Hanky Panky | |
---|---|
Directed by | Lindsey Haun and Nick Roth |
Written by | Nick Roth |
Starring | Jacob DeMonte-Finn Ashley Holliday Christina Laskay Anthony Rutowicz Clare Grant Azure Parsons Toby Bryan Lindsey Haun Nick Roth Seth Green |
Cinematography | Chris Wedding Morgan Demeter Kevin Schlanser |
Edited by | Nick Roth Lindsey Haun |
Music by | Jimmy Haun |
Distributed by | DeskPop Entertainment |
Release date |
|
Running time | 87 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Hanky Panky is a 2023 American comedy horror film written by Nick Roth and directed by Roth and Lindsey Haun, featuring an ensemble cast including Jacob DeMonte-Finn, Ashley Holliday, Christina Laskay, Anthony Rutowicz, Clare Grant, Azure Parsons, Toby Bryan, Seth Green, and Roth and Haun themselves. In the film, a crude talking handkerchief vies with an evil killer top hat for the fate of the universe.
The sweet and quirky ayahuasca marriage counselor Diane mistakenly invites the wrong "Sam" to a retreat which she is co-hosting with friends and family at an isolated snowy mountain cabin. Instead of her best friend's sister Samantha showing up, she gets Sam, a socially anxious oddball. Sam is accompanied by his best friend, Woody, a foul-mouthed talking handkerchief which Sam believes only he can hear. Woody is reportedly sexually aroused by cleaning up messes. Diane is Sam's opposite, but it's love at first sight. The only thing that stands between them is that right away everyone in the cabin starts being mysteriously murdered, and the whole vacation quickly descends into a zany pandemonium of cults, psychedelics, aliens, and, as Woody himself puts it, delicious chaos. [1]
The film was produced without a budget, with the small cast and crew splitting costs and living together in the cabin in northern Utah in which the film was almost entirely shot. [2] It was shot on the Digital_Bolex D16 camera. [3]
Principal photography began and was completed in January 2016. Post-production on the film was completed in 2023. [4]
The film premiered at the Los Angeles Comedy Film Festival on December 9, 2023, [5] and was released streaming worldwide on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Google Play, and Fandango at Home by DeskPop Entertainment on April 19, 2024. [6]
The film received generally positive reviews from critics: on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 89% rating, based on 18 reviews. [7]
Kristy Puchko of Mashable praised the film as a "gleefully absurd avalanche of silliness... the comedy equivalent of a Jackson Pollock," [8] and Film Ireland called it "a genre-bending rollercoaster that seamlessly blends elements of comedy and horror, all while descending to a new level of insanity... A surreal success in ambitious independent filmmaking." [2]
The film has also received 49 awards from film festivals. [9]
Heywood Allen is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many accolades, including the most nominations (16) for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He has won four Academy Awards, ten BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for a Emmy Award and a Tony Award. Allen was awarded an Honorary Golden Lion in 1995, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1997, an Honorary Palme d'Or in 2002, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014. Two of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Diane Keaton is an American actress. She has received various accolades throughout her career spanning over five decades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Film Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for a Tony Award and two Emmy Awards. She was honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center Gala Tribute in 2007 and an AFI Life Achievement Award in 2017.
Gene Wilder was an American actor, comedian, writer and filmmaker. He was mainly known for his comedic roles, but also for his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). He collaborated with Mel Brooks on the films The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974), and with Richard Pryor in the films Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991).
Cabin Fever is a 2002 American horror comedy film co-written and directed by Eli Roth and starring Rider Strong, Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, Cerina Vincent, Joey Kern, and Giuseppe Andrews. The story follows a group of college graduates who rent a cabin in the woods and fall victim to a flesh-eating disease. The inspiration for the film's story came from a real-life experience during a trip to Iceland when Roth developed a skin infection.
Husbands and Wives is a 1992 American comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. The film stars Allen, Mia Farrow, Sydney Pollack, Judy Davis, Lysette Anthony, Juliette Lewis, Liam Neeson and Blythe Danner. The film debuted shortly after the end of Allen and Farrow's romantic and professional partnership, and was the last of their 13 films together. The movie is filmed by Carlo Di Palma with a handheld camera style and features documentary-like interviews with the characters interspersed with the story.
