Nowhere Man (2005) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

"Nowhere Man might be the best film ever made about a guy who gets his dick cut off."

 - The Village Voice

"It might be the only film in history in which a cameo by Troma kingpin Lloyd Kaufman actually increases its overall class content."

 - The Onion A.V. Club

At the beginning of Nowhere Man, we hear a couple arguing. She has taken something from him and he wants it back desperately. She says she'll return it for $560. Lacking the cash, he refuses the deal.

As the story develops, much of it in flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, we discover that the missing item is the man's penis, which the woman has snipped off, Lorena Bobbit style, and placed on ice. The guy, who resembles the notorious Mr. Bobbit, then goes on a typical film noir detective pursuit - well, typical except that he's not looking for a falcon statuette or a missing person, but his own dick, which adds a certain urgency to his quest. The two stories, past and present, unfold in parallel. In the present, he pursues his missing pee-pee. In the flashbacks, we see why he lost it in the first place, and gain some unexpected sympathy for the woman. As the story unfolds, we find that Rochon is not just an insane bitch, but was reacting to a flurry of abuse heaped upon her after the guy, who supposedly loved her, discovered her porno past and was unable to deal with it.

I'm not sure what relationship, if any, this film had with Troma Studios, but there seem to be some connections, as noted in the quotes which begin this article. The emperor of Troma, Lloyd Kaufman, appears in the film as the doctor who explains the victim's medical options. The Lorena part is played by the film's co-producer Debbie Rochon, who is to Troma approximately what Gwyneth Paltrow once was to Miramax - their muse, their resident diva, and their best actress. She's the centerpiece of their repertory company, and can handle almost any kind of character. I suppose she is the low-rent Paltrow - kind of a Gwyneth Skidrow, so to speak. Whatever connection there may be to Troma, this film is not a Troma campfest, but a tense drama with some occasional offbeat and pitch black comedic fringes.

Unexpectedly, it did receive a brief mini-release into theaters. According to IMDb, it had an opening weekend below $200 (!!)  in one theater on the March 13th weekend (2005). The actual weekend gross of $173 is the lowest such number I have ever seen. Assuming three showings per day for three days, that's $19 per screening, and I guess that would be $19 at Chicago prices, because the film was reviewed by several Chicago-based critics. (I didn't see an Ebert review, however.)  Nowhere Man later expanded to another theater, finishing with a domestic gross a bit above $3,000. I guess the second theater must have been in New York, because the film picked up notices from The New York Times, The Post, and the Village Voice, and they pinpointed an opening date in late March. The metacritic score is 41, which is not so bad, although one must appreciate that the score was not derived from a bunch of wishy-washy 40/100 reviews, but from scores in a very wide range from 0/100 to 80/100. There were some harsh pans, to be sure, but Nowhere Man also picked up four pretty good reviews. (Village Voice, Film Threat, L.A. Weekly, Chicago Reader.)

I think director Tim McCann did yeoman's work to stretch the non-existent budget as much as he could to create a film with some tension and a professional look and sound. The film is only 75 minutes long so it's a short trip, and the road is made a bit smoother by the fact that Rochon did a good job in the lead. One would be hard pressed to find a better actress in the world of B and C movies.

That's the good news.

The bad news is, well, let's face it, it may be the best no-budget movie about a guy looking for his dick, as the Village Voice contended, but it is still a no-budget movie about a guy looking for his dick, and the acting can sometimes descend to the porno film level.