SPIKE & MIKE'S: SICK & TWISTED FESTIVAL OF ANIMATION

Includes Animated Shorts by: Craig McCracken, David Donar, Aaron Springer, Bill Plympton, Zac Mayo, Fernella Boggs, Robert Clark, Dave Zbringer, Kendall Smith, Miles Thompson, Sean Mullen, Walter Santucci, Cindy Banks, Webster Colcord, Walt Dorn, Mike Wellins, Brandon McKinney,
Gregory Ecklund, Mark Oftedal, Anthony Loi, Kevin Kalliher, Joddy Nicloa, Stephen Loizos
Running Time: 100 minutes

"Pork you, asshole."
A cyborg pig gets revenge on a bloodthirsty farmer in the Webster Colcord animated short film Slaughter Day, from the DVD collection Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation.

Long before internet websites like Atom Films and Ifilm started displaying short films for the world to enjoy, this particular brand of filmmaking was rather hard to come by.  Unless the film garnered some type of major acclaim and was released onto a VHS compilation, anyone interested had to find other means of tracking them down.

The same was true with animated shorts for many years until Craig "Spike" Decker and Mike Gribble entered the scene.Spike and Mike, as they quickly came to be known, created their Classic Festival of Animation as a means to show animated short films that they had acquired to thousands of people across the US that usually wouldn't otherwise be able to see them.  The Classic Festival has been home to such high profile animation pieces as Tim Burton's Vincent, Pixar's Tin Toy, and even work by Wallace and Gromit's Nick Park.  In 1990 though, Spike and Mike decided to create an alternate festival to go alongside their more prestigious one.  This festival was known as the Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation and contained shorts of a more adult nature.  Some of the more famous shorts that have played this particular festival have been Trey Parker and Matt Stone's original "South Park" offering The Spirit of Christmas and the pilot episode of John Kricfalusi's popular Nickelodeon show "Ren and Stimpy".

Several VHS compilations of the Spike and Mike's Twisted Festival of Animation have been around for years, but the good folks over at SlingShot Entertainment have seen fit to give us the first ever DVD release of the program.

Featuring thirty-four shorts in all, the disc is a veritable cornucopia of bad taste and low-brow humor that will appeal to just about anyone with a penchant for... well, sick and twisted animation.Almost every short on the disc is worth watching (with only a few notable exceptions) and are guaranteed to be the type of things that you would never want to show to your mother. An example of some of the more disturbingly twisted shorts can be witnessed in a John Kricfalusi produced segment called Baby's New Formula, which truly has one of the most unpleasant endings I have ever been witness to.  There is also a trio of cartoons called Lloyd's Lunchbox, featuring a severely inbred character who commits random acts of violence on himself that had me cowering in the fetal position by the time the shorts were over (though the third was is admittedly weaker than the first two).  The Tim Burton-esque cartoon Petey's Wake is also slightly disturbing, mainly because of the theme of the short, but ultimately I found it to be one of the most enjoyable shorts on the disc.

Another enjoyable short is one entitled Brian's Brain, which tells the story of a young boy's first day at school and the ridicule he receives because the top of his head is missing and his brain is exposed for all to see.  (Editor's Note: Brian!  Your life story!)

A follow up short, called The Birth of Brian, is also included, but it is not quite as entertaining as the initial offering. In terms of sheer laughs, I also found myself enjoying an odd little short entitled Dogpile, which features a man threatening a dog who is about to take a crap on his nicely manicured lawn (to which there is also a weaker follow up).

As far as shorts that can be avoided, there are only a few of those that are noteworthy.  The one that comes most easily to my head is entitled Phull Phrontal Phingers and features an entire cast of people's fingers in an homage to B-movie sci-fi films.  The "short" goes on for far too long and is more irritating than enjoyable. Home Honey I'm High is also relatively negligible and can be likened to the equally unfunny drug humor of Cheech and Chong. 

Hut Sluts, featuring two girls on a night out on the town, is probably the most pointless short on the disc and is one that could be skipped without missing anything important.

Overall, Slingshot Entertainment's release of Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation is something that is definitely worth picking up for anyone who is into animation of all types. 

The shorts are all presented with the clearest possible transfer that the original prints allowed for and the majority of them look pretty good considering their low bu dget nature.  No extra features are included on the disc, though there are DVD-ROM links to the Slingshot website.

review source: www.jaxfilmjournal.com