Woody Allen has acted in, directed, and written many films starting in the 1960s. His first film was the 1965 comedy What's New Pussycat?, which featured him as both writer and performer. Feeling that his New Yorker humor clashed with director Clive Donner's British sensibility, he decided to direct all future films from his own material. He was unable to prevent other directors from producing films based on previous stage plays of his to which he had already sold the film rights, notably 1972's successful film Play it Again, Sam from the 1969 play of the same title directed by Herbert Ross.
Lindsey Haun is an American actress, singer, and director. She is known for her role as Hadley on the HBO television series True Blood. She was nominated for a Young Artist Award for her role in the 2000 Disney Channel original movie The Color of Friendship as Mahree Bok, and has starred in the film Broken Bridges, for which she also recorded a portion of the soundtrack. She starred in and co-directed the 2023 comedy horror film Hanky Panky.
Evil Dead is an American comedy horror franchise created by Sam Raimi consisting of five feature films and a television series. The series originally revolves around the grimoire the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, an ancient Sumerian text that wreaks havoc upon a group of cabin inhabitants in a wooded area in Tennessee.
Jimmy Cary Haun is an American guitarist and composer, known for his work with the bands Yes, Air Supply, and Circa.
Hanky Panky is a 1982 American comedy thriller Metrocolor film directed by Sidney Poitier, starring Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner. Wilder and Radner met during filming and later married.
Tucker & Dale vs. Evil is a 2010 black comedy horror film directed by Eli Craig and written by Craig and Morgan Jurgenson. It stars Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Brandon Jay McLaren, Jesse Moss, and Chelan Simmons. Labine and Tudyk play a pair of well-meaning hillbillies who are mistaken for killers by a group of clueless college students. The film premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and received a limited release in the United States.
Eli Craig is an American film director, screenwriter, and actor. He is best known for writing and directing the cult horror comedy film Tucker & Dale vs Evil.
Dark House is a 2014 American horror film directed by Victor Salva and starring Tobin Bell, Lesley-Anne Down and Luke Kleintank. The film follows a man named Nick Di Santo, who discovers that not only is his long-lost father alive, but that he may be able to explain the source of his clairvoyant abilities.
Point Grey (PGP) is a Canadian-American film and television production company, founded in 2011 by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The company is named after Point Grey Secondary School in Vancouver, where they met.
Ashley Holliday Tavares is an American actress. She is best known for playing Chloe Delgado on the 2010 ABC Family series Huge and Melissa Sanders on the 2012 Nick at Nite serial drama Hollywood Heights. She also starred in the 2023 comedy horror film Hanky Panky.
Extraterrestrial is a 2014 Canadian science fiction horror film that was directed by Colin Minihan—one half of the Vicious Brothers, who co-produced, wrote, and edited the film. It stars Brittany Allen, Freddie Stroma, and Melanie Papalia as a group of friends who must defend themselves against an alien onslaught.
Nicholas Tobin Roth is an American screenwriter and actor. He wrote, co-directed, and starred in the 2023 comedy horror film Hanky Panky.
Another Evil is a 2016 comedy horror film that was written and directed by Carson Mell. The movie had its world debut on March 12, 2016 at the South by Southwest Film Festival and stars Steve Zissis, a man who hires a ghost hunter to rid his house of ghosts but finds that he instead wishes to rid himself of the hunter.
Friend of the World is a 2020 American independent black-and-white film written and directed by Brian Patrick Butler in his feature film debut, starring Nick Young and Alexandra Slade. The surreal experimental film takes place post-apocalypse and tells the story of a young filmmaker and a military general trapped in a bunker with a mysterious threat.
Speak No Evil is a 2022 psychological horror thriller film directed by Christian Tafdrup from a screenplay he co-wrote with his brother Mads. It is produced by Jacob Jarek and is distributed by Nordisk Film. Filming took place in Denmark, the Netherlands and Italy, and most of the film is shot in English, with some scenes in Danish and Dutch. The film centers on Bjørn and Louise, a Danish couple who are invited by Patrick and Karin, a Dutch couple, to their country house for a weekend holiday; the hosts soon begin to test the limits of their guests as the situation escalates.