Tuck in the kids, leave grandma at home and check your inhibitions at the coat room - the notorious annual celebration of sex, violence and bad taste, "Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation," has steamrolled into the Michigan Theater.
Occasionally offensive, frequently unwatchable, often pornographic, sometimes hilarious and always shocking, Craig "Spike" Decker and the late Mike Gribble return to theaters triumphantly with the intense, humorous 1996 offering of 28 of the best of the morally worst examples of animation. This work is part of a 20-year tradition that has launched the careers of Nick Park and Mike Judge, among others.
Adhering to classical sick and twisted precedents, the component cartoons of various animation styles (pencil drawings, claymation, etc.) featured in "Sick & Twisted" certainly do live up to their collective name. The "Sick" is provided by, for instance, wide-eyed, talking excrement, and the "Twisted" is created by, for example, the funny rantings of a discarded, whining condom who feels "used."
Opening the disorderly 1996 show is the relatively virtuous "No Neck Joe," in which a dim-witted head with arms and legs happens upon two bullies who are selling candy for a quarter. Just as Joe buys the candy with his only 25 cents, he sees another sign selling necks for a quarter; the bullies run away laughing and Joe is left to cry.
Joe gets his revenge in a later episode - he is riding in a car with the bullies when the three are involved in an accident, giving the bullies a nasty case of whiplash which, in turn, gives No Neck Joe a reason to smile.
Another comparatively light point of the show is the hilarious fairy tale, "The Happy Moose." Narrated by raging bull Jake LaMotta to a trio of cynical street kids, this is no ordinary fairy tale - it begins with, "Once upon a time there was this fuckin' moose who lived in cardboard box over in Jersey." What follows that delightfully lewd introduction is a side-splitting story featuring enchanted weasels that is a refreshingly light-hearted alternative to several other featured cartoons.
One such alternatively abhorrent cartoon is the serial "Lloyd's Lunchbox," which nauseatingly depicts the stupid Lloyd experimenting with various bodily destruction. I suggest not eating during the Lloyd episodes, especially the one titled "Three Course Butt-Cheese Platter."
Not all of the sickening thrills are relegated to superfluous displays of violence, however. In "Safe Sex" one man's lascivious struggle with a wily contraceptive device is depicted. Bill Plympton's "How To Make Love To A Woman" is a brutal step-by-step guide for men that gives new meaning to the term "nipple piercing." And "Marylou" features a carnal prom night fantasy about a woman who, through her vagina, transports a boy to Oz - where he kills the Wicked Witch, causing the resident Munchkins to worship his penis. Don't ask, just watch.
Nicely lining up with those new perverse, detestable animated shorts are new episodes of old Spike & Mike staples, like promiscuous Valley Girls, Summer and Tiffany in "Hut Sluts," septic specialist Rick the Dick,and dog-in-heat Horndog. The latest produces the most laughs of the festival as Horndog humps everything from a Barbie doll to a Thanksgiving turkey.
For those who are unfamiliar with any of Spike & Mike's past endeavors, included in this year's festival is a flashback to 1992, with Mike Judge's original short featuring Beavis and Butthead, in "Frog Baseball."
If this "Sick & Twisted Festival" were actually a judged film festival, undoubtedly the highest praise would be bestowed upon the funny faux commercial "Tasty Beef." In this short, spokesperson Tasty the Cow gladly sacrifices pieces of himself for three carnivorous kids. Also likely to be lauded is "Ah, L'Amour," a bitter, violent little film about a masochistic stick-figure man who has no luck with women. (He says, "Hiya, Jill. Nice shoes." She screams, "I need some space," and literally bites his head off. He says "Hello," to another woman; that woman exclaims "No means no!" And proceeds to stab him in each eye.)
Yet another winner would be the wonderful "Genres." This depicts the torture and humiliation of a reluctant cartoon bunny at the hand of his creator, who places the rabbit in scenarios like "The Romantic Movie," "The Foreign Abstract Western Movie" and, most memorably, "The Porno Disaster Movie."
For all its perversion and detestation, "Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation," is nothing more than an enjoyable adult regression into the normally juvenile world of cartoonishly violent and innocently perverted animated fun.
That is, if your juvenile years were filled with blood, semen, tears of laughter and other bodily fluids.