Directed, produced and written by Adam Lenhart, Eric Griffin and Jake McClellan, the star of HeBGB TV is HeBGB TV itself, “a multidimensional cable box installs itself into a neighborhood and slowly, the world.” A brother and sister are soon taken captive by their host The Purple Guy who shows them everything from a talking pumpkin named Squash on a home shopping channel to a skeletal standup comedian named Dick Tickler (the web site calls him Rib Tickla) and Monster Girl, a former horror host turned live on TV phone sex operator having a “breakthrough during a breakdown.”

Imagine if there was another Nickelodeon in the 90s that didn’t care about theme parks and mass merchandising its cartoons and instead stuck with weirdness like Turkey TV, Are You Afraid of the Dark? and You Can’t Do That on Television but with monsters, anthropomorphic candy corn getting mutilated and no small amount of wonderfully queer content.

This is it. And it’s exactly as awesome as you dreamed.

HeBGB TV rewards all the short attention span I’ve built over the and feeds it lots of sweet, sweet candy. Commercials parodies, cartoons, weird bursts of half-watched TV, all through a pulsating cable box — eXistenZ for kids! — that should not be and yet is.

Ten thousand stars out of five.

You can learn more about HeBGB TV at its awesome official site.

This movie was part of the Another Hole in the Head film festival, which provides a unique vehicle for independent cinema. This year’s festival takes place from December 1st – December 18th, 2022. Screenings and performances will take place at the historic Roxie Cinema, 4 Star Theatre and Stage Werks in San Francisco, CA. It will also take place On Demand on Eventive and live on Zoom for those who can not attend the live screenings. You can learn more about how to attend or watch the festival live on their Eventlive site. You can also keep up with all of my AHITH film watches with this Letterboxd list.