Hollywood Gets The Axe

Hatchetman (2003)
Directed by Robert Tiffi
Screenplay by Robert Tiffi

Not only is Hatchetman a typical example of a psycho slasher film but it reaches even further back into the cautionary tropes about moving to the big city.   In fact, there are so many cliches in this film that you might almost wonder if it's a parody.   Stripper trying to get into law school?  Check. Stripper being stalked by ex-boyfriend who just got released from prison?  Check.  New girl in town who wants to try out stripping to make some money and is now possibly going to get killed when she should really just go back to Smalltown, USA and marry the first single guy who can operate a tractor?  Check.   Girls who take showers while riddled with fear?  Check.  Killer who puts on a gruesome mask and a hooded sweatshirt?  Check.  Killer who can miraculously survive a pitchfork to the chest and escape before the end credits to allow for a sequel that will never happen?  Check.   That's already more checks than you'll find in Prague.   (That pun is still not as bad as the cliches in Hatchetman.)

Horror films play on and with fear.  Fear of the unknown is the key fear.  It's the fear that something that we can't quantify is going to jump out of somewhere dark and end our existence.  In Hatchetman this is combined with the fear of the gruesome or ugly.   The mask the killer wears is seriously scary rotted flesh skeleton toothed monster.   But, it is still just a mask.   And once you realize that you're not really dealing with a supernatural creature (albeit one with a hand axe picked up from the local hardware depot) then the fear is quantifiable.  And unlike a creature like a T-Rex a killer with a mask and an axe is almost charmingly human scale.   And because he's not a ghost or some sort of crazed super-zombie the fear is mitigated and transformed.  On the one hand a human scale killer living in a rational world is not as scary as a super smart shark that can float in the air.   On the other hand, Norman Bates is scary because he is possible.  And a stalker with an axe is possible.  Although some of the hacking he's able to do with very little swinging room are quite improbable and more than likely physically impossible.  Seriously.  Hatchetman is able to hack off limbs with a handaxe while sticking his arm into the driver's side window of a car and swinging in that narrow space.   That's almost ridiculous even for a supernatural slasher.

But of course, the fact that he's targeting strippers is what moves us into the realm of the ridiculous psycho slasher subgenre of film.  The killer implicates our own voyeuristic tendencies in his complex web of morality.  On the one hand he's killing these purveyors of sexuality presumably as a punishment for their commodification of that sexuality.   But his very stalking of these girls makes him a voyeur and someone who seeks out sin, even as he tries to punish it.  And what is the real reason the Hatchetman is killing strippers?  You could say it's because of whatever motivation it is he reveals (I think it had something to do with his mother, probably.  I really didn't care at that point.)  But the real reason he's killing strippers is because strippers make awfully photogenic victims and it gives a perfect reason to show scenes inside a strip club.   This is slightly better than the traditional made-for-cable "thriller" where the cops always seem to have to get information from a stripper, but not by much.   Making the strippers an integral plot element is both more honest and more desperately obvious.   But really, would it have been any less ridiculous if the victims were a college swim team whose members really liked to take long showers?   It's the desires of the audience that are as much the problem as the poor schmucks who make this stuff.   This civilization clearly has some issues.   Big issues.  And yeah, it's kind of ridiculous to try to work out these big issues while talking about a silly hatchet killer movie, but it seems more fruitful to try to get something out of having watched this film instead of being drawn into the question of which stripper's nipples were the most interesting.

The one thing that had me going in this film was that there were several candidates for the killer set up. The stalker released from prison was an obvious red herring.   Rob the overly enthusiastic apartment manager who installs a camera in Star's bedroom was goofy enough that being the killer would have been a good contrast for his dumb regular persona.   Gerry the rich guy with strange proclivities certainly would have been a good suspect from a class struggle perspective.  For that matter, Curtis the actual killer (oops, spoiler) lives in a really nice house all by himself and so isn't exactly a poor down on  his luck psychopathic murderer.  The notable red herring is Marty the creepy guy who likes to work on his car and sneak into girls' apartments and steal their underwear.  The combination of Marty, Rob and Curtis the Hatchetman makes Los Angeles into a place where your choices are A) Have your every move watched by a stalker with a hidden camera.  B) Have your underwear stolen by someone who breaks into your apartment. C) Have your hands hacked off by an axe murderer.   That's not a world of great opportunity in Hollywood.
The one perhaps unintentional red herring that had me going for a while was that I thought the killer could be the nervous first time stripper Molly, but maybe it was just that the actress was adding a subtle possibility there that wasn't actually plausible in the plot.

To go back to the strippers for a second I think they serve to some extant to distance us from the horror.  If you think of horror stories (and murder mysteries) as a way of standing in for our fear of death then the victims serve as sacrificial replacements.   The nearer these sacrificial stand-ins are to ourselves in form the closer we feel to the situation and the more catharsis we get from watching our substitutes die in our place.   It serves to bring out our fear of death and then in some way allow us to deal with it.
Conversely, the further the victim is from ourselves the closer we get to a callous, even fetishistic enjoyment of seeing someone who isn't like us dying instead of ourselves or our substitute.   Thus the cheers in the audience when Paris Hilton was killed in House of Wax.   This thesis could go a long way to explain other horror movie tropes in terms of who gets killed and how.  It's just an idea.  I don't know how much I buy into it.   Suffice it to say that I'm not a stripper in Los Angeles, but I am a human being and I'm still disturbed when I see any person get their hands lopped off by a guy with an axe.

The collecting aspect of Curtis the Hatchetman is interesting because it is emblematic of consumerist material desire.   He can't just see the strippers, he has to kill them.  He can't just kill them, he has to take a trophy for his collection.   If the strippers are commodifying sexuality then the Hatchetman is commodifying death and making material collectibles out of it.  Though, looking at the size of the refrigerator in his garage where he keeps his hands you have to wonder how many more people he can kill before he runs out of storage space in his current mode of collecting.

As for the big city?  Well, it's the real killer, isn't it?   People come from everywhere with their dreams of...whatever it is that people dream of and then they become strippers and then some psycho kills them.   There's your cautionary morality tale: Beware of Hollywood and the psychos that dwell in it. And, in a larger sense, beware of the big city and the ways it can kill you.
On the other hand, the morality tale is diluted by the happy ending where Claudia is accepted to a law school in LA and her cop boyfriend Sonny finally proposes marriage, though Curtis the Hatchetman does manage to survive a pitchfork in the chest and evade capture so maybe he can still exist as a boogeyman to warn young folks about the dangers of moving to the big city and becoming morally lax.
In fact, that may be a more satisfying way of interpreting the ending than imagining that the filmmakers ever thought they'd make Hatchetman 2.

