Hirsch and McConaughey in Killer Joe.

Director William Friedkin has always been attracted to lurid movie material. From the gruesome, overcooked The Exorcist to the vile and unhinged Cruising, he craves plots about deeply conflicted characters who are hopelessly alienated, disconnected from both the society that surrounds them and even their own lives. One craves another well-crafted action nail-biter like his Oscar-winning The French Connection, but at 76, his view of the world just gets darker than ever. Small wonder, then, that he has found his literary soulmate in Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts, whose twisted, controversial and fascinating work has found its way to the screen through Mr. Friedkin’s jaundiced camera twice—first in the repellant schizophrenic thriller Bug, and now in the toxic trailer-trash thriller Killer Joe. When this sick, ludicrous cocktail of sex, violence and mayhem was first unveiled a year ago at the Toronto International Film Festival, one wag aptly described it as “the ghost of Tennessee Williams meets the spirit of Quentin Tarantino.” For shock value, cut to Gina Gershon, crawling across a filthy kitchen floor covered in blood to perform fellatio at gunpoint on a Colonel Sanders drumstick, and you have a high-water mark in tastelessness that gives depravity a bad name.

The inbred lowlifes in this B-movie black comedy are members of the Smith family, a clan of troglodytes in a seedy Texas trailer park replete with vicious barking dogs on chains, who swing into ruthless high gear from the very first scene, when penny-ante drug dealer Chris Smith (a game turn by Emile Hirsch, who has grown from the appealing, open-faced kid in The Emperor’s Club into a scabby, hirsute roughneck) arrives in a torrential rainstorm and is greeted at the screen door by his father’s new wife Sharla with a female full-frontal. Following a drug deal that went sour when his own mother stole the cocaine and kicked him out of her house, Chris is broke, desperate and not exactly lit by all four burners on the stove, on the lam from the good ole boys on motorcycles who want money or murder. But Chris has a plan: his mother’s $50,000 life insurance policy. If his mentally challenged, beer-swilling father Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), who works as a grease monkey at Bob’s Muffler Shop, and his sluttish stepmom Sharla, a former stripper who works in a pizza parlor, will help, they can knock off Chris’s drunken mom (and Ansel’s ex-wife), pay off the debt, split the profits, and have enough dough left over to improve their lifestyle—maybe get out of the trailer and move up in the world, to a tract house with aluminum siding near a 7-Eleven.

To make sure the job goes off without a hitch, Chris has even hired a contract hitman who never fails—a psychotic cop in a Stetson hat and skin-tight jeans called Killer Joe Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) who moonlights as an assassin. The first problem: they can’t pay his $25,000 fee until they collect the life insurance, so Killer Joe agrees to take Chris’s nubile, thumb-sucking, baby doll sister Dottie (Juno Temple) as a retainer for his services. Chris and his dad are reluctant to pimp out their nubile Lolita for a killer’s bounty, but their survival instincts outweigh all feelings of morality and guilt. Besides, her daddy says, “It might just do her some good.” Second problem: What they don’t know is that Dottie’s mom (who is talked about but never seen) has made her the secret recipient of the insurance policy, and Dottie has her own ideas about what to do with the money. Nor does she completely mind the idea of losing her virginity to the swaggering, seductive and studly Joe and keeping the money herself. As the plot turns brutal, the psychopaths turn greedy—especially Ansel’s wife and partner-in-crime, Sharla (Ms. Gershon, shedding more than just her underwear and baring all)—lying, ruthlessly cheating each other and facing the ultimate consequences, in a curdled, rampaging splatterfest finale that sprays blood all over the walls and leaves almost the entire cast on the floor with their guts hanging out. Because the characters are all equally loathsome and stupid, you are never sure if the hilarity is intentional, but I guarantee you the antics of this dysfunctional chicken-fried family will make you gasp and laugh at the same time. Oddly enough, it’s the juxtaposition of comedy and horror that keeps Tracy Letts’ screenplay balanced between entertainment and nausea and highlights the highs and lows of Mr. Friedkin’s fast-paced, pulp fiction, film-noir direction. They can both thank the fearless cast for their passionate willingness to do anything—and everything—for maximum effect. Kicked and beaten by a man’s fists to human hamburger, Ms. Gershon is both amusing and appalling as she pushes the degradation of women beyond the boundaries of political correctness. Even Mr. McConaughey, a terrible actor with no craft or range who whistles through his teeth like a tea kettle until you climb the wall, seems more natural than usual, staggering around in his birthday suit, with his whining Texas accent used to good advantage. He even manages to give Killer Joe a mix of kink and tenderness, finding unexpected down-home joy in something as simple as a home-cooked tuna casserole. Ms. Temple’s thumb-sucking Dottie has erotic moments, but nothing Carroll Baker in a nightie didn’t think of first in Baby Doll. Mr. Friedkin imparts an ugly Texas landscape of convenience stores, pizza joints, auto repair shops and cheap motels to show the downfall of decaying blue-collar America with harrowing effect.

