Nelson Hibbert (Dave Foley) is the kind of corporate ladder-climber who thinks he’s a shark but is actually a goldfish. When he loses the executive promotion at Nagel Industries, despite marrying his boss’s daughter, he decides to storm the big boss’s office and unleash a tirade for the ages, yelling “Go to hell, you bastard! I swear. I will kill you! You are dead to me!”

Instead of a promotion, he finds Mr. Nagel slumped over with a knife in his back. Nelson’s brain immediately hits the panic button. He assumes that because he was angry and present, he’s Public Enemy Number One. He bolts and goes on the lam, changing his look, living in the woods and trying to survive off the grid.

The kicker? The office security cameras captured the entire murder, and the police have zero interest in Nelson. He is a fugitive running from a law that isn’t even looking for him, while simultaneously trying to stay one step ahead of the actual killer who starts tracking him down. It’s a farce of errors where the biggest threat to Nelson is his own panicked imagination.

Foley co-wrote the script with Jay Kogen (who wrote for The Simpsons) and Wallace Wolodarsky. You can feel the sharp, cynical humor of the Kids in the Hall era throughout the entire runtime. And David Steinberg was a massive influence on the comedy scene for decades. His background in stand-up and his work on shows like Designing Women and Seinfeld gave him the perfect sensibility to frame this film as a series of escalating, claustrophobic miscommunications.

There’s no way this movie was going to be a success. It’s too weird, too full of character actors I love (Joe Flaherty, Jennifer Tilly and, of course, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson in cameos; what was Bruce McCulloch, causing more cancer?), too all over the place. It’s like an episode of The Simpsons when you were a kid or Mad Magazine. It’s as dense as dense can be when it comes to jokes, and I laughed out loud like six times, which is more than I’ve laughed in weeks.

This never came out in theaters and barely made it to DVD. My kind of movie.

Also: You should know that as a kid, I totally wanted to grow up to be Joe Flaherty. He remains a hero.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.