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Ian Stanley reviews

Distributed by
Image Entertainment

Cert: N/R

Running time: 84 minutes

Year: 2002

Pressing: 2002

Region(s): 2, PAL

Chapters: 30 plus extras

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0

Languages: English

Subtitles: None

Fullscreen: 1.33:1

16:9-Enhanced: No

Macrovision: No

Disc Format: DVD 5

Price: $19.99

Extras: Shocking Home Video of Drug Abuse Gone Out Of Control, Trailer, Music Video, T*t F**k joke on PBS, 3 Easter Eggs

---

Director:

Kevin Booth

"This country is a big terrorist pig. This country is a big bloated celebrity that thinks it doesn’t have to pay the cover charge" – - Doug Stanhope ( abridged ;)

After the passing of Bill Hicks I pretty much lost interest in the American Stand-up comedy scene, actually pretty much all stand-up comedy… There didn’t seem to be any comedians around who were worth the time, yammering on endlessly about their family and how funny their kids are… Yes, ‘Dennis Leary,’ I’m looking at you! Based on some good reviews (as I’d never heard of the guy), I picked up this disc in a special offer, and it’s turned out to be a damned good buy as it’s hysterically funny and gets an alarming number of spins.

Doug Stanhope seems to be a comedian whose star is on the rise. He’s picked up a co-presenting gig on Comedy Central’s ‘The Man Show’ (shown here on Sky’s ‘FX’ Channel) and his stand-up performances have garnered many excellent notices, apparently winning the ‘Stratmore Press Award’ at 2002’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival. ‘Word Of Mouth’ is his first DVD, the second is due for release around August time and, based on the strength of this, I for one plan on picking it up.

Like Bill Hicks, Stanhope is not a comedian for all tastes, he walks on stage half drunk and then proceeds do drink and smoke his way through the following 78 minutes of his set, unleashing some of the most near-the-knuckle material I’ve heard in recent years. Please don’t have visions of Bernard Manning here, Stanhope doesn’t come across as a bigot, but more as an angry, funny and incisive bar room philosopher.

He certainly doesn’t seem to be afraid of offending anyone though, that this show was recorded on May 11th 2002 makes it very surprising that he does material about 9/11 and Al Quaeda. Touchy subjects even now. Like Bill Hicks before him he laments the move towards prevalent conservative attitudes in American society, his skit on vice cops and vice laws is worth the purchase price of the disc alone.

"Great things don’t have to tell you they’re great.
You’ll figure it out on your own!" - Doug Stanhope

When, as global citizens, we’re repeatedly force-fed America’s re-found sense of patriotism, it’s refreshing to see someone who’s not afraid to criticise his own country. Stanhope incisively skewers the hypocrisy of modern day living, politics and religion. He controversially (correctly?) proclaims that the attacks on America are resultant from the country’s interfering in foreign lands, in such a way that would not be tolerated were the positions reversed. Predictably George Bush also comes in for a kicking with some of the set’s cruellest and funniest material.

He is also not afraid to poke fun at himself and show himself to be no better than anyone else, he openly admits to having used hookers and frequenting porn shops in his past. He also has two hysterical stories that he recounts that show he’s not above laughing at himself as well as others. Obviously the truth of these stories are unknown, one’s about using a sex toy and one is about getting business from an ugly transvestite hooker, and both had me gasping for breath from laughing so hard!

The image on this disc is perfectly acceptable, shot on video but a good picture all the same. It’s presented in 4:3 Full-screen ratio, and I did notice a few compression artefacts in a couple of places, they were distracting but nothing too serious and over very quickly. The sound is in stereo and is nothing special. Being an independent release the sound does suffer a bit as sometimes you can clearly catch conversations that are going on in the audience and this can become a bit distracting. For most of the time though the sound is perfectly fine. The 84 Minute main Feature is divided up into a healthy 30 chapters.

Extras wise, we have quite a few for an independent release, including what must rank as some of the strangest I’ve ever seen.

The first is titled ‘Shocking Home Video of Drug Abuse Gone Out Of Control,’ it is a 29 minute video of Doug Stanhope and his friend Mat Becker tripping on mushrooms in a hotel room. It’s strange but very funny stuff, mostly because of Doug ranting and rambling on about hookers, his life being a shambles and trying to make a connection and Becker cracking up at just about everything he says.

There is a short interview clip called ‘T*t F**k joke on PBS’ (0:49) in which he advises TV censorship has the strange effect of working well for him as a stand-up comedian. It’s shot with a nightvision lens and the sound is pretty bad on it due to a siren going off.

There are also 3 Easter eggs on the disc, one is a clip of Stanhope sitting on the toilet tearing pages from the bible (0:59), one is a conversation between him, his wife and Don King (strip bar owner) in an elevator (0:14) and the last is a short video of Stanhope skitting a waitress in Don King’s strip bar (1:24). Apart from the ‘toilet’ clip none of them are particularly good quality due to limitations inherent in the filming of them. Still they go some way to show that Stanhope is a genuinely funny guy even when he’s not working from a prepared set.

Rounding things up we have a trailer and a music video, which is the song that plays over the end of the drug abuse extra and seems to be based on various lines of Stanhope’s, sung by a girl punk band… The song’s not really my thing but some may like it…

It’s nice that ‘Sacred Cow’ made the effort to put some value added material on this disc when so many of the majors don’t even bother to try!

In closing, I can easily recommend this to those who like their comedy raw and angry and who are not easily offended. The disc has acceptable picture and sound quality and a few decent extras.

Please note that as an independent release it is only available from the website of the production company Sacred Cow.com

If you’re still not convinced there are a few downloadable clips to view that might help you make up your mind. The disc turned up for me about a week after I got the shipping notice, but I’ll admit I did find the shipping charges to the UK a bit steep.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
OVERALL

Review copyright © Ian Stanley, 2004.

DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.

PC games reviewed by the editor are on: