5/5 A Sui Generis Enema of the Soul
  by Cocteau Triplet
If you're reading this, chances are you're a big enough fan of Wonder Showzen and Xavier: Renegade Angel to seek out more from one of the beautifully diseased minds behind them. Perhaps the Tobasco-sauce-tongue-burning-taste-bud-obliterating brilliance of those shows ruined all other TV eye-food for you and now you wake up screaming in the middle of the night, haunted by the muddy taste of mediocrity. What oh what will wash the grimy gunk from your gums and finagle your uvula with the fierce flavor you've come to favor?

Here we have a final solution, or at least one for about 80 minutes. Vernon Chatman's experiment pays off big, as we're presented with 4 segments of the most bizarrely absurd proportions played as straight as humanly possible (remember, the actors really think that Chatman is getting off on their earnest deliveries of lines such as "Are we just some fleeting thought in your cold brain, Lord??"). An amateur starlet sexily bathes in the "tears of neglected children," and things just get better from there. If you're a fan of PFFR, whom I hope we see much, much more from, you need to see this like the hemorrhaging economy needs a band-aid (badly).


2/5 you're in on the joke...so now what?
  by Plopper (up here)
Vernon Chatman, aka the funniest living person since sliced bread, had an embolism of genius with the idea for "Final Flesh," which, if you're reading this, you are probably already aware of: send some deliberately bizarre, pretentious nonsense in script form to pornographers who specialize in individual custom fetish videos. Basically "Candid Camera" or "Punk'd" on some unsuspecting adult film folk. Funny premise? Check. Funny writer? Well yeah, that's an understatement.

Unfortunately, now that you are in on the joke, the entertainment value for "Flesh" has been just about exhausted. Sure, it's mildly entertaining to watch people doing stuff like rubbing raw meat all over themselves and trying to be sexy doing it, but this gets old very fast. Also, it's pretty apparent that (at least some of) the "actors" know what's up. This is perhaps best illustrated by the blooper reel included by the second act's performers (the only extra on the DVD), who seem well aware they are being manipulated by some hoaxter (watching them try to finish a scene in which a man in a diaper overflowing with spaghetti sauce that he calls his "emotions," with straight faces, is far more entertaining than any scene in the actual movie).

Vernon's paw prints are all over this thing...the dialogue is absurd, surreal, sacrilegious, and generally in poor taste. It's the same kind of stuff that makes Wonder Showzen and Xavier so gut-bustingly hilarious, but somehow it just does not work coming from amateur ugly-bumpers.

So who is this movie for? It doesn't work as porn, obviously, but it doesn't work as comedy either. I really wanted to like it, but honestly, I just didn't laugh once. A great idea with not so great results.

5/5 Genius
  by Adam Saint (Brooklyn, NY)
This is one of the greatest examples of comic surrealism I have ever encountered. There's a back story that makes this truly brilliant: Chatman and Lee contacted a production company who makes custom porn for fetishists or whatever your particular kink may be. Much like the old 'song poem' phenomenon, for a fee they will cast, produce and edit any porn script you send them. Chatman and Lee push the limits of this premise by having these committed, though I would imagine jaded, folks do a 'porn' they've written with a post-apocalyptic, Dadaist, surrealist setting and 'plot.' It is hilariously weird and discomforting from start to finish. Chatman and Lee have done it yet again - created yet more comedy with a unique and daring voice that is all their own.
Truly, this is a bizarre and brilliant piece of work.