Trailers #3

Give me some credit. Even as a teen, I knew I had a future cult hero in Joe. His train-wreck performances quickly became the stuff of legend. White Lightning was a movie purported to be written and directed by Joe, and the joke is that he was as unflaggingly inept a filmmaker as he was an actor. Me making a joke about shoddy filmmaking? We can only hope I was in on the punchline. (Let's also take a moment to thank Joe for his sense of humor about all of this.)

Love Never Dies is next, a sweeping melodrama set to the tune of Gone with the Wind. Just like White Lightning, this co-stars my mom. While her surprise cameos are understandably poignant for me, they're also pretty hilarious - her nonplussed expression when Joe abandons her is priceless. With their equally wooden countenances, she and Joe were truly the perfect on-screen couple.

And then something totally bizarre: the preview cuts away to me as Peter Jennings, relating a news story of Admiral James Stockdale opening fire at a local Wal-mart. Political satire? Seriously? I couldn't tell you, because I have no memory of making this.

Lastly we have Croc-Face. Aside from a lame Fear in-joke, I can't make heads or tails of this one. Fake arms? Dental floss? Believe me, I wish I knew, because I'm sure my future therapist will ask.

The Bastard Chicken Clock from Hell

My oft-made gripe is that I didn't have any editing equipment. But what if I had? Today, an experiment! I re-edit one of my movies.

The movie in question is The Bastard Chicken Clock from Hell. I had this clock. It was plastic, shaped like a chicken, and played an annoying song as its alarm. My friends disliked it. That's not strong enough. They loathed it. They plotted its demise. Yet despite tumbles down stairs and kicks across floors, it was The Thing That Would Not Die.

Thus this movie about an evil clock who drives its owner to do something awful to get that terrible song out of his head. You know how directors supposedly have "visions"? Well, this was my first one. I envisioned a (mostly) silent, black-and-white film with a few lingering dissolves. But those were three things I could not do. Until now. Take that, life!

Above you can watch my re-edit. I didn't allow myself to tamper too much - I didn't change the order of shots or do anything else that might dramatically improve the movie. But it's still kind of nice, after all these years, to see the damn thing finally finished.

(Footnote: The chicken clock survived many more assassination attempts in college, one of which knocked the clock hands from the face, rendering it useless. But still it sang its song. It was years later when, mysteriously, it passed away silently in the night. Sometimes I awaken and think I hear it calling to me from beneath the bed. Maybe it didn't die? I am too afraid to look.)

The original version is below.