Blubberella (2011)

Director: Uwe Boll

Screenplay: Willam Belli, Uwe Boll, Michael Christopher and Lindsay Hollister

Cast: Lindsay Hollister as Blubberella; Brendan Fletcher as Nathaniel Gregor; Michael Paré as the Commandant; Willam Belli as Vadge; Annett Culp as Magda Markovic; Clint Howard as Doctor Mangler; Uwe Boll as Hitler

Ephemeral Waves

Smells like pubes and cheese here.

Well, inevitably the conversation would move to Uwe Boll. He would have to be talked about in terms of unconventional filmmakers, or those will outsider reputations, and fully forming my interest in cinema during the mid-to-late 2000s, Boll was a notorious cult of personality at the time. He has vanished, making an official retirement in 2016 due to difficulties to fund his films. He is evidence of cinema's curious nature that, for every auteur who struggled to get films made of their ambitions, figures as long as they worked in the medium as a business (or just made them off their own backs, medium to micro budget) could have long filmographies.

Blubberella (sic) and its production narrative could have been something legendary producer/director Roger Corman might have done himself to cut costs, namely that Uwe Boll whilst he was making BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2011), the third in a series based on a videogame franchise he made the trilogy of, decided to make a shot-by-shot parody with almost the same actors and the same resources. Considering that the film was set in World War II, with period accurate designs and sets, Corman might have been proud of someone else not letting the production go to waste.

Like the original, this follows a half human half vampire, only know she is Blubberella (sic), switching original actress Natassia Malthe for Lindsay Hollister, who in the middle of ninety forties Europe is found in a modern colourful bedroom with an internet connection, angry her dating life on "HebrewHookup.net" is being undermined by the Nazis. As much as the film is made on ingenuity, it was for me also a terrible viewing experience. It seems pat to have a review of a film by a director who kept having to fight off negative reviews become a negative review, but we are stuck in position especially with how he treats the material, and how sadly this is, rather than an excuse to mock his work, this is a film that clearly came in with an idea, only to stumble immediately into an ill coordinated mess.

Humour is subjective, which proves an issue whenever one is attempting to critique of at any level of scholarship on the subject. Uwe Boll's attempt at a parody, which was co written with cast members like Lindsay Hollister herself, can be split into three divisive categories - 1) that it has a lot of pop culture references from this time period including an extended parody of Lee Daniel's Precious (2009), a film I wonder if it still has any cultural memory of after the acclaim it had back then; 2) some absurdist humour, mainly a lot of anachronistic details or details like placing Hollister's face on old vampire film posters in her bedroom; and 3) and the most divisive content, a lot of deliberately offensive humour for bad taste. The last can be described in how, in a scene where Blubberella (sic) and a group of resistance fighters find a Nazi train, only to find onboard who are explicitly Jews are being shipped off rather than the weapons they were expecting. They all at first consider helping them, reconsider it as the stereotypical gay character in the resistance argues their fashion sense is dreadful, then reclose and lock the train cart door.

Yeah, Uwe Boll is playing a deadly game of irony throughout Blubberella (sic) that has not aged well. His comedy here is as deliberately broad as possible and very much signposted all the way through, takes Bloodrayne 3 and very much leaves the barest of structures to throw jokes at, that when the heroine accidentally leaves a Nazi victim alive, the Commandant (Michael Paré), with vampire abilities he hopes to exploit this with the help of mad scientist Dr Mangler (Clint Howard), but never progresses this beyond the jokes.

The resistance is only presented by two figures - their leader Nathaniel Gregor (Brendan Fletcher), who starts to fall in love with Blubberella (sic) only to have the sexual performance of an awkward teenager, and Vadge (Willam Belli), who minces, is explicitly gay, and whose entire stereotyping is softened when I learnt Willam Belli is a drag performer, brought in by Lindsay Hollister when Boll wanted her to come up with jokes for this parody². This does however leave me in a worst, more conflicted pace as the humour in the film did not work for me and strays into some eye brow raising territory. It is not even out of political correctness - but instead rolling my eyes at this all.

Here is the thing with Uwe Boll: I never considered him "the worst director ever", as subjectively that is a nonsensical title to bestow on anyone, as it takes one person to admit they liked House of the Dead (2003), his first notorious film, even as a guilty pleasure to undermine his candidacy. Even by this time, with Blubberella (sic), the likes of Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) were lowering the bar further in technical and production quality beyond him. Boll reminds me instead of his fellow countryman Roland Emmerich. Two German filmmakers who clearly wanted to make Hollywood films, Emmerich getting the blockbuster budgets whilst Boll had to be resourceful, both wanting to do spectacle, both wanting to innovate¹, both wanting to also make serious films, Emmerich among his even tackling the Stonewall riots to divisive attitudes as Boll among his did a film inspired by the Columbine High School shootings. Both have been dogged by negative critical opinion. Emmerich however has never challenged film critics to boxing fights as Boll did, with some accepting and footage recorded in a documentary.

