Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival

When you hear the title, Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival, you may think it's just a gaudy, violent and crude occasion for low-lifes who laugh at poo poo jokes to come out in public and scare the normals. I was hoping for that more than anything when Spike and Mike came to Flagstaff's Orpheum theater and it more than delivered.

But more than just inappropriate humor, Spike and Mike have aimed to showcase short animation that is foreign or independent, the type of artistic sweat that you may never see otherwise. The aim of the hosts may just be to act indecent, but they also warm the artistic heart.

It's also a throwback to a forgotten culture. I remember growing up that there used to be short animations before feature films. Now what do you get? Bradford fucking Howe, the Screenvision guy trying to sell you a damn cellphone or shell your soul over to the Navy. Unless it's Pixar, you don't get an appetizer before the main event. You get commercials and that's disgusting, not to mention soulless.

The 70's and 80's were full of independence: independent theaters, film fests, underground comics and animated shorts. These days, everything is a cookie-cutter chain store selling you shit from China. Things like Avatar and Wall*E should have big stickers that say MADE IN TAIWAIN all over it. Our entertainment is fake and boring and it's always been this way, but at least thirty years ago we had other options.

Spike and Mike (and little theaters like the Orpheum) are keeping ideas of independence alive. Their festival is brilliant, inspired and above all, controversial. It's not some bullshit, wiped-up and glossed over film about how we all need to be nice or save the environment. It's a feeding frenzy for those feverish primal urges everyone gets and a damn good excuse to get drunk while enjoying "the simple pleasures" in life.

It began with the eerie "Who's Hungry?" by David Oochs, which luckily I have found on YouTube. It's an eerie, dark retelling of Hansel and Gretel, perhaps the way it should have been told, but with some strong imagery invoking Hostel, a hand reaching from a blender, grabbing at a little girl's skull.

There were a lot of zombie flicks, such as Chainsaw Nurse and Touchdawn of the Dead. Zombies are just so easy to film, yet (as Shaun of the Dead proved) so good for humor. There were also rambunctious owls, dogs with electric collars and all the things you can dream of.

There were the occasional penis cartoons, satisfying the most primal desires, and maybe it's mindless entertainment. It's still beautiful and funny and important. Animation is an art that modern audiences are losing, Pixar nonwithstanding. Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Animation Festival is a celebration of an unappreciated, underground culture. We need more things like this in the world.