I thought I'd sworn off slasher films after the pile of them I watched a while back but I let this one slip through since it had been a while.   Now I remember why I had avoided these kinds of films for so long.  Films like this defy categorical interpretation.   Is it misogynistic or does having Claudia survive and go to law school make it empowering.  Does Molly become another slave to the system of exploitation or is she empowering herself by taking charge of her own sexuality?  One of the reasons this film snuck up on me was that the cover art and description soft-pedalled the stripper aspect.   The cover itself seems to indicate a forest motif (which would make more sense with the hatchet being the weapon of choice.)    But it's hard to avoid the fact that this film can be summed up by the statement "If you love watching strippers, but also want to watch them get killed, then this is your movie."
Of course, it's equally true that if you replaced the word "stripper" with "attractive person" then you would not only be describing much of the horror genre but much of the murder mystery genre as well.   How many Law and Order (or even more clearly, CSI) begin with the gruesome murder of an attractive  person?   (Sometimes even strippers.)    So maybe there's something wrong with the culture in general and trying to pin it on one film that is more obvious about it is kind of disingenuous.  

Claudia Wagner, stripper applying to law school -- Cheryl Burns (L.A. Noire)  Are there any strippers who aren't applying to law school?  Why is it always law school?  I'd love to see a film where a stripper is working her way through a graduate program in Hermeneutics and is thus likely to have to remain a stripper even after she graduates.
Sonny Banner, Claudia's cop boyfriend -- Jon Briddell (Midnight Movie, 11/11/11, Hot Wax Zombies on Wheels)  On the basis of films like this it seems clear that the entire LAPD is dating strippers and erotic novelists.
Molly, Claudia's roommate -- Nina Tapanin (Witches of the Caribbean, Wash Dry and Spin Out, Red Riding Hood Meets Frankenstein)  You might dismiss the character of the innocent girl who gains self-confidence through stripping, but I like how you might almost believe she's the real killer.
Star -- Mia Zottolli (Blood Scarab, The Mummy's Kiss, All for Lust, Rolling Kansas, Carnal Desires)  Star is pretty unsympathetic right up until you see that Rob the apartment manager has put a hidden camera in her bedroom.   Even Curtis the Hatchetman thinks that's not cool, and he ends up killing her...with a hatchet...and keeping her hands as a trophy.
Chloe Bennett -- Racquel Richard (Expose)
Michele Spencer -- Elizabeth Ryan
Brittany Evans -- Fonta Sawyer
Rita -- Leila Renae aka Leila Hashemzadeh (Staying on Top, Passion Cove)
Tina -- Christina Lepanto
Robyn -- Robyn Heller (That Side of a Shadow)
Rob, the manager of a crappy apartment complex -- Chris Moir (In Hell) You know your character is doomed when the killer has better ethics than you.
Curtis Moore -- Darren Keefe Reiher (My Big Fat Independent Movie, Sons of Anarchy, 24, Chuck)
Marty, a panty thief/mechanic -- Matt McDonald (Scream, Freedom Park, Idol)
Daniel Strong -- Daniel Browne/Daniel Rhyder  (The Cavanaughs, Layover, 3-Day Weekend)
DiAngelo -- Gino Maurizio
Dallas -- Gina Maurizio
Gerry Rubins, a rich guy who throws crazy parties -- Brian Katkin (Burial of the Rats, Dinocroc)
Officer Jacobs -- Dan Warner (Bunny Whipped, Goldmember, Norma Jean & Marilyn, NCIS, CSI, CSI: Miami, The Shield, Cold Case, 24, The Bernie Mac Show, Alias, Passions, Hallowed Ground, Criminal Minds, 2 Broke Girls)
Officer Mills -- Toney E. Smith (Take Down, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Sex Surrogate)
Plo
Tenant #2 -- Rachael Leigh Santhon (Passenger Side, Adjusting Arbie, What We Do Is Secret)
Police Officers -- Joseph Luis Rubin (Ali, Diagnosis Murder)
Tim Thomas (Rendition)
John D. Crawford (Elizabethtown, American Dreamz, Walk Hard, Step Brothers, The Vampire's Assistant)
David Banks (Nutty Professor II)
Jason LeGrande (Bikini Detectives, Yard Sale)
Ike Ogut (Kandahar, Bury the Evidence, CSI: Miami)
Carlos Osorio (Sexo con amor)
Duffey Westlake (Joan of Arcadia)
Alan Deane (The Cape)
Floyd Conder (Pants on Fire)

Cinematography by Ken Blakey (Mandrake, L.A. Heat, Freedom Strike, Executive Target, Beverly Hills Bordello, Bikini Summer, Bikini Summer II)
Original Music by Gerhard Daum (Hollywood Kills, Forsthaus Falkenau)

Bonus Trailer
Spinning Boris 
Another Showtime original.  In this one Jeff Goldblum and Liev Schreiber help Boris Yeltsin track down a masked killer who's hacking strippers to death with a handaxe.

No Impact, Man

No Impact Man (2008)
directed by Laura Gabbert & Justin Schein

I thought I was going to be lightly amused by this film that documents a writer's self-aggrandizing attempt to reduce his footprint on the earth.   Instead I found myself furious at the self-righteous sham that Colin Beavan engaged in.  No Impact Man should be called No Impact Scam, because the real trick is the commodification of a concept and the packaging of that for the profit of Colin Beavan.    Nice trick, No Impact Man.   Even the name No Impact Man is like a supervillain taunt.  I imagine him wearing some sort of skintight hemp outfit with a big zero on it and cackling while stroking his no-impact goattee and counting up the cash that this scam has brought in for him.   I'm sure all of this has "raised awareness" of something for somebody at some point, but let's call it what it is: a writer's scam to avoid having to get a real job as a minimum wage slave.  

Forming his Legion of Doom, No Impact Man declares an arbitrary set of rules that define his attempt to have no environmental impact.   I would have thought that shutting down the laptop and not blogging would have been high on the list of things that make an environmental impact, but hey, No Impact Man has to be seen making no impact otherwise how would people know that he is a supervillain.

And what would a supervillain be without sidekicks.  No Impact Man's sidekicks are Business Week Wife and Innocent Child and of course the ever present but never mentioned No Impact Dog.
Probably the most egregious omission in this film is the very high impact dog that No Impact Man keeps in Manhattan.   It's the size of a small horse.   And in the deleted scenes it looks like there might be a second dog in the household, too.  And yet there is never a mention of the dog in the film.   I haven't read his book, so I don't know if he mentions the dog in there.   But in the film this horselike hound is a glaring indicator of the conspiracy of silence that people like No Impact Man engage in when it comes to the arbitrary rules of "green" that they attempt to enforce.   While we see Colin and Michelle argue about having a second child there is never a question that maybe keeping a horse-sized dog in Manhattan is as irresponsible and selfish as keeping a donkey would be, and far less useful and clean to boot.

