I didn’t realize I had a VHS collection until it had reached
a modest size. In fact, it was a completely accidental thing. Some folks have
comfort foods, and well, I have comfort films. Initially, all I really wanted was to have access to all the movies I had fond recollections of seeing on local TV as a kid. That eventually
expanded to include all the flicks with haunting box art that I was never
allowed to rent as a child. Then there came my desire to find a lot of the
brutally edited-for-television flicks I enjoyed as a teenager on USA Network’s
Up All Night. It was a good hobby in that it was cheap and easy to track a lot
of this stuff down. Places like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster, which had
absorbed cool libraries from the mom and pop shops they had taken over years before, were
dying off and getting rid of this stuff for pennies, literally. It also brought
to me a sense of warmth and nostalgia from a secure point in my life. The fact
that I had purchased a lot of these titles on VHS wasn’t intentional either. It
just so happened that a lot of these movies never made the leap to DVD. Collecting sort of took on a historical precedence as I became aware of
exactly how many films were likely going to slip through the cracks as schools
of VHS-only, out-of-print tapes were being tilled into landfills across the
country. You know how they have those statistical ads on television that tell
you how often a burglary or sexual assault occurs? Well, just as horrific to me
was the fact that a lot of films were dying, potentially never to be
rediscovered, around the clock. So, my collecting criteria expanded to
include a lot of stuff I’d never even heard of. It has become less about
nostalgia and more about actually discovering lesser known titles and
preserving them by sharing through screenings. It’s viral magic.
As with any hobby, there are probably people out there who
collect based purely on the “obscurity” of the title. When you’re collecting,
it’s good to be aware that there are two brands of obscurity. The first and
most commonly sought-after type of obscurity is the kind that is brought upon
by the rarity of the item. This is perhaps the most dangerous type of obscurity
because a lot of people will celebrate a title for its sheer rarity even if it
happens to be a total piece of shit. It can create a deceptive hype around an
ultimately disappointing title. The second kind of obscurity is when there is a
title that is relatively common and yet is not very well known. This can be
equally deceptive, as it can cheat you out of seeing a lot of great stuff.
However, there’s also the other side of the coin, where something might be
obscure because it is a total piece of shit that fucking sucks soooooo bad –
and this brings us to “King Frat” on the All American Video label, a subsidiary
of Mogul.
This movie is most often referred to as an “Animal House”
Clone, though it is nothing of the sort. The process of cloning something would
imply some sort of sophisticated process, whereas “King Frat” is about as
scientific as shitting into an empty bottle of Old English; instead, it would
be more fair to call it a blatant ripoff, and it’s a complete fucking mess. Don’t
let people fool you with that “so bad it’s good” bullshit, either. It’s
actually so bad it’s sobering. The night I decided to watch this, I was
actually totally trashed, so I was in the right frame of mind to enjoy a
sophomoric comedy, but it completely assailed my buzz and left it for dead.
There’s nothing to synopsize in terms of plot because there isn’t any. There is
no real dilemma, nor is there any adversity for the characters to go up
against. It’s basically just a bunch of crap that happens. In fact, there aren’t
even any characters really. Instead, you get a handful of people who are just
consistently on screen. About the most development we get is for some 50 year
old Native American dude who gets dumped from the movie about a quarter-way in.
Other than that, there are no arcs. The only guy who stands out is 41 year old
John DiSanti as JJ “Gross-out” Gumbroski, who is essentially “King Frat”’s
Belushi, only DiSanti comes across like a far less charismatic Joe Besser. You don’t even really get the sense that these
guys are rebelling against anything so much as they are just being assholes
since the movie doesn’t really have a main antagonist that’s out to get them.
Instead, we just have a bunch of loosely strung vignettes with them carrying
out unlikely pranks, such as putting smoldering weed in a funeral home’s air
vent so the service turns into a laugh riot. After that, Gross-Out appears in a
fart contest to get beer money. At some point some dipshit in a gorilla suit
gets his penis stuck in a girl, which really makes no sense. Then, the movie
concludes when the barely present token black guy gets beat up by the square white
guy frat. Otherwise, the jokes are impotent, the nudity is scant, and the
annoying theme song is wielded with maddening repetition.
About the only kind thing I can say is that it is
competently shot. Other than that, the actors and script collide to create a
soulless vacuum. The gross-out humor is “Garbage
Pail Kids: The Movie”-caliber - pathetic when you consider "King Frat" only meets a bench mark set by a film designed to appeal to stupid little kids. The most debilitating
absence is that of a legitimate trial or tribulation, and the conclusive "triumph" is just sort of tacked on. These are supposed
to be misfit characters, and yet there’s never any downside for them to bounce
back from. However, this isn't to say that this film couldn't have been good somehow. There are plenty of films in this vein that have virtually no plot, and yet kick copious amounts of ass because they're witty and have great performances. Films such as "Hot Moves" and "The Party Animal" prove this. Unfortunately there is noone on Michael Zorek's level anywhere in this film. Overall, this is an uneventful bag of shit that deserves to remain
obscure. Consider this a head on a pike and ignore the hype.
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