And here it is-- a movie about famous (famous in Colorado, at least) convicted cannibal Alferd Packer, who led an expedition to Breckenridge and ended up eating everyone in his party.
The Movie
So is it a good movie? That depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for brief flashes of the brilliance that would become far more stable once South Park got going, you'll find them here. If you're looking for a movie that can stand alone, out of the shadow of its creators' later accomplishments, you may be disappointed.
The movie definitely has its moments. It stars Parker (billed as "Juan Schwartz"), who also wrote, directed and wrote the songs, as Packer, and an entourage of four or five other guys-- Stone among them, of course. Packer is presented not as a heartless, twisted cannibal, but as a guy with lousy navigational skills who just happens to be leading an expedition. This is an unexpected quality in the movie-- that Packer is presented sympathetically (Parker explains in the commentary that he wanted to follow Packer's version of the story).
Of course, there are plenty of gross-out jokes, fart humor, and amusing depictions of people eating people. There is violence to the extreme of being cheesy (such as when Parker pulls off a guy's arm and beats him with it.) And there are the songs, which are just like you'd expect them to be-- unrefined, somewhat crude, but definitely running on the same kernel that made South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut. Songs include "When I Was on Top of You," Packer's ode to his lost horse, Leanne, "Hang the Bastard," and "It's a Schpadoinkle Day," the movie's main theme.
It's a first film. Most of the cast served a technical function in the making of the movie. The photography is not that great, and the sound is not very good. As a movie, it's good, but not great. But there's a far more compelling reason to pick this disc up than the quality of the movie (see The Extras below).
6 out of 10
The Video
Any flaws with the video here are the fault of the source material, and the only flaws with that are not with the print but with the way the movie was made in the first place. Its colors are way oversaturated in places, way undersaturated in others. Although it was shot on film, it has a strangely video-y look, but I can't figure out why.
Anyway, this is a good, clean, full-frame, non-anamorphic transfer (not surprisingly, as this movie originally went straight to video).
7 out of 10
The Audio
The thing I most noticed about the audio on this disc was the fact that the looping (the overdubbed dialogue) was reeeeally obvious in a lot of places. And, as is pointed out in the commentary, a lot of it was recorded in a bathroom (for the reverb value). But, again, that's a source issue, not a DVD issue.
This is a straight-up stereo mix. As Troma Studios is fond of putting everything except the technical information on their packaging, I'm not sure of the format, but it's not a Surround mix (or if it is, it's a really bad one). But what do you expect? This is a student film, and in that light the audio is pretty damn good.
5 out of 10
The Extras
And now we come to the real reason any "South Park" fan, or any Parker/Stone fan in general, will want this DVD: the commentary track.
Yes, both Parker and Stone, as well as a few of the other cast members, give comments for the length of the film, which would not be enough to sell a DVD except for the fact that the group is drinking scotch throughout the commentary-- they get through two bottles. As a result the track is liberally sprinkled with cursing (lots of it, like every other word), "I'm so wasted" statements, a broad range of insults of each other and everyone who's not in the room, much talk about the cans on the boom girl, and general merriment and ridicule of their own film.
I have to be honest-- when I was watching the movie, I got bored halfway through and switched on the commentary, and it was WAY more entertaining from that point on. The only drawback is that the only audio from the movie itself in the commentary track is what bleeds through from the speakers of the TV they were watching the movie on to the mikes they were talking into.
There is also the original trailer for this movie, which I suspect was the short they made to get financing for the rest of the movie. Parker and Stone give an interesting, and amusing interview on the beach somewhere, and there are a few behind-the-scenes videos of the shooting of certain scenes. You can even watch a live stage production of "Cannibal!" Finally, there is a clip from the little cameo Stone and Parker did in Troma's "Terror Firmer," in which they play a pair of hermaphrodites.
There are a lot of other extras on the disc, this being a Troma release. Troma puts the same stuff on every disc: "tour of Troma studios" (which is actually just a whole bunch of film clips), lots of talk by Troma's Lloyd Kaufman, the "Troma Intelligence Test," and more stuff like that. It's a lot of stuff, and most of it is just Troma commercials-- much more inventive commercials than most, I grant you-- but commercials just the same.
9 out of 10
Is a commentary track enough to sell a DVD? That's the question you're going to have to ask yourself, and the answer you give will be directly related to your love of Parker and Stone, and their gleefully scatalogical discourse. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I am more fond of the f-word than most people.
-- Alex Castle is more fond of the f-word than most people.
