Tag Archives: David Firth

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: KUSO (2017)

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BewareWeirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Flying Lotus (credited as “Steve”)

FEATURING: Bethany Schmitt, Ouimi Zumi, Iesha Coston, Zack Fox,  Shane Carpenter, George Clinton, , voice of

PLOT: Survivors of an L.A. earthquake are stricken by disease and experience bizarre events.

Still from Kuso (2017)

COMMENTS: “Kuso,” the Blu-ray’s liner notes explain, is Japanese for “shit,” and you’ll see plenty of kuso in the course of Kuso. The film opens with a shot of maggots wriggling in trenches spelling out the film’s name, followed by a shot of a jerking seismograph. That intro segues into the opening sequence, in which two straight-laced white news anchors reporting on an earthquake are interrupted by a black man in putty-makeup who performs a free jazz scat explaining that “no one will save you” (among the more coherent lines). Then the kuso-show begins in earnest.

The brief earthquake mention is about all the context we get for the segments that follow, which are intercut together and interspersed with surreal (and usually obscene) collages and animations. There’s a couple with a pus-based love life, a flatulent bald kid in a dunce cap who finds a giant anus in the woods, a woman who loses her baby in a hole, a stoner girl who lives with two fuzzy Muppet creatures with TV monitor faces (and who has an exceptionally tasteless date rape/abortion subplot), and a man who undergoes scat therapy to cure himself of his fear of breasts. It’s not clear that all of these characters live in the same universe, except on one occasion when two of them meet and converse in a doctor’s waiting room.

None of the individual stories have much structure or go anywhere interesting, and none of the individuals have any characterization beyond their surface deformities. The lack of storyline and of characters of course contribute to Kuso‘s surprising dullness, but there’s also the lack of variation in the suffocating atmosphere: there’s no real humor, no joy, just endless darkness, cruelty, and a fetishistic focus on disease and bodily fluids. There’s no tonal contrast in the film, which is surprising for a director who’s a musician. It’s no symphony, but instead the cinematic equivalent of a 90-minute bass solo.

There is so little African-American surrealism out there that it’s a crime that this lump ends up as one of the more prominent examples of the form. The film seems pointless, never applying its vision to any end beyond the most juvenile variety of shock possible. It depicts a world of cruelty and disease unrelieved by any sort of thought or emotional investment. That is a sort of vision. But it has nothing to do with Flying Lotus’ anarchic but groovy and joyful music, which is experimental and challenging but harmonic—unlike Kuso, which is a harsh blast of formless noise. Because Lotus is so talented, I hope that he will aim higher in future filmic excursions, and that one day we’ll look back at this movie as a lonely misfire in his artistic catalog. But as it stands, Kuso does a great disservice to weird films. , and their brethren often shock, but you never doubt that deep down the fillmakers actually like people. Kuso has nothing good to say about our species, and actually appears to actively hate humanity—including, by extension, its audience.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…inevitably whets the appetite of people who 50 years ago would have been lining up for their 10th viewing of ‘Mondo Cane’ — the sort of audiences forever on the lookout for something weirder or more extreme to make them go, ‘Ewwwww!’ Those viewers, as well as some among the habitually-stoned, will constitute the primary fans of this first feature… Everybody else is going to want to take a wide detour around this insufferable mishmash of interwoven segments — aimless in themselves, even more so as a whole — almost entirely concerned with bodily functions and bodily fluids.”–Variety (festival screening)

(This movie was nominated for review by “Dan M.”, who said “I’m assuming somebody else has already suggested it but there you go.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Kuso [Blu-ray]

Kuso [Blu-ray]
  • Region A Blu-Ray
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List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: UMBILICAL WORLD (2018)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Voices of David Firth, Paul MacKenzie, Christian Webb

PLOT: A remixed collection of David Firth’s absurdist flash animation cartoons, like “Salad Fingers” and “Health Reminder,” assembled into a stream-of-consciousness feature with some new material.

