I live and breathe for bad movies. Total incompetence in filmmaking is my bread and butter. Can't act? Can't direct? Can't edit? That's not a problem. I'll find something to enjoy in your work, even if it's not what you intended-especially if you made it with passion and without cynicism. It's all good with me.
But then I marathoned the Terror Toons trilogy, and director Joe Castro almost broke me.
Let me put my experience into what I call the Five Stages of Terror Toons.
1. Disbelief
Starting with the original classic, Terror Toons - made in 2002 over the course of three days on a budget of $2,300 and some sort of hallucinogenic gas-you simply cannot believe that anyone in their right mind would attempt to make what is essentially an ambitious but witless, gory, live-action Tex Avery cartoon with so few resources.
2. Irritation
The shot-on-video aesthetic, the grating amateur performances, the obnoxious repetitive sounds, and the ugly-as-sin Photoshop effects feel like an assault on the senses. You would have to be a demigod of patience to make it through twenty minutes of Terror Toons without your facial muscles starting to twitch murderously.
3. Boredom
When you realize it's a one-trick pony, monotony sets in, and you start looking for anything else to engage your brain. Anything. What's that fuzz on the carpet over there? I think I might need to vacuum this weekend...
4. Depression
I was hit hard with a wave of sadness halfway through Terror Toons 2-not just because I still had another half hour of the film to endure, but also because I felt bad for Joe Castro. My first introduction to Joe-the man, the myth, the legend-was on the SyFy Channel's makeup competition reality series Face Off. Joe lasted all of one episode in Season 3. When the judges criticized his creation and it became clear he was about to be eliminated, he preempted their decision and stormed out in a fury of profanity and pure madness. The man clearly has a dream-nay, a vision-and the fact that he's been making these Terror Toons movies for over 15 years just makes me feel awful.
5. Numbness
The endless barrage of clip-art gore, stock sounds, and the cackling visages of articulation-free prosthetic creatures wash over you until you feel like a corpse on the beach, pushed around violently by the surf. You begin to rot as crabs eat your flesh, but Joe just keeps on going... which brings us to Terror Toons 3.
This new masterpiece purports to pick up where the original Terror Toons ended, and I guess it kinda does. We're treated to ten minutes of archival clips to bring the uninitiated up to speed, but this won't help them. After another fifteen minutes or so, Herschell Gordon Lewis shows up in an appearance that was clearly filmed in his kitchen one afternoon, and the movie inexplicably becomes an anthology... sort of.
I couldn't tell you the plot of Terror Toons 3. In fact, I'll give someone five bucks if they can convince me there was one. There's so much computer-generated trash on screen at any given moment that it literally becomes incomprehensible visual gibberish-not in the questionably arty-farty style of Alejandro Jodorowsky, but in a way that feels like a veritable dog's breakfast splattered across your television screen. At times, it feels like it was procedurally generated by some sort of twisted artificial intelligence, hell-bent on extracting vengeance on mankind.
The assault of digital gore and bizarre prosthetics gets so intense that, for a moment, it almost becomes transcendental genius. I'm sure that someone out there will become convinced that Terror Toons 3 is the next evolution of cinema. It will run in arthouses across the world for years to come, it will be required viewing for film students, and academics will be locked in years-long, vicious debates about just how important it is to mankind itself.
Terror Toons 3 isn't really a movie. The fact that it all ends with a "TO BE CONTINUED", and that Joe is already threatening to release Parts 4 and 5, is simply the icing on the cake.
Bravo, Joe. Bravo.
