Existo (1999)

Director:

Coke Sams

Writers (WGA):

Bruce Arntson (written by) &
Coke Sams (written by)

Genre:

Comedy | Sci-Fi | Musical

Tagline:

He was a Psycho Marionette and the Devil Pulled His Strings

Plot Keywords:

Political | Independent Film | Character Name In Title

Awards:

3 wins

Cast

  (Credited cast)

Bruce Arntson	...	Existo
Jackie Welch	...	Maxine
Mark Cabus	...	Roupen Dupree
Jim Varney	...	Marcel Horowitz
Gailard Sartain	...	Colette Watchuwill
Michael Montgomery	...	Armand Glasscock
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
David Alford	...	Dirk Beverage
J. Thomas Bailey	...	Roupen's Thug
Tommy Barnes	...	Store Manager
Matthew Carlton	...	Jacques Patou
Connye Florance	...	Ramona
Denice Hicks	...	Mo Deeks
Jenny Littleton	...	Penelope
Robert Malone	...	Bartender
Brian Russell	...	Edgar Zoloffsky
Barry Scott	...	Bernard Ozak
Cooper Thornton	...	Vigo

Runtime:

94 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Color

Filming Locations:

Nashville, Tennessee, USA

Company:

Hometown Productions

Quotes:

Maxine: Spin the Bishop!

One of the worst films ever made. Period.

First off, I'd just like to make it clear that I did not find this movie terrible for any political reason. I am neither left or nor right, and I am totally indifferent to politics.

Now, with that out of the way. This film is utterly awful. Aiming to be a low budget, cult classic that pokes fun at right-wing conservativeness, "Existo" crashes and burns with its trite political humor that completely fails at even garnering the slightest of smirks. Coke Sams (who, by the by, directed the Ernest films, which are some of the worst films of all time), is trying way too hard, and ends up with a "beat you over the head" style of attempted satire that completely misses the point of cult fandom.

The genius of cult classics is that the directors didn't know they were making a cult classic. They just wanted to make a quirky, original film and weren't sure if anyone would like it. But Coke Sams is actually trying to intentionally make a cult classic here. He's aware of himself too much, and that makes his work extremely pretentious. It's like someone dumped the entire Criterion Collection, every episode of Inside the Actor's Studio, some of Michael Moore's 5th grade liberal poems that he scribbled on the back of his notebook, and a gallon of feces into a melting vat, mixed up the putrid contents, and then, through some undoubtedly illegal process, converted the product into a film of monumentally horrible proportions.

The film opens with a voice-over that tells of a dystopian, ultra-conservative future. Yeah, really subtle. Existo, the main character of film, played by Bruce Arnston, is a member of a secret rebel movement poised to overthrow the right-wing government. Arnston does all sorts of Zaney things that you'd see on one of those live-action children's shows on PBS, like delivering all of his lines, both in dialog and song, in the fashion of a bad Jim Carrey imitation, and while this may amuse the everloving crap out a group of 8 year olds, it does naught for someone with an attention span wide enough to realize that there's about ten billion better ways they could be wasting their time, like setting all their cherished possessions on fire or phialing down grandma's bunions.

No doubt through some kind of agreement between Sams and Jim Varney via their Ernest-built relationship, Varney makes his very last appearance in this film as an old man caked in Cream of Wheat. It's very sad to think that this was the last "professional" thing Varney did before he died, and I can't help but to think that Varney's death is somehow related to this film.

I'll close by saying, don't be fooled by the positive user comments for this film. This film was made in Nashville, and you'll note that almost all of the positive user comments are from anonymous users from Tennessee, most likely friends of Sams or even members of the crew who produced this abomination, perhaps even Sams himself.