Still from Umbilical World (2018)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: The nature of the project—an anthologized (though “remixed”) collection of previously published material as opposed to something originally conceived as a unified piece—makes Umbilical World somewhat suspect as an official List entry. There is enough bizareness here to merit the “” tag, however, and that will be more than enough endorsement for many folks.

COMMENTS: Umbilical World begins with “Salad Fingers,” the sweet green goblin with vegetable digits (and David Firth’s most popular creation) struck by lightning and dissolving into a puddle, out of which a glistening umbilical organ rises and glides into low Earth orbit, where it grows on to have relations with celestial objects.

It’s totally and delightfully surreal, of course, but this opening is also a way of implying connectivity between these shorts, although in reality there is no serious connective tissue between the segments. The absurdist miniatures here range from the silly tale of Salad Fingers adopting some sort of oil-soaked battered tin war surplus cylinder, to a skit with skinless gangsters using twisted Prohibition-era slang to order drinks, to straight-up satires of ads and public-service announcements, to a truly nightmarish bit involving a razor-taloned doctor puppet who wounds a horse and feasts on its blood. (Those who have only been exposed to Firth’s lighter, satirical side may be shocked by how terrifyingly dark he can go.) There is, at least, a unity of style and attitude, themes of insanity and death and despair and tubes suck through your skull, and a consistent vein of coal-black humor used to cope with these existential terrors. Extra-weird bits include a character vomiting scrabble tiles when questioned by a head sticking out of a tree stump—not to mention a baby-faced umbilicus entering a photograph of a vagina, emerging from a photograph of an anus, and vomiting eyeballs. There’s a new insane concept once every thirty seconds on average. And there are a surprising number of decapitations—usually not fatal—running throughout the work.

The transitions between the sequences are new material, with ideas like Salad Fingers taking place on a microscopic world on a piece of moldy bread. Characters also watch new cartoons on televisions embedded in the back of other characters heads. Stylistically, much of the animation remains true to Firth’s original flash versions, updated to HD; there are also segments dabbling in an ultra-grotesque form of cutout animation, with cross-eyed photorealistic heads bobbling unsteadily on animated bodies. One extended, trippy bit of digital manipulation, where 21st century  amoebas morph in pseudo-3D over the image before exploding into a fractal supernova and then turning into a stop-motion / homage with mannequin heads and a spinning plate of fruit and sundered body parts, ventures into brave new territory. The music—by Flying Lotus, the late Marcus Fjellström, and others—is eerie and well-matched to the mood. And while the individual pieces featured here may work better as shorts—there can be too much of a good thing, at least in one sitting—the experience is like leaving Firth’s YouTube channel on autoplay while waiting for the drugs to kick in, then checking in just when you’re peaking to find something on that plays like a collaboration between , , and a serial killer.

On a personal level, I was only familiar with the three Firth shorts previously published on these pages, plus a few more we screened and passed over for another day. I suspect someone like me may be in the best position to appreciate this collection. If you have too much familiarity with Firth’s work, you might be disappointed in how little new material is here, or be upset if your personal favorite was left out. If you have too little familiarity with Firth’s work, you might miss out on a bit of context or some of the umbilical connections, or simply be stunned by the mix of -style jokes with nightmares that would make bolt up in bed screaming. In any case, there is an obvious pitch to this work: Firth has worked hard publishing on YouTube to build a fan base, but paltry streaming advertising revenues don’t pay the bills for 99% of content providers. Like a Kickstarter reward, Umbilical World offers fans a chance to show him a little financial support, and to receive something new and exclusive in exchange. Umbilical World also immortalizes Firth’s work in a less ephemeral fashion. It’s available streaming (click here for options), or on DVD with a bonus “making of” documentary and director’s commentary.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In terms of the vibe, think Bill Plympton crossed with Eraserhead.”–Joe Bendel, J.B. Spins