Years ago, a local film critic (living in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex) dismissed
Crimes of Passion by saying, “Why doesn’t Ken Russell just go back to England?” as if this were a legitimate, professional reaction to any film. You just couldn’t help the feeling that she didn’t get it. “It” not being the film itself. It was awful but I don’t think it’s ever okay to pan a film because one’s sensibilities are offended. Or ravaged. Ironically I find myself in a similar situation after viewing
Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. Call it Karmic Justice. I repeatedly wondered if I’d viewed this collection, say, 25 years ago, if I’d have been rolling in the proverbial aisles. Though I’d like to think I’m smarter today.
From The Grand Guignol Theatre of 19th Century Paris, to Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive to the Mr. Creosote sketch in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, to the Itchy and Scratchy cartoon-within-a-cartoon featured on The Simpsons the practice of depicting the disturbing, the horrific, the unwatchable seems more and more prevalent. And in those particular cases, hilarious. With the release of films like Bonnie and Clyde, The Wild Bunch, The Godfather, Taxi Driver, it’s been theorized that film makers must steadily escalate the violence in their movies to lure audiences away from television, the result being that we have become progressively more inured to the maiming, mutilation, decapitation and other forms of torture and execution we bear witness to in the everyday business of visual entertainment. Remember the groundbreaking sketch when Dan Ackroyd, dressed as Julia Child, lopped off the end of her thumb on Saturday Night Live? I say groundbreaking because, yes, it was funny. The blood everywhere, so extravagant that “Child” was actually slipping in it. SNL demonstrated that you could be gory and tasteless and excessive and still be uproarious. Unfortunately, it also spawned uncountable comedic derivations, based on the unfortunate misconception that anything tasteless or absurdly, disproportionately grisly was de facto funny.
The reason why I’ve gone on so long about this is because so much of S&M’s Animation Festival is composed of creepy, violent images that I can’t sort out whether they’re not funny because I’m just a sour old curmudgeon, or a closet candy-ass. Mondo Media’s Happy Tree Friends is rife with mutilation imagery, that I suppose, is plausible, but just random enough that the shock invites us to laugh. Just how far can you push the irony of physical trauma erupting repeatedly and whimsically? Perhaps the reason Eric Merola’s Fly Boy (homage to Di Palma’s Scarface) works better is that context gives it depth. We’re not expected to find hilarity in random ghastly occurrences that pop up to poison the cotton candy, to gouge out the eyes of Hello Kitty! But who am I to say? Maybe there are people who find the specious, vapid content of traditional cartoons to be so dull and insipid, so vacuous (so offensive?) that Spike and Mike provide respite. Catharsis.
Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation offers 23 new films and 2 special encores. It runs about 90 minutes, and features roughly the level and garden variety of quality you might expect from an assortment of 25 animated short subjects. Some of the pieces never transcend the amusement you might get from any quirky, novel animation, and unlike other animation festivals, none are intended as chiefly dramatic or reflective pieces. Though the best have layers of content. There is a great deal of impressive facility and imagination going on, even if the end result of most have very little impact.
Cat Ciao, for example, has lots of intriguing craft and mechanics. The depth of field is vivid and inspired, even if the story is disappointing. And that’s the way it is throughout. It’s like a Christmas stocking with a few gemmy trinkets here and there but not much you’d want to take home. A couple (
The Answer and
Mule Dick ) are predicated on jokes that have been circulating for at least 15 years and others like
Proper Urinal Etiquette and
Krazy Kock are more clever in concept than in practice. Some, ironically, go on way past the point of being comical while others hit the punch line so quickly you have to do a double-take.
Hippie Juice was terrible. By far the best are:
Here Comes Dr. Tran, The Boy Who Could Smell the Future, My First Boner (after Schoolhouse Rock), Crab Revolution, Frog, and
Ah, L’ Amour, with
Proper Urinal Etiquette, Mr. J. Russell, No Neck Joe and
Krazy Kock running second
.