MEG MCCARVILLE – Tick DVD

The inimitable Meg McCarville’s feature length film “Tick” available for the first time on physical media. Features two short films as well. Viewer discretion strongly advised and all that…

THIS REVIEW HAS SPOILERS:

I found this movie in a dollar bin at a video store in Philadelphia and decided to purchase it and I am forever glad I did. This movie changed my life!

“Tick” is a tragi-comedy about a girl, Meg, who’s been shooting heroin for 5 yrs & who decides to try to get on a methadone program. After learning that she can’t get on the program quickly unless she’s pregnant or has kids she tries to get pregnant. Most of the rest of the movie presents her misadventures in pursuit of getting knocked up. 1st she asks a gay friend to do it – he wisely tells her she’s crazy. A guy who takes her home from the bar to talk about music really DOES want to talk about music & is too high from some speed variant to get an erection. Eventually she’s raped while she’s passed out at a party. She gets pregnant as a reult but doesn’t realize it at 1st. In the meantime, she picks up a guy at a convenience store / gas station (?) ‘rest’ rm. He takes her home to ‘party’ – wch she learns means him asking her to torture him in a sortof ‘regression’-drag scene w/ dolls representing his parents & “Happy Birthday” playing on a record player. Finaly, she realizes she’s pregnant, gets in the methadone program but ODs before it starts.

McCarville is remarkable in this. If I knew her, we’d probably be friends. Alas, though, this reminds me entirely too much of my life in Baltimore. Drug addiction & stupidity running rampant. Nonetheless, it’s a good pseudo-document of a certain ‘lifestyle’. In the 2 shorts at the end, McCarville’s naked & presenting herself in a sortof Viennese Actionism meets Kenneth Anger style – minus any formal subtlety of movie-making. Whoever McCarville & Brown are, I wish them luck.. & hope they don’t OD like Meg does in “Tick”