Shorts Featured: "The Haunted Mouth," "The Power to Serve"
The Shorts
The Incognito Cinema Warriors have two shorts to contend with today. The first is The Haunted Mouth, a dental short film starring Cesar Romero as a ghost who laughs at all the foolish children who have cavities. Thinking himself victorious, he gloats like a Bond villain and tells all the children how easily they could have beaten their poor dental hygiene, to prove that they still won't do it.
This short is presented in a horror movie setting, in order to help children associate bad teeth with "scary." It's not wrong, bad teeth can be horrifying. Just look at hockey teams. The short's presentation does get slightly obnoxious, as our main character is an egomaniac who is daring children to do something healthy and then mocking them for not doing it. I suppose that's the point, because you want to prove this asshole wrong. But I myself would prefer to grab him by his invisible neck and knock his invisible teeth out, and then ask him "Who has better teeth now, bitch?"
Did you want more narration after this but this time over a documentary footage recruitment film? The Power to Serve is for you! This appears to be a film made to charge up (pun intended) the power economy in the state of Ohio, boasting what it consists of and what the future might hold.
If you're interested in working in an electric plant, The Power to Serve has several details of what you might be doing in your day to day work. Mostly it wants to make sure you realize just how much of a future you might have in the mundane world of power supply. It even touches on the exciting future resources of atomic power! What could go wrong there?!
I can't believe I'm saying this, but bring back the plaque ghost.
The Episode
Whew. That YouTube ICWXP episode really took a lot out of me. But I've licked my wounds and I'm ready to see if I'm past the low point of this indie franchise.
With two shorts on the roster, ICWXP has now pushed it's running time past the ninety minute mark. So far this "second season" has left me slightly underwhelmed, making me wonder whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but at least their episodes are no longer in the self indulgent two hour plus realm. Ultimately while I've always appreciated ICWXP's attempts at being more story driven, at it's heart it fails to break away from it's sketch comedy roots. I've always been more responsive to efficient humor that knows where it's joke is and doesn't take too long to tell it, and doesn't belabor itself to make sure the audience knew what the joke was. That's why the most important element of comedy is called "timing." ICWXP has a few bits where I can tell what the joke is, but it takes forever to get there, or they just push it past it's logical conclusion. Part of this is because of their ambition to rise up and have their outside-of-the-theater segments be more grandiose than your traditional MST style host segment, but it falls a bit flat when their basic story for each episode really just amount to a series of skits with more dynamic camera angles.
For example, most of the episode piggy backs on Cylon making his "movie," which he decided is going to be a documentary and follows people around for talking head interviews. Sometimes the interviews are funny, sometimes they aren't, and in the end this whole plotline doesn't really go anywhere (maybe it pays off in a future episode, I don't know). Really it's just an excuse to get the characters to say funny nonsense into the camera and kill time. Other moments include the captured henchman from previously on the show trying to escape captivity, as he just kind of mulls around in his room for quite a while in several spread out scenes leading up to the single joke that his "locked" door was open the entire time. I get it, but it shouldn't be eating away time as much as it is.
The most successful story point comes at the end where the disembodied voice from a few episodes ago contacts Rick and states there is a virus in the Cine-A-Sorrow and they need to press their pet zombie head Zed for information, who has decomposed to the point where he can't speak anymore. There is a fun interrogation scene with a translation device, though while it runs a bit on the long side this type of comedy infused with plot events is a step in the right direction.
Inside the theater, we are given a tour of The Haunted Mouth, which is some of the funnier theater work in a while. The horror movie setting of the short inspires some great horror movie references, from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Evil Dead, and the also show off some uneasiness to the voyeuristic tendencies of our narrator, which they of course turn into a fetish. The quirkier moments of the short are usually the funniest, with the dentist dartboard giving me one of the biggest laughs of the presentation.
After a short break they enter the theater again and are greeted with concession shorts, causing Rick and the Bots to digress in a discussion on anthropomorphic food selling it's kin for consumption, but after that we are slingshotted into The Power to Serve, which is mostly dull cityscape shots that are narrated. It would be easy to trip up with this short, but the guys do pretty okay here. I don't think I laughed as much as The Haunted Mouth, but whenever the short threatens to become even more monotonous, the gang is usually game to start ripping apart the state of Ohio. It continues even until after the short has finished, which has Cylon trying to encourage the others into admitting that there is something good about the state, though they come up a blank.
Final things I can point out about this episode: Topsy is upgraded to a new, more expressive design. Re-reading my original Bride of the Gorilla review I recalled complaining about how inexpressive the Bots were, which it's good to see they've taken steps to change. However I don't know if it's that I've gotten used to Topsy's design, but the new eyes somehow make his face less interesting and maybe arguably less funny, with the static readjustments to his eyes in between cuts being somewhat amusing to me. Dunno. I guess I changed my tune on that. The episode also ends with a rather odd scene between cultists and a zombie, which I guess is supposed to be a cliffhanger but takes so long to tell so little that I wasn't even sure what was going on or why it was here. But misgivings aside, this was probably one of the more consistently humorous episodes since this new "season" started, but they need work on their editing at the scripting stage.
Good
The DVD
Like all episodes of ICWXP, this episode is offered on DVD and digital through icwxp.com. The audio is good and the video is a sharp widescreen presentation (complete with stretched format for the shorts), and the disc comes loaded with special features.
We start off with a group of features devoted to behind the scenes shenanigans as well as construction of updated production. The first feature is called Let's Go to Transworld, which is disappointingly not a transvestite theme park of some sort. Instead we watch series creator and star Rikk Wolf walk around a horror special effects showcase and buy props. Candy Counter 2.0 is the next featurette, chronicling the construction of an updated set piece. The Eye of Zed is a brief look at a special effect I was curious about, which showcased a moving eyeball in Zed's skull, and also the construction of the skull prop. Eyes for Topsy is a little skit where Topsy is forced to thank the backers for his new, more expressive head. We also have a brief YouTube channel promo skit featuring the characters from the show. Finally there is a memorial feature on the demolished movie theater the series used as the Cine-A-Sorrow exterior.
We also have a bonus riff here by Josh Way, who provides a bonus Fun With Shorts selection called A Day of Thanksgiving, which features a turkey-less family on Thanksgiving learning the true meaning of the holiday. Like always, I hope to cover Josh Way on this blog in the future so I won't go into many details, but I will say I liked it.
Concluding the disc is a commentary by series creator and host Rikk Wolf. Rikk admits he's in a hurry because apparently the DVDs were shipping soon and he needed to get this thing recorded. The result is very rambly, jumping from one topic to another, sometimes far ahead of a scene before it happens, as he just tries to cover as much as he can as fast as he can. It's a solid listen for fans though.
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