About JE Smith
Location: Irving, Texas
Occupation: Freelance
Bio: JE Smith, aka Jeff S., is a forty-something guy who was born in Illinois, but has been living in the wilds of Dallas, Texas for almost twenty years. He has been a movie nut ever since seeing Escape from the Planet of the Apes at Steeleville Theater in 1971 and is also obsessed with Doctor Who, Ultraman, Star Trek, The X Files, Batman, Spider-Man, Doc Savage and many other pop culture icons. For fifteen years (1981 - 1996) he published the sf/horror filmzine Wet Paint, and tried his hand at self-publishing his own comics with Bulletproof (1999, 3 issues) and Complex City (2000 - 2003, 4 issues and a trade paperback), both of which bombed. He's been writing film reviews for almost thirty years and is just getting the hang of it. Married to the lovely Barbara for over 16 years, and owned by a sleepy cat named Max.
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Once upon a time, a boy named Ray Pye put crushed beer cans in his boots to make himself taller.
Are rampage killers born or manufactured? Certainly, when we first meet Ray Pye (Marc Senter), with his slicked-back hair, goth eye-liner, and cocksure attitude, he already seems unduly damaged, and within five minutes of the opening credits he’s shotgunning two young women at their hiking camp in the woods, because he sees them kissing and assumes they’re “lezzies.” “They’re never gonna have kids, right? Who’s gonna miss ‘em?” he crows to his teenage friends Tim (Alex Frost) and Jennifer (Shay Aster) before pumping multiple bullets into the women. Everybody keeps their mouth shut, so the murders go unsolved, but as we jump forward four years we discover that police detective Charlie Shilling (Michael Bowen) has always been sure Pye was the killer, but could never obtain enough evidence to bring him in.
Ray is still top dog among his clique, works as the assistant manager of his mother’s hotel, pumping crap out of backed-up toilets, and brags about an unseen “band” that he wants publicity photos for. At a party, he boasts that he’s already nailed six of the girls in attendance, but seems to suffer from a profound inferiority complex – as noted, he crams crushed beer cans into his cowboy boots to make himself appear taller and more impressive. In his small circle of hangers-on (mostly much younger than he, and impressionable), he is the cock of the walk, a cat among the pigeons. But confronted by police he becomes cowed and childlike in his fear. He’s also thrown for a loop by the arrival of bored and disaffected rich girl Katherine (Robin Sydney) who grants him sex but no emotional connection. Meanwhile, Ray has been stringing Jenn along, and finally proposes marriage with a glass ring that he passes off as a diamond. Amid mounting pressure from the cops and increasing tension from the women in his life, Ray snaps. Really snaps, leading to one of the most disturbing and unnerving final acts in recent cinema.
Harrowing at times, The Lost is virtually a one-man show that details the quickly accelerating decline of Ray Pye from self-absorbed creep into full-fledged maniac. The film’s small-town idiom is very much in the classic tradition, and writer/director Chris Silverston (who has since directed I Know Who Killed Me, unfortunately) perfectly captures the dead-end quality that rural living can have for the young and ambitious. Impressively, the low budget never really hinders, and the film has the feel of something from the late 1970s, a certain grit and sinew. The story is rather slight, and there are precious few characters we can sympathize with, but Silverston nevertheless manages to keep the film engrossing from start to finish, employing some nifty directorial flourishes, but never in a show-offy manner; they always serve the story. Silverston is also indebted to leading man Marc Senter, whose captures the sociopathic charm of Pye with uncanny magnetism. You wouldn’t want to spend five minutes with a real-life Ray Pye, but Senter makes him compelling in the manner of the best cinematic psychos.
The rest of the cast is first-rate as well, especially for such a low-budget production. Of particularly note are Shay Astar (you may remember her as Tommy’s brainy squeeze Augie in Third Rock From the Sun) as Ray’s strung-out girlfriend, and Michael Bowen as the world-weary cop who knows Ray’s a killer, but can’t prove anything. Robin Sydney is both smoldering and ice-cold as the manipulative Kath, and is appropriately hella-gorgeous to boot. Dee Wallace shows up for exactly one scene as one of the murdered girls’ mother. Seduction Cinema fans will be amused to see SC stalwarts Misty Mundae (billed here under her real name of Erin Brown) and Ruby Larocca as Ray’s first victims – and actually, both give pretty good performances.
But really, the whole show is Marc Senter. He’s the engine that drives this entire film, and it’s only a shame The Lost (finished since ‘05, and granted only a cursory theatrical release) didn’t get wider play and do more for his career. His Ray Pye is, at turns, intense, overbearing, cowardly, and ultimately unhinged. This is an impressively varied and assured performance. Senter is simply sensational, and I virtually guarantee we’ll be seeing more from him in the future.
Anchor Bay has done a pretty good job with the DVD. Special features include some audition footage (interesting mainly in seeing exactly why Senter got the job), a very odd outtake reel, a handful of deleted/extended scenes (nothing that will be unduly missed), a brief storyboard sequence, and a handful of trailers. The audio commentary is not by any of the filmmakers, but rather by author Jack Ketchum, on whose book the film is based (and who cameos as a bartender early in the movie), along with his friend, author Monica O’Rourke. The track is interesting, but a bit too leisurely at times, as the pair (who obviously enjoy each other’s company) lapse too frequently into silence. I’d certainly have been interested to hear Silverston and/or Senter comment on the making of the film, but maybe it’s better to keep a little mystery about these things.
The Lost will not appeal to every taste, but as a character study of a seriously disturbed man with a gun in his hand, it is frankly unforgettable.
