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Wenzel Storch
Cult German underground director of bizarre, campy trash that usually pokes fun at various institutions, religions and social groups with improvised drug-fuelled madness. His movies are somehow both adult trash involving many bodily fluids and light spicings of gore and sexual themes, as well as childish, colorful camp and whimsical games. Reviewed until 2016. An insane children's fairy-tale for warped adults. It's as if Storch saw City of Lost Children and decided he can make something similar in his own style using a low budget and any colorful prop and costume he can find or build. The plot is nothing to write home about, telling the tale of a childhood friendship created when one boy saved another from drowning in an icy river populated with talking seer-snowmen and bullying boys that piss on him. They split up, one becoming a horny, insane king of an island with fascist henchmen who piss on everyone and collect girls for the king, the other gets married, has many kids and travels in a big snail populated with many talking animals including a frog and a bear. But it's the colorful visuals that are the star here, with outrageously colorful and complex sets, as if a designer took LSD while working at home for a few years. Typically for Storch, most of the movie consists of random wacky scenes, including a literal and slightly gory 'brain-washing' episode, a vomiting bear, a rabbit that mutates into a huge time-traveling ornament that turns-on the snail, bird-meat loaded with explosive, raunchy old women with fake rumps, a musical episode performed by a black-face, plate-lipped woman, a nonsensical 'sex scene' in a big round yellow diving suit, and much more. A man with electrified hands walks into a monastery (a colorfully decorated tent) with two nuns, they shower him with cookies and he converts them to rockers, party girls and hippies. They go out on adventures involving other hippies, a killer that gorily slices up bodies, pornographic bees, they throw eggs at a dance-crazy sex therapist in a barn, make fun of a black boy playing a violin, experience an insanely psychedelic montage, and more, while stop-motion stuffed hedgehogs and dolls go on a road trip. Altogether, like a low-budget, twisted children's film for adults with silly puns, trash and pop-references. A campy and crazy bad movie that may entertain as long as you know what you're getting into. Storch's first is a cheap, home-made piece of insanity that pokes fun at the church and religion in childish and brainless ways. There is not much of a plot, with recurring characters including an older desperate man with wife problems who is turned into a young priest through a bizarre miracle, an angel, some altar boys, etc. all taking part in random 'adventures' usually, but not always, under the theme of religion. There is a lot of very cheap, mind-warping and psychedelic stop-motion animation and puppetry with bizarre imagery, silly dialogue with strange religious-heavy advice and discussions, a priest who cuts off his hand and a small boy who sacrifices a limb for religion, a bunch of campy comedy and sketch scenes with home-made sets, etc. Honestly, it's difficult to describe this one as it is so random and strange. |
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