It can be difficult to be a Residents fan.
For 50 years now, this anonymous group has been making music that is an acquired taste. And the style of their music has changed so radically over the years that each era has its fans and detractors. Then there’s the volume of material—one would pay a pretty penny to acquire even the standard versions of each album and compilation, let alone the multiple reissues many titles have gone through. They have also consistently churned out a lot of swag, per their label’s motto of “BUY OR DIE!”
Despite their live shows consistently being extremely theatrical, it is still surprising they initially tried their hand at filmmaking before deciding to become musicians. That endeavor, Vileness Fats, is legendary for the footage which has been released to date. What is available is dreamy black-and-white of people walking around crouched in short costumes, with openings only for their head and one hand. Just watching them makes my knees ache in sympathy. There’s also full-sized people. Oh, and there’s Siamese twin wrestlers. I almost forgot, there’s also creatures that are basically a head atop a shopping cart with looks to be a large drill on the front of it.
In 2022, the group came full circle by incorporating the footage from that abandoned film into Triple Trouble and, with that, they finally had a feature film. Unfortunately, the best moments in it are those glimpses of footage from the older, never-to-be-finished movie.
Dustin York plays a guy becoming unglued from reality. This is familiar territory for the group, even if their ideas had previously been confined to music. In flashbacks, we see York was a priest, but he gave that up to be a plumber. He becomes obsessed with a runny white goo he keeps finding in drain pipes.
This becomes the basis of a conspiracy theory building in his mind, though it never really gels into anything I thought this character actually believed. It is more like he keeps accumulating bits from different experiences he has, and he just kind of mushes them together into something resembling a belief system. It’s like if the end result in the game Katamari Damacy was forming a religion from the disparate elements you collect. Even so, I have no idea where his belief the fungus is from the moon came from.
The biggest problem with this movie is I didn’t believe anything that happened in it. I have seen worse acting, though I did not believe any of the performances. Much happens that is superficially “weird”, but I didn’t find any of it particularly interesting.
That said, some unique elements of this film are pretty annoying. A drone equipped with AI is accompanies York most of the time. Named Cherry, the drone has an animated face and a female voice. I honestly was never sure if Cherry really exists or not, but she at least provides a device for York to deliver his exposition dumps to. At first, I thought he was breaking the fourth wall and talking directly to the audience, something which usually annoys me. Over the course of the film, Cherry becomes increasingly glitchy, though I didn’t find this added much to the plot.
York is also revealed to be the son of the deceased Randy Rose, one of the personas the lead singer of the band has adopted at intervals. In a bit of self-mythologizing, Rose is described as a “rock star”. I may be a fan of The Residents, but that is a combination of words I would never associate with them. There’s a subplot involving crematorium owners who had stolen Rose’s ashes, but that doesn’t go anywhere.
Anywho, that familial connection is what creates the opportunity to use that footage from Vileness Fats. A nice bonus on this blu-ray is the inclusion of all the footage from that which has been made available so far. Unfortunately, that footage, whether on its own or incorporated in the feature film, makes Triple Trouble feel like thin gruel in comparison.
I really, really, really tried to be generous in my assessment of this film, but I found Triple Trouble to be only intermittently interesting. This will doubtlessly be a once-and-done viewing for me, not unlike my feelings towards much of their musical output in this century so far. For both forms of media, I find the appeal of their earliest work, like Vileness Fats, to be far more intriguing.
Dir: Homer Flynn and The Residents
Starring Dustin York, Isabella Barbie (as the voice of “Cherry”), Isabelle Ellingson
Watched on MVD blu-ray