Giuseppe Andrews, Shane Douglas

Portions of this review originally appeared in INsite magazine, June, 2006.

  Whether they know it or not, filmmaker Giuseppe Andrews and hardcore wrestling icon Shane Douglas play to the same audience. They’re part of an underground gestalt, an amorphous blob of culty weirdness that somehow finds its way into your shopping bag every few weeks, along with the latest issue of Rue Morgue and those cheap, public domain sci-fi box sets. When you get home from your favorite pre-fab, monolithic, income-snorting big box store, you may find yourself wondering what you just spent half your check on. It’s okay. If you bought Giuseppe’s Trailer Town, Touch Me in the Morning, or Period Piece, or either of Douglas’s (heretofore referred to as the Franchise) Hardcore Homecoming shows, you can rest assured you’ve gone beyond the range of the average home theater consumer.

            It would be unfair to compare these two to their mainstream counterparts (say, Kevin Smith and Vince McMahon). Sure, they’re all vying for that coveted 18-34 year old male demographic, but something seems more genuine about Giuseppe and the Franchise. Maybe it’s the homebrew, barely-digital video quality of their respective productions. Or, it could be that anything seems more genuine than Jersey Girl and Monday Night Raw. (Speaking of apples and oranges…)

            Regular readers of this column have probably figured out by now that I lean more towards the small press variety of home entertainment. Given the choice between the tenth re-release of Highlander 2 or a weird little movie from some folks I’ve never heard of, I’ll likely save Christopher Lambert for another evening. (Wait. Virginia Madsen’s in Highlander 2. Choices, choices, choices.) When you grow up around tape recorders and video cameras, you tend to appreciate entertainment that’s a little closer to home. It may be more exciting than that chop-up snippet tapes you made in high school, but it’s hardly overproduced. That’s cult. That’s fun. I’ll take a micro-budget rip-off over a big-budget remake any day.

            Both of these guys are low-budget, but neither of them are rip-offs. Giuseppe’s style owes a bit to John Waters, Dolemite, and, frankly, the VCR, but he’s his own creation. His movies, for the uninitiated, are adult comedies, shot mostly on hand-held video, featuring gin-you-whine, California trailer park residents as actors. There’s always a story, sometimes several, but the narrative rightly takes a back seat to the jokes. And there are lots of jokes, all of them dirty, some of them genius. Idiots who complain about adult content in sitcoms and reality shows have no clue what lies beyond American Idol.  If That 70’s Show seems risque to you, just keep writing those FCC letters. Stay away from these movies.  You won’t like them, and you’ll hate the people who do.

            Giuseppe’s detractors will tell you all of his films are basically the same. Anyone who’s seen at least two of them knows this isn’t true. His short Dribble (featured on Best of TromaDance Volume 3), has people reading monologues in nearly every scene. Trailer Town has subtitles. Touch Me in the Morning is in black and white. Period Piece is an anthology. These seem like minor deviations at first, but they genuinely change the pace and feel of each movie. In each case, what would be just another silly, sicko comedy becomes more visceral.  And if you meet me, I will make you watch all of them.

            The Franchise made history in the wrestling world, when ECW was just starting out. Big-time wrestling fans know the story: when ECW was just another subsidiary of the old NWA (that’s the National Wrestling Alliance, which has no affiliation with MC Ren), the Franchise won the NWA title, then threw it down and declared ECW the real deal. It was the closest thing to the Protestant Reformation professional wrestling had ever seen. (And, I swear, it was frickin’ real!) Eastern Championship Wrestling became “Extreme” Championship Wrestling, a new era began, wrestlers started walking out to Pantera songs; you know the drill.

Then, ECW closed up, was bought out by WWE, and, naturally, someone got mad at someone else. The result is, basically, two ECW’s. (Just don’t tell McMahon.) You have the WWE version, set to resurface this summer with ECW One Night Stand and a regular TV series. Hardcore Homecoming, needless to say, is more like the original ECW product. It’s cheap, it’s lewd, and it’s bloody. There is no storyline. If you like wrestling action, you could do worse (say, Monday Night Raw).

The product is in its infancy, and you can bet the bigger promotions have taken notice. That may be one of the reasons why the Dudley Boyz (Team 3-D, if you prefer) don’t appear on this release. ECW was the pinnacle of independent wrestling in the 90’s. They were the company that “almost made it.” Hardcore Homecoming (and its sequel event, November Reign) may not be the most professional product, but it does recapture that spirit.

Andrews and the Franchise both play to the same audience, even if it is just me and my crazy friends. I’m waiting for the analogies: “Tyree is to Terry Funk what Walt Dongo is to the Sandman.”

Yes. There is someone in this world named Walt Dongo. You must not fear.