The Amazing Bulk (2012)

From https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/
images/I/914bBPKNKzL._SY445_.jpg

Director: Lewis Schoenbrun

Screenplay: Keith Schaffner and Jeremiah Campbell

Cast: Jordan Lawson as Henry Howard; Shevaun Kastl as Hannah Darwin; Terence Lording as General Darwin; Randal Malone as Dr. Werner von Kantlove; Juliette Angeli as Lolita Kantlove; Jed Rowen as Detective Ray Garton; Deirdre V. Lyons as Detective Lisa Tuttle

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

This is the first of Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs, which will retire the Non-Abstract Abstract reviews in favor of tidying the blog up and add more elegant style to the work, mainly aesthetically and a title for these non-abstract films I'm covering that rolls off the tongue more.

Made in 2012, I first learnt of The Amazing Bulk through Obscurus Lupa, a female web video host (real name Allison Pregler) who probably did the sardonic review of bad obscure films long before most; I'm not a fan of these types of videos, but to Lupa's credit, rather than soft targets she had the decency (and still does) to dig the deepest, to never given in to the obvious, once a huge fan (and still admiring her work to this day) just for how her reviews in particular covered the prolificness of cinema from the 2000s onwards, an entire cultural flotsam-and-jetsam few of us would probably watch unless by chance that she delved into deliberately, an entire catalogue that could easily be forgotten and lost but, chronicled by someone like Lupa, is just as strange as great canonical weird work if absolutely painful to sit through. Few of them will probably be remembers, and even the few know like David DeCoteau's A Talking Cat?! (2013) feel like they're skirting the fringes of fame, without judging their merits, based on irony only, but, whilst they exist, it's worth covering such examples to gauge what the 2010s in particular were like for these curious cheap creations that were released just before and during streaming becoming popular. So, like a perverse tribute to first learning of The Amazing Bulk from one of her videos, here I am much later covering it.

The notable thing about The Amazing Bulk is not the amazing coincidence that its similar to the Incredible Hulk, a comic book series of interest, but that barring the actors and an occasional prop (a fake purple monster hand too), the entirety of this film is set in green screen with animatiom which looks like it's from a mid nineties video game. It's not even Ralph Bakshi's Cool World (1991) in terms of the interaction between the actors and the sets as, shot only over five to six days, this feels equivalent to visual decor to a theatrical performance of a very peculiar sort rather than a great integration of the two sides.

The premise is generic, the kind that you can boil some superhero films down to, openly borrowing from the Incredible Hulk how scientist Henry Howard (Jordan Lawson) is like Bruce Banner, working for General Darwin (Terence Lording) to create an experimental super serum that, after many ill fated tests on CGI rats which caused an alarming amount to vanish into puffs of CGI smoke, finally works but turns Howard into a CGI purple monster of varying sizes, something just big and other times large enough to make a helicopter a toy he can pluck out the air. Whenever he gets angry or mildly constipated¹, the Bulk causes destruction to CGI vehicles in the vicinity. Why this is not like most superhero films is that, looking like the world of an edutainment game from my past, The Amazing Bulk was created with a lot of pre-existing models and materials. Characters don't even run or walk for large amounts of time, only gyrate on the same spot as the background moves instead.

From https://i1.wp.com/psychodrivein.com/wp/wp-content/
uploads/2016/07/R3-Cops-blast-The-Bulk-03103629.jpg

The film never transcends to a state of true weirdness because, whilst many will already be put off by its quality, the worst part for me is that for all its irony, director Lewis Schoenbrun has openly admitted The Amazing Bulk was more a challenge to make an ultra-low budget superhero film and thus it plays itself safe in plot. The thing is, growing up once hating a lot of these no-budget films, now admiring them but picky, that it is never the technical or aesthetic quality now that was then and now the true issue with many of these films, but how so many feel so stridently obsessed with recreating plots that I found predictable in higher budgeted work, let alone with the factor of whether they could actually recreate them (if at all) on lower budgets. The Amazing Bulk does feel mercenary as a result in its creation, where even factors like its bizarre choices of animation, bought from the likes of eBay, Digital Juice, Animation Factory and Turbo Squid Inc. among others, are never implemented in a way showing actual risk or a sense that the director is an eccentric.

Probably the most fascinating thing about director Schoenbrun instead is his claim to have assisted on Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler (1993), notorious an animation feature film which first started production in 1963 and, after a bastardised 1995 Miramax theatrical release alongside various re-edited versions in existed, had to have three bootleg "Recobbled" cuts made available by fans up to this current day to try and bring Williams' work to existence. I cannot help but wonder, speculate, if that ever had a subconscious influence on Schoenbrun's mix of various "found" props and a desire not to be stuck in a scenario of an endless, arduous production as, for better or worse, the production time was so short in terms of shooting everything.