Boll for me also, and I am fully aware of the dangers of armchair psychology especially when it will anger the creators of a film, has also been someone clearly rattled by those film critics, hence he buries them in dialogue here by a comparison to a vampire. Boll has by this point juggled between anger at his critics, making a film like Seed (2007) meant to unsettle, and playing up to his reputation with deliberate bad taste and irony, be it the comical reinterpretation of House of the Dead for DVD release, or Postal (2007), where adapting a notorious PC game franchise³, he also played himself as a bastard who funded films with Nazi gold. Blubberella (sic) is neither as subtle, clearly with the attempt at not necessarily provocative, but the same attitude of eating with one's mouth open to deliberately put someone off. He also continues this self mocking nature, or is willing to be a sport, but playing Adolf Hitler. Blubberella (sic) tries to convince him to not be evil, becoming friends, only for him to still show himself as a little dictator when he is losing at the board game Risk. It would be a funny scene, baring the fact he also has actor Brendan Fletcher in full blackface, to the point it could have been applied with burnt cork as minstrels used to use for the makeup, playing the stereotype in "urban" speak, which as a phrase to have to use to describe this already makes me uncomfortable to use.  

Boll will shoot himself in the foot for a film like this, his reputation to be effects by the fact that, in a time irony was considered a free pass, he has not one but two blackface performances alongside various other deliberately offensive jokes which are exceptionally broad and, in those two cases, never making any sense anyway to why they are there. The first makes even less sense, closer to the school of parody filmmaking of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, behind films like Disaster Movie (2008) which were critically drubbed and they themselves falling out of the limelight as Boll did by the late 2010s, a parody of the Oscar nominee film Precious. Change the lead character for Blubberella (sic), and her abusive mother Willam Belli in blackface playing to a stereotyped voice whilst hurling abuse at the protagonist, and you get...well, something that recounting in memory a part of me thinks of wanting to sink my head into my hands, wondering why no one reconsidered this before putting it to film . Even as part of dream sequences, alongside the Adolf Hitler one, they do not really stand out aside from two really poorly considered attempts at humour.

Aside from this, which has never been flagged up since the film's release in 2011, also likely to haunt the production is the gay humour, which even in context of them likely to have been penned by Willam Belli, come off as a subtle blow with a sledgehammer to the back of the head, the jokes about the lead being fat and eating, Hollister which are worse knowing Hollister, trying her best, took this role because of the stigma against larger women, and the issue that, even beyond this, that Blubberella (sic) feels lacksidasical, as the umpteenth pop culture reference appears and hits like a snowball with a rock inside.

The production is striking for a comedy as, borrowing sets from another production, it was a very realistically depicted form of World War II Europe, probably one of Uwe Boll's highest budgeted films in terms of appearance. With the accurate costumes and props, the one joke I had initially rolled my eyes at but, in hindsight, I find funny shows what the film should have been. It is when, with the resistance fighters are introduced, walking through snow covered countryside as a unit, you notice that one of the grunts is an actor in a cumbersome yellow-orange fish costume. Maybe the soldier wanted to stand out, or there is a bipedal walking fish fighting Nazis, but they are encumbered on land as they flop over in the snow and are ignored as they lay there on manoeuvres. That - contrasting a serious war film with this surreal farce - was what Boll could do and clearly could. Instead, he is not subtle and more interested in provocation to a detriment.

Or give Clint Howard more scenes. Most of his lines are terrible, but the other Howard brother, even over director Ron Howard, is practically bullet proof when it comes to all the good will he gets as a figure. Whilst Boll himself awkwardly, and uncomfortably, adapts himself to this comedy and creates something miserable, Clint Howard as a mad German scientist can overcome even an onscreen caption, which everyone gets and are usually terrible alongside the chapter cards, that he was Michael Jackson's doctor by being so gleefully evil as he dissects a vampire whilst he is still alive. Whilst Michael Paré, as the main Nazi villain, is maniac and even turn to Marlon Brando mushmouth levels of acting, probably on purpose, Clint Howard has always been providing this type of role and becoming beloved regardless of the quality of the films he has been in. Everything in the film is, personally, terrible, with actors like Lindsay Hollister sadly left hanging, and myself being left with a bad taste so bad that, when the film ends earlier than I presumed and that the last fifteen to ten minutes are outtakes, I had to abandon it and run even as someone who has been a mad completist of endurance cinema.

It may seem an odd way to end this review, but aptly Clint Howard himself has the right way to describe Uwe Boll and the entire problem with this production. ”[I’ve] said, ‘Uwe, spend more time on the material...Certainly I wish he was a little better filmmaker. I wish I could hit a ball a little straighter. Life’s not perfect, but I like Uwe.”² I do not mind Uwe either, having even found in the past that when he made a film like Rampage (2009) he suddenly surprised people with a film many actually liked including me. Unfortunately, when there was such an apt opportunity for a funny World War II parody, and a way to have a very positive role for an actress of a larger weight, that faltered because Boll did not think through the material, made some egregious and offensive choices, and lost a good opportunity when it was for the taking.

In fact, reading upon the way the film was being made, as well as the fact Boll was planning a third film with the same sets, the completely serious and dark drama Auschwitz (2011) which dealt with a study of the concentration camp, there is a wonder if a lot of the film's haphazard and ill thought-out pacing was due to the ambition hitting a roadblock that shock it from being properly produced. The result instead proved, tragically, unbearable for me.

 

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1) House of the Dead, for its notoriety, had Boll use a turn-table rig that spun a camera around his cast as if they were rotating characters in a video game select screen. It was never seen after as, spinning at a high speed, such a rig would be too dangerous.

2) A fascinating article on the production here.

3) Specifically Postal 2 (2003) - where you had the ability to urinate on people, fight the former child actor Gary Coleman, and could place cats anus first onto one's guns as improvised silencers.