Five friends, a love of film and, a suicide pact. In Tolkein lore, Astron-6 is the day of the Elvish New Year, and a new year is upon us indeed....I'm not going to attempt to review each of the short films included in this set, but rather to spotlight a few that give a flavor what what Astron-6 is all about. This collection features comedies, horror films, short animations, music videos, and exploitation madness, but it is crystal clear within a minute or two of each short that the same team is at work on them all. Their satirical approach to all genres of film is very recognizable, and their love for the pop culture of the 1980's bleeds from every frame, and nowhere is this more evident than in the opening short, Cool Guys.
From their first meeting at The Winnipeg Short Film Massacre, the five men instantly found themselves embroiled in a deadly game of cat and mouse. Rather than destroy each other, the sworn enemies decided to unite - and then destroy themselves (once famous). Astron-6 is the brainchild of these five iconoclastic, multi-media artists who share a fascination with the mechanics of fear and laughter. They subvert the expectations of the seasoned viewer with the nightmarish and absurd. Their imagery and recurring themes are often torn from the childhood of the irony-craving, internet savvy Generations X and Y. That is, they often lampoon genre films of the 1980s.
Cool Guys is a short about losers, three of them. Two are nerdy high schoolers who decide to leave town and go to the beach where they can reinvent themselves as cool guys, the third is a Woodersonesque older guy who hangs out with high schoolers because they are the only people who think he is cool. Once they get to this beach town, hijinks ensue. The film uses in 28 minute running time very wisely, stuffing in every '80s teen film genre trope possible without losing focus on the story. Every thirty seconds there is a reference to another film, but not in a way that makes the film seem lazy, instead it shows the viewer how completely the Astron 6 team understands these films and uses their ideas to create their own story. There are elements of comedy, horror, drama, and psychedelia in Cool Guys, but most of all, it's just entertaining.
There are a few sci-fi/horror shorts in the package as well, my favorites are the previously featured Lazer Ghosts 2: Return to Laser Cove and Inferno of the Dead. Lazer Ghosts 2 is a brilliant lampoon of late '80s direct to video sci-fi features. It is a ten minute trailer reel of insane awesomeness that links lasers, ghosts, the evil ghost of Albert Einstein, scientists in lab coats, and tired cops spitting tired cliched lines. The film is amazing, and packs more laughs into its ten minute run time than most films do in ninety. It is also worth looking at as a preview to their first feature, Manborg, which takes on a lot of the same aesthetic, only with more ambition and a longer run time. Inferno of the Dead is much more deadpan. A couple wakes up to find that the world has been infested with zombies, only these zombies don't want to eat your brains, they just wanna hang out. The zombies become more like an irritating high school bud who needed a place to crash than a malevolent presence, they just won't leave. They watch TV late into the night with the volume up to high, they drink the last of the milk, they are just bothersome. I loved Inferno of the Dead for its ability to lampoon a genre without seeming like too much of a hokey joke.
There are about ten or so more shorts on this set, and while they aren't all awesome, they are all certainly very good. They range from the stop motion horror antics of Insanophenia to the crazed horror buddy comedy action sci-fi FX thriller Heart of Karl, to the satire of sword and sandal features, Goreblade. All of them are really funny, and a couple of them even show a some real heart, like the buddy film Nobodies, which I thought was actually kind of touching in its own goofball way. Astron-6 are ready to make a name for themselves in the wider film world, and with Manborg and Father's Day under their belt, I'm sure we can look forward to a lot more awesomeness on the horizon. If you invest a couple of bucks in this set, I can almost guarantee you'll feel like you got your money's worth.
The Disc:
Since these shorts were shot on all manner of different media with all sorts of different output goals, the A/V quality is all over the board, but I will say that it looks as good as it needs to to get the point across. Some shorts are non-anamorphic widescreen, some are anamorphic, some like Lazer Ghosts look like they were never intended to go beyond a computer screen, but after a few minutes you forget the technical shortcomings and focus on content, which is king after all, right?
These discs feature a ton of bonus features which, added onto the short films in the set, make the total runtime somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 minutes. There are at least a half a dozen commentaries for the films, all of which are worth listening to, if for no other reason than to hear the guys bitch at each other. There is also some behind the scenes footage from Lazer Ghosts, as well as production stills and bonus shorts that haven't been seen before. It would be ridiculous for me to name them all, but rest assured, if you want more content, there's always more on this disc.
Troma stuff is usually not my bag. I respect them for sticking around for so long, but most of their original productions don't do anything for me. However, their acquisitions are a different story entirely, and this is one of the best. Please pick this one up, it's fucking great!