Sticking to its plot, it does mean any real sense of eccentricity is lost baring a few grasps of pleasurable weirdness. It's thankfully not a pain to sit through, strong enough to tolerate this type of film now, but it's with good reason few would watch The Amazing Bulk without having an allergic reaction. This means that, in terms of the story rather than the production values, the few moments of eccentricity offer what I wish the film should've been in a drought for most of the film. Introducing our villain Dr. Werner von Kantlove (Randal Malone), with his fake German accent and beau Lolita Kantlove (Juliette Angeli), the film offers some much needed absurdity in how, for all his bad hamminess, in his best mock Dr. Strangelove/poor man's Tim Curry performance, you still have an interesting joke character who is explicitly impotent yet in a loving relationship with the simple minded Lolita, both having found a way around this by blowing up national monuments, depicted with stock photos with small CGI missiles turning into CGI explosions over them. Then there's General Darwin, the Thunderbolt Ross of this world, who at times sounds like he's an older man losing his marbles, either improvisation or the script, which as a result manages at least some actual laughs from his abrupt shouting of lines.

Between Darwin's abrupt hatred of dust to Dr. Strangelove and Lolita's ongoing love, the deviant scientist wanting to blow up the Moon (regardless of it destroying the ecosystem if he did) with his bubble headed girlfriend by his side, these joke characters are so much more interesting than a film that wants to be sympathetic with our lead and his romantic interest, a Betty Ross stand-in Hannah Darwin (Shevaun Kastl). And yes, Stanley Kubrick references in the text may stand out; Schoenbrun is a huge Kubrick fan, and whilst the references are embarrassing at times, it's at least a quirk of interest as, in one of the few virtues of the film technically, the director wisely chose good (and public domain) classical compositions²; anyone who wanted to heard Also Sprach Zarathustra over a CGI science bench being shaken about and a fake purple monster had popping up behind it will be able to knock it off their bucket list if they watch this film.

The idea of cinema which makes so many bad decisions it transcends and becomes unique is one I find has weight as the Millennium has encouraged a greater sense of irony to our viewing but also a greater sympathy for filmmakers, as technology allowed for more homespun productions which have to struggle and sometimes overcome their limitations or the circumstances in their making. The surrealist in me sees this in lieu of what is called the "marvellous", celebrating the try-hard as much as taste which transgresses middlebrow mainstream culture, but there's a difference between the absurd from the bland and merely bad. The Amazing Bulk is not Things (1989) or After Last Season (2009) sadly.

The closest moment is when the Bulk, when the US Army turn on him, goes on the run from explosions; its established early, as to get to Kantlove's CGI castle, a literal one barely guarded by male extras in mock Medieval helmets borrowed from a heritage site gift shop, our lead crosses past a golf course and immediately a leprechaun afterwards among details in the background, something which is taken further with Lewis Schoenbrun eventually using even the least appropriate animated figures regardless of tone and logic. Scored the 1812 Overture by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the chase scene is ridiculous but also compelling as a CGI Bulk flees across various (tonally different) locations. CGI tanks, CGI Robin Hood archer, CGI superhero, CGI pug dog superhero, CGI gecko using a CGI computer in a CGO desert, CGI submarine, CGI children playing with CGI footballs blissfully ignorant of the CGI Bulk nearby being attacked with CGI explosions, all CGI gaudiness but, whilst un-defendable in terms of good taste or quality, the only moment something actually strange takes place for an entertaining level of absurdity. The rest of the film, though, is a low budget superhero film that, whilst breezes past with pace that never slogs, is still a really bad and bland production. For every CGI car smaller than a cast member crushing them, The Amazing Bulk never finds a well of personality to compensate, never finding a charisma more interesting and instead more concerned with normal plotting despite that being innately the worst part of the production.

From https://i0.wp.com/psychodrivein.com/wp/wp-
content/uploads/2016/07/amazing-bulk-07.jpg

======

1) I apologize to actor Jordan Lawson for such a joke, probably too cruel for my usual writing, but with his stern look a constant, it cannot help but remind one that even two actors like Eric Bana and Mark Ruffalo probably had to struggle with even just making anger and repressed rage look credible in any movie, let alone ones where they turn into the Jolly Green Giant on steroids.  

2) Barring an awful MIDI version of Ride of the Valkyries, but that's the least of the film's issues.