While “John Wick 4” is a hit in theaters, we invite you to discover “The City of Monsters”, an improbable film from Keanu Reeves’ early career in which he plays… a dog-man!
There is the Keanu Reeves that we all know, that of Point Break, Speed, the Matrix films and the John Wick saga, the fourth part of which is currently a hit in theaters. And then there is the Keanu Reeves that we know less, the one who, at the start of his career, distinguished himself in completely crazy comedies.
In the quirky genre, fans of Keanu Reeves have no doubt already seen the SF comedy Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its two sequels. But do they know The City of Monsters, this completely delirious film dating from 1993 in which the American slips under the features (or rather the hairs)… of a man-dog?
In 1993, Reeves, not yet thirty years old, was a star. Revealed in Point Break, the one who starred in My Own Private Idaho and played under the direction of Coppola in Dracula is a name that is starting to count in Hollywood. Surprising, and quite gratifying it must be said, to see him then, in parallel, play in modest and completely crazy productions, including this City of Monsters co-directed by Alex Winter, his accomplice in the Bill & Ted films.
The story of this unreleased feature film in theaters in France? That of a pretentious actor, his best friend and a committed activist who find themselves on a farm run by a strange scientist. A farm in which we find a number of completely crazy characters.
Among these freaks (the original title of the film is Freaked), include a nose-man, a bearded woman (played by… Mr. T!), a sock-man, a worm-man and, therefore, a dog-man by the name of Ortiz, played by an unrecognizable Keanu Reeves.
Below, Keanu Reeves as a dog-man (the beginning of the video) and other amazing passages from “The City of Monsters”:
Influenced by ZAZ comedies (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, the fathers of Is there a pilot on the plane? and other delusions on the big screen…), City of Monsters is a great anything black and absurd humor, a UFO without limit rich in assumed bad taste. See it to believe it!
Note to conclude the presence in the credits of Brooke Shields and a certain Sam Raimi. The director of Evil Dead and the first Spider-Man trilogy slips into the costume of a corrupt police officer for the occasion.
False Fitting: Keanu Reeves’ blunders and mistakes