Mis-information.
As with a lot of shockumentaries, the content and purpose is to leave you in a state of bewilderment at things that we wouldn't normally think goes on in America. This, to me, wasn't such a shock as I am plainly aware that for every good natured American there are half-a-dozen fame-crazed idiots wanting to drive tractors over their girlfriends, eat their own vomit and have sexual relations with their pets – but don't worry there is non of this on here... surprisingly.
Our host and director Richard Metzger is a calm, possibly desensitised guy, very much in the form of the Fast Show 'Jazz Time' character, however there are times when I would've wished him to question these people and their revelations a bit more, and not let them ramble off on some major ego trip about what they think they can do, or have seen etcetera.
So with two discs of around 6 hours running time it's obvious that I won't be leaving the house anytime soon, so I sit down with a large Starbucks, a pen and a pad and get suck into the world of the bizarre and unknown. The first disc four programmes on that programme one was aired on Channel Four, but soon found it's way to the Sci-Fi channel, whilst being heavily edited.
'The Best Of Both Worlds' is the name of the first segment and goes into great detail about semi-sex-changes, or lady-boys and He-She's, if you will. Exploring all aspects of the subject from: why someone may want their male organ but have breast implants and dress like a female, to who is interested in the pornography depicted and displaying these folk? There seemed to be a split between whether or not a man was homosexual if he was interested in this.
Next we have a fabulous artist named Joe Coleman who painted these wonderful large paintings in the vein of Vince Ray, however when you look closely at them there are pictures in pictures. However things get a little strange when we hear that within his paintings he includes his and his wife's blood, a cist from his neck and his hair. Then we are also told of his love of the macabre and his collection which includes a lock of Charles Manson's hair which he has balanced out with an alleged body part of Christ! If this wasn't bad then we are introduced to his adoptive baby, which is in a large jar and was purchased from a sideshow. There are also pictures of a few famous people holding his jar like Iggy pop, Johnny Depp and a very uncomfortable looking Leonardo Di Caprio!
After a segment on 'Outsider Music' which surrounds the love of people who can't play instruments or sing properly, we have 'Uncle Goddamn' which appears in every programme and is about a very drunk uncle who's nephews set on fire, spray paint and sellotape up. It is actually very disturbing as the uncle appears to be permanently drunk and unable to move, and the only things he says is "Goddamn!".
Programme 2 has an in depth look into Satan worshiping in 'Sympathy For The Devil' which has a handful of satanic cult leaders who have joined forces to make another sect called 'The Syndicate Of Five Points', however their philosophy on all that is evil differs and they split up, with name calling and drawing funny cartoons of each other – they are scary!
There is an interesting story on brainwashing, however when they start talking about sexslaves that involve the president and even Prince Charles and The Queen, well quite frankly truth or not, I for one don't need to know.
We then have Paul Lifferty a fantastic graphic designer and artist who believes that he knows how to make a time machine. It is now that you realise that after the first programme which was clearly the best, the others have a good lead story but then it just ends up with stupid unbelievably stories from people who are gifted in ways that shouldn't need them to make stuff up. Yep, I wasn't convinced about his HG Wells capabilities.
For music fans in Programme 3, we have Kembra Pfaher who is better know as Karen Black, who fronts a rock band whilst being pretty much naked, and also does theatrical shows whereby she attached things to her vagina. We even see her getting her said body part sewn up, the point being that her family didn't like her stage shows so this was in protest...hmmm.
In 'The Sex Life Of Robots' we have an old dude who buys up old Barbie and Actionman dolls and in his dark and dingy apartment transforms them into robots. Again it's the story of an artist going too far. The robots look really good, but our guy decides to make porn with the robot-dolls. It's good, but really, what is the point? His talent is not being shown at its best here!
Programme 4 is mostly about pornography, and although semi-explicit is actually very interesting. We have the views from everyone you can think of and it is far to say that this is probably the first time I've seen a totally unbiased argument for this subject.
The last thing I will mention is Mr Awesome, a guy who was a computer game champion in the eighties but believes that he never got the fame that he deserved, so he buffed up, posed in Playgirl, included his telephone number, and now has written a book on the people he went on dates with. Fruitcake.
All in all there are some fascinating stories, but there is a lot of National Enquirer stuff here too. It's like a darker version of Eurotrash without the funny voices and stupid presenters. If you are interested there is a website: http://www.disinfo.com/site/
So if this is a DVD to tell us how weird Americans are then really, they shouldn't have bothered, we know that all ready!