2002 movie
Rating: 16/20
Plot: A bulbous guy named Bob unsuccessfully sells watches on the street and frequently engages in shouting matches with fellow pedestrians. He wanders a sort of purgatory. Meanwhile, his sister Julie, a girl who died from a drug overdose a long time ago, searches for him in an attempt to save him from a sugar addiction.
Damon Packard wrote, directed, and starred in this stunningly original piece that I'd like to label "outsider art" if it wasn't so aware. If I understand the story correctly, Packard spent an inheritance to make this movie which I think is about Hollywood, Hollywood's affect on our psyches, human beings' inabilities to get along with each other, human beings' inabilities to get along with themselves, overindulgence, paranoia, the role that media plays in our lives, and probably countless other things; made about 25,000 dvd copies; and sent them to celebrities. It reminds me of what the Residents did with their "Santa Dog" single although if Packard sent one of these to Richard Nixon, he was probably too late. Their reactions were collected on his website which doesn't seem to exist anymore. Unfortunately, I can't find any of those. The movie is a real treat for oddballs like me with the right sensibilities. It's a collision of nightmarish, horrifying imagery and hilarity that you don't see much outside of David Lynch's stuff. Things start with low-budget shots of a wandering spirit in a ghostly-white nightgown, shots ultra-eerie or mysterious because they are low-budget ones. The after-school special music gives this a weird 70's vibe. Then, the onslaught begins. Off sound-effects, voices obvious and comically dubbed with actors who had no idea that they were actors in a movie, an extended vomiting scene that is probably about six times longer than it actually needs to be, warping effects, characters shouting like they have Tourette's, sound effects from other worlds, drug-dazed horrors. The style's unique, and the results are very funny while managing to seep into your skin a little and reach parts of the soul that you're not usually aware of when watching a movie. There's a redundancy to the proceedings and a cheap experimental flavor that will turn off most people who like "real" movies. I want to make it clear that this is not a movie for everybody, but more adventurous cinephiles will discover a lot of beauty in all this ugliness. I know nothing about Damon Packard, and this is the only movie of his that I've seen. I suspect he's a very cynical individual, but he finds some humor in all these aspects of society that he doesn't like very much. A lot of the voices put to some of these "characters" made me laugh, and I loved one of his sister's lines: [Spoiler Alert!] "You died on the E.T. Adventure in 1984 from a sugar overdose." The hilarious behind-the-scenes reenactment of what seems to be a Steven Spielberg shoot also made me laugh, almost uncontrollably. Best of all? Amidst a lot of chaos filmed (illegally) at Universal Studios: A Klaus Kinski ride. Just let those three words sink in a little bit. Klaus Kinski ride. Just thinking about it makes me want to throw a monkey across the room.
