Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game, and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

No boss I have ever worked for has said something to me that I remember more than toss off Chris Elliot lines, things like “I do this little trick with measuring spoons,” “We’ve lost a lot of good men in mine 5, Dave,” and “I’m a male model, not a male prostitute.” No actor has summed up the weirdness that I love in comedy better than Robin Williams, and no movie shows what I love more than Cabin Boy. It’s my Star Wars.

Directed by Adam Resnick, who wrote the film with Elliot, this is less a movie than a collection of strange moments. Fancy lad Nathaniel Mayweather (Elliot) annoys everyone, which keeps him from getting on the right boat and boarding The Filthy Whore, a ship under the helm of Captain Greybar (Ritch Brinkley). When Nathaniel causes the death of Kenny (Andy Richter), the cabin boy, he must take over and be at sea for months, perhaps never getting to Hawaii. The crew, Skunk (Brian Doyle-Murray), Pappy (James Gammon) and Teddy (Brion James) will kill him way before that happens.

Or maybe they won’t. But it comes close, with him stuck in Hell’s Bucket, on his own on a raft for days at a time, burning himself by covering his body with cooking oil and drinking salt water. Only Choki (Russ Tamblyn), half-shark, half-man, saves him. The giant Mulligan (Mike Starr) almost gets him — for sleeping with his multi-armed wife Calli (Ann Magnuson), after which he yells, “These pipes are clean” — but Nathaniel is either lucky or learning. He even gets Trina (Melora Walters) to fall for him.

Chris Elliott earned a Razzie Award nomination for Worst New Star, but lost to Anna Nicole Smith for Naked Gun 33+1⁄3: The Final Insult. Now and forever, fuck the Razzies.

This is a movie that you must like to be one of my friends. If you don’t get it, I’m not sure we can ever connect in a meaningful way.

Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game, and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

The first of three horror movies by Phillip Ridley — followed by The Passion of Darkly Noon and Heartless — The Reflecting Skin starts with three friends — Seth Dove (Jeremy Cooper), Eben (Codie Lucas Wilbee) and Kim (Evan Hall) — doing what bored kids stuck in Idaho do. That would be inflating frogs and blowing them up all over a widow named Dolphin Blue (Lindsay Duncan).

Seth lives in a gas station, where he works when cars pull up, as his parents, Ruth (Sheila Moore) and Lewis (Duncan Fraser), exist in a state of ennui toward one another. At one point, a car full of men in dark suits pulls up and one of them promises that they will see Seth soon. Seth has been talking to his dad about vampires, so when he is sent to apologize to Dolphin, she mentions that she feels 200 years old. He starts to think that she is one of the dead.

Eben soon goes missing, and Seth’s father is sure they will be arrested for it, as everyone in town knows that he is gay. Instead of facing the police, he sets himself on fire. Cameron (Viggo Mortensen) comes back from the Army to help raise Seth and soon falls in love with Dolphin. At the same time, Seth finds an ossified fetus and believes that it is Eben, whom he turns to, convinced that his brother’s radiation poisoning is being fed on by Dolphin.

Ridley said of this movie, “I created a fabulous child-eyed view of what I imagined America to be like – it’s a kind of mythical once upon a time never-world, where guys look like Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley, and everything is set in a Wheatfield and it all looks very American gothic.”

Cinematographer Dick Pope captured the magic hour here, orange fields of grain set against the black car filled with evil. Everything heads to a dark end, as the actual monsters of the world aren’t the monsters in a child’s mind, but the very simple killers that roam the highways around the small town.

Coil, which had Stephen Thrower as a member, used samples from The Reflecting Skin on Stolen & Contaminated Songs.

“It’s all so horrible, you know, the nightmare of childhood. And it only gets worse. One day, you’ll wake up, and you’ll be past it. Your beautiful skin will wrinkle and shrivel up, you’ll lose your hair, your sight, your memory. Your blood will thicken, and your teeth will turn yellow and loose. You will start to stink and fart, and all your friends will be dead. You’ll succumb to arthritis, angina, senile dementia, you’ll piss yourself, shit yourself, drool at the mouth. Just pray that when this happens you’ve got someone to love you, because if you’re loved you’ll still be young.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Aug 18-24 indie comix week: When I was a kid, I used to read Mad Magazine and Cracked, so when I got a little older, it didn’t take much convincing to pick up Eightball and Hate. I’m an OG in the “complaining about superheroes” game, and my scars were anointed on the Comics Journal message board!

Why did I wait so long to watch this? Why was I able to buy it at a dollar store? Why isn’t it on a major streaming service?

Directed by Jared Hess, who co-wrote it with his brother Jerusha, Gentlemen Broncos has some of Napoleon Dynamite in it. Benjamin Purvis (Michael Angarano) has a strange home life, one seemingly fixated on his dead father, living with his mother Judith (Jennifer Coolidge), who dreams of selling her nightgowns but is stuck working retail and making popcorn balls. Ben escapes his real life by writing science fiction. His latest book is Yeast Lords, which is all about Bronco (Sam Rockwell), a hero he has based on his father. As he writes, the audience sees the movie in his head.

Ben’s a nice guy. He’s unable to talk to most girls, but when introduced to fellow writer Tabatha (Halley Feiffer) at a science fiction writer camp, he allows her to read his story. She reacts strangely, running away, when in truth she’s stunned by how good it is. I get the feeling she wants to be with him but doesn’t have the language or ability to do that; instead she’s with Lonnie (Hector Jimenez), who makes cheap SOV-style films.

At the camp, Ben takes a lecture from one of his heroes, Dr. Ronald Chevalier (Jermaine Clement). He quickly realizes that the person who was his idol is really a jerk; eventually, one realizes that he’s run out of ideas. He turns a contest at the camp — to publish one winner’s work — into a chance to steal an idea. Ben’s Yeast Lords becomes Brutus and Balzaak with minor changes.

Throughout, Ben’s mom wants more for him. She introduces him to a Guardian Angel from church, Dusty (Mike White), who is less a father figure and more someone who teaches him how to shoot blowdarts. When everything goes bad in a few days — the Yeast Lords movie that Lonnie made is horrible, a rich man tries to assault his mother under the pretenses that he wants to get her clothes into stores and Chevalier shows up at a local bookstore — Ben flips out and gets arrested.

This is where his mother’s love appears again. She has sent all of his books to be registered and officially bound by the Writers Guild of America. There’s proof that he’s the one who wrote Chevalier ‘s work. His books replace those ones and everyone lives happily forever after.

From the opening — “In the Year 2525” by Zager and Evans playing over book covers — to how fully formed its villain is (and how much he sounds like Michael York in Logan’s Run — thanks Gizmodo, I couldn’t figure out who he reminded me of) and the love that drives the end of the movie, I was totally won over by this movie. At one point, Tabatha tells Ben, “Well, you’ll never get anywhere by just letting your mom read your work.” I am so happy to know the truth.