12 Inches of Dangling Fury review

12 Inches of Dangling Fury

By Gary M. Lumpp • Mar 12th, 2003 • Category: Comedy, Reviews

This is hard.

I’ve never seen a Chris Seaver movie before, or anything he’s done under the Low Budget Pictures banner. By reading the description of 12 Inches on the back of the DVD cover, I had an idea going in what to expect - a cheesy, no budget comedy. But as the saying goes: dying is easy, comedy is hard.

The “story,” if you can call it that, is about female demon hunter (Kok) who moves into a house owned by Jesus Christ where Hugh Jackman lives. Yes, it’s as ridiculous as it sounds. Really though it’s just an excuse to toss together a bunch of humorous (at least to the filmmakers) ideas and make a movie out of them. For example, Jesus is portrayed like a wannabe hip hopper, complete with gold dollar sign chain and gang signs. The Asian character has all of her lines poorly dubbed. You get the idea.

The problem for me is that I didn’t find anything funny about this movie. I’m sure there’s a group out there who will enjoy it, but I’m afraid I’m not a member. I don’t think fake bad teeth are inherently funny. I don’t enjoy watching someone smell their own farts (badly dubbed farting sound included - or maybe it was just someone off camera). I’m not a fan of a bunch of bad sex and bodily fluid jokes, and I’m not shocked when someone uses certain “naughty” words (you know the ones I’m talking about).

12 Inches is a cheapo comedy, and proud of it. There aren’t any production values - someone’s house is the main location, and at one point they shoot at a nearby baseball field. Props include bad wigs (again, sorry, a bad wig alone isn’t funny to me), bad fake beards, bad fake teeth, and a plastic penis. Most shots are lit with one bright light, casting harsh shadows on the plentiful movie and Transformer posters that fill the walls. At least everything was in focus, and framed decently enough.

I’m sure there’s an audience out there for this kind of short (I hesitate to call it a feature, clocking in well under an hour). The DVD features the usual outtakes and bloopers, which reveal that at least the filmmakers thought it was funny. And for those of you wondering, yes, Thary Kok does get topless (although I couldn’t access her photo gallery in the extras section - or was that another joke?). If you like your comedies cheap and broad, 12 Inches is right up your alley. The rest of us will just have to keep looking for our comedy elsewhere, and that’s getting harder every day.

Director: Chris Seaver
Writer: Chris Seaver
Cast: Thary Kok, Chris Seaver, and various bodily fluids and 80s sitcom references.
Score: *
Web Site: Low Budget Pictures