This will not stand.

You want to know what this movie is about? It’s about some guy with a camcorder, some friends, the ability to create rudimentary FX and having their heads shoved firmly up their asses as they thought they were making art.

See, I picked this up, used, for $10. For a DIY DTV flick, that‘s kind of asking too much. I’d never heard of it. All I knew was that one of our independent heroes played a part in it. Jim Van Bebber. (You should really check out Deadbeat At Dawn and The Manson Family)

I just let it roll and chronicled my reactions as a casual viewer. So, it’s kind of going old-school, for me.

We begin with a horrible “We edited this at the local High School”-looking quote that I’ve never, EVER heard before, in any permutation. “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children.” So, already, we’re getting deep and meaningful insights into the vulgarities of life, itself. Thanks, movie. If you don’t follow up with some actual scenes that mean anything, I will kill you. Yes. I will kill the movie. It can be done, non-believers.

Okay. We’re not even one full minute into actual footage and I already have gripes:

1) There are tracking issues with the opening shot. So, it was shot on video? And they… I… Fuck! I’m watching a DVD of a VHS and they couldn’t even fix the tracking?! WTF?

2) The audio is terrible. Nobody has even said anything and I’m dreading the next… (looks at the DVD case and finds no listing for the time. Goes to IMDB…) …82 minutes. I hope to a god that they used a mic other than the one on the camera. Please!

What am I looking at? Everything is washed out and over-exposed. I’ve got a guy pouring water on his “mutilated” body. Well, if you call having bright-red blood and one latex wound “mutilated”. And… He’s getting dressed. Wow. I have to say, …Nice, humongous sunglasses, dude.

Okay, I can’t see a goddamn thing. Now everything is muddy and unfocused and some fat kid might be digging a hole. Yes. He’s burying a body.

Now it’s UNDER-exposed! What the good goddamn is happening? What is that? What IS this? Is that a person trapped in a giant condom? Where is all this screaming coming from? Who’s the guy on the couch? What is behind that branch? WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?

I don’t mind head-fucks, but at least film it so I can see what I’m not understanding, dammit.

Okay. The one clear shot is of a dude with his junk in full display. Thanks, again, movie. Fuck! There are many long shots of this guy walking around with his junk flopping about.

And a field of dead people.

Imagine all of this random shit, with some guy on a microphone screaming “Oooohhh!!! Aeeeiiii!!! Aaaahhhh!!!! Eeerrrrrr!” constantly. Then imagine that it’s a shitty Radio Shack mic that you gave to your 10 year old cousin, who accidentally dipped it in bleach, it now only records in slow-mode and he’s still using it to make his “guy’s junk all over the screen” movie.

Well, that’s the first 11 minutes. Now we’re getting music and voice-overs that I can’t hear and the dude that got dressed is walking. Walking on a road. Walking on some train tracks. Eating … what the fuck is that? They look like swollen penises, but they came out of a can. Blech.

And he walks some more.

I hate you movie.

I don’t think I can make it through this thing.

I’m starting to feel like I’m watching Begotten, but this movie is not going to do it as well.

Begotten had some interesting shit going on underneath. But, so far, this is just a guy that was naked, got dressed, walked around naked, then was dressed and walking and this is not …. Aaaaagggghhhh! Why am I doing this to myself? (Answer: I do it for you. The people that don’t have to actually watch this shit, but can live vicariously through me.)

Look, if you’re going to make an art-house flick, you either make a short or you have a story and dialog and/or you have some goddamn TALENT. I don’t want to spend *ASS SHOT!* over an hour trying to take your random scenes and try to make sense of it with nothing to help guide me….fuck! None of these scenes cut together in any recognizable way.

Why does that guy hate his yard? (I want a T-shirt that says that on the front!)

Okay, yeah. This is going to be Begotten without the talent or vision or “meaning“.

And he is now walking on a sidewalk.

This movie is expanding the boundaries of walking with it’s non-stop walking action on all sorts of different terrain. Truly, it is a masterpiece to pass down to our children.

Okay, so…I think the walking dude (Stephen King reference, for ya, there) is the Mutilation Man.

Oh! Dialog! I can’t fucking hear a goddamn thing. Apparently, some random guy in the middle of nowhere has set up a rickety table and a sheet so that MM can do his mutilating for a, soon to arrive, crowd.

