Freaked (Tom Stern and Alex Winter, 1993)

Why does Keanu Reeves go uncredited as 'Ortiz the Dog Boy'? The only reason I ask is because I happen to think that this is probably the best performance of his career. If you're wondering why I say that it's "probably" his best performance instead of saying that it's "hands-down" his best performance is because I haven't seen Bram Stoker's Dracula since it came out on home video. I know, his performance as Jonathan Harkness was universally panned. But I have a sneaking suspicion that time has been kind to his performance in that particular motion picture and now is the perfect... What's that? You say time hasn't been kind to Keanu Reeves' performance in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Huh. Well, if that's the case. I can confidently declare Keanu Reeves' turn as Ortiz the Dog Boy in Freaked to be the best Keanu Reeves performance of all-time. Yes, I realize that Keanu Reeves is still alive and could technically still top his performance in Freaked. But let's get real, people. This is Ortiz the Dog Boy we're talking about. In other words, this is as good as it gets, Keanu-wise. Wow, where did that come from? I never in a millions years would have I guessed that I would open a review with such a surplus of Keanu-based jibber-jabbering. I initially wanted to get in a fake argument with myself about Michael Stoyanov's ethnicity. But my inner UN Secretary-General (Ban Ki-Yum-Yum?) has informed me that I should tread lightly when it comes to matters that involve Balkan-centric ethno-cultural identity. So, I put the subject on the back-burner. I still think he's Macedonian... (Bup-bup. Tread lightly.)

Anyway, I can't believe Keanu Reeves got mentioned before pus. Which is weird, because I love pus. And I also love projectile vomit. And loud Styrofoam cups. And leggy stewardesses named, oh, I don't know, Francesca. And worms that dream of wiping they're own asses. And trolls named Stuey. And TEC-9-toting Rastafarian eyeballs. And, of course, references to Jake and the Fat Man.

Oh. My. God. When freak show impresario Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid, my favourite Quaid, by the way - don't let the "Hollywood Star Whackers" bring you down) mentioned Jake and the Fat Man, I nearly lost it.

After about three straight minutes of J.A.T.F.M.-based losing it, I eventually found it. And when I did, I was shocked to discover that this movie is actually quite awesome. Sure, the film doesn't fully explore the gender identity crisis (a.k.a. gender dysphoria - which is something I'm going through big time at the moment*) that Ernie (Michael Stoyanov) and Julie (Megan Ward) face throughout the bulk of this movie. Nor do they fully explore the gender identity crisis  that Mr. T's Bearded Lady goes through, either.

He's told flat out that he would be better off without a dick. But is he? Is he better off? Honestly, I don't know. At least Elijah C. Skuggs lets her keep the beard... which was nice of him. He might be a weirdo, but he cares about his freaks. Well, sort of.

At any rate, imagine being attached to Megan Ward, like, all the time. Yeah, it sounds great on paper. But what if Megan Ward doesn't like you? And not only that, what if Megan Ward shows her dislike for you by punching you in the face? Even those who are adept at taking multiple punches to the face will grow tired of being repeatedly pummeled by an attractive blonde in a red beret. Oh, and don't bother running away. Wherever you go, Megan Ward goes. You know, because a mad scientist/card carrying weirdo glued you together using a controversial substance called Zygrot-24.

One of the perks of being the best friend of a successful television star is that you get to act like a douchey jackass on airplanes. The downside being, when said TV star decides to pursue/woo an attractive blonde environmentalist in a red beret (one who is down in South America protesting the very product your TV star friend is supposed to be promoting), you're the one who's probably going to feel a slightly coolish sensation on your hip area when the aforementioned mad scientist/card carrying weirdo starts slathering iridescent sludge all over it.

Actually, screw coolish, that iridescent sludge looks like it burns like a three-toed motherfucker.

Coolish, not coolish. The point is, being Ricky Coogan's best friend has its advantages and its disadvantages. Oh, Ricky Coogan. You greedy tool, you.

Played by Alex Winter, who also serves as the film's co-writer and co-director, Ricky Coogan is the star of the television series, Baker's Dozen, and Ghost Dude, a semi-successful movie about a... ghost... dude??? (the film's plot is never revealed).

