Coat
| |
| Directed By | Hans Backovic |
| Produced By | Kathleen Emery |
| Written By | Hans Backovic |
| Starring | Francois Kelvin Crius Delacroix Hadas Krusen |
| Music By | Phoebe Hashemi |
| Cinematography | Patton League |
| Edited By | Hans Backovic Patton League |
| Production Company | Backovic Productions |
| Distributed By | Backovic Productions |
| Release Date | xxxxxxxxxxx |
| Running Time | 1 hour |
| Language | Common Tongue |
| Budget | 277,900 Laurels |
| Box Office | xxxxxxxxxxx |
Coat is a 1665 AN Caputian horror film directed, written, co-produced and co-edited by Hans Backovic.
The film is a story about supernaturally beautiful raccoon pelts (called "pine lights") that cause anyone who seeks to profit by them to commit horrendous acts. Francois Kelvin stars as fur trader Mark Johnson, who finds these beautiful raccoon pelts and makes a coat out of them as a gift for the beautiful dancer Galaxia (Hadas Krusen), in order to fulfill his fantasy of sex with her. As a result, people end up committing brutal murders and suicides appropriate to their positions in relation to the pelts whenever around them.
Plot
Mark Johnson is a fur trader who desperately wants to have sex with a stripper named Galaxia, who has no interest in him. One of his suppliers, Daniel Feldman and his son, go onto private land owned by an old woman known as "Pacha Mamma," to trap animals. They find each trap containing a raccoon, and Feldman schools his son on the proper way to kill them: crush their windpipes with a boot, and if they survive, crush their skulls with a baseball bat.
After processing, all of the raccoon pelts are perfect, Feldman calls Johnson to arrange a sale. However, after Feldman goes to bed, his son Joshua becomes mesmerized by the hanging furs, then pulls out the baseball bat and beats his father to death. Joshua then opens a trap and sticks his face in, ripping it off. Johnson and his assistant arrive the next day to discover the beautiful pelts and both Feldman and his son dead. They steal the pelts and proceed to make a coat, which Johnson asks Galaxia to model at the furriers expo. Inspired by his assistant, Johnson figures out where the Jamesons got the pelts by finding the map to Pacha Mamma's land, and visits her to ask for a few raccoons to breed for fur.
Pacha Mamma states the reason she warns people off her land is that the raccoons have taken up guardianship of a Wechua lost city's ruins on them. She rages and chases him off, screaming that they have not yet had their say. The fur trimmer, Nicholas, disembowels himself with his scissors after cutting the pelts. The seamstress, Marie, sews her nose, eyes, and mouth shut after finishing the coat, then suffocates. Johnson is only concerned that the coat is finished, and takes it to Galaxia's apartment. She is entranced by the coat and eager to model it, but Johnson says he is still considering other models. Galaxia sees this as a request for sex, and agrees.
After they have sex, during which Galaxia is wearing the fur coat, Johnson says he needs the bathroom and something sharp. Taking a knife with him, Johnson skins his own torso and creates a vest, bringing it out to Galaxia. She panics and runs to the elevator, managing to take it down one floor before Johnson falls down the elevator shaft after her. She tries to escape, but Johnson grabs her leg and her hand is caught and crushed in the doors. Police find their bodies, and the film ends on one of the cops making a bloody footprint on the floor.
Themes
The story can be seen as a dark satire on the fur industry; the means of the victims' deaths all being based on what the furriers do to the raccoons. This is unusual for a film by Hans Backovic, since he normally avoids political overtones in his films.
