Tag Archives: Peter Hyams

EVIL’s Coaxial Cord Right into Your TV Set! “HeBGB TV” reviewed! (Scream Team Releasing / DVD)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Contact Your Local Cable Provide to Upgrade Your Box for “HeBGB TV” on DVD!

In a world of streaming devices, the cable box era has become nothing but a memory until mysterious HeBGB cable boxes sudden appear on retail shelves and on homeowner doorsteps.  The what looks to be a brain in a box with some wiring quickly self-installs right into the cable jack and manifests a gaudy-dressed tangible host, The Purple Guy, right into your living room.  Promising a guaranteed fun time, The Purple Guy is eager for souls, I mean viewers, to subscribed to the endless commercial content of HeBGB TV, promising nothing but the best entertainment from the other side of the dimension has to offer.  Sordid horror, 90s-inspired carving infomercials, grotesque commercials, monstrous sexy hotlines, demonic feature films, and more provide a source of endless brain-rotting consumerism over the TV broadcast waves.  Eye-glued patrons of senseless horrors become slave to the screens that send their very souls to a machination machine from another world.  Who can stop the evils of doom channel surfing? 

Those who are now in their late 30s, early 40s likely remember how awesome and nearly uninhibited cable television was back in the day.  Money and creative talent were invested in turning the most ordinary retail product into a mini-movie of ostentatiousness, imbued with vividly stark colors and an insanity of pure energy.  Television didn’t coddle, it shaped the very fabric of impressionable children of that era, resulting in imagine and inspiration.  That is what comes to mind when speaking of “HeBGB TV,” a comedy-horror anthology of sorts of shorts written-and-directed by Eric Griffin, Adam Lenhart, and Jake Mcclellan.  The trio’s initial concept, prior to the creation of “HeBGB TV,” was something along the lines of an interactive variety show with short films, standup comedy, and puppetry held in front of a live audience.  When COVID hit in 2020, their idea pivoted toward a movie, eventually a script evolved into a drivable wraparound narrative chalked-full of some of the prefabbed material as well as some other new zany, horror-inspired skits, shorts, and string-pulling puppetries.  Griffin, Lenhart, and Mcclellan produce the feature under their LLC of HeBGB TV productions and PatchTown Films, based right in my regional backyard of Lancaster, PA.

Credited in the film as Knucklehead, Jake Mcclellan may act to the very definition of pseudonym but, in the lack of better words, is the face of “HeBGB TV” by having scores of roles and personalities at his disposable to dress up and become a totally new and grotesquely phantasmagoric character.  Whether be The Purple Guy, PU News’ greasy anchorman, the Blue Monster, or just desperate dieter with a health-hazard late night snacking problem, Mcclellan goes all out with makeup, costuming, and prosthetics in what could be considered a one man drag show and its gorgeously panache and over-the-top but doesn’t stray terribly too far from the outrageous era the horror-comedy emulates.  “HeBGB TV” is full of caricatures of late-night television and oddities of live TV and marketing campaigns, even Eric Griffin and Adam Lenhart get involved in front of camera as a hobo watching a portable antenna TV and as Smokie, the exterminator of potheads with noxious weed, as seen on TV, or rather “HeBGB TV.”  Most of the enthusiasm, and eccentrics, are within film’s faux television programming but the cast of performances flesh out with Ian Sanchez, Curtis Proctor-Artz, Josh Dorsheimer, Zenobia Decoteau, Michael Garland, Mike Madrigall, Ellen Tiberio-Shultz, Kristie Ohlinger, Colleen Madrigall, and Willow and Van Reiner as the kids who The Purple Guy connivingly entertains and Andrew Bowser reprising his most beloved YouTube persona, Onyx the Fortuitous.

