Dandy Dust (Hans Scheirl, 1998)

One of the ways I like to gauge the success of a motion picture is by the level of comfort I feel when it comes time to unfurl my genitals. Normally covered with a thick, impenetrable layer of corduroy, the second the sturdy contents of my far-reaching crotch-o-sphere hit the warm musky air of my filthy shack, a surge of misguided trepidation washes over me. The fear that some unseen entity is going to all of a sudden leap out from the darkness and devour everything within spitting distance of my groin is always in the back of my mind. If that fear is nonexistent, that means the film wasn't very engaging. If, however, I appear to hesitate when the time comes to expose my fleshy apparatus for urinary, or, if I'm lucky, recreational purposes, it's safe to say that the film was a monumental success. Now, I know what you're thinking? How did my junk feel after viewing Dandy Dust? Well, let's just say I've been wearing a man-size diaper for the past three weeks. Of course, I haven't been wearing the same man-size diaper for that entire period of time–I mean, I do change it every five to six days. But that's not the point, the point is, uh–what the hell was I babbling about?–Oh, yeah, the amount of concern I felt for my venereal well-being was off the bleeding charts.

Having properly explained the status of my spiritual pudding after the movie, I'd like to move on and discuss the operational fortitude of the film itself. What is Dandy Dust? And what makes it such a large thorn in my blister-covered sausage? Rapidly spewing from the mind of Hans Schreil, an Austrian artist living in London, the highly experimental film is an uncompromising mishmash of diseased colour and vivid moistness. In other words, I had no idea what was going on.

Actually, that's not entirely true. I knew exactly what was going on. I'm just trying to buy some time in order that I may cobble together a semi-coherent collection of thoughts. Okay, put away your burning chainsaws and try not to bite your tongue off, because here I go. Bored with the quality of his existence on the planet of Blood & Swelling (day-glo decapitations and the mechanism of eternal destruction have become so passe), a gender ambiguous cyborg named Dandy Dust (Hans Schreil) flies through the galaxy and lands on a new planet called 3075. Hanging out with the cyberdykes in its bladderverse (a giant neon bladder at the centre of a parthenogenetic conception where everyone drinks vital fluids through translucent tubes connected to their fluorescent genitals), Dandy is puzzled, transfixed, and astounded by this newfound universe.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, Mao (Leonora Rogers-Wright) and Lisa (Carole Fuller), unamused by this vacationing ninny, remove the memory disc in Dandy's brain. Dressed like members of Altern-8, the twins are afraid that his memories of 3075 will taint the atmosphere and make the air unbreathable. In the meantime, Dandy goes about his day. Which includes getting covered with chromatic ooze, attending an art show, being harassed by coffin-shaped bats, and battling his dust-covered nemesis, who may or may not be a Dandy duplicate from another dimension.

Apprehension over the safety of my one-eyed goose named Lucy is merely one in a moronic armada of deciding factors when comes to judging cinema. As most people know, women who wield syringes full of iridescent sludge are just as important when it comes to wooing the lingerie-adorned cockles of my award-winning heart, and Dandy Dust has a doozy in the form of Suzie Krüger, the newly crowned queen of crazed female syringe wielders.

H.E. double upside down bendy straws, I think her left arm might have been a giant syringe. I know for a fact that it secreted slime. But then again, everything in this movie secreted something at one point or another.

Playing Supermother Cyniborg XVII ("the great Duchess of Loft and Spire"), Dandy's body part collecting mother figure, Suzie Krüger, wearing nineteen-inch heels, a purple bishop's mitre, and sounding like one of the female back up singers in the imaginary Skinny Puppy cover band, Life Born Addict Breathe Angel, is a frightening force of unwell nature. Similar in the way Gisele Lindley made us complacent by the sight of her tactile nipples in the Forbidden Zone, Suzie does the exact same thing with the coarsely sheared peeks and valleys of her boxed edifice. It got to the point where Cyniborg's microscopic clit and I were exchanging coquettish glances with one another.

A character with a flame for a head assists Dandy and shows him a gateway to his memories. Viewing them on a small television screen, we watch as Dandy is shown his troubled childhood. It is at this moment when we are introduced to my favourite character in the entire Dandy Dust macrocosm, and that is, Spidercuntboy (Svar Simpson), a hairy, parasitic demon with an exposed thoracic cavity who buzzes around inside Dandy's subconscious, and other places (they call Dandy's boycunt home sometimes, too). I liked Spidercuntboy because I understood what he or she was saying most of the time. In addition, their dialogue was mildly clever and I thought Svar delivered it in a manner that made the lover all things camp in me grin with reserved exhilaration.

Helping Dandy see into the future, Spidercuntboy shows him the sexually liberated version of himself in the cybernetic bladder of 3075. This effects the past when the usually reserved Dandy attends a "soiree" hosted by his nobleman father, Sir Sidore (Tres "Trash" Temperilli). Taking what he assimilated from 3075, Dandy stuffs his trousers with cold and hot food and starts to dry hump everything in sight.

This liberated streak in Dandy, however, does have its downside. After catching him having sex with his horses, Daddy rapes Dandy with his drill-penis.

Bloodied and battered, Dandy, after spending a fair bit of time with the twins on a giant screw that drips plasma, finds himself aboard his mother figure's crypt/mothership. A sort of cosmetic surgery ward in space, the film starts to get strange at around this point. The jarring physical appearance of Supermother Cyniborg XVII, and her flap deficient vagina, is still haunting as ever, yet it's the introduction of her repulsive staff (which includes the adorable Amanda J. Roberts) and their unorthodox dinning habits that made my external dangling a quivering mess.

Playing ping pong with eyeballs is one thing, smearing doll's blood over one's face to prevent aging, adult acne, and predawn diarrhea is, actually, just another in a long line of things. Listing lines, by the way, whether they be short lines or long lines, has never been my thing. Nevertheless, I was able to visually stab the doll's blood scene quite easily. I slid through it like I was violating a vat of melted imitation butter. It was everything else that was so hard to penetrate. I mean, the film doesn't exactly lay things out in an easy to digest manner. That being said, the spectrum placed in front of me was a rich tapestry of bright colours and splattering liquids.

Speaking of liquid, the film's overall temperament had a distinctly new wave vibe about it. The use of neon and the outlandish non-fashions seen throughout the film were very in tune with the style of that particular era. Also, the use of techno music, and not that lame happy hardcore crap, and operatic noise was very much akin to the outre spirit of Eraserhead, Klaus Nomi, Dr. Caligari (female foreheads are poked with needles) and Liquid Sky (I knew I said "speaking of liquid" for a reason).

While watching Dandy Dust I couldn't help but think of this one time I was playing the music of Test Dept. for a group of friends back when I was a wide-eyed teen. The shocked looks on their faces as they listened to the disjointed racket emanating from the low-cost sound system filled my adolescent soul with a rare form of underage smugness. Well, even though I watched this film in an isolation chamber, I have to admit, the sensation I felt was eerily similar to the day I introduced a bunch of T'Pau fans to the ear shredding beauty that is industrial music. Sure, it was quite some time before I could expel urine with the comfort that I am accustomed to, but that's the price you have to pay sometimes for the opportunity to be a self-satisfied prick in a man-size diaper.

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