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| All Images Courtesy Blood Sick Productions/MVD |
Previously available as a VHS release and a burn-on-demand disc direct from the filmmakers, the unhinged analog indie experiment Busted Babies has just been unleased as a wide-release blu-ray from Blood Sick Productions and MVD, and… wow, this one’s a trip. Conceived by writer/director/actress Kasper Meltedhair and shot on VHS, Busted Babies is a deliriously insane oddity that feels like it was pulled directly out of a drug-addled dream via a psychic VCR. What is it about? What happens in it? I just watched the film, and I’m truthfully not quite sure. The movie is so dreamlike and strange that it’s hard to hold in one’s mind. Is it good? I’m not even sure how to judge it. It studiously resists conventional reviewing. The movie is simply a vibe. One thing is for sure, though – it’s a very memorable, uniquely weird journey, and one that I enjoyed going along on.
Busted Babies first and foremost reminds me of something that The Club Kids of late-80s/early-90s NYC would have made. The boldly strange, bizarrely costumed, messy and confrontational DIY aesthetic, the weird humor and dadaist sensibilities, the tripped-out party vibes of the whole thing – it all feels quite Club Kids (watch their shorts Pickle Surprise and Strawberry Shortcut if you’re not familiar, and check out the documentary and/or dramatic film Party Monster). The strange aesthetic and the atonal electronic soundtrack also both seem to pay homage to another underground NYC classic, 1982’s Liquid Sky. But then it’s also filtered through a lens of retro-kitsch shot-on-video trash cinema, as evidenced by a cameo from SOV horror auteur Donald Farmer (Cannibal Hookers, Demon Queen, Vampire Cop, Shark Exorcist, etc). This combination of possible influences gives a good indication of what sort of a journey you’re getting into with Busted Babies, although it is also very much its own willfully-weird beast.
How to even begin to describe the premise… So, a literally nameless (officially called “______”) young woman with horns, bat wings, and polka-dot skin (filmmaker Kasper Meltedhair herself) has the power to turn babies into glass, and has a penchant for stealing babies (using tactics like luring their mom away with a trail of sandwiches as bait) who she then glass-ifies. While working in a bizarre hair salon, she drops one of the glass babies, which explodes and covers herself and two friends with a green slime, which somehow renders them immortal. They repeatedly kill themselves and each other, but thanks to the magic of the mysterious baby juice, always survive and are restored to their normal condition. Meanwhile, a group of men in suits who dance everywhere they go are on a mission to steal some of the glass babies, so they too can shatter the babies all over themselves and become immortal. Highjinks ensue, as the characters pursue each other through strange, often surreal or liminal environments.
If that premise sounds remotely straightforward, I assure you it is not, as the movie moves with the slippery logic of a dream, and doesn’t so much follow a plot as it free-associates through a series of bizarre events. Many scenes consist entirely of dadaist nonsense dialogue, consisting of random strings of words spoken by the actors as though they are coherent sentences with meaning. Other scenes do have conventional dialogue, but about such bizarre dreamlike things that the meaning is just as slippery. The film consists largely of weird episodic asides, like an immortal character trying to kill herself using magic body-melting chewing gum bought from a homeless man, or a grotesque body-horror nightmare journey to a Flintstones-themed fast-food restaurant from hell, or a chase sequence through the liminal space of a half-abandoned mall. It’s the kind of movie that leaves you wondering whether you really saw the things you think you saw, or if you dreamed or hallucinated it.
Of course, this won’t be for everyone. Depending on your mileage, this is either a fascinatingly weird, fun trip through DIY, SOV madness, or a tedious and offputting experience that will test your patience. Personally I was in the former category: I had a lot of fun drifting through the weird chaos that the movie was throwing at me. I do think it’s a bit too long: a full 90 minutes is a lot for something this non-narrative and confrontationally strange. But aside from that gripe, I enjoyed the journey, and very well might return to it. This movie is completely a matter of taste, though: it’s hard to recommend or not because your reaction to its strangeness will be entirely your own. Follow your heart with this one - if it sounds like your flavor of weird, then by all means, check it out, because it just might be!
- Christopher S. Jordan