While Kung Fury is a ton of fun, just as Alamo Drafhouse’s rediscovery of Miami Connection was a good laugh, Ninja Bachelor Party operates on a completely different level. Maybe I’m being a little nostalgic in my love for this, but the addition of Bill Hicks seals the deal. This is sublime.
Dick, thanks for shooting me this link.
this was pretty good for a low-budget production (5,000 USD?!) particularly, most of the dialogue is clever all the way thru, loaded w/ a heavy dose of pop culture and faux zen/martial-arts-mysticism. the parents especially are quite funny and poke good fun at the times and at the challenges of child-rearing with humorous, folksy, PG-rated, panache– the mother with her fire/brimstone/damnation talk, the father with his not-quite-profanity “flooey” and “hulala”, and both supporting each other to talk sense into the boy. and the song lyrics as well, “can u believe it? the news today? // clarence is a ninja…and he’s here to…stay…”).
i had never heard of bill hicks before —not that that means anything, since you (M) have a better handle on all of this than i ever did— and i watched a few minutes of his old comedy skits afterwards, which dont really, IMHO, hold up very well against the passage of time (like most stand-up comedy material, let’s face it).
but….this short somehow keeps the edge. a welcome addition to the site.
I enjoyed the dialogue too, feeling it was quite clever. Making a Kung fu spoof was also a staple for a lot of people who came of age in the 90s, at least among many of the people that I knew growing up. In might be a bit of a stretch, but it sort of feels like what the LoFi movement was to music in the same period.
And I agree, a lot of stand-up doesn’t seem to age too well. I remember thinking Billy Connolly was insanely funny as a kid; as I got older he just struck me as quite bland and MOR.
And then, there are people like Gallagher, who are in categories all their own, then and now…
Do we have a digital version of that Kung Fu spoof we made?
No I don’t. When I go home on the 4th, I’m going to pick up my Hi8 camera which is at my mom’s and look for that tape. If I can find it, I’ll digitize it.
ha, gallagher…the one and only!