FILM THREAT
issue 10, June 1993

Hip Shooters
by Dave Parker

Hey moviegoer! Put down that gun!
Yeah, we know you're unhappy. It's springtime, which can only, mean one thing: shitty movies!
'Tis the season for the studios' worst bottom-of-the-barrel dreck-the flicks the idiots in power are contractually obliged to deliver even though they'd be hardpressed to find someone to rent them for 99ct, much less see them for $7.50. Let's face it, Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase own these vernal months.

Occasionally, however, the Earth tilts oft its axis a little and something decent like The Silence of the Lambs escapes. The year 1993 may also go down as one of those infrequent burps in film history, because very soon two young and recklessly impulsive auteurs named Alex Winter and Tom Stern will bless us with a movie so amazing, so stupendous, so goddamn funny, that the title cannot be merely spoken. .It must be screamed from every salt-filled pore...
HIDEOUS MUTANT FREEKZ!

If there's anything that can be termed a freak in the innately strange and deformed world of Hollywood, it's the incredible two-headed director. There are the Zucker brothers, who, along with Jim Abrahams, hit the jackpot with Airplane! and The Naked Gun. There are Rob Allen and Bill Devlin, those wacky guys responsible for Goofus and Gallants The Movie. There are the infamous Dark Brothers, whose joyously sleazy exploits have reinvigorated the adult film genre.And now there are Alex Winter and Tom Stern, two Tinseltown misfits who are determined to transform your neighborhood movie house into a shrinking, reeking, retch inducing chamber of human abnormalities with Hideous Mutant Freekz – the first traveling sideshow ever to roll out nationally on a single day. The project marks their second directorial collaboration (their earlier and equally sick 16mm short, Squeal of Death, is a Film Threat Video title that debuted on the pair's now defunct MTV comedy show, The Idiot Box and their first for a major studio (20th Century Fox). Surprisingly, deprivation – not depravity – is Alex and Tom's main reason for unleashing Freekz. For these twentysomething filmmakers, one of the worst aspects of being born during the 60s – besides missing out on the inexpensive drugs and the carefree sex– was not being able to experience a genuine freak show. Sure when some two-bit country fair set up in town, they might have been treated to a three-headed cow or a baby with a harelip floating in formaldehyde. But it wasn't ever a live show featuring real folks who could inspire such flatteries as, "Jesus Christ, there's something wrong with that guy!". "TV really killed the traveling freak show," laments Alex, relaxing with his codependent codirector on this balmy Southern California evening in a popular Venice crack house. "Why would people want to pay money to see freaks when they could just turn on the set and watch Gary Coleman? There's always a freak somewhere on TV." Tom, the taller and less photogenic of the two, agrees. "It's a shame, really because the freakshow was the oldest form of entertainment around. Back when there were cavemen, you can imagine everyone checking out the guy with three eyes. Freak shows were how these kinds of people made money. How else is someone with balls the size of a Volkswagen gonna earn a living." "Yeah," says Alex. "We've always been interested in the exhibition of freaks. There's something both tragic and funny about them. They're the ultimate in pathos." Okay, so Hideous Mutant Freekz isn't the first movie to spotlight the very physically challenged. But it is the first comedy, as far as we know that deals with this delicate subject. In these days of political correctness, it just isn’t acceptable to laugh at other people’s problems. "Fuck delicacy!”, barks Alex, “Cynical comedy is on the upswing – probably because this country is so far in the shitter. And what could be more cynical than laughing at someone else’s misfortune? That’s why we made the main character such an asshole. The audience will enjoy seeing him get screwed over. The joke’s on him, not the freaks!”