Cut from the same cloth as Weird Al’s “UHF, Peter Hyams’s “Stay Tuned,” and Jeff Lieberman’s “Remote Control,” the cable box antics of the 80s-90s TV is quickly fading the analog years into nothing more than static snow of broadcast noise.  However, “HeBGB TV” is the answer, the recollection, and the nostalgia-driven film that delivers better than trying to get a glimpse of the vague outlines of adult actresses in the static noise of premium adult channels.  Directors Griffin, Lenhart, and Mcclellan combine their creative geniuses, incorporate their sentimental love of 90’s media, and integrate their own other interests into a cinematic cannonball of colorful comedy-horror.  While the wraparound stories outside the HeBGB TV box proves able with the inexplicable mass rollout of the brain-in-a-box cable program provider and rotting, killing, and transfiguring viewers into mindless gawkers, overdosed smokers, and malevolent demons, the real star of the feature is flipping through the channels for the go-hard mock-commercials and other putrid programming laced with horror themes and capturing the spirit of television culture of 20-to-30 years ago.  While most of the visual effects reside around the wraparound story, contributing to the alloying of the story, Adam Lenhart’s practical effects more than make up for it a DIY initiative of can-do sculpting, molding, and crafting ingenuity below the embraced realm of unreality.

Don’t touch that dial as Scream Team Releasing delivers cable television like never before with “HeBGB TV” now on DVD! Though the Scream Team Releasing DVD back cover lists the format as a Blu-ray, the data file is actually a MPEG2 encoded, singer-layer DVD5 that has a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio presentation. A combination blend of interlaced and digital video swirl “HeBGB TV” into a time warp of the past and present. The filmmakers captured not only the feel of rambunctious, eccentric, and vividly brilliant 90’s commercials but were also able to capture the look of it too with the interlacing horizontal lines indicative of video frame rates of the time. The wraparound narrative portions are digitally cleaner in juxtaposition, factionalizing present and TV programming with distinction until the culminating plan comes to conclusion. Some of the digital visual effects gags crumble under the practical elements of an analog airing, proving once again that the tangible and practical outstage the digital composition, but the crumbling doesn’t stem from compression issues. The English language Dolby Digital 2.0 mix is a symphony of frenzied chaos, pinpoint advert jingles, and deliciously distasteful horror gags facsimiled perfectly, as if it was plucked straight from the pre-millennium. Dialogue is quick but renders clean and clear in a blend of inset and ADR vocal recording, per the commentary. No issues with depth, range, or any kind of compression side effects. Well scored with a catchy main theme and topnotch sound designed to add to “HeBGB TV’s” romp commercial content. English subtitles are optionally available. Bonus features are aplenty with a retrospective interview with the three directors and short clips going in-depth with behind-the-scenes movie magic, a HeBGB TV video installation guide, a world-premiere pre-show, the first interactive show prior to COVID, and the theatrical trailer in the motion menu option shaped like a retro tube television with right side buttons. Inside the setup option along with the English Subtitle toggle, a directors’ commentary can be selected and played from there. The standard edition encased inside an Amaray comes with faded hues on an illustrated composition cover art of most of the “HeBGB TV’s” wacky pastiches and a disc pressed with the pulsing brain-loaded cable box. The release comes not rated, region free, and has a copasetic runtime of 78 minutes. ”HeBGB TV” is couch potato worthy that syndicates together hilarious travesties and transvestites for timeless television touting, stitched together from previously shot short films, puppetry depravities, and a new sci-fi fiction.

Contact Your Local Cable Provide to Upgrade Your Box for “HeBGB TV” on DVD!

The Mold Knows Evil. The Mold Knows! “Motivational Growth” review!

