Dude Bro Party Massacre III (2015)

 

Directors: Jon Salmon, Michael Rousselet, Tomm Jacobsen and Joey Scoma

Screenplay: Alec Owen

Cast: Alec Owen as Brent / Brock; Jon Salmon as Nedry; Paul Prado as Turbeaux; Greg Sestero as Derek; Jimmy Wong as Sizzler; Ben Gigli as Samzy; Joey Scoma as Todd; Kelsey Gunn as Samantha; Olivia Taylor Dudley as Motherface

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) / An Abstract Candidate

 

I'm an immortal fuck machine!

Contextualised as an almost lost film, Dude Bro Party Massacre III was by all accounts demanded by President Ronald Reagan to be destroyed, likely for the plot twist in a dream sequence where he is secretly killing bros as a female serial killer. His censorship of the film, destroying it, was however thwarted by the fact one teen in Minnesota and his VHS player managed to record a late night public television screening of the film, the only copy we are able to see. Just in recounting the first two films, never existing outside this scenario, the amount of gore combined with female nudity, ridiculous deaths and a man getting his face pulped as an orange does in an electronic juicer is enough to catch one off guard. The story is recounted by Brock, twin brother of Brent (Alec Owen), who is murdered immediately after this exposition. This continues the curse of the "Motherface", originally a dorm mother burnt in a panty raid gone wrong, eventually leading to a daughter/copycat "borrowing" her face, with someone else now at it again in a film which is less a slasher parody, but does get in the joke about sequels managing to stretch out the premise over and over.

The real context of the film is that it is the creation of 5-Second Films, a group founded by Brian Firenzi in the spring of 2005, originally starting with films that are simple:  2 seconds of beginning titles, 5 seconds of film, 1 second of end titles¹. Naturally, 5-Second Films evolved to the point of making this theatrical film and creating this ironic parody, structured as being shot on VHS, a type of film going through this neo-grindhouse and meta-genre era of cinema in the late 2000s and early 2010s which I found at the time very uninteresting. Alongside the possibility I have softened to these films through this particular example Dude Bro is also aiming for something stranger in tone, something to use a Spinal Tap reference deciding to go up to eleven than merely just for the lowest hanging fruit. Considering someone gets a harpoon in the crotch, not even that is safe, and yet this is going to cram as many bizarre turns as it can in an era when YouTube was becoming a concept, and looking at the parody films of yore, in taking this absurdist tone to an extreme.

That is not including all the meta jokes and the adverts in-between, like the Pizza Goblins, which are seconds long and more there to knock you for a loop than for parodying advertising, as the film when it is staying on point with a plot is going to turn it on its neck in bizarre ways. The premise is a slasher, where after two previous Motherface spree attacks, the bro dorm for the third year welcome into their midst Brent, the twin brother of their fallen bro, welcome in among a vegetarian named Sizzler (Jimmy Wong) who will not get into the dorm unless he gets some "beef" and because of his dietary choice, a wheelchair bro who lost his legs to wolves, one whose trauma of his French handyman father leads to the subtitles being from someone sneaking in distress messages, and also among them one traumatised from the previous times. There is also a girlfriend of one of the bros who wants to join the fraternity despite being an all men's one, and whose boyfriend is stalked by the fear of her wanting to take his virginity and have kids.

The film befits the era it was made; now the 2010s became an old decade than lived in, where this type of humour is not within context of many "surreal" films from this period like this. Time has also softened this type of humour, and made the references more noticable, where suddenly you are taken aback by a cameo by adult film star and pro sex advocate Nina Hartley as a school principal, only to be bombarded by the fact this also has Larry King and Andrew W.K. among the cameos, a mad pot pourri of figures to have had. This is a film proud to write the most ridiculous dialogue, to have the silliest plot twists and play loose to its own plot, even point out its absurdities, which were once things I hated in these types of genre films. I have changed, but also Dude Bro is willing to push the joke to its extreme, taking the slasher and taking it the most surreal route of all. The plot is your traditional slasher in a body count, but you also have to factor in, where you also have to factor in the police being led by comedian Patton Oswalt, a Satanist who is rooting for the Motherface killer as the Bros have the power to summon the ultimate bro, one who needs to be stopped even if it involves sacrificing his virginal male police officer, a noble spirit even if his noble desire to "bang" kids with the power of literature is badly phrased. This would all be jokes I once hated, but now, something delights me in the lunacy of how the plot lines are interconnected in jokes that seem random but lead to extended pay offs, such as how this cop (guided by the female officer meant to lead him to his sacrifice) is told he needs to bop the bros on the nose, because they are actually sentient oranges behind a huge vitamin c decrease in the state, a bizarre joke that has a tragic and perverse pay off with the film ending with oranges raining from the sky.

The production - helmed by Jon Salmon, Michael Rousselet, Tomm Jacobsen and Joey Scoma, with collaborations by numerous people for the script by lead actor Alec Owen - does have a frenzied lunacy to it of clear improvisation. It exhibits the type of layered nudging humour of YouTube but in a case where, as an ultimate spoof, any joke which fails is matched by ten more afterwards, which is a huge advantage to the film tenfold. There are moments you will wonder if you have actually seen certain moments in this movie, such as the spirit guidance from a deceased foetus, and yet this has for the obvious gag of side characters, there to just pad the cast out for a body count, them making reference to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the two Hamlet characters who only have one significant moment in that monumental play and, as referenced in this moment too, got a Tom Stoppard play around them which is just as well regarded and absurdist, a smart joke to pull among all the lewder jokes which also land perfectly.  

Back in the day, this type of irony undercut the absurdist and surrealist touches to these parodies, but with a film like this, even jokes which would have caused me to roll my eyes once, like an abrupt robot duplicate, now land especially as this takes the jokes to their extreme, especially as this is still also a super gory splatstick comedy where a man will slap himself with his own ripped out tongue against his will. There is also the willingness, for a joke about the bros having of killing many people for yearly pranks, to extend it to a long (frankly sombre and beautiful) extended gag with model shots and underwater imagery just to add to the punch line. Especially as the fourth wall gags are a factor too - in the adverts being mild aneurisms in their randomness, or the search for a lost bro to become a joke one expects from a Leslie Nielsen parody film - and I became to admire Dude Bro Party Massacre III as a gleefully bizarre spectacle.

Abstract Spectrum: Lurid/Wacky/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low

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1) 5-Second Films' About Us page, preserved on Web Archive in its October 3rd 2012 version.