For the week of November 26, 2000
Remember all the sixties drughead flower-brain filmmakers who decided that movies didn't need a story, because that was Establishment bull, and movies didn't need to make sense, because that was what the man wanted, and movies didn't need professional actors, because that was not reality, brothers and sisters? And so from about 1968 to 1973 we have some of the most painfully unwatchable acid-trip montage collage fromage celluloid assaults ever seen before or since, with voiceover narrators quoting Kahlil Gibran and barefoot guys named Ian babbling about Vietnam and girls in sack dresses having sex with Jesus-bearded snorting potheads.
Is it all coming back to you now?
Well, they're baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack! These neo-hippies migrated up the coast and became smug Seattle post-modern ironists, and the only thing different about their movies is that this time they're trying to be funny. Thank God.
I speak, of course, of Doomed Planet, the epic story of two duelling murderous religious cults in Seattle that battle it out on public access TV and in the parking lot of the Kingdome (R.I.P.). It was produced and directed by Alex R. Mayer, whose life was descending into oblivion three years ago as he "sat in front of a computer for 60 hours a week grinding out mind-numbing web pages for corporate rock bands." His girlfriend left him. He worked for an internet porn site. He was a bouncer a downtown Seattle dive called The Frontier Room. And sometime during those darkest of days he decided to become a filmmaker.
The result is sort of a soft-porno "Groove Tube" with 120 subplots, and the best recommendation I can make for it is that, if you watch it, you'll realize that there are diseased malcontents in Seattle. I'm especially happy to know this, since the last time I spoke at the University of Seattle I opened with about ten minutes of Seattle jokes and bombed, thereby learning the hard way that only people from Seattle are allowed to make jokes about Seattle. Seattle is the New San Francisco, with the same sort of catatonic navel-dwelling that made the Grateful Dead possible.
This is the old story of a feel-good cult leader named Kurt who hangs around public parks and talks perky Amazon-dot-com executives into joining up, but unfortunately he's opposed by a grim opposition cult leader who wears a fedora, like an idiot Blues Brother, and pursues people through the streets, kidnaps them and transports them to festive Bavarian towns, while simultaneously performing messy disembowelment surgery on especially happy members of the despised "sad flower cult." Things get hairy when the Doomed Planet Cult hires a fat plush-toy-cuddling hitman to kill Kurt and all his flunkies with razor-edged Frisbees, but the Sad Flowers get unexpected energy from a trip to Bruce Lee's grave, resulting in several cult deaths and a corporate cult merger followed by a new millennium orgy.
Sure we've seen the plot before, but have we seen it with gratuitous lesbian porno footage? I think not.
Four breasts. Seven dead bodies. One dead cat. One kidnapping. Pig's-feet consumption. Closeup disembowelling. Jerry-Springer-type cult-member pummelling. "I'm a Hippie In Your Eyes" montage. Fast-motion necrophilia. One orgy. Cheesy apocalypse footage. Gratuitous Japanese punk band footage. Kung Fu. Seattle Fu. Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Alex R. Mayer, as cult investigator Mr. Sparkle, for saying "For some reason I couldn't explain, I was no longer fascinated by junkie sex perverts"; Rob Theilke as Dr. Pill, a PCP junkie who wears women's panties on his face and enjoys an occasional shot of mace directly to the eyes; Raven as Charles Manson, who gets frustrated when a surgical dissection goes too slowly and plunges his knife repeatedly into a rival cult member's mid-section; Diana Adams, doing an excellent impersonation of Mary Kay LeTourneau; and Elle d'Orado, as the cult recruiter who swallows a firecracker and blows herself up. Best line: "Hey, cult members, take that strange cult behavior outside where it belongs!"
Two stars. Joe Bob says check it out.
To check out Joe Bob's voluminous guide to all the B movies
ever made, go to http://www.joebobbriggs.com or email him at JoeBob@upi.com. Snail-mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.
© Copyright 2000 United Press International and Joe Bob Briggs