One of the cool things about owning a movie review website is all the free DVDs thrown your way by people and companies looking to promote their product, using your hard work as a billboard. Well, that may be the case for other sites with exponentially more through traffic than what we get here at the Tomb, but occasionally someone who reeeeeally wants to push their flick through as many channels as possible will come knocking on our inbox with an offer for a free copy of their DVD with review purposes, in which case that whole "Cool! Free shit!" scenario comes into play. Sadly, I get distracted easily and sometimes these free promotional DVDs are pushed to the wayside, exiled to the "freebies" pile, where they collect dust and roach droppings for several months before I finally toss them into a box and shove them into the back of my closet, never to be seen or promoted on this website. The problem is that so many of these promo movies are tedious, badly put together, and a literal cluster fuck to sort through, so I don't really have the 90 minutes to waste on watching them. Besides, it's never as much fun to wipe your ass with somebody's hopes and dreams when it's being given to you with a press packet that explains just how much effort was put into making their shitty movie. It's not so bad when it's a company sending you screeners, because they're just faceless distributors and thus there's no need to be gentle when shoveling their shit straight into the incinerator (along with Stephanie *wink*wink*). But, when you're getting discs (whose cases subsequently smell of cheap plastic and make your eyes and nose burn if left out in open air for too long) directly from the director or the writer or the star's mom who just wants you to say a few kind things about their little movie so they have something nice to quote on their box when they try to sell it to a studio or one of those aforementioned faceless distributors, I feel like a dickbag for ragging on their piss-ant production values and half-retarded grade school drama club performances. Anyway, I'm hoping that I don't need to force the nice words when it comes to Freaky Farley: a flick that's "paying tribute to the strange, funny moments in horror movies that take place when no one is being killed".

"Freaky" Farley Wilder is a disturbed fellow cruising through a run in the mental ward of his home turf in Morgantown. He reminds me of my childhood next door neighbor in that Norman Batesian way... Double F has a rich tapestry of childhood trauma, mostly focused on his mom's untimely death, his dad's insistence on punishing him by making him dig holes, and wearing the same striped shirt day in and day out like a living cartoon character... okay, so maybe it's not exactly a "rich tapestry of childhood trauma" like Ed Gein or Henry Lee Lucas, but it's apparently enough to baffle the various headshrinkers who have been assigned to the Freaky One... not that I can imagine a handful of hillbilly Freuds to be much better than community college psych majors anyway. Some time into his late-twenties or early-thirties, F-Squared was still living with his dad, inner-tubing down the local waterways, blissfully unemployed, holding onto dreams of becoming a park ranger, and forbidden by dear old Pops to do constructive things like going to college, and masturbation... well, the masturbation thing is just an assumption, but I wouldn't be surprised. He's also gotta deal with the random dangers of Morgantown, like the guy who sneaks around dressed like a ninja for no reason, or the local bully "Air Force Ricky", who sustains himself and his girlfriend by intentionally bumping into people and trying to intimidate them into buying them pizza. It's amazing how something as simple as naming one of your ancillary characters "Air Force Ricky" can suddenly make your movie something incredible!

Around his mid-teens (just late enough for it to be creepy instead of curious) He-Who-Shares-His-Name-With-A-Dead-Comedian took up the All American hobby of peeping. Stalking the streets at night in true perv-o fashion, Double F found joy in watching through windows as ladies came home from a hard day of work, school, or just generally teasing everybody with a dick, and slipped out of their clothes into something expensive and poorly made no doubt purchased at places that sound like Sictoria's Vecret. Of course, as all guys who were perverted teens discovered at some point, the world's just not as chock full of hot women getting nekkid in front of open windows as teen comedies would have us believe, so many were the times that Sir Farlseberg would actually end up scoping a tubby dude's hairy man purse bounding out of the shower instead. Hilarity ensued... well, more or less, "who didn't see that coming?!" moments ensued, but you get the idea.

Being the town weirdo, you have to figure Freaky would eventually pick up a groupie to hang around him on his "journeys", so enters Scarlet. Scar's a cute chick who thinks Cap'n Farls is cool for his urban legend status as the local peeping tom and gives every awkward loser hope that they'll one day find their own whacked out lady love like her as they stroll the railroad tracks, schoolyards, and playgrounds in "cute but awkward relationship montage" style. When Freaky's inner tube goes missing, Scar helps him track it to the local haunted wood, home of "ax murderers, druids, and the bearded hobo"... because calling him just "the hobo" isn't very interesting. The haunted woods also happen to be where Farley's mom and dad had a cabin together... the same cabin where she died years earlier... by means of which we've yet to hear about... this better be going somewhere, and preferably not down in the sewers with the CHUDs and albino alligators. Will Freaky Farley make it out to his parents' cabin in the woods? If he does what will he find there? Exactly how did his Freaky's mom die? Will he and Scarlet ever be more than "just friends"? Will he ever stand up to his father? And if so, what will the consequences be? What exactly led to our hero being bundled up in the booby-hatch? Will he get out of the booby hatch?! How many more times can I say "booby hatch" before it gets annoying? More importantly, what's to become of Air Force Ricky and the ninja?! Check out Freaky Farley and find out.

The freakiest part about Farley? The mesh camouflage shirt he wears for the last 15 minutes or so of the movie. Uggh, mesh should be outlawed with a penalty of death by full body acid dip for offenders.

Here's the part where I put up a line comparing this flick to two successful movies in an effort to give the creators something to quote for the box art: "Freaky Farley is a merging of Psycho with Napoleon Dynamite by way of Sam Raimi!". You can substitute Ghost World in for Napoleon Dynamite too, depending on which group of indy people you're trying to market to. If that one’s not good enough, here’s "If the kid from The Pit grew up to star in a Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 parody that culminated in an Eliminators-like mish-mash strike force monster hunt with a Master of Evil budget, it would be Freaky Farley!". Of, if we’re reaching for the quick and dirty promo quote, let’s try on “Freaky Farley is FREAKING FUNNY!”. Yeah, that’ll do it. It's kinda true too, so I won't be brought up on perjury if it gets used!

FF was shot with a Super-16mm camera to capture that "independent, no-budget, '70s feel", and the actors were all Average Joes (and Josies) with little to no prior acting experience. Remember when I said during my Karate, the Whiff of Crap review that the director pulling double duty as the star was always a bad sign? The same holds true for the writer doing the same, as Matt Farley’s acting outright bothered me at times. Sometimes it’s bad in a perfectly fine way, but sometimes it’s bad in the “Are there any Q-Tips nearby I can jam into my eardrums?!” way. It was probably intentional though, as most of the bad parts and most of the good-bad parts were usually well distanced from each other. The whole thing opens a bit slow and doesn’t really pull out it’s meat (i.e. the random oddball moments to snap you back to attention) for a good 25 minutes or more. Additionally, the gore wasn’t nearly as prominent as I had expected, so I’m disappointed there. Even though, you can't help but take note and support a movie when the creative minds behind the whole thing offer their feature up as a tribute to guys like Bill Rebane. Yes, that Bill Rebane: the auteur behind masterpieces (of shit) like The Giant Spider Invasion and The Alpha Incident. As Tom Servo once called him, “One of the finest directors to come out of North Central Wisconsin”.

In closing, I'd like to nominate Air Force Ricky for the next President of these Divided States. If there's one person the nation can get behind, it's Air Force Ricky! Air Force Ricky! Air Force Ricky! Air Force Ricky! Air Force Ricky! Air Force Ricky! Air Force Ricky! Air Force Ricky! Air Force Ricky!