In fact, if No Impact Man managed to impact zoning and regulations so that people in New York could keep small pack animals it might go a long way towards creating the kind of environmentally friendly world that he claims to want.   A donkey would do all the things that their bicycles would do and it would also be a nice pet and could take the place of the otherwise useless carnivore they are keeping captive.   And yeah, I am curious if they put their dog on a vegetarian diet like themselves or if they granted the dog a big impact waiver to eat meat.   The fact that nobody ever questions the matter of the dog in the film is indicative of the kind of hucksterism that this project represents.

Another key moment is when a company lends No Impact Man a solar cell to power his laptop when he shuts down the power to his apartment.   Must be nice.   Must be grand to live a life where people just give you things.   Wow, I could try to lower my impact if people just gave me things.  I'd ride a donkey all thirty miles to my job every day if someone wanted to give me a donkey and some fodder.   But nobody's making a movie about me so I have to pay for gas and drive to work instead of hooking up my laptop to my free solar power so I can blog about how I walked up some stairs to feed some meat to my dog while I eat local Manhattan lettuce for lunch.

Initially I thought that No Impact Woman would be the villain here, what with her addiction to shopping and her job shilling for the man at Business Week.   But a few minutes watching No Impact Man's controlling personality and sullen lack of humor and I can see why I'd want to throw myself into my work and maybe get my happiness through shopping or a child because No Impact Man is a jerk.  And for better and for worse he's a jerk with an ideology and a plan which makes him both interesting and more of a jerk than your average plain vanilla jerk.   I suppose that explains some of the attraction she might have for him.   Still, he comes off as a big enough jerk that you kind of want her to go ahead and fill the house with expensive handbags.

I guess this whole project would be less ridiculous if No Impact Man was living in a suburb with even the smallest sliver of land associated with it.   I'd like to see how he feels about bike lanes if he or his wife had to bike thirty miles to work and thirty miles back.    (A donkey cart would be much better for this.  If anyone has one they'd like to donate to me, I'll take it.)   It's really quaint to keep a litter box full of mulch.  Keeping a pile in the yard is actually hard work, buddy.   One of the most telling images in the film for me was when No Impact Man decided to visit a farm and there he is standing in a field and scribbling stuff down in a notebook like Nancy Drew so that he can "learn about where food comes from."  Here's the answer:  your food comes from people who actually sweat and work so that you can sit in your apartment tossing meat chunks to your dog and scribble a blog entry on your free solar powered laptop, you worthless remora.  Oh, I stand corrected, a remora actually performs a function in return for its symbiotic existence.  

A lot of my vehemence (and I seem to be harboring a lot of it) has to do with the faux innocent naivete of No Impact Man's project.  "Oh, I didn't know that it was so hard to walk up all these stairs."  "Oh, I did't realize that keeping food in a clay pot wouldn't actually refrigerate it.   How stupid do you have to be to attempt to replicate a means of keeping things cool that is used in Nigeria?   I'm sorry, maybe I'm just ignorant of the advanced refrigeration techniques of the Yoruba, but frankly I don't think so.  I suspect that some bigger fraud sold No Impact Man a bill of goods about how keeping a pot in a second pot with some wet sand in between would make for a cheap refrigerator and because No Impact Man is equal parts huckster and rube, he went for it.    Maybe he's just lucky nobody tried to sell him on the idea of putting a layer of dog poop mixed with straw all around his house as insulation like they do in Zampoochia.

Seeing the piles of people jump on the bandwagon and follow No Impact Man's project is seriously disheartening.   Look, he's riding a bicycle on the Today Show!  But if watching No Impact Man peddle his story to the media is annoying, watching him peddle his bill of goods to college students is cringe-worthy.   It's insidiuous, not because being aware of your environmental impact is bad, but because thinking that you can live your life like No Impact Man and thus save the planet is bullshit plain and simple.   Do we live in a wasteful society?  You bet we do.   And do stunts like this have any long term impact?  Well, my answer is no.   And if your only response is that things like this experiment "raise awareness" then I can only say that raising awareness doesn't actually lead to long term changes. If it did, then there would be no pets allowed in Manhattan and they'd replace the motor vehicles with more organic donkey carts.   But they're never going to do that, are they?

I never thought I'd say this, but the real hero of this movie is an old long-haired paunchy hippy.   Mayer Vishner is the only person in the course of the film to question No Impact Man's premise and challenge the fact that what he does in this stunt cannot make up for the lifestyle that he and his wife encourage.

MAYER:  At the risk of being too personal, but, you know, it's not, it's just the facts. Michelle writes for Business Week.   


COLIN:  Yes. 


MAYER:  Millions of trees are cut down on a regular basis in order to promote the thoroughly fallacious propaganda that American corporate capitalism is good for the people, good for you and me. You know, now, if it's your contention that she makes up for it, that evens out because she doesn't take the elevator in your 5th Avenue co-op, I have to say you're either dishonest or delusional.

I think it was awesome that this moment was kept in the film by the filmmakers.   And while you might dismiss Mayer Vishner as a lefty, he's at least on the mark about the kind of "I recycled so I can keep working for the company that's making all of planned obsolescent products that can't be recyled" feel good activity that No Impact Man engages in.   No Impact Man's real superpower seems to be his power to quietly dodge the old hippie's thorny question and never address it.   And like the issue of the No Impact Horse Sized Dog, it's easy to bury the question because nobody wants to touch the issue of the working woman (even if she's working at a place that depends on the very system that her husband claims is destroying the world) just like nobody dares to question the notion of keeping a horse sized dog on 5th Avenue because dogs are cute and friendly.

And that's what's so damned galling about things like No Impact Man.  They give us a veneer of effort to hide our structural excess.   And to see people who have plenty of time on their hands preaching nonsense when so many of the rest of us have to work so hard just to keep from drowning is just plain evil.   Every day when I'm driving home from work and sometimes when I'm driving to work there are people like No Impact Man biking along in leisurely fashion and I think to myself "it must be nice to not have to be at work in five minutes so that I can just ride a bicycle and slow down the cars driven by poor schmucks who can't afford to cycle around in the country that has enriched the very jerks like No Impact Man who now tell me that I should do more to consume less of the things that made him rich."
I think in long sentences when I drive.  

So, No Impact Man made me fume in a way that I'm sure was horrible for the environment.   So I'm just going to go back to my compost heap and do my part to make the world slightly less artificial without making a blog to glorify myself while doing it.  