Posted by Steven Lewis on

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Ian Foliver is a pessimistic, depressed, and reclusive young man with a touch of agoraphobia. When his best friend, an old Commodore tube Television named Kent, bites the bullet with a busted boob-tube tube in his unkept apartment, Ian determines that life is no longer worth living because that television named Kent was his only friend, his only ray of daily sunshine and that life-worthy activity had just suddenly died. Feeling that life is no longer worth living, Ian gathers up household chemical products and decides to gas himself to death in his bathtub, but when trying to clog the bathroom air vent, he slips and falls landing on his head. When he wakes up, Ian is face-to-face with a growth of conversing mold. The Mold, as it refers to itself, wants to help Ian – clean up his apartment, shave and bathe, and attract the attention of his attractive next door neighbor who Ian stalks and ogles daily through his front door peephole. In return for this helpful motivation to live, The Mold demands that Ian follows The Mold’s precise instructions which might not be as helpful as Ian first thought.
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The Don Thacker directed dark comedy is a surreal voyage into the internal life struggle of Ian Folivar, played beautifully by Adrian DiGiovanni, who directs his own downward situation making the audience part of Ian’s life. Ian is a character that is aware of his flaws but can’t accept his life and his analysis is that “life is shit” and is dangerous so shutting himself in his small apartment fairs way better than living the conventional life. “Motivational Growth” shares commonalities with prior cult favorites; one of those favorites is the Peter Hyams directed and John Ritter starring film “Stay Tuned” to where Ian becomes sucked into eccentric television programs he was viewing before Kent blew a fuse. Also, another cult favorite film, Don Coscarelli’s “John Dies at the End,” which shares that wacky fantastics of dark and ironic situations. All three of these dark comedy romps are in a small, rare genre group that dares to be different and do well at it.
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The Mold is an unique, life-like creation of filth that can actually make you feel the fungi-filled griminess lying within between the nooks, crannies, and crevices of your body. A job well done by Thacker and his The Mold puppetry team led by special effects supervisor Steve Tolin of TolinFX. They really did an amazing job creating a practical effect living-being that works in sync with the iconic voice of Jeffrey Combs whose voice fits as The Mold’s persona – confident and inspirational with a hint of cynicism. The interactions between Ian and The Mold becomes symbiotic where Ian needs The Mold to rejuvenate his depressed life back to order and back to the land of the living while The Mold needs Ian to fulfill it’s inauspicious desires for Ian’s “well-being.” When Adrian DiGiovanni interacts with The Mold, he’s interacting with an actual character in the room and not a hokey-hapless effect. You have to hand it to DiGiovanni in forming a believable dialogue and relationship between himself and an inanimate object such as the lowest scum, excuse me – fungus, on Earth.
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What I adore about “Motivational Growth’s” plot is the mysterious time period that it’s set in as many references point to the late 1980’s to the early 1990’s with the video game imagery, the television personalities, and the hairdos and clothing lines of characters in Kent’s hosted top shows Ian mindlessly views. Ian, himself, is stuck in time not knowing what a Plasma TV was which would fall right in line with the time frame above since Plasma’s didn’t start rolling around until the mid 90’s. I also like the peculiar characters Ian encounters even though his setting his solely set in his cramped apartment. Box the Ox, played by the intimidating Pete Giovagnoli, pinpoints his character perfectly as a seemingly overbearing, yet somewhat absent and simple minded, landlord who threatens Ian with off-the-wall metaphors, thus making him fun to watch and see how Ian attempts to interact with Box until Box cuts him off all the time even if Ian is provoked with a question by Box the Ox. Ken Brown as Plasmoday is by far my favorite. With a creepy face and creepy mannerisms, Plasmoday had too short of a role and I thought he would make a return to Ian’s abode to lick his TV again, but in the character’s short amount of screen time, Brown is able to up-play the oddity that embodies Plasmoday with such passion that it’s hard not to love the character.

“Motivational Growth” molds itself into greatness amongst cult movies. The nitty-gritty portions are grossly stimulating and will sure to have you jump in the shower for a quick rinse. Whether or not Ian is suffering from brain trauma, purgatory, or just to awake to a nightmare scenario, the story is left open for interpretation, giving the audience a chance to determine the ending for themselves which is always fun in my little black book. The MVD Blu-ray is spectacular technically. Super clear with no disturbances in the transfer. The Hi-resolution downplays the obvious practical effects on The Mold but that only brings more charm to the film. The sound is clear and the extras are plentiful. I’d suggest “Motivational Growth” to anyone – even to a neat freak with cleanliness issues.