July 14-20  Vanity Project Week: “…it might be said that the specific remedy for vanity is laughter, and that the one failing that is essentially laughter is vanity.” Are these products of passionate and industrious independent filmmakers OR outrageous glimpses into the inner workings of self-obsessed maniacs??

Born in Akron, Ohio, Damon Packard is the grandson of Sam Pollock, who organized the Amalgamated Meat Cutters of Akron, working to limit the workweek, establish employer-paid wellness funds, implement a prepaid direct-service medical care program, raise wages, and more. At the time of his death, he owned one of the largest and most respected private collections of union-related publications in the United States, with most books signed by their authors.

He started making films in college, including the Miles O’Keefe-starring Dawn of an Evil Millennium, as well as Apple, an elf fantasy film made while he lived in a tent for two years in Hawaii. After receiving an inheritance, he made this film, which he directed, wrote, and starred in, as well as handling most of the other aspects. He created 23,000 DVDs and gave them for free, as well as sending the movie to celebrities.

It starts with an introduction by Tony Curtis, stolen from another film. It features numerous snippets of movies that aired on the CBS Late Movie, giving the impression that you’re sitting in front of a thousand TVs all changing channels at once. It’s also about Steven Spielberg making Something Evil, as well as Julie, a teen who died from an overdose in a supernatural drug cult in the early 70s just like an afterschool special, now a specter searching from beyond the grave for her brother Bob (Packard), an overweight homeless man who wears several unworking headphones, all the clothes that he wears on his back and seems to lose his mind every few minutes.

With a drug freakout inside Universal Studios on E.T. Adventure, a bloody axe fight that Bob recovers from immediately, strange audio blasts followed by Carpenters songs, appearances by Lana Turner, George Hamilton and Joey Heatherton, an extended vomit sequence, 137 minutes of Los Angeles being Hell, even the guardians of the city losing their minds, anger and rage at all times. Shot on 16mm, Super 8 and Digital 8, formats don’t matter when so much has to be related to you, as if you’re either watching one of those tapes you’re forced to endure when you get a minimum wage job or you’re being Stockholmed into a death cult. Maybe both.

I’m struggling to explain what I’ve seen. It ruined me for a few days, rendering me unable to watch any other films and I consider that the highest compliment I can give a movie.

DVDR Party has the Something Evil remix for sale, as well as all of Packard’s films. I feel like I’m going to blow my next pay on his movies. Maybe it’ll be enough for him to make something new.

You can watch this on Tubi.