Hoping to capitalize on his celebrity, the suits (i.e. William Sadler - the rest of the "suits" are skin-covered elderly puppets) over at E.E.S. (Everything Except Shoes) want Ricky to go to South American nation of Santa Flan (named after the patron saint of creamy desserts) to promote a banned fertilizer named–you guessed it–Zygrot-24.

Now, you would think that Ricky would be mucho eager to get down to the business of promoting Zygrot-24 given that he stands to earn five million dollars. But Ricky is too distracted by Megan Ward's Julie to focus on the task at hand. Down in Santa Flan to protest Zygrot-24, Julie is at first repulsed by Ricky, as he represents everything she's against in this world.

In a ironic twist, however, Julie starts to develop feelings for Ricky after he's transformed into a hideous freak.

It should be noted that Ricky's soulmate is actually Stuey Gluck (Alex Zuckerman), a loudmouth miscreant whom he shares a psychic connection with. Of course, the fact that Stuey (a.k.a. The Troll) is an obnoxious little kid will probably mean their relationship will be strictly platonic in nature. But still, I liked how Stuey goes out of his way to help Ricky in his time of need.

You could argue that the real star of Freaked isn't Alex Winter, Megan Ward or Brooke Shields as talk show host, Skye Daley, but special make-up artist, Screaming Mad George. Creating the looks for not one, but at least half a dozen freaks, Mr. Mad George's make-up work is astounding (I particularly liked the way Ricky Coogan's ghastly side glistened in the light of the moon).

And to make sure each freak is properly introduced, the film has a scene where an impromptu game of Hollywood Squares breaks out. Hosted by Keanu Reeves' Ortiz the Dog Boy, the game gives us our first look at many of the film's signature freaks.

Let's see, there was, Worm (Derek McGrath), Cowboy (John Hawkes), The Eternal Flame (Lee Arenberg), Rosie the Pinhead (Patti Tippo) and Bob Vila (Nicholas Cohn). Hold on, I don't think Bob Villa was a freak, he was just there to confuse audience members born after 1995.

In fact, there's a lot in this film that will confuse and bewilder people born after 1995. Yes, I realize that almost every film made before 1995 has the potential to confuse and bewilder today's youth. But not every film made before 1995 has a sly reference to Jake and the Fat Man. Or a Morgan Fairchild cameo, for that matter. Nonetheless, I would rather a film confuse and bewilder its audience than bore and anesthetize, that's for damn sure. And Freaked, the best merger of Freaks and The Great Escape to come out during the early 1990s, is definitely not boring. Not even close, bud!

* "At the moment"?!? Ha! Talk about being dishonest. More like the last twenty-five years. Extreme avoidant personality disorder + dysphoria = Pure hell. I'll be okay... hopefully.

Future-Kill (Ronald W. Moore, 1985)

Trapped in a part of town where all the women either look like Sharon Mitchell from She's So Fine or Lois Ayres in The Devil in Miss Jones 3, five frat boys in eye makeup are desperate to escape its dilapidated embrace. Whoa, hold on a second, did you just say they were trying to flee an area where the female residents bear a striking resemblance to Sharon Mitchell and Lois Ayres? What the fuck is wrong with these people? If you hadn't interrupted me, I might have gotten around to explaining why this crude collection of college age dunderheads wanted to vacate this shadowy patch of concrete in such an accelerated manner. But now I don't know. Just kidding, of course, I'll explain why. Even though we're all the same, our brains are filled with contrasting ideas as we develop. Manifesting themselves in a number of different ways, these brain-based variations can apply to things as diverse as language and culture. However, one of the most significant ways these differences can unmask themselves is through a person's wardrobe. Just because you're body is clothed a certain way, does not necessarily mean your mind is clothed in a similar fashion. In others words, you may look like a mutant, but you don't think like a mutant. And in Future-Kill, a cunning examination of cutting edge fashion and its connection to urban violence from writer-director Ronald W. Moore, we learn firsthand that a superficial makeover should always be paired with a spiritual one. Getting one or the other may fool the unenlightened, but most people will see right through your ruse and try to kill you.