In the final analysis, the atmosphere overwhelms the logic. There is no subtext to the carnage; we hold out no hope that these clueless wretches will learn or grow or stretch beyond the depth of a mug of Lone Star draft. The narrative ideas come from better movies as varied as Double Indemnity, Tobacco Road and Fargo. I confess I found the uncompromising trashiness perversely riveting, until the ending, which pours on the gore like barbecue sauce. It sends you home reeling, but wondering what the point of it was, and why so many worthwhile people bothered to do it in the first place.

rreed@observer.com

KILLER JOES

Running Time 103 minutes

Written by Tracy Letts

Directed by William Friedkin

Starring Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch and Juno Temple

2/4

Today’s movies are often filled with paranoia, and sometimes they get too schizophrenic for coherence or comfort. But a movie that is about nothing but paranoid schizophrenia from start to finish is rare as an authentic, autographed eight-by-10 of Jack the Ripper. A sick little number called Bug is just such a movie. Bring a barf bag.

Based on the creeped-out play by Tracy Letts, whose screenplay remains faithful to the freaky original, Bug is ugly, repellent, nauseating and relentlessly lurid. (Specialties of the house, served often by director William Friedkin, but not with much box-office success.) I feel I should say something about the shock effects, but I truly don’t know where to begin. In a trailer court aptly called the Rustic Motel, on an Oklahoma highway in the middle of nowhere so filthy and primitive that it makes the abattoir in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre look like the Hotel du Cap, a battered cocktail waitress (Ashley Judd) lies around snorting coke with a lesbian friend (Lynn Collins), listening to a ringing phone with nobody on the other end. Enter a cadaverous war veteran (Michael Shannon, repeating his original role) who convinces them there’s radioactive plutonium in the smoke alarm. The next morning, Judd’s ex-husband (Harry Connick Jr., without a piano to save him) steps out of the shower after two years in prison and beats the living daylights out of her. The young stranger, who is now her lover, has a head full of phantom theories about the dangers of technology and germ warfare, and the bulk of the film centers on the insects, plant lice and bug larvae he believes are growing under his skin as a result of macabre medical experiments conducted by the U.S. government. Convinced the bug eggs have moved from the bedsheets into her own skin, Ms. Judd fills the room with fly catchers hanging from the ceiling, insecticides and bug sprays that spread unspeakable poisons to her lungs, glands and bloodstream. Much self-mutilation results, but by the time they strip naked, ripping out their teeth searching for egg sacks inside their gums, Bug unleashes more horrors than a normal audience will tolerate. There is no content worth mentioning, but for style Mr. Friedkin returns to the shadowy, decaying look of his worst film, the torturous homophobic disaster Cruising. Everything is so dark you wonder if anyone involved has ever heard of electricity. The claustrophobic murk is a combination of Kafka and life in an outhouse. But in the end, it makes no point at all. So obscure that it never irons out its wrinkles to a smooth template for nouveau horror, Bug provides an alternate vision that reacts against the mainstream slash-and-hack school of teen horror flicks, but its paranoia is so political that it ends up becoming depoliticized in its exaggerated rant. A dismal excess of moral apathy that blames the Republicans for computer chips that control world religion, economics and population growth—not to mention bad movies—it’s clear from the get-go that Bug is headed for a date with a lighted match. Count on it: It’s the only thing in the movie that makes sense. I read an interview in which Ashley Judd called this sick assault on the senses “an extreme love story.” I want to be on what she’s on.

Beige! is also the name of a vicious new word game sweeping Manhattan. This game, invented by me and my Jonny, was created after a viewing of The Boys in the Band –remember the 1970 William Friedkin movie of Matt Crowley's 1968 hit play? (Rent it if you don't. Some say this depiction of szhooshy Manhattan gay life in the late 60's is far scarier than The Exorcist , which Friedkin went on to direct, though I myself find it quite refreshing.)

Beige!, the game, was born out of a snippet of dialogue that occurs as this movie reaches its drunken and plangent dénouement. Michael, whose nifty apartment provides the backdrop for this drawing-room tragedy, insults mincing party guest Emory (Cliff Gorman, a brilliant actor whose career was, in the eyes of the unenlightened, tainted by his overly convincing performance). Harold, the self-described "32-year-old, ugly, pockmarked Jew fairy" whose birthday party provides the raison d'être for the bulk of the shrysteria (shrill hysteria), lashes back protectively on Emory's behalf–and "beiges" the hostile Michael. Observe:

Emory: "Oh God, I'm drunk."

Michael: "A falling-down-drunk nellie queen."

Harold: "Well, that's the pot calling the kettle beige!"

Harold's seamless substitution of "beige" for "black" speaks to the magnitude and penetration of beige, the color, in the late 60's. But forget about that for the moment and focus on the brilliant way that Harold trumped Michael's opinionated aggression. Think about how useful Beige!, the game, could be to you as you go about your daily life. Beige!-ing (not to be confused with Beijing) is the ultimate weapon with which over-opinionated New Yorkers can neutralize each other's hyper-critical salvos. Example:

First New Yorker: " Chocolat ! What a wonderful movie!"

