Good morning -or afternoon for our European friends- Movie fans. It is I, your estranged semi-critic Brad. I have been watching from afar in a bungalow off the coast of the Dominican Republic; well not really, simply busy with the real world -one has to feed the monkey-. I wanted to follow up a post from the past on the upcoming stop motion animated film Live Freaky Die Freaky.
Finally today this sure to be cult classic is being released on DVD. It only took a shade over two years to make but now John Roecker’s vision will be shared.
To be honest with you friends I just got finished watching the trailer and I think it is culminating to be a disappointment. Which is to bad because it has a grand cast of punk rock personalities. For example, Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day is the voice of Charlie Manson. Joining in on the fun are names like Tim Armstrong (Rancid), Tre Cool, Benji Madden and Jane Wiedlin. Unfortunately many seem to think the efforts are lacking;
√¢‚Ǩ≈ìNot for the easily offended,√¢‚Ǩ¬ù reads the title card that opens LIVE FREAKY! DIE FREAKY!, followed quickly by the logo for You Got Bad Taste Productions. To some fans of sick cinema, that kind of thing sends up a warning sign√¢‚Ǩ‚Äùthe best such films tend to be not those that set out to deliberately offend, but those that just do their own thing and don√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t give a damn whether anybody√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s offended or not. This puppet-animated phantasmagoria dealing with the Charles Manson murders had the potential to be a twisted laugh machine, but squanders it by taking the easy way out with a puerile, lowest-common-denominator approach … The stop-motion imagery and lighting are occasionally quite expressive, suggesting that something really could have been achieved here if the material wasn√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t so regressively coarse. As it stands, if you want to see a genuinely shocking film about Charlie and his crimes, see Jim VanBebber√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s THE MANSON FAMILY; if you√¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re partial to puppet sex, stick with your bootleg of MEET THE FEEBLES; and if you want to watch animation that pushes the taste boundaries and actually has a point to make in doing so, keep watching SOUTH PARK.
~Fangoria Magazine
I’m not going to pass total judgment as of yet but my optimism has greatly diminished. Better luck next time Roecker. It was only two years of your life.
