I knew I should have quit while I was ahead.
I was extremely fulfilled after "The Big One." I'd just had an incredibly enriching day of filmgoing. I was ready to go home and write it all up, but then Hallenbeck and Harry peer-pressured me into sticking it out with them. Basically, they put the whammy on me. Suffice it to say, I ended up going to the Dobie for the midnight screening of the infamous 1992 Troma pic "Cannibal: The Musical," Trey ("South Park") Parker's first film.
It disturbed me. I have to take a moment.
...
That's better.
What can I say? This was an extremely... challenging filmgoing experience, interspersed with a few redeeming moments. But not enough.
Things started out harmless enough, as we were first treated to a screening of the South Park "pilot," "The Spirit of Christmas." Of course, pretty much everyone in the audience had already seen it countless times, so it did little more but to drag us further into the arms of slumber.
Then there was... that short film. "The Sound of One Hand Clapping." I so did not need to see this. Basically, a shaolin monk gets ambushed by ninjas, and retaliates using his genitals as a weapon. Don't even ask. You don't want to know.
No, really. I'm not kidding.
Finally, probably at half past midnight, "Cannibal" started, with a title card explained that it was in fact a restored film from the "Oklahoma!" era that was lost in the shadow of that film's enormous popularity. It claimed to be a true story of the only person ever convicted of cannibalism in America, a survivor of an ill-fated excursion from Utah to the Colorado territory in the 1800's. Whatever.
Let me put it this way -- this could have made a really good short film. But as a feature, it was excrutiating.
Granted, there are some truly inspired moments, and witty wordplay. But there are also vast expanses of pain in between. It was like a bad student film with too big a budget, out of control and gone wrong, as if some rupture in the space-time continuum had delivered it from Bizarro World.
Okay. There was one thing that made me laugh out loud, but I was the only one in the theatre who did. So at the risk of revealing my secret identity, here goes. There's a scene where the protagonists encounter a pair of Indians -- who speak Japanese. Now, given that I know a smattering of Japanese (gojira kuru!), I picked up on this immediately, and for some reason found it absolutely hysterical. It was maybe 1:15 in the morning. That might have contributed. But the concept of Japanese Indians just killed me.
Nevermind.
Anyway, the film is bad. So bad that some diehard "South Park" fans with masochistic tendencies might even find it entertaining. Maybe. But be warned -- there's also a lot of bad singing. To be honest, the film is a blur in my mind. I've been trying to surpress the memory as best as I can. But it ain't easy, especially when that "like a baked potato" refrain keeps singing through my head. Oh, the pain, the pain...
By the time the film ended, I wished someone would just shoot me. Instead, I roused my near-catatonic self, drove myself home and went to bed. I had horrible nightmares, and was awoken too early the next morning by my Japanese-screaming alarm clock. True! But I won't get into that.
Later this weekend, check out my final pair of film reviews from SXSW: "Six-String Samurai" and "Dead Man's Curve." Trust me, you'll wanna read 'em!
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