Second New Yorker: "Really? I found it sub-par and strangely uncompelling."

First New Yorker: "Well, that's the pot calling the kettle beige!"

Exit, wincing, Second New Yorker.

Seasoned Beige!-ers are now abbreviating when they go in for the kill. Example:

First New Yorker: "Are you planning to watch the Oscars?"

Second New Yorker: "That smug, self-indulgent, tedious montage of mediocrity?"

First New Yorker: "Beige!"

Be warned: playing Beige! may well teach salutary lessons to regular folk–but with more competitive friends and acquaintances, it merely ups the ante. A curvaceous female friend recently Beiged! a hypercritical foodie after he, perusing the menu, dubbed the chef's offerings "unacceptably lardy." The smarting gourmand then lashed back, misogynistically counter-Beige!-ing my friend in front of the waiter after she innocently ordered a spicy tuna roll. I'll let you figure it out.

Beige is a sleepy staple in the world of maquillage , but this season she's taking center stage. Witness the libidinous and explosive Steven Meisel ads for Dolce & Gabbana starring Leonardo DiCaprio's bit of crumpet, Gisele Bundchen. Despite her garish rhinestone-cowgirl-Madonna drag, the Brazilian beauty looks both chic and sensual. It's that beige makeup: eyes, lips, skin, nails. Even her hair has been dyed beige.

Apropos of the sexy chicness of beige, MAC has just launched an extensive new line called Skin Flicks. Start with Fleshpot sheer lipstick or the slightly darker Fondle ($13.50 each); then drench your lips with C-Thru pale nude beige "lipglass" ($11.50) and glaze your talons with Barest nail polish ($8). Skin Flicks eye shadow (Brulé, Camel, Cork and Mystery, $30 for a special limited-edition compact that includes all four colors) completes your 70's-inspired beige-athon. MAC creative director James Gager warns, "Beige is not for the meek. We call it 'the shock of the nude.'" It's available at Henri Bendel and MAC stores, or at www.maccosmetics.com.

The beige frock of the season is an asymmetrically hemmed gladiator jersey dress by Callaghan ($490 at Barneys Co-op and Bergdorf Goodman). If it's sold out by the time you call, then head over to the Kors (Michael's second line) boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue. You will find a nifty Ann Heche-ish (she's the beige icon of the 21st-century) perforated suede skirt for $455. Mr. Kors, so long regarded by us international fashion sophisticates as the King of Beige, loathes the word. I spoke to reluctant beige-riarch Michael right after his fall 2001 show (Miss Heche was head to toe in beige in the front row ... holding hands with a man!) and got an earful. "Camel or putty, now those are colors," said his highness. "Beige is a club."

Beige is indeed a club. As testimony to the power of beige, the concept, Beige the boîte de nuit has been packing them in (from Monica Lewinsky to Sophia Loren) for five years every Tuesday night at the Bowery Bar (40 East Fourth Street at the Bowery). Nobody is more surprised that the name caught on than M.C. Erich Conrad. "At the time, I thought I would give it a bland, mediocre name–in case it failed," he said. It was an instant hit, but not everybody tuned into the irony of the name. "We were pre-lounge. People didn't get the concept," said Mr. Conrad. "They showed up wearing beige."

My recommendation: Go little and often. It's worth going every week in case you hit one of Eric's unscheduled Nude Nights. As Eric says, "Flesh is the real beige."

Beige-ing your home can be dicey. It takes a maestro like beige-iast Jeffrey Bilhuber (330 East 59th Street, 308-4888) to stop it from looking like a sad attempt at subtle sophistication. Mr. Bilhuber, who freely channels the beige Halston-esque, ultra-suede chic of the 70's and did Givenchy's legendary beige New York apartment in the late 80's, believes fervently in the eternal sizzle of this hue. "It's unwavering," said Mr. Bilhuber. "Beige is the universal language."

If you can't afford Mr. Bilhuber (which is a drag, since you will miss out on some incredible interpersonal badinage), then buy one yard of beige ultra-suede ($40) from B&J Fabrics (263 West 40th Street, 354-8150). Choose from the following beige approximations: country cream, sand, camel, coffee cream and chamois. Next, borrow a staple gun from a window-dressing acquaintance and re-cover two of those fake Louis whatever chairs in your living room.

Invite friends over to admire your resourcefulness. If your amateur upholstery receives any caustic commentary–e.g., "Lumpy yet quaint," "Poignantly saggy," etc.–seize the opportunity to Beige! the offending guest. When the uncomprehending laughter has subsided–i.e., almost immediately–you will have the perfect opportunity, using your stellar example, to recruit and convert a whole new battalion of Beige!-ers.

Let the games begin.