Tabloid

I just saw this at an independent film festival in Tulsa OK. It has three different vignettes tied together as stories in a tabloid. In my opinion, the first (Baby born with a Beard) was the funniest of the three, the second (BBQ of the Dead) was the weakest, and the third (Town attacked by Killer Vacuum) was just average. The most interesting thing about the third was that it co-starred Lisa Loeb. Don't expect Oscar-winning material, but it's fun to watch.

'Tabloid! (1985) is a refreshingly zany, tall tale telling trilogy of wickedly windswept and wonderfully weird news bulletins that gets off to a terrifically 'Troma-tic' start with a hilariously hirsute happening concerning a hillbilly dope deal gone murderously south which dramatically includes some suitably chewy-looking blood-squibbage, excessively girthful, rather than mirthful 'comedic' acting which all ends splendidly with the edifying, post-massacre birth of a beautiful bouncing, full-bearded baby!!! Aww! diddums!! The clearly fun-having Writer/directors Matt Shaffen & Bret McCormick save the very best of their macabre morsels for the middle as Tabloid's bizarre, deliciously bad tasting, B-Movie highlight concerns the outlandishly 'offal' affair of the... 'BBQ for the dead!' an altogether kooky, absolutely ooky-puky confection endowed with a morbidly surreal charm all of its very own, where a recently revivified trio of crusty cadavers enjoy the pleasantries of a spontaneously manifested midnight BBQ; these heroically hungry dead-heads nauseously chew the fat, expounding upon highfalutin existential matters, finally climaxing in more of a stridently spiritual dénouement that I had anticipated, no doubt a salty enough dish for most, but ultimately the dish proved a little too 'overcooked' for my tastes! This frequently tepid, infrequently titter-laden trilogy ends with some truly abject fluff and nonsense over one especially nefarious, storm-raising, devil-possessed vacuum cleaner that is somehow able to remotely invoke monstrous, room-destroying, wicked witch evaporating typhoons, while certainly breezy enough in its execution was ultimately nothing more substantial than bunch of hot air! Any freak-thinking, low budget, tabloid-lampooning, B-movie goofiness wherein the most natural acting comes from a sweetly somnolent, doo-doo making pooch will always quicken my Trash-Movie digging heart! (Apparently 'Tabloid!' featured Lisa Loeb but, quite frankly, I just couldn't see past the darling doggie's 'ruff' charms!)

I'm not in the movie business but I was involved in the making of this movie 20 years ago in Dallas, Texas, and got screen credit for art direction and creating the tabloid newspaper. I didn't realize it had ever been released or shown anywhere. Lisa Loeb was just a teenager -- who knew she could even sing. I didn't realize it was her until I watched my tape with my kid years later and he recognized her. My friends were the writers and producers and I've lost contact with them through the years. Matt Devlen ... Schafer ... J.D., if you read this, e-mail me. As for the movie, it's a novel concept for a low-budget piece. Scenes involving people reading the same supermarket tab wrap around three stories that are printed on its pages.