Documentis Personae
Colin Beavan, a somewhat naive jerk who decides to try an experiment
Michelle Conlin, the spouse of said naive jerk.  Writer for Business Week.  
Mayer Vishner, the hero of this movie

Original Music by Bobby Johnston

Extra Features
1. A Letter From Beth
Beth offers the No Impacts access to her books and periodicals. That's so nice of her.
2. Beachwalk & Talk
I really want to know if that second horse sized dog belongs to No Impact Man.
3. Bike Rant
This scene highlights the worst tyranny in the country, that of the homeowners' association, or in this case the co-op bozos who think a bicycle on the street outside of their building would be an eyesore.
4. Bobby Johnston, Composer
This may have been the most entertaining highlight of this experience for me.  I really liked the composer's methodology and the music is really light and fun.  
5. Building Super
Another hero.   This guy has to carry the weight of other people's attempts to have no impact or high impact or whatever.
6. Extended Mayer Rant
I was disappointed that the "extended" rant didn't include the key portion of the rant that was in the actual film.  
7. Freegans
I've always wondered about the incidence of parasites in food acquired through dumpster diving.
And I will continue to wonder because this scene doesn't answer that question.
8. How To Make A Pot In A Pot
The question isn't "how?" but rather "why?"  Nigerian style refrigeration?   Yeah.
9. How To Make Vinegar
Slightly useful if you don't already know how to make vinegar.
10.  Pregnancy Reveal Alternative
Not nearly as suspenseful as the way we find out in the final cut.
11.  No Impact Date
I think I'm going to call up someone tomorrow and ask her out on a No Impact Date.  
12. Scrabble
I can't believe they cut out this fascinating scene of people playing scrabble and talking about the environment.
13.  Sundance Q&A
Nobody asked and nobody answered any of the questions I wanted answered.
14. The Future of Bees
Maybe if there weren't so many itinerant hives and people were better about keeping local hives instead of trucking them in and taking them away we wouldn't have to worry about the colony collapses.  Also a reduced dependence on pesticides.  Oh, why do I bother suggesting things like this.  Just recycle some cups and take the stairs with that bag of meat for your horse-sized dog in Manhattan.    
15. Transportation Alternatives
And once again, nobody mentions donkey carts.   Because nobody wants to have to deal with the dirty reality of what it would take to make things better.  Clean air means smellier streets.  

Oscilloscope Releases
1. Gunnin' For that #1 Spot
Another documentary about people who look at basketball as their great chance.  Cheery.
2. Flow
Water and who controls it.  
3. Dear Zachary
There's only so much personal tragedy documentary I can handle.  I know this is a good story, but still.
4. Wendy and Lucy
Has Michelle Williams made a genuinely happy film lately?  The only way this one could seem less chipper would be if she were looking at basketball as her only hope out of a hopeless life.
5.  Frontrunners
People running for president of their high school class.   I'm sure these little sociopaths are fascinating.
6. Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie
If this movie actually does break out of the confining genre expectations of a Bigfoot Movie I'll be genuinely surprised.
7. Treeless Mountain
A depressing Korean film.   Just what I wanted for Christmas.   I'm sure it's also heartwarming in some way.
8.  Scott Walker 30th Century Man
Looks like it would make a good double feature with The Devil and Daniel Johnston.
9. The Garden
This is kind of the opposite of No Impact Man.   It also highlights why genuine attempts at doing something naturally constructive with urban land is more difficult than the window dressing that No Impact encourages.
10. Burma VJ
Now would be an interesting time to revisit this doc about Burmese protests.
11. Unmistaken Child
Another Tibetan lama story.  
12. No Impact Man
The trailer looks more playful than the actual people or the story is.

Win Ben Stein's Trojan Horse

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (2008)
Directed by Nathan Frankowski
Screenplay by Kevin Miller & Ben Stein

Expelled is possibly the worst Holocaust documentary I've ever seen.   First of all, it seems to conflate the tragedy of the Shoah with the erection of the Berlin Wall.   And then the filmmakers conflate all of this with the issues of evolution, eugenics, and contemporary academic freedom which are only tenuously related to the Holocaust.  

It's a shame that this film keeps mixing things up so badly, because Ben Stein's reaction to the Holocaust is genuinely moving.   You can sense his emotional connection.   Mostly you can sense this because of the way he sits at Dachau holding his head in his hands.  Ben Stein obviously feels the pain of the Holocaust deeply and while he does seem to get it confused with the Berlin Wall and the scourge of Soviet Communism I can tell that the Holocaust means a lot to him because everytime he disagrees with something or someone he compares it to the Holocaust (and sometimes to the Berlin Wall, but like I said, he seems to get confused sometimes.)

According to Expelled Charles Darwin was Hitler's intellectual forefather and people believing in Darwin's theory of evolution caused the Holocaust--and also the Berlin Wall.   Also, according to this film, people who believe in evolution are firing people from their jobs for not agreeing with them, which is sort of like putting up a Berlin Wall of ideas and then rounding up the ideas you disagree with and murdering them in some sort of metaphorical Holocaust.   And just because it's a metaphor doesn't mean that it can't be real, so Ben Stein goes to concentration camps and the Berlin Wall to show us that ideas can become real and that people who believe in evolution won't rest until they've put everyone else behind a wall and then murdered them.    It's really hard to disagree with this logic.   And I won't disagree with it, because Ben Stein is right and there really was a Berlin Wall and a Holocaust so he must be right about everything else too.    That means the people shown in this film are obviously being persecuted by the academic Evolution establishment.

Ben Stein is absolutely right about how academic institutions are against freedom of ideas.
I have a chemist friend who has been trying for years to get grants to publish his work on the transformation of base metals into gold but who is instead forced by the academic establishment to teach a form of chemistry he does not believe in just to keep his job.    This isn't the free marketplace of ideas he imagined when he escaped across the Berlin Wall carrying his Holocaust survivor father on his back.  There's something to be said for giving people the absolute freedom to say and do what they want in an academic setting.   Call me Laocoon, but I just can't shake the feeling that Ben Stein and his Trojan Horse gang don't actually want intellectual freedom and that there are plenty of ideas they'd like to shut down if they could.   That doesn't excuse the people who won't let my friend teach alchemy to his students, but it does make me awfully suspicious about the motivations of the "victims of persecution" that Ben Stein quickly equates with the victims of Hitler and Stalin.  
I just get a feeling that Ben Stein's friends are planning a party that I'm not going to be invited to.
I guess that's sort of the way people who weren't Nazis or Communists must have felt when confronted with the rise of said groups.  (See, Ben Stein.  I can equate what you're doing to what the Nazis and Communists were doing.   You've made it so easy.  All I have to do is stroke my chin gravely and close my eyes and suddenly it looks like I'm thinking of you as a threat as serious as Hitler or Stalin.   And maybe you and your Trojan Horse are that kind of threat to me.)

