The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon

The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon is the perfect DVD companion to Wolfgang Buld's Penetration Angst, a freaky flick about a woman with vagina-dentitis (that's teeth in the cooch, for you non-medical types). In The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon, we've got a guy with a penis-monster which looks like a cross between Alien and the man-eating flower in Little Shop of Horrors. If he were mine, I'd call him Frankenschlong.

But make no mistake: The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon is not played for laughs. It's a strange, moody drama that follows the title character (played by the indie movie's writer/director/producer, Annette Ashlie Slomka) on her quest for the perfect pecker. A mad scientist, she creates this critter in her makeshift lab, then grafts it onto a poor, gullible schmo ("It made animal noises, what did you attach to me?!" he screams at Sarah, having just accidentally killed a sexual partner). The reason for all this? It's an eerie erotic experiment that's all about punishing mankind for overpopulating the earth. (Hey, I don't write them; I just review them.)

While The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon does suffer from some of the usual pitfalls of low-budget horror movies, I must say it's the most unusual movie I have seen this year and it is certainly never boring (especially not when the penis-monster is boring a fatal hole into some poor chick's, er… hole). Far be it from me to pull a Freud here, but this movie will probably not have much mainstream appeal -- all it needed was a cameo from John Wayne Bobbitt. However, if you liked recent films like KatieBird, Twisted Sisters, or Machined, then The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon will surely enjoy a place in your film library.

The acting is decent, and the cinematography is admirably arty. Unfortunately, I missed a lot of the dialogue because the screener I received (this may be fixed later on) had a poor sound mix which muffled the dialogue and heightened the score to Spinal Tap's "eleven". And, there are no captions for the hearing-impaired to help one sort it all out.

Cast and crew commentary is funny and spirited. There's lots of talk about male members, fake blood, and the locations (mostly the director's own house - "I had a lot of sex in that bed!" she quips at one point; presumably this is before prospective dates screened The Secret Life of Sarah Sheldon!). It's a good mix between the trivial and the technical, so aspiring horror film directors should especially enjoy the additional release material.

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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson