Grimoire Films | Buy at Amazon | Review by Jonathan Plombon
Bill Zebub is the editor of "The Grimoire of Exalted Deeds," a fanzine dedicated to death-metal music. He also makes movies. Rebellious movies. Movies that forego the typical FBI warning for one that reads, "This movie contains material that may offend gay crybabies." They're bad movies. And one of those bad movies is DIRTBAGS: EVIL NEVER FELT SO GOOD.
DIRTBAGS starts promising enough with a title screen stating "Fuck the normal way of beginning a movie!" You'd think Zebub would give a little explanation as to why we should fuck the normal way of starting a film, but he doesn't. Instead he informs the viewer in another title screen that "This movie is called 'DIRTBAGS' and if you want to add the tagline it is called 'DIRTBAGS: IN THE UNIVERSE OF EVIL.'" I like that it gives me the option of a tagline. That's pretty considerate. But it's also confusing since the tagline plastered all over the DVD packaging is EVIL NEVER FELT SO GOOD.
Plus, neither IN THE UNIVERSE OF EVIL nor EVIL NEVER FELT SO GOOD is a tagline. I'm pretty sure they're subtitles. To paraphrase Zebub himself, "Fuck the normal definition of a tagline!"
According to the "The Grimoire of Exalted Deeds" Web site, DIRTBAGS asks a profound question: "In an attempt to make something that is high-brow and low-brow at the same time, Bill Zebub created a story in which every character is severely flawed. Are these traits handicaps or advantages?"
Deep. For those of you wondering, DIRTBAGS accomplishes this paradox by juxtaposing awful jokes about defecation and homosexual sex with out-of-place, heavy-handed, anti-Christianity rants. Take for instance when Scott (Paul Torgeist) is raped by a gay pizza man (Brian Joseph Gleitz). Scott's father (Parker Weller) wakes him up outside his house and preaches to him the good word of the Lord.
"God did not create you to throw your life away," Scott's father says.
"Dad, I was born not created. It was a biological process, not some kind of miracle," Scott says.
"Science is the tool of the devil. Christians do not believe in science."
"Dad, science is not about belief. Laws are true whether you believe them or not."
This continues for two more minutes until Scott pulls a condom out of his ass.
So, what's the plot of DIRTBAGS? To be honest, I made am effort. I really tried to follow it. I really did. At the twenty-minute mark, I noticed that I wrote two pages of notes. And most them were scribbles about the scene where a tampon is yanked out of a woman and the scene where a boom microphone is clearly visible on the right hand of the screen. I gave up.
There is no plot, just loosely strung-together vignettes Zebub tosses together when it's convenient to fit in another gag featuring a drug dealer in black face or men slipping roofies into women's drink.
Here's as much of the plot as I was able to jot down: Bill (Bill Zebub, its actor, producer, director, editor and writer) is a college student, whose initial conflict is that he's studying with Kim (Jeannine Mercer), who's using Bill to make her boyfriend, Andy (Carl Williamson), jealous. There's also Scott, an overweight, pill-popping atheists whose allergies to bumble bees limit his interaction with the outside world. That's the first ten minutes. DIRTBAGS is 104 minutes long.
But it's not just religion that gets the Zebub treatment. He also attacks gender issues, as well.
The film opens with Bill (Bill Zebub) stuttering on about how he's taking a college class. He remarks that he's only taking one class, The Psychology of Women, so he can get an easy A and keep up his GPA (later in the film, he's seen taking in a Public Speaking class, but I digress). This inspires a spirited discussion about Feminism and how ideological differences can be the result of sociological difficulties: "The only twats that care about women's issues are fat ugly cows. Have you ever seen a hot slut who gets offended by a picture of another hot slut?"
Both low-brow and high-brow, see?
Maybe this just isn't my type of film. Maybe I'm just not the audience. The audience, from what I've been able to surmise, is made up of people who hate Jesus Christ but love penis jokes. Here's one of the better ones: Scott' father tells his son to accept Jesus Christ. Scott says that he won't eat the body of Christ. "With my luck," Scott pessimistically analyzes, "I'd get the dick."
Zebub forever balances on that thin wire between high-brown and low-brow...
Before watching DIRTBAGS, I had a stereotype that all death-metal fans were white, racist, homophobic, misogynistic, tattoo-adoring Satanists and atheists. This film not only reinforces all which I believe, but informs me that my stereotypes weren't outrageous enough.
The movie's intent, as it's described on the back of the DVD, is to base a film on the idea that humans are inherently selfish. The problem arises when one analyzes the film itself on this principle. Is the film itself a comment that our world is selfish? Is the film itself an extension of the principles? Since the actions perpetrated by the characters are "selfish," then are the filmmakers also selfish for promoting such behavior? Does any of this matter in a movie that contains a joke in which a woman releases her bowels in a pool?
Who cares? The most important question is whether or not you should watch this film. And the answer is no. Unless you hate Jesus Christ and love penis jokes. Then give it a whirl.
