"Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In" for 5/1/02: "Gore-o-rama A-go-go!"
By JOE BOB BRIGGS
Drive-In Movie Critic of Grapevine, Texas
PORTLAND, Ore., May 1 (UPI) -- The first annual Gore-o-rama
A-go-go! film festival and weirdbeard performance art hoedown
last weekend has restored my faith in the future of American
sleaze.
It kicked off with a commercial for "The Puppet Porn
Network"--sock puppets getting nasty--and concluded several
alcohol-soaked hours later with the world premiere of "Last
Girlfriend," a movie about what would happen if you decided to
break up with your girlfriend at the precise moment your house
was attacked by an army of ravening zombies.
The whole thing was put together by Miss Poontang A. Plenty
(yes, that's what I said--we're in the world of
goth/punk/retro/glam/gogo here) and her partner, filmmaker J.L.
Watkins, as a benefit for something called p:ear ("program:
education art recreation"), which is a charity that teaches the
arts to homeless children. (Nope, I'd never heard of it either,
but some of those kids can flat DRAW.) Thank God none of the
homeless youths could actually see what went on at Dante's, a
downtown Portland club known for its burlesque nights and
something called guerrilla wrestling, which on this particular
evening involved a redneck named Cowboy Clyde sawing up a giant
cat with a Weed-Eater.
At any rate, just a few highlights from the gore auteurs of
the future:
The grossout champeen was a flick called "Zitlover" that's
so disgusting I can't describe most of it here. As directed by
Cyrus Helf and Charlie Grant, it tells the story of a zit-
infested weirdo who lives on that liquid cheese they use for
ballpark nachos and never passes up a chance to . . . let's just
not go there, okay?
"Goodbye, Mr. Feingold" was probably the best movie,
following two men and a woman as they plot the murder of a
mysterious Mr. Feingold, fantasizing about various diabolical
ways to terrorize, torture and kill him, each one adding to the
scenario as we watch the Tarantinoesque schemes grow more and
more elaborate. Mark Hemingway and James Spader directed some
excellent actors and carried off a twist ending nicely.
"Them Damn Zombies" is, as you might imagine, a zombie
comedy set in the Pacific Northwest, with a tabloid news
reporter, two bimbos and three rednecks all trapped in a hunting
shack as the undead take over the world. Andy Koontz and Scott
Phillips directed with some great scary-woods effects and plenty
of limb-chomping closeups.
Brett Vail's "Recipe for Disaster" is a filmed version of
the Internet urban myth about the $250 Neiman-Marcus cookie
recipe--I know you've read it--and envisions an international
Neiman-Marcus army so vast that they'll go to any lengths to
punish recipe theft. Hysterically funny.
"Last Girlfriend," directed by J.L. Watkins, is a recreation
of the house in "Night of the Living Dead," besieged by zombies,
as the man and woman inside hash out their relationship issues
while blowing the heads off the undead onslaught. Funny AND gory
AND crisply written.
Isn't digital video great? There were other films--you can
look em up on the websites at the end of this column--but these
were the best ones, and what was interesting to me is that they
were all sorta based on the classics of the past. Young
filmmakers not only know their gore history, they REVERE it, so
that special effects that could get a film banned 30 years ago
are now so commonplace that you can brew some up in the garage.
An exploding head has almost become child's play. Flayed flesh is
part of Film History 101. And zombies rule the film world.
They were GOOD zombies, too. Hungry zombies. Festering-open-
sore zombies. Zombies with class. After it was over, I didn't
wanna eat for three days. And that, of course, is my highest
praise.
And that was only the FILMS. The time between flicks was
filled in by a zombie chorus line called The Gore Whores, a
performance by "Ukulele Guy" and his mechanical monkey, the
aforementioned Portland Organic Wrestling, and, last but not
least, Lilian Lust (the alert will recall that she takes her name
from the Raquel Welch character in "Bedazzled"), an oversexed
nurse who lapdances her patients before ripping their hearts out
(really). Live. Onstage. It's messy. I loved her.
Four stars. Joe Bob says check it out next year,
because
there's talk of making this an annual event.
Website for "Red's Breakfast": http://home.earthlink.net/~calebemerson
Website for "Recipe for Disaster": http://hell.com
Website for "Them Damn Zombies": http://angelfire.com/film/horronfilm/THEMDAMNZOMBIES.html
Website for "Zitlover": http://indiedvd.com/films/fusionone.html
Website for "Goodbye, Mr. Fiengold": http://rolltwenty.com
Website for "The Monongahala Mongoloid": http://mikejustice.tripod.com
Website for "The Hills Are Dead": http://filmwave.com
Website for "The Testament of Tom Jacoby": http://petting-zoo.org
Website for "Last Girlfriend":http://nexus6films.com