So why did I even bother to see this film?  Because I was curious.  Because I've actually seen how petty academics use their small power to enforce literary discipline on those who might question their way of seeing and talking about things.   And when academics can be this vicious in the relatively innocuous fields of literature and fine arts you can imagine the political stakes when we're talking about disciplines like science, politics, law and history.   So I was prepared to see someone go after the way that academics control the way we are allowed to speak about topics and the way the academy can use the badge of institutions to decide who is or isn't a credible speaker.   The tricky thing here is that if Ben Stein had gone after the literary enforcers he could have shot fish in a barrel when it comes to making people look silly for shutting other opinions down for arbitrary reasons.   But with science we know there's a lot more going on.   My other reason for watching this film is that I'm not an atheist, and I've found the radical atheism of the self-proclaimed defenders of science to be (to put it mildly) off-putting.
I was hoping that Ben Stein would have a go at them without resorting to the things which he (of course) resorted to.   But then, I should have expected that because Ben Stein has a Trojan Horse of the Apocalypse and it's about more than just Intelligent Design or finding a room to acknowledge God in science, it's about gaining ground for the religion of the rich and the ignorant to displace not only the secular creeds of academia but in so doing to also displace the religion of the oppressed and the religion of those who believe in a God that is not dependent on remaining ignorant of the natural world.   I suspect the people in Ben Stein's Trojan Horse are carrying a large number of corollary opinions that might even shock Ben Stein if he thought he'd have to live long enough to see his friends take dominion and make them come to pass.    But Ben Stein doesn't care, because he's made a strategic alliance and he's sticking to it.  

I think what bothers me most about this film is that technically speaking I believe in the notion of "intelligent design" insofar as I believe in one God (indivisible) who created the universe and who cannot be quantified or contained by our meagre senses and imagination.    So I should be on the side of people arguing against people like Richard Dawkins who insist on the absolute belief that God doesn't exist.
But something about this film just sticks in my craw and so I feel like Laocoon staring at the Trojan Horse wondering what's hidden on the inside of it that makes me mistrust it.   I can't quite put my finger on it, but something about this whole project makes me feel like a little queasy, like these people are secretly plotting to put up a new Berlin Wall and then commit a Holocaust-like genocide.
I suspect a bait and switch here and that I'm not actually welcome in the ID camp because the intelligent design in question is much more specific than they want to let on and Ben Stein won't spoil their game by admitting it.  Because Ben Stein has a whole herd of Trojan Horses and multiple agendas at play.
It would be facile to say that Ben Stein is unleashing something he may not be able to control.   And maybe Ben Stein has come to some sort of arrangement wherein he won't find the world he's created all that uncomfortable.  But for me, I look at the people at the Discovery Institute and I have to wonder if my belief in God would in fact be welcome there or if I would be first on their list of people to be sent to the work camp.  (Oh, did I just equate the supporters of Intelligent Design with Hitler and Stalin?  Who do I think I am?  Ben Stein?)

Of course, this is all part of the theological problem I have with both the extremist atheists and their ID opponents all of whom seem to insist on the need to "prove" the existence of God.
Everybody seems to be missing the point about what God is.   If you believe in a limited God that can be proven then you don't really understand the concept.    God is not an atom.   There is no molecule of God any more than there is a molecule of Love or Goodness or Evil or Hate in this world.   Mr. Dawkins is incorrect in his insistence that this disproves the existence of such things.   But Ben Stein is equally wrong in hitching his wagon to people who are bent on trying to prove that there are such atomic proofs of inanimate concepts.    I believe that God exists.  Unlike other concepts which I believe only exist because of our belief, I believe God exists with or without our belief.   Some might say that the existence of a universe and existence is sufficient proof that a prime mover had to create these things.   I say that God would exist even if there was no universe and even if there was no "existence" as we know it.
Any God that can be proven to exist in a finite way is a paltry idea compared to this perception of God.
God isn't a particle and can't be proven or disproven by us.   God is everywhere and nowhere.   You don't need to come up with a numerological code or a cipher to prove that God exists and the existence of a fossil from millions of years ago does not disprove God.   It only disproves those beliefs of man that have nothing to do with God.  
And maybe that's my real problem with Ben Stein and his Trojan Horse friends:  they believe in a small weak God who they can trot out when they want something and when they need an excuse to put their dirty hands on me to rule me with their tyranny.   The want to believe in a God that needs them.  I believe in a God that I need.

I guess if I wanted to think about important things then this film was a great launching point for arguments and discussions about things I care about deeply.   But as a piece of propaganda, I hope Ben Stein chokes on this film someday and I hope his Trojan horsemen suffocate in their wooden decoy.  

Documentis Personae
Ben Stein -- former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford
Dr. Richard Von Sternberg -- with a name like that you'd think this guy would be the villain of a film about the Berlin Wall and the Holocaust.  Von Sternberg is secretly planning on acquiring a nuclear device which he will most likely detonate in order to precipitate the apocalypse....just kidding.  (Seriously, you litigious bastard, I was just kidding.  If you even try to sue me for this little bit of satire I'll make you eat your own feces, you lousy kraut.)
Dr. Caroline Crocker -- an immunopharmacologist adjunct professor whose contract with George Mason U. wasn't renewed because she may have said that Jesus intelligently designed brownies in her home-ec class.  Just kidding.  Actually, Sweet Caroline is a rogue CIA vampire hunter who is trying to stop the evil Dr. Von Sternberg from acquiring a weapon of mass destruction.
Dr. Michael Egnor -- a neurosurgeon who doesn't like evolution.

Dr. Robert J. Marks II -- Firstborn son of the Holy Roman Emperor Robert J. Marks I who first came up with the plan to detonate a nuclear device with the hope of precipitating the apocalypse.   Just kidding.

Actually, Professor Marks II is a cybernetic drone who consumes old people's medicine as fuel.   

Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez -- A Cuban astronomer (which is something like a real astronomer only pressed together and grilled)

Dr. Paul Nelson -- grandson of Byron Christopher Nelson and a believer that the Earth is younger than we think and thus not old enough to drink.   

Dr. William Albert Dembski -- A mathematician whose name is perilously close to Dumbski which is perilously close to being Eastern European and thus he must be a secret communist.    

Dr. Stephen C. Meyer -- A major dude in the Discovery Institute.
Dr. Jonathan Wells -- a biologist who was inspired by Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church to go out and take on Darwinism.
Dr. David Berlinski -- claims that he lives in the oldest building in Paris, really likes to lean back in chairs
Dr. Walter Bradley -- Engineering prof.
Dr. Uta George -- Director of the Hadamar Memorial  (Hadamar was the site of mass sterilization and killing of "undesirables" by the Nazis.)   

