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Life & Arts

Twisted 'Live Freaky' should die and be forgotten

Director John Roecker goes for shock, ends up with a reel of schlock

by JASON GAGNON
The Daily Cougar

The publicized premise for writer/director John Roecker’s stop-motion animated sleaze fest Live Freaky! Die Freaky! is pretty interesting. In the year 3069, the Earth is a desolate wasteland when a nomad stumbles upon a copy of Vincent Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter. The nomad determines that Charles Manson is the new messiah and seeks to spread his message to the people. 

Of course, the problem is that this clever idea has only about a minute of screen time. Instead, the movie descends into a spoof of the events portrayed in Helter Skelter (the Manson Family, the Sharon Tate murders) that are only concerned with being as offensive as possible. In fact, the film starts out warning audiences that the following hour and some change are not for the easily offended and if the idea of graphic puppet sex, a cross mutating into a swastika formed of penises and a bucket full of claymation gore turns you off, you probably shouldn’t see this movie.

That said, the film limits itself to an audience strictly composed of genre fans who, honestly, are way too jaded to be shocked or repulsed by things Troma Studios, The Aristocrats or Takashi Miike have already expertly done.

What is offensive about Live Freaky! Die Freaky!, however, is that it is blatant intellectual plagiarism in the most disgusting sense. Roecker seems to have taken the Cliff’s Notes for Helter Skelter, changed everyone’s names to now begin with H (Sharon Tate is Sharon Hate, Charlie Manson is Charlie Hanson) and stuck them in the middle of base, juvenile attempts at humor that would make Steve Stiffler embarrassed.

The filmmakers fail to realize that having a character go off on long (Roecker needed some editing help with his script) and despicable diatribes about, for instance, a gay orgy involving kids with Down Syndrome is not funny. Bad taste is only sweet when there is an aim to the insanity, and this movie definitely has none.

Roecker has said he considers the film to be art terrorism, his Chuck U. Farley to today’s American cinema, but when you view the flick you can see these are extremely pretentious statements by a man who knows the only selling point of his flick is that he’s got punk rock stars like Tim Armstrong, Billie Joe Armstrong, Benji and Joel Madden voicing the characters. The voice work is all pretty terrible (with the exception of Billie Joe Armstrong, Theo Kogan and Asia Argento) and weakens an already crippled film. Tim Armstrong is unintelligible as ever, which makes you wonder why he is narrating the story, aside from the fact that he funded the debacle.

There are some pretty cool animation and lighting techniques used (the "Creepy Crawl" song being the standout), and it was nice to hear Kogan (formerly of the Lunachicks) sing something new. That’s where the positives for this disaster end. This will undoubtedly undo Roecker’s once blossoming film career after his documentary work with Green Day and its "secret" side project, The Network. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Live Freaky! Die Freaky!Directed by: John RoeckerStarring: Billie Joe Armstrong, Asia ArgentoYou’ve Got Bad Taste ProductionsVerdict: A horrible waste of a great premise squandered by literary plagiarism, infantile humor and some terrible voice casting. This should be buried and forgotten.

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