In order to be a successful adolescent person operating in the North American milieu, you'll eventually have to embrace a subculture. A decision that is bound to be fraught with unforeseen complications, you must choose wisely or else face the consequences. Unveil your subculture choice too quickly and you risk being mocked mercilessly by your peers (there's nothing worse than an overnight punk). Take too long and you could find that the subculture you have chosen to represent your personality has lost its allure (you don't want to come off as out of date or insincere). Since teenagers are usually away from the open air petri dish that is your average high school during the summer months, I recommend that you craft your new look gradually while amongst your closest friends. Iron out the kinks, practice walking in the shoes (all subcultures come with their own distinctive footwear), visit the record store at least once a week, trim your pubes accordingly, and you should be good to go by the time September rolls along.

Unfortunately, the frat boys in Future-Kill have had no gestation period whatsoever when it came time to launch their new looks. Woefully unprepared for life on the other side of the tracks, Paul (Gabriel Folse), Steve (Wade Reese), Tom (Barton Faulks), Jay (Rob Rowley), and George (Jeffrey Scott), may look like radioactive mutants, but they're still crass frat boys at heart.

Performing one juvenile prank too many, the aforementioned quintet are told that they can make things right with their president (a sap they just tarred and feathered) if they bring back an anti-nuke mutant from their post-apocalyptic hellscape masquerading as a neighbourhood. In order to blend in, each frat boy is given a mutant makeover. As you would expect, the montage that follows was the best montage where globs of irregular eye makeup is applied to the eye areas of men on the cusp of heterosexuality in the entire movie. Anyway, on top of having their faces painted with garish colours, they're given mutant-friendly clothing and haircuts.

Driven to the mutant part of town located just outside the non-mutant part of town, a place populated mostly by punks and freaks who oppose nuclear proliferation, by Clint (Craig Kanne), a senior fraternity member, the newly transformed mutants get their first taste of mutant life when they're verbally assaulted by a car full of, you guessed it, drunken frat boys. When they try to yell back–you know, explain to them that they're drunken frat boys in disguise–the drunken frat boys in the other car ignore what they're saying and continue to ridicule them.

Plunging deeper into mutant territory than they expected, the drunken frat boys, who are, in fact, completely sober, desperately want Clint to pick a mutant for them to kidnap, so they can get this ordeal over with. Of course, the mutant he ends up choosing turns out to be Eddie Pain (Doug Davis), the leader of the anti-nuke mutants. While it's true, Eddie tries to adhere to a policy of non-violence, the same can't be said for a mutant named Splatter (Edwin Neal from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre), an armour-wearing killing machine whose veins are coursing with radiation.

In an act of ill-advised stupidity, they casually approach Eddie and Splatter with the intention kidnapping the former, and you can pretty much guess what happens next. (Free tip: Never casually approach someone called "Splatter.") During the ensuing melee, Splatter ends up killing Clint (stabbed in the neck with his retractable claws) and Eddie (stabbed in the neck with some kind of throwing star). But I thought Eddie and Splatter were tight, what gives, man? Well, it seems that Splatter didn't agree with the whole peace and love thing Eddie was pushing (no surprise given the fact that his name is "Splatter") and decided to get rid of him. And who better to pin his murder on than a bunch of frat boys pretending to be mutants.

Running wildly into the night, the frat boy mutants split into two groups: Paul and Jay go one way, while Steve, George, and Tom go another. Since the trio of frat boy mutants seem to think that they're starring in a shot-for-shot remake of The Warriors (they get chased, they stop and fight, they get chased some more), I'll focus the bulk of my attention on what Paul and Jay got up to. And why is that, exactly? What if I said, Jennifer Balgobin-esque gams glimmering underneath a faulty streetlight, would that make any sense? No? What do you mean, no? The character they run into reminded me of actress Jennifer Balgobin (Dr. Caligari), she wore an outfit that exposed the tantalizing flesh that covered her femur, and, to matters even more succinct, she stood in the vicinity of a streetlight for a greater part of the film's running time. It makes perfect sense! God, you people sometimes. All right, I've gotta cool down. I'm about to blow a basket full of penis-shaped gaskets.

Okay, where was I? Oh, yeah, Paul (uninteresting story, I thought his name was Doug for most of the film - he had a real Doug vibe about him) and Jay meet up with a lady mutant named Julie (Alice Villarreal) as she's being hassled by the cops. Helping to untangle her from a precarious situation (the police definitely had rape and candy on their minds), Paul and Jay hope that Julie will return the favour by showing them how to escape from mutant city (which looks an awfully lot like Austin, Texas). Reluctant to say "thanks" to her rescuers ("thanks doesn't exist around here," she grumbles), Julie, her pink dress covered with a smattering of fuzzy thingamabobs and a dash of unnecessary moxie, eventually does thank them and agrees to lead them to safety.

