missing father as they were together in the Rambosian civil war ten years ago. As the search deepens, we come to know about some pills invented by Lena’s father that do the work of Viagra (or, in the film’s term, Tentigo). Will Dace be able to find the father? Can he stop a local drug cartel from using the pills for world domination while simultaneously preventing a militant Church from also getting its hand on the pills?
The surprises, however, don’t lie in the answers to these questions. Why? Because Dace Decklan is not concerned with the plot. It casually inserts one just to throw all types of farcical humor at us. Characters shamelessly masturbate, their hands are covered with bodily fluids, incest takes place openly in the forest, and boobs are framed in closeups. Lena becomes the sexual object of desire for the camera as it ogles at her body with lust and lechery. If all this sounds like your type of trashy movie, then go ahead and watch Dace Decklan. You may be satisfied with it. I, too, love trashy exploitative cinema, but I didn’t have any fun with this film.
I suppose the trouble resides in its attempts to forcefully evoke laughter from the audience. The characters scream, shout, and endlessly circle around a topic in an effort to generate guffaws. This results in scenes that are stretched beyond their capabilities, like the one where the bad guys seem to laugh forever or a musical number near the end that just goes on and on without any impact. Even the gags that do work don’t have you rolling in the aisles. You just appreciate them mentally with a shrug. These include the Marlon Brando On The Dining Table joke (it’s as silly as it sounds), the Fight That Turned Into Sex joke, and a shot that has Dace with his mostly unbuttoned shirt standing heroically facing the wind.
And that’s the main issue with Dace Decklan: it’s devoid of hilarity. Every scene appears as if it should be funny, but it’s not. The film wants you to participate in its insanity, but you barely move a muscle to smile for any of it. But you know what they say: comedy is subjective. Give Dave Decklan a try, if you want. Maybe you will have more fun than me.
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