Losers Lounge is set in 1948, with a cast of characters including a seedy private eye, crooked cops and other down-on-their-luck inhabitants of the fictitious town of Passionville, Illinois. It is a film noir style murder mystery in which a troubled young woman arrives in town, finds work at Losers Lounge (the centerpiece of the film) and ends up being murdered. An ex-cop with a shady past is suspected of the crime and has to find the real killer to prove his innocence.

The actors in this movie give very good performances and the script is well done without being clichéd, as is often the case with other films in this genre. The location used for Losers Lounge is a real restaurant that is more of a diner than a lounge but it has the character and feel of the period and serves as a hub around which the story revolves. It adds an air of authenticity to this micro-budget film that would cost many thousands of dollars to recreate on a movie set.

The director’s commentary track on the DVD reveals that this movie was made for about $1000 and that three Canon DV cameras were used to record it. The video was converted to black-and-white for more of a “noir” look.

It is good that the story and performances are so strong in this movie because they help to counter the many technical difficulties. The audio is uneven and the voices can be difficult to understand. There is very little background music which makes the audio problems stand out even more. The exposure of the three cameras was not equalized so a scene will change exposure level as it cuts from camera to camera. Furthermore, one of the cameras seems to have had the edge enhancement setting at maximum because when it is used there is a distracting line at any edge where there is a light and dark contrast.

Many shots are not well framed and often there is half a frame of headroom above the actor’s heads. Some of the locations were tight so the cameras were run up on booms to look down on the actors, resulting in awkwardly composed shots. Also, much of the movie is blocked in a manner that looks like a stage play. People walk on to a set, deliver lines and walk off, with the camera fixed on a tripod looking on. There could be more closeups and intimacy in the direction. The night shots are too dark, whether from low exposure in the filming or during conversion to mpeg, and the most crucial scene in the film, the murder, is too dark to see anything happening!

In spite of the technical difficulties, I recommend the movie on its story and performances. I’m sure the next film from the artists at DL Sites will be even better and I look forward to future releases from them.

Losers Lounge won the 2004 Best Narrative Film Noir at the 5th Bare Bones International Film Festival in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Congratulations to Don Boner, his cast and crew!

Two and a half stars