Porklips Now

"Never get out of the car. Mertz got out of the car. Then he got out of the car business..."

Did you like "Apocalypse Now" ? Then you should love "Porklips Now," probably the greatest no-budget amateur film (the indy hadn't yet been invented) of the '80s. Spot-on parody fantastically directed with truly bizarre performances. Skewers its target in less than 30 minutes with the best Brando impression of all time.

Why the heck isn't this available on DVD (along with director Ernie Fosselius' "Hardware Wars") ? And why didn't Fosselius end up directing feature comedies ?? Your mission is to find this film. And you're not borrowing my raggedy VHS copy.

"Porklips Now" has got to be the funniest spoof of a feature film that I've ever seen! One thing that makes it so good is that it stays so close to the original movie (Apocalypse Now). Almost every scene in this short parallels a classic scene from that movie. For example, the one guy who is skate boarding behind the car while holding the rope, is like the guy who was water skiing in Apocalypse Now. Or, the arrow through the head prop, hilarious. This short even captures some of the strange atmosphere from Apocalypse Now. Favorite line at the end of the movie: "Oh Dullard, you slay me".....DULLARD: "Actually, I was just about to do that". Its been a long time since I've seen it, so the dialog might be slightly different, but it was something like that.

Billy Gray is perfect as Dullard. He sort of reminds me of Charlie Sheen with his reactions and facial expressions. The rest of the cast of unknowns also do a very good job.

I'm sure this will make its was onto DVD at some date and time- I just hope its in my lifetime! A friend of mine had it on Betamax way back in the eighties, but it should be on DVD by now.

The single best movie parody of all time. This short includes all of the major themes and "quotable quotes" of the movie applied to an absurd topic. It was timely (release within a year of the original movie), well produced and executed, included an actor who had been lost to popular attention (wasn't he dead?), and even included some of the hype surrounding the original. If you view any one movie parody, this is the one. The real question is -- where is it?

O....M....G.

Sorry if the above quote was inaccurate as to the price of porklips, but it's been 25 years since I saw the original, on the flip side of "Hardware Wars," by far inferior.

Since then, I've run around saying "Porklips" is THE funniest film ever made. Yep, better than Spinal Tap, in a low-budget kind of way, which Fosselius plays up.

"Apocalypse Now" is the #1 best film ever made, so I guess it'd stand to reason I'd rank Porklips as the #1 funniest film. I wonder of Coppola has ever seen Porklips? Anyway, about 5 years ago I found a VHS copy on ebay, and snatched it up. Took it to a fiend's house, where we literally rolled in the aisles for hours.

"I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree. Dullard? Dullard, are you listening to me?" I called the fiend a month later to get my tape back. "Oops. I taped football over it." *)%*@#)!!! So now I'm on a new quest...If anyone knows where to obtain this, email me! Fred Mertz...Operating beyond any reasonable or sane price controls.

The way Ernie catches the whole mood and style with what was probably a super 8 camera and a dull patch of suburbia is amazing. The writing was incredible in the way he turned his bad clichés into almost sensible strings of thought, not to mention the great camera work. We've all heard of stream of consciousness, I guess you'd call this stream of punconsciousness.

Every time I see this, I actually manage to see something new, be it one of the ads that flash by way to fast, or something so obvious you slap yourself for missing it before. The attention to detail is much better than several big budget movies manage, it's too bad that big budget directors aren't required to make at least ONE no-budget film.

One doesn't NEED to see Apocalypse Now to get this movie, (Yet another sign of it's quality) but it would definitely help. I saw this after seeing the original, but I would love to see someone see them in the opposite order and watch their reactions. Although Apocalypse Now has many 'black comedy' moments, seeing Porklips Now first will probably have a very interesting effect on what gets laughed at.

I give this a full 5 stars