Dr. Peter Atkins, British chemist and atheist
Dr. Hector Avalos -- author of Illness and Health Care in the Ancient Near East
Dr. Richard Dawkins -- scientist, atheist, brewer
Dr. Eugenie Scott -- scientist, chief lightning rod for intelligent designees
Dr. Michael Shermer -- founder of The Skeptics Society, if you think you can be sure of that
Mark Souder -- former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana.  Resigned in 2010 after admitting to an affair with one of his part-time staffers.
Pamela Winnick -- a writer
Dr. Daniel Dennett -- another atheist
Dr. P.Z. Myers -- one more atheist

School Janitor, a school janitor....John Deonarine
Sara, a student....Lili Asvar (Viva Laughlin, Hannah Montana, Dexter, Greek, Women's Murder Club, Worst Week, The Haunting of Molly Hartley, Love Hurts, An American Carol)
Student....Toi Rose aka Antonio Christina
Multiple animation voices....Adam Behr

Original Music by Andy Hunter

Cinematography by Nathan Frankowski & Ben Huddleston

Previews

An American Carol 

A comedy about a Michael Moore-like character who is visited by several ghosts and also there will probably be some fart jokes in this film.  Was David Zucker ever funny?

Special Features
1. Fossil Hunter by John B. Olson -- An illustrated ad for a novel.  
"Fossil hunter is a delightful romantic thriller.  A female Indiana Jones off on a scientific treasure hunt..." -- Philip E. Johnson
Ugh.   I wonder if this Lara Croft ripoff at least has the decency to also believe in moral virtues or is that too much consistency to ask of people?
I'm fairly sure that even my curiosity will not prevail upon me to read this book, but hey at least I got to see the pretty drawings of the fossil hunter lady.  

2. An Important Message From Ben Stein:  Academic Freedom Petition 
Is one Trojan Horse not enough for Ben Stein?  Nope.  Here's a little Trojan Pony for you kids.  
This is the sort of thing that sounds like something I should get behind.  I want academic freedom.  I want to be able to write papers about phrenology and to criticize Derrida and Habermas without being pilloried by some jerks with tenure.   But the Academic Freedom Petition is a little like the Keep America Clean Act.  It sounds nice until you get to the second line where they slip in the part about the people they want to clean out of America.   That's the Academic Freedom Petition in a nutshell.  It's a good idea if all you know about it is the title.   It sounds downright patriotic.   But it's about as patriotic as the various actions of the government that allow for tossing people into our Cuban dungeons based on secret evidence that nobody has to show to anybody else.  

3.  Expelled: The Book 
David Berlinksi, who really likes to lean back in chairs and who lives in Parisian luxury has written the companion book to this film.   It features an attractive female archaeologist who fights off vampire trolls in the search for true science and faith.    Also, it has some pictures of Ben Stein holding his head in his hands and pretending to be sad about something.  

4. Practical Applications
The Design Hypothesis and Medical Research 
I think this is technically speaking a deleted scene, but since admitting that any scene from this film was deleted in editing would be tantamounting to saying that the director's creation was imperfect it's not called a deleted scene.    Oh, and I know I'm only half-joking about this being the reason it's not called a deleted scene.   At any rate, I don't know why this gem about medical science benefitting from the idea of a design (and thus a designer) was left out of the film.   It is of great comfort to me to think of HMOs in the future using this great science as their guide to

5.  Expelled Theatrical Trailer
If only Ben Stein had run this documentary like an actual classroom instead of like the kind of propaganda film created by the Nazis and Communists who he claims to hate but whose style of information he really seems to have internalized.   If this had been set up as an actual classroom discussion and had been left up to a certain degree of genuine improvised questioning and answering the end result would have been something along the lines of the academic freedom that Ben Stein is asking us to sign up for.   But Ben Stein doesn't want academic freedom.  He just wants to make sure that his ideas can shut up other people's ideas.  

6.  Bonus Music Tracks by Andy Hunter
"Stars"
This song is certainly not making the case for intelligent design of music.  
This is the worst piece of music I have intentionally sat through in a long time.
"Technicolour"
I stand corrected.   THIS is the worst piece of music I've sat through in a long time.   I used to believe in music until I heard this song.  Now I realize that music is just a haphazard collection of sounds clobbered together and given a name.
"Out Of Control"
I believe in God, but I don't believe in Andy Hunter.   Why did you make this music Andy Hunter?  Why?   I guess this is better than crappy metal, but not by much.   Is this Ben Stein's way of punishing the people who watch this DVD?  

The Giant of Bilbao

The Film Crew: The Giant of Marathon (2007)

The Giant of Marathon (1959)

I had high expectations for The Film Crew's assault on The Giant of Marathon, partly because I'd seen the film before and partly because a classic sword and sandal film should be like bread and butter for these guys.   Well, the bread is a bit stale and the butter needs some salt.  

I won't go into my issues with the film itself, because that's a whole other kettle of fish that should be examined at another time.   As for The Film Crew, this is a longer film than their other outings and I was pleasantly surprised by the general quality of the humor.  I think it's short of Wongo in many places, but it was especially nice to see some transgressive ethnic humor.  I can't think of the last time I've seen a film where someone insulted Basques, but....actually I guess Wild Women of Wongo was just one big pile of Basque jokes.  

Anyhow, The Giant of Marathon is a sufficiently ridiculous film (with Steve Reeves, no less) that all the great Hercules jokes could be trotted out.   I still can't help thinking that there was some meddling that prevented any of this humor from having a real edge, but at least the Basque stuff at the end had a little bark if not some bit to it.  

I guess I'd rate this at about the same level as Wongo in The Film Crew oeuvre, maybe even a little higher because of the funny hat sequence.    Nothing beats a good funny hat gag.   Except maybe a funny gag gag.  

So, while I think an angry drunk classics professor (I'm looking at you, Victor Davis Hanson) might be at least as funny providing commentary for this film as The Film Crew, I still think this Film Crew outing was worth watching.   And since it represents the last ride of The Film Crew before they moved on to Rifftrax it has a certain nostalgic appeal, if 2007 is a year you're feeling nostalgic about.  (I'm looking at you, Victor Davis Hanson.)

I suppose I should apologize for making fun of Victor Davis Hanson, because I have no idea if he's a drunk or particularly angry but since he's not of Basque heritage I'm not really afraid of him.   Unless he shows up at my door wearing a giant Athenian pediment as a hat, then I'd be both a little afraid and a little impressed by him, even if he's not Basque.  

