Something Weird Video | Review by Sinferno
What do you do when your home movie parties become boring and you have nothing decent to show to your friends between main features? Granted, I have BANNED CARTOONS to watch beforehand and all manner of DVD collection featuring 70's era movie trailers to watch in between, but not every movie works well for home audiences being sandwiched between toons and the usual tits and trauma. Moreover, I don't know about you, but audiences come to my place to not only bask in my fun, heartwarming personality (yeah right), but also to gaze upon my gigantic flat-screen and gargantuan movie collection of cinematic bizarreness.
The problem is that there is nothing I can possibly show my friends and family which can shock them like it used to. I, like they (because of me) have seen everything, and sometimes it takes a special product to let them know just how much cinematic torture/entertainment I am willing and able to inflict onto my guests/victims as the proprietor of my own mad, all-night movie house of the damned.
While this product is not explicit, bloody or controversial in any way, it does trouble an audience with incessant blathering overtones of quiet culture shock. As such, this feature is best employed not as a stand-alone product, but as polite background play between films of whatever kind, where it allows a room full of home moviegoers time to refresh their drinks, use the facility or simply kick back and engage in polite conversation so they don't feel the need to talk during the feature itself (a pet peeve of mine which makes me want to show my own dearest real-life friends of many years to the exit).
I know what you are thinking: "ANY closing film credits can be used as mood music to carry on basic human activities. Why are you being so grandiose?" The answer is because these intermissions and countdowns actually work with any style of movie no matter how mainstream or warped. Because this product is so layered it goes with anything, like the Jell-O of cinematic shorts.
On the surface what you have is a tame DVD that plays like the advertising prattle of your own small-town theaters. It's got ads for the local lumber company, the neighborhood seamstress, and promos, never-ending ads for the refreshment counter, a magical place which sells all manner of food and drink that promise to "add enjoyment to any movie" (not to mention 90% of the profit margin of the theater itself). In this capacity this stuff is polite (ie, boring) enough to play before any of your own DVDs, even "family movies" assuming you are into that sort of weird crap. But because these intermissions, countdowns and advertisements are from the 50's, 60's and 70's, an adult mind can find all kinds of things that are messed up about them given our 21st century sensibility.
In HEY FOLKS! iT'S INTERMISSION TIME: VOLUME 1 the strangeness is most evident in the following:
the never-ending snack bar ads, where cigarettes scroll across the screen along with candy bars as if they were on one and the same level of dark concession; a 1950's era artist's rendering of people is shown as the narrator says "This theater offers a choice of food and drink sure to satisfy anyone and everyone" never mind the fact that every person depicted in their all-inclusive cross-section of humanity is just a white person of a different age; and, a repeating ad which offers a product called a "Flavo shrimp roll" which appears to be a putrid-looking fast food cuisine product encased in a giant noodle casing whose mascot is the most offensive-looking portrayal of an Asian man seen onscreen since those World War II Popeye Cartoons.
And let us speak further of the food. Throughout the film we are repeatedly encouraged – browbeaten, actually – to get up and "stretch our legs" and go to the concession stand and get ourselves some healthy popping corn made with REAL BUTTER. If this sounds insane, then you should see the sloppy depictions of the butter falling onto the popcorn utilizing distinctive camera angles and closeups that must have single-handedly inspired the adult movie "money shot". But aside from the popcorn porn, there is much else that is wrong with the food available at your local concession stand. For one thing, whenever they offer burgers, dogs or pizza (warmed with authentic infra red heating) you will want to lose your lunch. Every onscreen food product looks greasy yet tinged with a random shade drawn from the wrong corner of the color wheel. It is hard to believe that anyone would watch these promos even during the longest triple feature, and desire these (always less delectable versions than depicted in real life) fast food items, but there they are: green hot dogs, radioactive glowing burgers, and fries that are such a bright and unnatural shade of yellow in the fryer that you know that they could only taste like ammonia.
Ever wonder why modern food stylists prepare food for commercials by replacing ice cream with potatoes, painting grill lines on hamburger patties or adding crushed aspirin to drinks to make them fizz even after hours of filming under hot lights? Probably to make sure that concession food never looks this bad anywhere again (even after being expelled through your colon).
But it isn't all shameless promotion and sundry item pitches. A couple drive-in theater public service announcements are occasionally offered as well; helpful warnings to have your exhaust system maintained in your car so you don't fall asleep and die from carbon monoxide poisoning during the feature and a helpful reminder to WATCH for CHILDREN as you exit the drive-in FOR THEY ARE OUR FUTURE CUSTOMERS AND WE WISH TO PROTECT THEM. Oh, how very civic-minded!
Appropriate for all ages, yet troubling to the modern civilized mind, these belong in the library of any home theater aficionado with a large movie collection who wants to shock his audience once more with the quiet, esoteric nature of his collection as well as potentially increase his concession sales of overpriced corn syrup-based concessions to his own friends and family.
| Yucko/Neato Factor: As a standalone product you must really love film to be amused by an hour and forty five minutes of clocks counting down to films that will never come. Yet this makes a wonderful garnish for an evening's menu of cinematic delight for friends and family. |
 |
| Production Values: Some of the material looks like it was pulled from stressed film stock. But this does lend an intentional crumminess that creates a certain aire of authenticity and reminds you that it is real, even when your brain surely says it is not. |
|
| Realism: With the ads for small town beauticians offering the "latest" beehive styles and ads for greasy-looking, toothy car dealers who sell "modern" cars with tailfins, this is more realistic than you ever wanted. Realism beyond sarcasm. |
 |
| Value for Price: For $10.00 I would at least pick up one of these. Especially if your guests are an ill-kept bunch of fools who need to be implicitly instructed when it is socially acceptable to talk, pee, or go home. (Now if it could just remind them to turn off their fucking cell phones during my movies). |
 |
| Plot: This is the most mindless form of brain-numbing dreck that was created soley to liberate you from your concession stand dollar. Now if you will excuse me I have a sudden, maddening craving for some overpriced watery, piss warm Sprite. It's Taste-tastic! |
 |
