HEY...STOP STABBING ME!

Produced and Written by Patrick Casey and Worm Miller
Directed by Worm Miller
Edited by Richard Carole

Herman - Patrick Casey
Damon - Andy Kriss
Carrie - Maria Morales
Chartreuse - Sean Hall

I dreaded viewing HEY...STOP STABBING ME! about as much as I've come to dread viewing a Jess Franco release. Over the years I've only seen a few truly enjoyable sov comedies; most fail miserably and I truly hate putting myself through the Chinese water torture of screening them. I think it might be the comic timing that falls short, but I can't bring myself to rewatch any of those past efforts to confirm my theory.

Viewing track record aside, Sub Rosa's lackluster packaging and a painfully unfunny title would turn away would-be HEY...STOP STABBING ME! viewers as well. Outside presentation is something Sub Rosa has struggled with ever since the dvd release of RAVAGE, and the continuing stream of unattractive releases continues with this one. Any casual viewer will tell you that packaging is everything, especially when it comes to spontaneous rentals or purchases. 9 times out of 10 an ugly disc won't get shelf space in the chain stores.

No, viewing HEY...STOP STABBING ME! was not something I was looking forward to. But like the old cliche goes, "don't judge a book by it's cover," or in this case other crummy sov comedies. In an effort to pre-judge and get the most painfully watchable dreck through the dvd player first, in went HEY...STOP STABBING ME! Surprise, surprise, the movie is hands-down the best thing Sub Rosa has released in years.

Writers Patrick Casey and Worm Miller have a very cinematic style of presenting their material, something most sov moviemakers lack. They know the first rule of Funny is that the jokes must be humorous on the page. If they fail there then the jokes will fail on-screen. They know to keep their scenes short, another thing sov moviemakers struggle with. Comic timing is everything and the shorter the better. Quick and to the point. Bam, bam, bam! An audience knows when they're being set up and the freshness of a scene can be lost if too much time is taken. Take another Sub Rosa comedy as an example, INBRED REDNECKS. The only funny scenes in that movie are the non sequiturs that blow in from left field and blow out just as quickly. With HEY...STOP STABBING ME!, every scene has only the required information. We come into the scenes as late as possible and leave as early as possible.

Shorter scenes also means sov moviemakers have to come up with more scenes, another point of laziness that's not a problem for Casey or Miller.

Their story revolves around Casey's character Herman. A poor schmuck fresh from college who isn't prepared for the real world. Like me, he took a b.s. major and an even bigger b.s. minor, Comparative Lit, a course of study that will only quality a person to dig holes.

Casey's life after graduation is a never-ending stream of bad luck, or at least luck his sheltered self isn't prepared to handle. For Herman, walking into reality is like a Christian being thrown to the lions. The irony, of course, is that all his bad luck is disguised as good luck. He lucks his way into a new house after being thrown off campus and into a new job and girlfriend. His roommates are assholes, the job blows, and his nympho girlfriend....how can I put this...likes Pokemon. To top it off there's a sock monster living in his basement. No, the $200 budget wasn't spent on making a monster out of socks, it's the kind of beast that steals your socks leaving you with an unpaired sock.

With the arrival of the sock monster viewers will hopefully catch on that what they're watching is satirical Gen-X farce. HEY...STOP STABBING ME is born out of popular cinema but doesn't have the need to throw in instantly dated references, another trapping to which so many sov moviemakers fall prey. Casey and Miller are smarter than that, they focus on the repetitious nature of everyday banality for their laughs. During their commentary they even discuss this, "the rule of three," something can be funny one time, never funny twice, and downright hysterical a third time. Those guys might be on to something with that, but I have no idea what...

The commentary is different than most I've heard recently, it reminded me of Tim Ritter's on Sub Rosa's TRUTH OR DARE release. Neither Miller nor Casey take themselves seriously. They spend most of their time trying to get drunk and making fun of Maria Morales, the sole actress in their Amazing Schlock production company. Hopefully Maria will take their ribbing in stride, as Herman's Pokemon-loving girlfriend she's the best thing in the movie. Pixie cute, she possesses an amazing and deadpan sense of comic timing that she throws around with a confidence that steals every scene she's in. Too bad she didn't get a chance

The DVD also contains a short making-of feature that details the fate of the movie Casey and Miller tried to launch immediately prior to this one, and how that movie's demise paved the way for HEY...STOP STABBING ME!. There's also a short film titled "Magma Head" that's every bit as funny as the main feature. It's definitely a package worth picking up.

Amazing Schlock
Sub Rosa