BIRTH DEFECTS
The film’s antagonistic protagonist is Ricky Coogin (Alex Winter) a conceited prick of an actor who’s become rich playing a character called Ghost Dude in a series of highly profitable films. Coogin’s greed catches up to him when a shifty big corporation called EES (Everything Except Shoes) offers him $5 million to travel about promoting a toxic, biogenetic South American fertilizer. After arriving in the country of Santa Flan, named after the patron saint of desserts, Coogin and his buddy Ernie (Micheal Stoyanov) stop off at a sideshow, where they are converted into freaks by the evil proprietor, Elijah C. Skuggs (Randy Quaid) and his nasty freak-making goop. To say more would be giving too much away, (and besides mere words can’t do this demented film justice.) Although Freekz is truly bizarre, its conception was even stranger. The original script was to have starred the Butthole Surfers, one of Tom and Alex’s all-time favorite bands. Due to its sick and disgusting nature, however, no studio was interested in making it. “We couldn’t figure it out,” says Tom. “We thought this was the most commercial idea ever put on paper. It’s hard to believe nobody wanted to see Gibby Haynes (head Butthole) jerking off into a red-hot skillet with his semen spelling out the word Satan.”

“The original intention,” explains Alex, “was to make the ultimate cult film that would rake all the elements that you’d see in a cult film and exaggerate them a hundred times. You know, The Hills Have Eyes kind of cult film – where the innocent family ends up in a horrible environment and they can’t get out of it and just get beat on from beginning to end.” Once producers Harry Ufland and Mary Jan Ufland (Not Without My Daughter, Night and the City) joined the show, Fox expressed an interest – but only after a major rewrite. “ Joe Roth, deserves a shitload of credit,”says Alex of the studio head, who subsequently departed for Disney. “It took a lot of balls to go for this idea.” “They were right in thinking the script was a little too hard-core,” says Tom. “But once they got interested, we realized we wanted to do something that as a bit more horror/comedy as opposed to just a weird slasher film with lots of bodily fluids. Tim Burns, a Canadian writer with an actual sense of humor who Tom met when they both slaved on The Jim Henson Hour, was enlisted to help make the story more of a comedy. “I have to admit, I just didn’t get it.” says Burns. “So I basically ridiculed it just to get on those guys’ nerves. But for some reason, they liked the ideas I jokingly came up with and I ended up rewriting the script with them. Without this rewrite, Freekz would almost surely have been made as an underground film shot on Super 8 – maybe 16mm, if a little cash was raised. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. Yet Tom and Alex now have the opportunity to subvert many more impressionable young minds than they would have had otherwise. Making the script slightly less disgusting is a small price to pay, when you consider how many kids may now grow up warped. “Sure it’s a little more mainstream,” admits Tom, punching a crackhead who’s been gibbering at us for the past five minutes. “But we’re talking degrees here. It’s still fairly gross by most people’s standards – and a lot more clever than it was. Compared to most comedies, it’s not at all mainstream.” But selling out always has some drawbacks. One thing audiences will miss is the sight of he guitar player from the Butthole Surfers playing someone’s spinal cord as the innocent victim screams in pain. Oh, the heartbreak.

