Cable access spoof a shock to the system

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This article was published 05/07/2019 (2625 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The five members of Winnipeg film collective Astron-6 have seemed to go their separate ways after releasing a series of amazing (I was going to say “respectable” and thought better of it) feature films such as the slasher pastiche Father’s Day and the mock giallo The Editor.

Steven Kostanski recently directed the SyFy TV movie Leprechaun Returns and Jeremy Gillespie co-directed, with Kostanski, the 2016 Lovecraftian horror movie The Void. Both are deeply involved in the Toronto film industry in the art departments for the companies behind such films such as It and The Shape of Water.

The DVD release of the web series Divorced Dad, starring/directed by and/or produced by remaining members Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks and Conor Sweeney, feels like the last kick at the Astron-6 can, especially since one of its extras, the short film Chowboys: An American Folktale, is billed as “the final film from Astron-6.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zViTN7juNGo&feature=youtu.be

If this is it, well, it’s a suitably deranged effort. Think, ’90s community cable access TV meets David Lynch.

Kennedy plays “Divorced Dad.” The character’s name is never revealed and we never get a hint of the wife and children that we presume are in his background. The credits of the show keep it vague, stating it was all “inspired by a dream.”

We assume that dream is of a bitterly divorced guy coping with the trauma of break-up by hosting a show about the social options available to the newly single. But a minute into the show, a kind of chaos takes over as Divorced Dad spars with his seething co-host Gilles (Gilles Degagne), the control room fragments the picture and sound into shards and the designated guest, a hostile stuntman (played by Brooks) demonstrates how to make your own bulletproof vest out of a safety vest and a metal lunch tray, with predictably bloody results.

Soon, the whole world of Divorced Dad feels very dreamlike, if not flat-out delirious. An episode devoted to fitness sees Divorced Dad working out while continuously vomiting up some insidious blue energy drink.

In one episode, Divorced Dad seems to be the only person on set who can hear a persistent whining noise, which he fixes by prodding a mysterious key out of his bloody ear canal. Soon, Divorced Dad is trying unsuccessfully to extricate himself from a vacant retail space in what feels like a nod to the sequence in Twin Peaks: The Return where Agent Cooper is trying to escape the Black Lodge.

Astron-6 made a total of five episodes of Divorced Dad, but they apparently got kicked off YouTube with the notorious “My Sis” episode, wherein our hero hosts a fundraiser for the titular organization, which he believes to be a Big Sister-type organization.

He is terribly, terribly wrong.

Given Winnipeg’s own history with colourful cable access shows (The Pollock and Pollock Gossip Hour, Math with Marty), a straight spoof might have sufficed. But with Astron-6, one must anticipate a layer of transgressive horror, and the resulting shock to the system takes the project beyond parody.

Kino-Lorber has released the series on Blu-ray, in addition to DVD, which is ironic — like most of Astron-6’s library, let’s face it, it might best be viewed on a stressed VHS tape.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @FreepKing