The mutants, as Julie explains to her new friends, are just like everyone else. The only reason they dress like dime store punks and wear crazy makeup is because they're trying to draw attention to their cause. And what better way to make right wing lunatics stand up and take notice of you than by dressing up like Annabella Lwin from Bow Wow Wow and decorating your eyeballs in a way that will no doubt remind them of Gina Kikoine's fierce peepers on the cover of Gina X Performance's X-Traordinaire (crypto-fascists adore West German disco).

Meanwhile, over in Splatter-town (the imaginary place where Splatter resides when he's not killing zods - the mutant nickname for frat boys), Splatter is trying to enjoy a moment of quiet reflection. When all of a sudden, two mutant chicks, one curious (Karin Kay) as to what kind of deformed cock Splatter was hiding underneath all that armour platting, and one incurious as to what kind of, well, you get the idea (the incurious mutant chick, for those interested in such things, is played by not renowned thespian Elizabeth Henshaw), interrupt Splatter's warehouse alone time. Well, the curious mutant chick does the majority of the interrupting, after all, she's curious, whereas the other one is incurious. At any rate, despite the fact that Splatter is a ruthless killer, part of me likes to think that even he was pleasantly surprised that he started his evening off by murdering someone with a chunk of corrugated sheet metal.

Reunited with their frat boy brethren, the five zods and their lovely mutant guide decide to hit up a club. And it's about time, as I was growing tired of watching incompetently staged brawls in the dark. Leave your weapons at the door, because we're about enter the new wave world of Max and the Makeups, one of Austin's, so I've been told, finest live acts. Lead by the gorgeous Lisa Gamache, the band perform their song "Xerox" in its entirety, while Paul and Julie bond with one another in the audience. This particular sequence gave Future-Kill a much needed kick in the proverbial pants, as the sight of Marilyn Burns (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) wearing armour and fishnets as Dorothy Grim, a mutant who holds to key to defeating Splatter, was the only thing this film had going for it up until this point. The energy, and, let's be honest, the raw sex appeal (Miss Gamache looked amazing in her black silk stockings) that Max and the Makeups injected into the film was greatly appreciated from where I was sitting.

After shaking down one of Julie's friends (Cathy Durkin) for information (her black garters quivering against her smooth skin with nervous trepidation as a clawlike object rubbed against them), Splatter and his raccoon-eyed, uzi-wielding, cat-killing henchmen finally track down the frat boys at his old hang-out. The dark, muddled alleyway fight scenes that we've been enduring for the past forty or so minutes have been replaced with a rich tapestry of colour. Red, blue, green, purple, and even teal, are represented as Splatter, the henchmen, Dorothy Grim, Julie, and the zods stalk the vivid halls.

It's hard to believe, but the frat boy's inexplicable aversion to mild transvestitism is what put them on a collision course with a mutant named Splatter. Whoa, that is hard to believe. Well, it's true. You see, all that unnecessary stress could have been avoided had the frat boys simply agreed to their original punishment, which involved wearing leopard print lingerie in a public forum. The fact that they were so vehemently opposed to wearing ladies undergarments is what lead to the kidnapping a mutant idea. Let that be a lesson to all you kids out there, don't be afraid of intimate apparel.

Speaking of which, the opening scene, well, the second opening scene (the actual opening scene features Splatter working at his desk), boasts a great party sequence where intimate apparel seemed mandatory. Hot dogs, nighties, dildos, drum machines, inflatable sex dolls, big hair, John Hawkes, hairy chests, and a Deep Throat pinball machine all commingle with one another at a fraternity pajama party. While the effort put forth by all the extras (including Kimberly and Dana Weaver) should be commended, it was actually Robert Renfrow's synth-heavy music score and the outstanding work of costume designer Kathleen M. Hagan (she also does the film's makeup) that really made this chunk of the film stand out from the rest. The only things preventing me from telling everyone to turn off the movie after watching the pajama party scene is the fact you'll miss seeing Max and the Makeups, the fuzzy things dangling from Alice Villarreal's chic outfit, and Denice Creach's seductive turn as "call girl."

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