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| All images courtesy: Visual Vengeance |
Before they helmed the no-budget shot-on-video cult favorite Suburban Sasquatch (2004), the husband and wife duo of Dave and Mary Wascavage started their DIY film careers with 2002’s Fungicide. It shares many of the same qualities as Suburban Sasquatch: the mini-DV aesthetic, the ultra-DIY special effects, the tongue-in-cheek campy vibe. And also like its better-known successor, it found a second life getting mocked by the gang at Rifftrax. But Suburban Sasquatch is an absolutely incredible title for lovably campy SOV trash, so of course it was the one that got more widely discovered, and became something of a minor cult classic, even getting its own Visual Vengeance blu-ray in 2022. Now Visual Vengeance is finally releasing Fungicide as well, on its own stacked special edition which also includes the Rifftrax version. And as it turns out, while it may not have as attention-grabbing of a title, Fungicide is better, crazier, and even more fun than Suburban Sasquatch, and strongly deserving of a cult following in its own right.
THE FILM:
A secluded bed and breakfast in the woods hosts an odd and over-the-top assortment of characters for a weekend: a professional wrestler dealing with anger issues, a discount Bear Grylls type reality-TV contestant, an evil real estate tycoon trying to buy out the inn, a mad scientist, and the inn’s hippie owner who sometimes has prophetic visions. When the mad scientist accidentally releases a serum he has developed that turns plants into sentient beings, the mushrooms that grow throughout the forest become living creatures with an insatiable appetite for human flesh – and they absorb the knowledge of the people they eat. The motley crew of vacationers must band together to fight back against the swarm of marauding mushrooms, and stop them from spreading out and taking over the world.
It’s a wonderfully absurd premise, filled with wonderfully absurd characters. And the film is completely in on the joke, with the Wascavages not only fully understanding the ridiculousness of it all, but enthusiastically leaning into it. This might be a no-budget DIY indie, but it is not some kind of unintentional disasterpiece; it is definitely a self-aware horror/comedy. It’s the kind of movie where one of the main characters is a professional wrestler named Titus Ignitus who suffers from chronic spontaneous combustion, and who is so vain that when he checks into the B&B, he places framed headshots of himself all over his room, so he can watch himself sleep. The script has some genuinely funny moments, with touches of weird absurdist humor, and some choice moments like a riff on the Jaws comparing-scars scene where the characters all share stories of food trauma that made them hate mushrooms. The script is also, for lack of a better term, the right kind of dumb: the humor is endearingly stupid, goofy, and broad, in a way that will very much appeal to fans of schlocky B-grade creature features. It is definitely a movie made with love for the genre, in all its silliness and cheese.
This self-aware tone also serves as a nice catch-all to help the movie get away with its microbudget flaws and idiosyncrasies, of which there are many. While the movie is an intentional comedy, many aspects of the production would inspire unintentional laughs as well: obvious stock sound effects, hilariously fake beards, special effects that are completely laughable even by microbudget standards. It is clear that director Dave Wascavage and company tried their best and were never phoning it in or trying to be bad, but it’s hard to call this a well-made movie in any kind of technical sense. The knowingly tongue-in-cheek, self-referential tone, though, makes all of these quirks part of the joke, and embraces them as features rather than bugs. The movie invites you to laugh, at both the deliberate jokes and the cheesiness of the whole thing, and as a result it feels like you are laughing with the movie, and not at it. Mileage may vary on this one, but I found it to be a genuinely likable and fun viewing experience.