SUPERFREEKZ
Freaks, needless to say, are integral to the film. At first, there weren’t enough very special people in the script. So Tim Burns set out to multiply the number of human oddities. “I really wanted to make the film more expensive,” he laughs. “And I figured more freaks would definitely drive up the budget.” While new mutants were added, others were discarded. “The Human Bong was a real favorite, says Tom wistfully. "His butt acted as the carb while you smoked his mouth." "That of course, was the civilized version, " reminisces Alex, the sadness apparent in his voice. "We originally had the smoke coming out his ass. But we thought that might be just a little too hard-core." "Some people might have called it bad taste," agrees Tom. Instead of a few completely unnatural oddities, there is now a healthy balance between the basic, old-time classic freaks and some that could only exist in the kind of nightmares you get after eating too many hash brownies at a Grateful Dead concert. Take, for instance, Juan the Dog-Faced Boy. Dog Boys (sometimes known as Wolf Boys) were a common freak show attraction. Usually it was some poor kid who had the misfortune of having hair growing all over his face. Many times there was also some bullshit story about how the carnival had discovered the little tyke being nursed by coyotes. "Our Dog Boy is slightly different," says Tom. "Juan likes to do "dog things" – like chase after squirrels and lick his balls. All the things we wish we could do. "There is also that eternal crowd pleaser, the Bearded Lady. Imagine if Madonna's whiskers grew even more pronounced, and you'll get the picture. Moreover, this bearded lady is not a woman, but a man who got in touch with his feminine side after being exposed to Skugg's secret freak producing formula. "His act consists of giving fashion and beauty tips to the audience," says Alex. "It's really very beautiful." Two of the stranger freaks are the Eternal Flame and Wormie, the Worm Man. The Eternal Flame started out as something similar to the Human Torch of The Fantastic Four. "The best way to describe him," explains Burns, "is just that he was a guy who erupted into flames without warning and stayed that way until someone put him out." When Burns jokingly suggested that the Eternal Flame be a guy, with fire spewing out his rectum, Tom and Alex – never ones to turn down a good fart joke – took him seriously and worked the character into the script. Wormie, meanwhile is a freak lousily based on the real-life Caterpillar Man – a guy with no arms or legs who kind of wiggled his way around. His big schtick was rolling a cigarette and then smoking it. "We basically twisted the concept around a little bit," says Alex, pausing to pull a revolver and blow a pigeon off a nearby window sill. "Wormie is a guy who gets turned into a giant worm. He's sort of pathetic in that he's always begging people to wipe his ass for him. Other freaks on parade include CowBoy, a guy with a cow's head and udders dangling from his belly; Rosie the Pinhead, a staple of any true freak show, Nosey a jerk whose nose is so big it takes up his entire head; Sock Head, basically a guy whose brain is encased in a sock instead of a skull; and Frog Man, a scuba diver who speaks French. The remainder of this cretinous crew is truly so bizarre, so outlandish, that they are not discussed by the writers. "Some of the stuff you just have to see to believe," says Tom "The effects are incredible!".

VERY SPECIAL F/X
With a budget of somewhere between $10-15 million ($100 million if you count all the drugs quietly supplied to the set) one would expect the effects to be pretty damn good. “About 30% of the money went to Tom and me.” Alex cheerfully confides. “Whatever was left we kinda dished out to the effects guys.” One of the make-up experts commissioned was the uniquely gifted Screaming Mad George. “He was the first guy to help us conceive of how to actually bring these freaks to life in a practical way,” says Alex. “He was with us since the very beginning, and when the script changed, we all worked together on these really weird characters.” The pair also promise some really cool claymation animatronics and “Tex Avery-style” computer graphics. “We’re very happy with the effects,” brags Tom, dodging a wayward bullet. “We were given enough money to actually do what we wanted effects-wise and still have enough left to support our debilitating, time-consuming cocaine habits.” The set, a luridly realistic sideshow from hell, is also pretty amazing. With such attractions as the Heavy Petting Zoo, where customers get to swap spit with their favorite barnyard animal, and I’ll Fart Your Weight, featuring a guy who holds a megaphone to his buttocks, then guesses your weight and farts it out pound by pound, you’d think that the merchandising possibilities would be endless. “Mattel and Kenner were actually interested in doing some kind of toys,” claims Alex. “They came down to check out the set and thought it was pretty cool. They even molded some figurines based on a couple of the characters.”

But then the unthinkable happened: They read the script! “After that, all interest kinda disappeared. This is definitely not a kid’s movie.” Too bad. Imagine Freekz action figures or Elijah C. Skuggs’s Instant Freek Goop to spread on your little brother’s face, or even Freekz Pez Dispensers. Nah, forget that last one. You’d have to be a real whore to sell out to a candy company.

