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“Jesus really can see me. And
he’s going to beat me brainless.”
 The
first third of this Aussie cult favorite is a harrowing, claustrophobic
mindfuck of incest and torture. And then it gets really weird.
Bad Boy Bubby is the story of 35 year old man-child (Hope), who’s
been kept locked up in a single concrete room by his demented mother all
his life. She warns him that he’ll die from poison gas if he ever goes
out, and leaves for work every morning wearing a gas mask, just to keep
him in line. Bubby’s mother feeds him, bathes him, and even fucks him,
nightly. With no outside stimuli to distract from the horror of his
existence – there’s no TV, no radio, no newspaper, no contact with the
outside world at all – Bubby’s only diversions are tearing the legs off of
cockroaches, and torturing his pet cat.
And that’s the whole first 20 fuckin’ minutes of the movie.
Eventually, Bubby’s drunken louse of a father shows up, kick-starting a
downward spiraling series of events that eventually land Bubby out on the
streets for the first time in his life. With no social references to work
with, and no language comprehension (he can only communicate by repeating
things he’s already heard, which have mostly been his mother screaming
about Jesus beating his ass) Bub drifts from one surreal encounter to
another, from a quickie sexual affair with a young Salvation Army worker,
to joining a rock band, to getting ass-fucked in jail by a shit-covered
maniac. Through it all, he retains his wide-eyed, child-like sense of
wonder, even when he’s being kicked unconscious by a bunch of angry women,
one of whom he’s just innocently groped.
Eventually, Bubby finds his place in the world, but not before he is
dragged through fifty different kinds of Hell. Same as me and you, really.
Except for the sleeping-with-mom parts.
Bad Boy Bubby is not only a demented masterpiece of pitch black
comedy, but it’s also something of a technical marvel. The film employed
32 different cinematographers, one for each different leg in Bubby’s
strange journey. Amazingly, the film still flows like one cohesive
tone-poem. And speaking of tones, the soundtrack is a binaural mix. This
was done so that you only hear what Bubby hears. An example of this
ingenious gimmick is the scene where Bubby’s bandmates have a serious
discussion about what to do with him – he’s just admitted to being the
‘Cling Wrap Killer’ – so they put a pair of headphones on him. Suddenly,
although you can clearly see the band arguing back and forth across the
table, all you hear on the soundtrack is the warm strings of the classical
music he’s listening to. You know what that is? That’s ART, Jack.
Nicholas Hope is perfect in the role of Bubby. He looks, and at
times, acts, like an autistic Roberto Benigni, right down to the wild
shock of black hair and the Grinch-y grin, and his skills at mimicking
whoever is around him is remarkable. His performance here is utterly
believable, which is quite an achievement, since everything that happens
to him is fucking crazy. He's like an Aussie Frankenstein here, a
bumbling, misunderstood monster trapped in an ever escalating series of
bizarre circumstances.
I was really impressed with this film. It’s certainly got enough sleazy
elements to classify as exploitation – incest, serial murder, animal
torture, prison rape, rock n’ roll – but it’s hardly trash. And although
the early scenes are harrowing and difficult to watch, the pay-off is
worth it, as this weird, savage world is seen for the first time through
the eyes of man who did not create any of it. Believe me, it’s much
funnier than it reads, and by the end, it actually manages to be
uplifting.
Bad Boy Bubby was (sorta) released in 1993, and spent a solid year
touring film festivals throughout Europe. It was actually the second
highest grossing film in Norway in ’93, and it did well in Australia and
the UK, as well. But For various reasons, it was never released here in
the US, so for many of us, this is out first chance to see it, and I
highly recommend that you do. You’ll never forget it.
Extras: There’s two fun, informative interviews, one with director
de Heer, and one with Nicholas Hope. There’s also a short
film that Hope used as a demo reel, wherein he plays an affable, but quite
insane, serial killer. There’s also the original theatrical trailer, and
various press items. All in all, a pretty great package.
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-Sleazegrinder
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