(This film was screened at the 2011 Ottawa International Animation Festival)
To say that director Phil Mulloy's films are controversial among animation fans is an understatement: his previous movie Goodbye Mister Christie won the Best Animated Feature Film award at last year's festival despite being reviled by audiences.
Mulloy has returned this year with a sequel to that film, titled Dead But Not Buried. It's as deliberately annoying as his previous movie, but generates more laughs mainly through sheer shock value.
Phil Mulloy Directs Spectre Films' Dead But Not Buried
Mister Christie is dead, and buried in the ground . . . or is he? A thin-skinned Japanese industrialist named Mr. Yakamoto believes Mister Christie holds the secret to eternal life. Mr. Yakamoto plans to bring Mister Christie back from the dead so he can spread peace and love throughout the world even if he has to kill everyone in sight in order to do it.
Meanwhile, a trio claiming to be Mister Christie's brothers and sister want Mister Christie's collection of Tesco stickers while Mrs. Christie (still getting her ashes hauled by Ramon) seeks her husband's body. Somehow this all ends up in Iceland, and Terry is still sticking nails in his face.
Now imagine all this being conveyed to the audience by a bunch of cut-out faces voiced by computerized text-to-speech synthesis. Not a lot of fun, especially considering director Mulloy recycles a fair amount of footage during the course of the film. Not surprising, considering this movie is a one-man show (the reams of credits at the end? Completely bogus) but Mulloy is clearly no Bill Plympton.
The annoying part is that Mulloy doesn't lack talent: he has a dab hand for dialogue (if you can get past those damned vocoder-voices) and he clearly knows how to push audience buttons. A woman has her arms and legs chewed off, and Mulloy still offers what is quite possibly the most offensive Japanese accent since Jerry Lewis.
Viewer reaction to Dead But Not Buried ran the full gamut of emotions: some viewers laughed at Mulloy's sheer audacity while others walked out of the screening. At least three holdouts used the movie as an opportunity to catch up on their sleep.
Want to be Antagonized and Annoyed? Watch Phil Mulloy's Dead But Not Buried
Part of reviewing films is discerning the artist's intentions, and whether or not he fulfilled them. If Phil Mulloy wanted to inspire his audience to feed him slowly through a meat grinder, feet first, then Dead But Not Buried succeeds admirably. It gets a 1.5/5.
Dominic von Riedemann - Dominic is the Animated Film Feature Writer, and winner of 11 Suite 101 Editors' Choice Awards.
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