Bill Corbett

Kevin Murphy

Mike Nelson

Bob Honcho....Mike Dodge

Bob Honcho's Secretary....Beth McKeever

Trailers
The Film Crew
In this ad The Film Crew burst into the Rhino Records offices and hold some people hostage while a rogue FBI profiler tries to negotiate with them to meet their demands all while a vampire apocalypse is due to happen in a mere 78 minutes.  

Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion
In this comedy special Zach Galifianakis plays a rogue FBI profiler who tries to negotiate with a coven of vampires who are trying to prevent copyright infringement.  

Bonus Features
1. An Apology From Mike Nelson
This series of apologies is the best thing that The Film Crew ever did.  

2. Commentary by Walter S. Ferguson  
I think this bonus feature may be a tacit acknowledgement of the failure of the humor of the The Film Crew in their regular identities.    Instead of coming up with funnier (and perhaps more transgressive) humor in their regular track they resort to creating this Walter S. Ferguson character in order to do some interesting things.    

The Amazingly Couth Women of Wongo

The Film Crew: Wild Women of Wongo (2007)
The Wild Women of Wongo (1958)

I have to give special thanks to my friend Ryan for the gift of this film and thus inadvertently compelling me to watch the rest of The Film Crew's oeuvre.  

Wild Women of Wongo is, aside from being an alliterative treat, a quaint film that has all kinds of things that finally The Film Crew can mock with ease.

The framing premise is that The Film Crew is freezing in their basement lair, so this film will be a tropical treat for them.    This premise is quickly discarded because apparently comic writers and performers can't be trusted to keep a premise going for longer than the life span of a sickly fruit fly.

Speaking of sickly fruit flies, I think that was the original intended audience for Wild Women of Wongo.
If you're a sickly fruit fly looking for a mythological origin story with commentary than you're in the right place.

If you're looking for wild women, though, you should know that the wild women of Wongo aren't really wild.   Suffice it to say that they're wearing underwear and also seem to be couth enough to shave their legs.    Even the women of neighboring Goona have a certain degree of couth you wouldn't really expect from wild women.

There is a modicum of plot to this film, which is a creation myth with Wongo being the land of pretty women and ugly men and Goona being its opposite.  Both cultures are threatened by an outside group of people who storm in and kill some of Wongo's population while the women of Wongo are off appeasing their crocodile god.

Laaaaa
La la la la laaaa
La la la la laaaa
La la la la laaaa

Actually, the crocodile seems to be an alligator and it isn't very big when it has to be wrestled underwater.  The whole thing was muddled enough and what with people making jokes constantly it was even harder to figure out what was going on.   But then, I suppose the jokes were why I was watching this in the first place.

I guess The Film Crew was more comfortable making jokes about Wongo because they certainly seemed to have regained a modicum of humor.    It might still have been better if they could have a robot character to hide behind, but it was an improvement after the last two outings.   Maybe the whole thing would have been better if the Wild Women of Wongo were a bit wilder, but it's too late to fix that.

So, I guess Wild Women of Wongo is worth a chuckle or two and if you want to see the world's saddest dried alligator ritual totem then this is definitely the film for you.  

Bill Corbett
Mike Nelson
Kevin Murphy
Bob Honcho....Mike Dodge
Bob Honcho's Secretary....Beth McKeever

Trailers
The Film Crew
In this promo The Film Crew play three rogue CIA agents who are trying to reclaim their identities while escaping from a rogue vampire cult bent on destroying the world with something that requires a 90 minute long fuse.
Zach Galifianikis: Live at the Purple Onion
In this touching film Zach Galifianakis plays a single mother trying to eke out a living in Detroit while keeping her son from joining a gang.  
Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story
Alright, already.  I'll see this movie.  You got me.   I want to see this.

Bonus Features
1. Make Film Crew Dance
Ah, the wonders of moderate interactivity, wherein you can make Mike Nelson dance and then add in Bill and Kevin and finally make them all dance together in the sort of frenzied climax.
"What Madness Drives Her?!"
What madness, indeed.

2. Goodbye, Wongo-Style
Unfortunately, doing it Wongo Style, just means standing next to a cardboard cutout and winking.

Space Mission Impossible

The Film Crew: Killers From Space (2007)
Killers From Space (1954)

In this outing The Film Crew take on the atrocious Killers From Space, a wretchedly bad movie made by Billy Wilder's slow-witted brother Jim-Bob Wilder and which features Peter Graves as a pilot/scientist whose plane crashes during an atomic test and who is subsequently abducted by the killers from space who proceed to use him to make sure that a subsequent test will aid in their ridiculously complex plot to conquer earth using giant spiders and geckos.  

In general I'd like to say that The Film Crew does a better job of being funny with this film than they did with Hollywood After Dark.   On the other hand, I still think they must have had some shackles on them regulating their humor to keep them from exceeding the wry smile line.   The first thing that came to mind was the muted reaction to the fact that the USAF planes in this film are given the call sign "Tar Baby."   Thus, the ground controller is forced to pick up a microphone and check in on Tar Baby 1 and Tar Baby 2.
This is how I know that there must be some manner of humor policing going on with The Film Crew.   Because only a great degree of restraint would stop three comedians from going to town on the Tar Baby issue.

Goose:  Maverick, we've got a bogey on our tail.
Maverick:  Is it Jester?
Goose:  No, man.  It's Tar Baby.  I don't think we're going to be able to shake him off.

I'm fairly sure that Killers From Space was not made with the cooperation of the USAF, but I'm extra sure that Killers From Space was not made with the cooperation of the NAACP.
Seriously folks, the pilots' call signs are Tar Baby 1 and Tar Baby 2.   How could you leave that alone?
If I was doing a commentary track on this film I think every other word out of my mouth would be "tar baby."    But that's probably true of every movie I see, so maybe it's just me.

The crew does better with their reactions to the startling extreme closeups that keep popping up out of nowhere, and in fact they close out the film with some fake film knowledge about the "Robichaix" which is the name they bestow on this technique.  

The film itself is so ridiculous that it makes Hollywood After Dark look like Hollywood After Dark.
Actually, Killers From Space is still more coherent than Hollywood After Dark, but at least Hollywood After Dark had some dancing.   The most action we get here is Peter Graves standing in front of a projection of a "giant" spider.  

And with googly eyed space aliens I would have expected more jokes and better jokes from the commentators.   But maybe they were still in shock from hearing "tar baby."   Or more likely still, they were probably still in shock from seeing Rue McClanahans's naked sweaty back in Hollywood After Dark.  Or maybe they had to cut the part where they couldn't stop talking about Peter Graves's nipples.

There were long chunks of this film that made me wish someone had edited in one of the "dance" sequences from Hollywood After Dark into this film, but then I'm not sure if that would have encouraged The Film Crew to break their imperial conditioning and make a few jokes.  

