Thursday, October 23, 2025 at 10:15 PM
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema - Downtown, Los Angeles
Opening with a bargain-basement AMC theater pre-show complete with full-frontal dancing male nudity, Todd Rohal’s FUCK MY SON! adaptation is not for the faint of heart. Expanding on Johnny Ryan’s underground comic of the same name, FUCK MY SON! is a tongue-in-cheek exploitation film in which everyone knows exactly what film they’re making. It follows the plight of a young mother, out clothes shopping with her daughter Bernice, and teaching her hard life lessons as they catch a peeping tom watching them. If only that had been the hardest part of her day… Instead, the two try to help an old woman who’s fallen, only to quickly find the tables turned, as the old woman shoves the two in her van and kidnaps them to her secluded farmhouse. Once there, with Bernice in a cage and the mother zip-tied to a pillar in a filthy basement, the old woman tries to make nice while she unveils her ultimate plan – to have the young woman fuck her son, at which point she’ll gladly let them go. The nausea-inducing depravity that follows is balanced with a raunchy, bleak, absurdist humor, trademarks of both Johnny Ryan’s and Todd Rohal’s work. Rohal is joined by long-time collaborators Steve Little and Robert Longstreet (as the old woman), along with an incredible performance from Tipper Newton as the young mother and a few other familiar faces along the way. The positively goopy practical makeup effects really bring this piece home and are provided by industry heavyweights Marcia King and Robert Kurtzman. All of this adds up to a not-to-be-missed spectacle. (Kev Dooley)