Gwar
Phallus in Wonderland (Metal Blade)
by Scott Hefflon
Dude, whoa… If you’ve seen Monty Python’s skits mixing actors in surreal environments and illustrated worlds you wouldn’t dream of, well, add a lotta gore and drooling and spooge, take away most, um, sense, and you might have an idea how twisted this is. Put it this way, Gwar makes Troma’s movies seem pretty normal.
The “plot” of this movie is that the U.S. government, the clergy, and various other Bad People Who Don’t Like People Having Fun steal The Cuttlefish of Cthulu (singer Oderus Urungus’s dick). So, of course, to fight back, the band’s manager, Sleazy P. Martini, enlists the help of a bunch of dirtbags (fans, most of us call them), they snort and smoke a lot of crack, and they set out to, uh, film videos and kill hipsters and religious hypocrites and, well, pretty much anyone they don’t much like. Which is pretty much everyone. One of my favorite scenes is when Gwar pulls up to an anti-Gwar rally outside a show, and they bash everyone’s big clay heads in, cut off some big clay boobies so they bounce around on surprisingly rubber bandy-veins, and generally slice everyone up with big, gory broadswords. That’s the way to deal with protestors!
Luckily, Oderous’ dick tips the band off so when the Morality Squad’s ringleader, Rambo Granny, shows up, Gwar and their cracked-out slaves fight back. But Grandma’s got a posse… A CIA slick prick and a steroid clayman, Corporal Punishment (just back from fighting the dirty Arabs), whose shapely assistant is always on hand (or giving him a handjob), and some Thing-looking, uh, thing, named Tiny. More fighting and gory bashing of heads ensues. The Stars’n’Stripes in the background was a nice touch, and I like the monster truck announcer during the realization that Granny’s wheelchair is a veritable Wheelchair of Death (death… death… That’s the echo, ok?), but I still don’t see why there’d be deli meats and heads of lettuce on hand for a shotgun showdown. How many battles between good and evil are catered?
And then, wouldn’t you know it, a 400-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex named Gor-Gor attacks New York City (after wrecking a trailer park cuz, um, hell, why not?) thus challenging Gwar’s mastery of Earth. Boy, who didn’t see that coming? More fire and gore and battleaxes and flashy edits ensue (funny how scale fluctuates: First the Rex towers over buildings, and then it fights head-to-head with Gwar on the street. Weird, huh?).
And then, as quickly as the beast arrived, it’s vanquished. Or the puppeteer suffered a fatal heart attack, and the peril was no more. The quest for Cuttlefish of Cthulu could continue. But then the credits roll to “Ham on the Bone,” leaving audiences asking “Quoi?”
Not many added DVD features to this ’92 product, but there is the option of skipping the movie and just watching the five videos – “Crack in the Egg” (ooh, Slymenstra Hymen shows her titties! Um, I waited 15 years to see that, eh?), “Have You Seen Me?” (the lounge song), “The Road Behind” (the slaughter of G’N’R’s “Patience” and glam hipster pretension in general), “The Morality Squad” (Granny’s attack), and “Gor-Gor” (a thrashfest that levels a city). There’s also a still gallery of the cast, in case you need to know how to spell their names or something…
(www.musicvideodistributors.com)