Random Dude beats on a… what the… no… he pisses on the whatever it is. Like a grate over a sewer, or something. So, that’s the second penis that has graced my screen. I am very appreciative.

It appears that pissing into the sewer is what alerts the audience that the show is about to begin.

No. I’m entirely wrong. There’s a naked woman in the sewer thingie that Random Dude also throws bloody meat onto. Ok.

MM does his Emo cutting thing to an enthusiastic crowd of, like, five people and no money is exchanged by anyone for his “performance”.

And he dresses and, thankfully, covers his, by now, very familiar genitals after rinsing in the river. Then he is approached by (an admittedly hot) Goth chick that says “C’mon”, repeatedly, in a voice-over that doesn’t quite match her lips.

*At this point (the first day with the movie) I got frustrated and decided to vent at our own NutJob via IM*

[01:57] NixIzEvil: Good kryst. This movie is fucking terrible. I want to quit. But I will suffer so that others may find some amusement and spare themselves this torture.

[01:57] jesslyn101: lol, and what movie is this

[01:57] NixIzEvil: The Mutilation Man.

[01:57] jesslyn101: ahh, never heard of it... that's probably why

[01:59] NixIzEvil: Yeah. Gah! That guy's junk is on the screen, again. Fuck!

[01:59] NixIzEvil: Yes, put on pants, you ass-hat.

[02:00] jesslyn101: lol, why is he wagging his thing

[02:01] NixIzEvil: I have no idea. His package has been on display at least 4 times, now. And I'm only 30 minutes in. No dialogue to explain anything. Just random shots all cut together with terrible sound.

[02:03] NixIzEvil: It reminds me of a much better movie that used the visual medium with no dialog to great effect. And that would be Begotten. Not an easy movie to tolerate, but it had talent and a point. Even though the point was buried under the visuals. Just a damn fine film. This is shit.

[02:03] NixIzEvil: Is that dude fingering that girl as he remembers some ...what the fuck is going on?

[02:04] jesslyn101: ugh, sounds bad

[02:04] jesslyn101: i hate movies without a point

[02:04] NixIzEvil: Well, the ...omg, she is totally not walking out of a giant vagina.

[02:04] NixIzEvil: She is.

[02:04] NixIzEvil: Goddammit.

[02:04] NixIzEvil: And now she has horns.

[02:05] jesslyn101: um, ooookkk

[02:05] NixIzEvil: By reading the back of the case, I can see what they mean, but....it's just not put together very well. Finally, Nix has a bad movie review to give.

[02:06] jesslyn101: nice

[02:07] NixIzEvil: Yeah. I've been seeing too many good movies. I need something to get me riled up. I started this review as an "as it happens" review, but realized it would take forever to do it like that. It's that bad. Every 30 seconds something else happens to make me hate it.

[02:17] NixIzEvil: Now, Begotten is actually a layered and intriguing film. Tedious for mainstream viewers, but arty types can pick up on the "story" as told through visuals. This is just crap. Designed to show off their cheap FX. I think it's shot on video, as... here, let me send you what I've got, so far.

This movie broke me. It broke my spirit. My pride. My mind, soul and heart, dammit. I couldn’t take it. It took me 4 fucking days to make it through it. And I had to fast-forward through the remaining 40 minutes after the girl walked out of the vagina and MM started slapping a small tree, as he cried.

And what was MM saying as he cried and slapped a small tree? “I can’t... I can’t do it… You… I can’t” AND THAT’S WHAT I WAS FUCKING SAYING!!!!

It’s not that the FX were hard to take. Or the content. It was just a pointless endeavor to try and endure.

I don’t blame them for trying something different, or even trying to make something, at all. But give us something to focus on. There’s only so many times I can see a guy take a drink from a liquor bottle, yell at a chubby kid and have that be the basis for why I should care about some dude in a post-apocalyptic world cutting and poking himself for others to watch.

It’s just so fucking pretentious that it doesn’t match with the crude and raw film that they ended up making.

Bottom line: If you want to watch some guy walk, a lot. Show his genitals, a lot. Have flashbacks and hallucinations, a lot. Listen to the same sound FX and half-baked “music”, a lot. Then I’ve got the movie for you.

The Mutilation Man.

For the rest of us, it’s a waste of time. (I gave them ½ a skull for actually getting it done and released.)