Career suicides rarely come as enjoyable as this, a $12 million financial debacle of collegiate comedy co-created by erstwhile Bill S. Preston, Alex Winter, and his former roommate/collaborator from NYU film school, Tom Stern. Flush with Bill & Ted’s residuals and boasting fresh evidence of behind-the-camera semi-competence from the run of their MTV sketch show “The Idiot Box,” these “two 25-year-olds” (as the duo persistently, incredulously refer to themselves on the articulate, funny commentary track) with an established penchant for aggressively retarded humor were miraculously entrusted with a handsome special f-x budget by 20th Century Fox. The result is Freaked—originally conceived as a dirt-budget rock opera with Austin’s acid-punk Butthole Surfers at its centerpiece, eventually realized as an intermittently funny, often just bafflingly grody make-up comedy, a sort of thinking man’s Nothing but Trouble.

Winter plays Ricky Coogan, a obnoxious, second-tier brat-pack douche bag with a locked-in sneer whose primary claim to fame is child stardom in a saccharine sitcom called “The Baker’s Dozen,” hired as the face of sinister multinational corporation EES to promote their environmentally incorrect operations in the South American country Santa Flan ( Ricky: “Santa Flan—what kind of shitty name for a country is that?”). On setting down, our hero gets sidetracked by Elijah C. Skuggs’ (top-form ringmaster Randy Quaid) roadside display of “Freekz,” whose numbers he’s forced to join by way of mutation. From there Winter and Stern just dump out the gag grab bag. Some bits are early-Nineties carbon dated by Larry “Bud” Melman cameos, references to Jake and the Fat Man, Ishtar, and “strong enough for a man but made for a woman” Speed Stick commercials; others are fucking hilarious. The art department jumble of Basil Wolverton Mad Magazine, Big Daddy Roth, and Mexican folk art provides a steady stream of trash-pop upchuck.

Anchor Bay’s extravagant two discs worth of material seems a tad excessive for a flick that’s just shy of 80 minutes, and the real-world usefulness of a feature-length full-cast rehearsal or lavish footage of the makeup crew listening to Aerosmith is pretty dubious. Better is the commentary, where Winter and Stern come across vividly and likably—assisted by the inclusion of two of their NYU films, you can imagine them as those kind of super-resourceful, try-anything, often-stoned film school best buds with really wild, usually awful ideas, dudes who could rig up an incredibly complex crane shot with a pilfered shopping cart and a few c-stands. Despite a few chuckling references to dismal test screenings (populated by “Cholos from Fairfield, California”) and uncomprehending studio execs (discontent is expressed with the title, which “sounds vaguely like the Scott Baio movie Zapped! ”), their overall tone is best described as gracious giddiness for having pulled the whole thing off. Nowadays, I gather, they’re directing skits for The Jimmy Kimmel Show; not exactly the Elysian Fields of auteurdom, but these guys seem just goofy and unpretentious enough to make it work.

It’s difficult to pay homage to the flawed, front-loaded, funny Freaked without descending into cultist quotations, and it’s impossible to try to make my enjoyment of this movie jive with any of the so-called critical tenets I try to hold up when I’m sober. This film is a jubilant piece of shit, simple and plain, but any moviegoer who can’t find a little time in their evening and room in their heart for a flick that features Paul Lynde’s chattering skeleton and Randy Quaid telling a soon-to-be Bearded Lady Mr. T “You’d be better off without a dick?” Well, that’s company I could do without.
—NICK PINKERTON