FREEKING OUT
With two idea-packed craniums, jockeying for position behind the camera, you’d think there would be some major fistfights. Not so with the Winter-Stern organism. “We’ve done it for so long that we don’t even think about it,” says Alex. “We do everything together right from the start. We write together, plan the shot list together, we even take turns with the casting couch. Basically the whole design of the film is a collaborative effort, so once we get shooting, there really aren’t any problems.” “We even yell at the same people together,” says Tom. “At one point, we ganged up and screamed at John Ritter so hard that he burst into tears. He was unable to complete his role as the hermaphroditic dwarf, so we had to write him out of the picture. No big loss, now that I think about it.” Yet Alex disputes reports that the pair are tyrants. “Sure we can be tough sometimes,” he says. “But we really do have big hearts and truly love everyone involved.” “Except for Dino, the thieving production assistant,” snarls Tom. “That asshole quit our film to write for The Ben Stiller Show. And what’s the first thing he does? He creates a talking sock character! That sonuvabitch!” “And don’t forget that propmaster!” reminds Alex. “Oh yeah, a word of advice for aspiring young filmmakers,” says Tom. “Always keep your eyes on the greedy, conniving propmaster. Companies pay them off to sneak their products into shots. Every time I looked through the lens, I’d see a Budweiser can in the middle of the frame. I’d swear it wasn’t there five seconds ago.” “The rotten bastard,” grumbles Alex.

Since word leaked from the super secret closed set Hollywood has been abuzz about the number of celebrities appearing in Freekz. Unfortunately, many of the star cameos landed on the cutting room floor. (“Deservedly so,” sniffs Tom.) So forget about Schwarzenegger, Cruise, Madonna, Costner and the rest of those no-talent, spineless, overpaid, Premiere-posing hacks. Their “contributions” to Freekz will never be seen. Unless, of course , Tom and Alex someday release a high-priced director’s cut on laserdisc. “No way!” bellows Alex, throwing an empty beer bottle at a nearby mirror for emphasis. “We burned all the trims. And most of the people in ‘em – especially Bruce Willis and Robin Wright – should be grateful that we did. The good news, however is that plenty of stars did survive the final cut. Besides Randy Quaid, there’s William Sadler (Trespass, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey) as the head creep of the evil EES corporation, Mr. T as the Bearded Lady, Megan Ward (Encino Man) as the feminist babe, Brooke Shields as a television show hostess, Larry “Bud” Melman as a dork and Keanu Reeves as Juan the Dog-Faced Boy. Wait a second – Keanu Reeves? “Keanu gets a bad rap,” says Alex. “He’s had the misfortune of being miscast a few times and everyone gets down on him. He’s actually very funny and has a great comedic sense that hasn’t ever been used to its full potential before now.” “It’s true ,” says Tom with a straight face. “People will be very surprised when they see how funny he is in Freekz.” “It sounds cornball to say this,” adds Alex, saying it anyway. “But we are very happy with the whole cast. Everyone was easy and fun to work with, I miss everybody.” “So do I,” weeps Tom. “So do I.” But there’s no time for tears. The duo are currently entertaining offers from all the major studios, and it won’t be easy for them to select just one. “We’re definitely going to do Freekz 2: Electric Boogaloo at some point,” swears Tom, brightening as he blows a hawker into a filthy hanky. “And everyone keeps bugging us to do the Eddie, the Flying Gimp From Outer Space movie. But our next directing assignment will be some Chuck Norris deodorant ads.” But first Winter may have to sweat out a third Bill & Ted movie – minus Ted. “Keanu was smart enough to get out of his contract, so this one just has Bill in it,” Alex explains. “This time, Bill and Rufus take the phone booth into Bill’s body to try and make him less of a fuckin' retard. It’s called Bill’s Fantastically Bogus Voyage!

On that note, we carefully pick our way through the crackhouse’s dazed occupants. After Tom stops to rifle the pocket of one comatose customer, we head out into the night vowing to recognize the inherent worth of every human being. Even if they do have an arm growing out of their forehead.