No aspect of the production is quite as hilariously cheesy and rough – in a way that the film definitely has fun with – as the special effects. Fungicide uses a combination of practical effects and CGI, and both are absurdly cheesy, and clearly made on a budget that was nonexistent. The practical mushroom monsters are puppets or suits made of fabric and cardboard, and they clearly look like DIY craft projects every moment they are on-screen. The CGI is chunky and polygonal in a way that is strongly reminiscent of those animations that were ubiquitous in bowling alleys in the 90s and 2000s; truly some Nintendo 64 level graphics at best. The final battle, with our characters fighting full-body-fabric-suit or chunky-CGI mushrooms using swords and pole-staffs, is utterly ridiculous in the best way. And this movie gives us the single most hilariously fake mannequin corpse I have ever seen in a horror film. But again, all of this is a feature, and not a bug; an essential part of the charm that makes Fungicide so fun (if you're the type of viewer who is going to find Fungicide fun). If you’re the kind of viewer who will enjoy this movie, these types of effects are charming, endearing, and just a vibe unto themselves. If you have no patience for this kind of nonsense, then this movie might just not be for you.
The other thing that really helps Fungicide to work as a fun DIY-cheese experience is its runtime: at a brisk 82 minutes, it never has time to wear out its welcome, or for its no-budget nonsense to become tiresome. It moves fast, avoids getting bogged down, and knows to keep its silliness to well under 90 minutes. Unfortunately Dave Wascavage forgot this lesson when he made his next film, Suburban Sasquatch. That movie has many of the same charms as Fungicide – absolutely absurd effects work, ridiculous creature situations, and a tongue-in-cheek tone that owns the goofiness of it all – but at almost 100 minutes, it is way too long. Suburban Sasquatch wears out its welcome, and excessively talky dialogue scenes grind the absurdity to a halt repeatedly in the back half. That is not true here, and faster pacing and shorter runtime make all the difference. I found Suburban Sasquatch to be a blast for about an hour, and then I found myself repeatedly looking at my watch; Fungicide on the other hand is pretty much exactly what I wanted Suburban Sasquatch to be. ‘Squatch had an easier time carving out a cult classic status with its fantastic title, but Fungicide does a more effective job of delivering the goods. Now that it has its own Visual Vengeance disc, I hope that this one can similarly find its way to DIY cult-classic status.
THE VISUAL VENGEANCE BLU-RAY:
As usual, Visual Vengeance's disc of Fungicide is pretty stacked with extras. The one disappointment is that it doesn't have any kind of behind-the-scenes featurette or on-camera interviews, which usually are Visual Vengeance staples. To make up for that, however, it has FOUR audio commentaries: a new one with Dave and Mary Wascavage recorded for this disc, a vintage commentary with the Wascavages and one of the film's lead actors, recorded for the original DVD, and two commentaries by movie podcast crews (B&S About Movies/Drive-In Asylum, and Schlock And Awe Films). The commentaries are all pretty enjoyable and fun, with the Wascavages providing lots of good behind-the-scenes anecdotes and facts, and the podcast crews striking a good balance between pretty well-researched background on the film, and funny banter about the absurdity of the whole thing. Personally I would have preferred some more concise on-camera interviews with the Wascavages and the other actors, but the commentaries are worth a listen.
The disc also includes the Rifftrax version of Fungicide, for those who would prefer to see the film in that riffed-on format. I generally enjoy Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, but honestly I thought this one fell pretty flat. I think the problem is that the whole Rifftrax hook is turning bad movies into comedies, but Fungicide - despite fitting the "bad movie" bill on a technical level - is already a comedy to begin with. That leaves the Rifftrax crew with nothing much to do, besides point out the cheesy production values, which the movie is already self-aware about anyway. It has a few funny moments - including a Suburban Sasquatch callback that genuinely made me laugh - but overall it seems like Fungicide being a self-aware comedic film to begin with kind of stymied the gang's joke writing on this one. I think the film is funnier, and a more fun viewing experience, without the Rifftrax.
Rather than watching it with Rifftrax, I would recommend getting your own group of absurd-B-movie-loving friends together, and making Fungicide the viewing material for your own rowdy cheesy-movie night. That is definitely the environment where this film will thrive - its microbudget insanity would be great with a good crowd who are game for this kind of nonsense.
- Christopher S. Jordan
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