The Direct to Video Connoisseur

I'm a huge fan of action, horror, sci-fi, and comedy, especially of the Direct to Video variety. In this blog I review some of my favorites and not so favorites, and encourage people to comment and add to the discussion. For announcements and updates, don't forget to Follow us on Twitter and Like our Facebook page. If you're the director, producer, distributor, etc. of a low-budget feature length film and you'd like to send me a copy to review, you can contact me at dtvconnoisseur[at]yahoo.com. I'd love to check out what you got. And check out my book, Chad in Accounting, over on Amazon.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Meet the Feebles (1989)

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Peter Jackson, despite the Lord of the Rings things he did, will always hold a special place in my heart. After my friends and I found Bad Taste in 1994, we were converts, and we looked for anything we could find by him. We found this and Dead Alive, and both were spectacular. I never quite got the buzz around the LOTR films, because none of them could stand up to these first three in my mind.

Meet the Feebles is a sick and twisted parody of The Muppets. The Feebles is a variety show owned by this walrus dude. He's supposed to be in love with the hippo chick that's their star singer, but he bangs a cat on the side. At the same time, the star rabbit thinks he's got a fatal STD, and is planning his death. Our protagonist is supposed to be a diminutive porcupine who has just joined the cast. As more and more problems plague the production, the gay fox that runs the show decides to do his own act, a song about sodomy. The hippo finds out the walrus doesn't love her, and she snaps, massacring the cast with a machine gun.

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Like Bad Taste and Dead Alive, this film is pure comedic gold. You know this isn't your-run-of-the-mill puppet film when you see a walrus doing a cat. There's also a rat who films bondage porn in the basement on the side, and a fly who runs a gossip column. Like Team America and Conan's sketch about puppet deaths, Peter Jackson does a great job killing off the puppets in his film. The hippo with the machine gun is fantastic.

Also like Bad Taste and Dead Alive, this film is not for the faint of heart. Don't let the puppet theme fool you, there are plenty of disgusting scenes in this, some grosser than those in the other two films. You've got the fly eating feces in a toilet, the rabbit with pus oozing out of the sores on his face, and the walrus vomiting on a rhino to screw up his golf shot.

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This is not a kids film either. The humor is purely adult fare. One of my faves was the Deer Hunter tribute with the lizard who was captured in Vietnam and now fights a heroin addiction. I also dug the aforementioned sodomy song. Anyone who looks at the puppets on the cover and thinks Dark Crystal or Muppets Take Manhattan will be sorely disappointed (unless you're me, and you have a twisted sense of humor, and think those two movies sucked ass).

Pay whatever you have to to get this gem. If it sets you back the full $19.99, it's so worth it. This thing will provide many more hours of enjoyment than all of the LOTR special editions put together.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097858/

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