So, I guess Killers from Space is just for people who like Peter Graves (but still want to hear three guys making fun of his movie), people who insist on seeing the whole Film Crew oeuvre, and for people who really like to hear three guys reacting to extreme closeups.  
It's slightly more amusing than the previous outing, but there's something about it that just isn't adhesive the way other things are, like, say tar babies.  

Bill Corbett
Mike Nelson
Kevin Murphy
Bob Honcho...Mike Dodge
Bob Honcho's Secretary....Beth McKeever

Trailers
The Film Crew 
So, there's this thing called The Film Crew (perhaps you've heard of them?) and here they are commenting on movies and one of those movies is Killers From Space.   I'll bet you're thinking to yourself that you'd like to see that and you'd be in luck because here they are right on this DVD.

Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion
In this stand-up comedy feature Zach Galifianikis plays a rogue CIA agent looking for revenge when a rogue CIA agent kills his family.  A thrill ride.  It's like The Bourne Identity, only with a big beard.

Bonus
"Did you know...?"
In the informative snippet we learn about the technique of backward masking and how it can be used to create things that sound like unintelligible alien speech, sort of like Last Year at Marienbad.

The truly great thing here, though, is that if you let the menu run as long as possible the frustrated Kevin Murphy will repeatedly ask you to make a choice and then eventually get off his stool and leave and then look back in to see if you've selected anything or not.   I'm a big fan of the menu screen comedy, so it was nice to see an attempt.  

Outtakes
This consists of a series of "outtakes" of a scene with an alien on a rock with a raygun speaking in lines that were then run backward and are now "recreated"  to reveal an angry bit player who has a beef with Peter Graves.  
"Pissing Me Off"
In this scene the bit player reveals that Peter Graves is pissing him off because he keeps trying to sell him insurance.
"Stupider"
In this scene the bit player reveals that his googly eyes are stupid and he says that the film's designers are even "stupider."
"This Costume"
Now he talks about how his costume makes him look like a tar baby and smell "like a Dutchman's crotch."  
"My Last Day"
In this scene he reveals that it's his last day and he's going back to work with the phone company because the film industry "smells like a Dutchman's crotch."
"Dressing Room"
Finally, our bit player declares that he's left Peter Graves a warm steaming going away present in his dressing room.  

Olden Girls

The Film Crew: Hollywood After Dark (2007)

Hollywood After Dark (1968)

The Film Crew was a brief project by some of the minds behind Mystery Science Theatre 3000 who would afterward go on to produce RiffTrax.   For the two people in the world who don't know what these folks do, here's the gist of it:  it's some people who tack on a humorous commentary to mostly awful movies.    The premise of The Film Crew is that these mooks in a workshop are sent films by their big boss Bob Honcho and they have to provide a commentary track for these poor films that don't have them.  

In the middle of the film the guys take a lunch break and we are treated to their antics.   

Word on the interweb street is that Bob Honcho was originally named Bob Rhino but when the owners of Mystery Science Theatre threatened to pull releases of future MST3K material from Rhino Entertainment, Rhino pulled out from The Film Crew and thus the lines where the guys mention Bob Rhino's name were re-looped with the word "Honcho."   If you look carefully you can see this.   The result provides meta-meta-fun for those of us who are tempted to do a commentary on this commentary because there's nothing more hilarious than seeing guys who make fun of films with horrible re-dubbing have to do the same thing themselves.  

This film being riffed upon here is Hollywood After Dark, a black and white "film" that features a young Rue McClanahan as a stripper.
Have you stopped screaming yet?
I'll admit that I've known about this film for several years ever since I was horrified to see a copy put out by Something Weird Video (of course) that was at the local Borders.    That version was part of a Rue McClanahan double feature with something called The Rotten Apple, where Rue plays some sort of shanty-dwelling prostitute.
I was a little disappointed by the paucity of Golden Girls jokes.   I can only imagine that there must have been some legal reason for this, because a good Bea Arthur joke is worth a thousand random quacking noises.  
Given the lameness of the commentary here and the cheap lameness of the framing scenes I can only assume that there was some sort of restraining order that prevented "The Film Crew" from saying or doing anything that might be really funny.
I'm pretty sure I could have gathered two of my friends and done a more entertaining job of making fun of this horrible movie.    Maybe the robot characters were just more interesting than three mooks watching a movie.

Of course, I understand that when a film is jaw-droppingly bad it's sometimes hard to find anything funny to say that will be any funnier other than to point out how stupid the film is.
In this case, there are multiple dance sequences that seem to go on forever.   Let me correct that last statement.   They don't "seem" to go on forever, so much as they actually go on forever.
I can appreciate that after 15 minutes of watching Xexa the Jungle Queen (or whatever her name is) dance with her feather pasties there's not much you can say in minute 12 that wasn't covered somewhere around minute 2.   And whereas some exploitation movies only put you through one awkward dance sequence this film gives you four.    There's one with a blonde that is mercifully brief, there's the really long one, there's the one with Rue McClanahan wearing some sort of upholstery and there's another one with a woman in pasties and a long fringe skirt that wouldn't be half bad if the sequence didn't last another eternity.    By the way, it's dance sequences like this that will kill your enjoyment of jazz music.  

Now, maybe my level of expectation was high (or maybe I needed to be high) but the best I could muster for The Film Crew's humor here was a slight sense of amusement.  You'd think you'd get more out of three funny guys making fun of the world's worst heist movie (oh, yeah, it's a scuba diving heist movie) but all we really get is mild amusement.    

I'm fairly sure there is nothing to be gained from attempting to watch this film in its original version, but there's not that much more to be gained from watching it with the help of The Film Crew, who in this outing are just not that funny.
So, unless you're an MST3K and associates completist, or you just want to see Rue McClanahan's sweaty naked back (go ahead, scream for a second.  get it out of your system) you can safely skip this film without a sense of loss.   

Mike Nelson

Bill Corbett

Kevin Murphy

Bob Honcho.....Mike Dodge

Bob Honcho's Secretary....Beth McKeever

Special Features
This DVD came with a movie ticket Film Crew patch which will look great on my letter jacket.

Shout Factory Trailers
The Film Crew
Here's an ad for The Film Crew, which helpfully lets you know something about what you're about to watch.
Blackballed: The Bobby Dukes Story
I may be sick of mockumentaries, but the cast of this makes it seem like I might have to give it a look.
Zach Galifianakis Live at the Purple Onion 
Genius.  Sheer genius. 

Ode to Lunch
I think this might have been funnier if it had been 30 minutes long.  And by "funnier" I mean I would have appreciated the commitment to punishing an audience by taking a joke that far.   I think making this poem such a short ode makes it less funny.