Way back in the late 1980s, a few film producers thought it was interesting that “comedians,” like the late Andy Kaufman, amused themselves rather than entertained their audiences. After all, if people would pay actual money to be goaded and/or irritated, that might create a much simpler genre of filmmaking. This sentiment set the stage for 1991’s The Dark Backward, a cult curiosity (rather than a cult classic) that a small percentage of viewers who prize the bizarre clutch to their breasts.

This week, in “celebration” of its fifteenth anniversary screening last year, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released a Special Edition DVD, perhaps hoping that the Shakespearean quote that serves as its title, or its muttered reputation of being in the same general category as Tim Burton, David Lynch, or Terry Gilliam movies, will entice a new generation to give it a try.

To his credit, writer/director Adam Rifkin would probably be extremely flattered that this dismal little film is mentioned within the same stratosphere as even the worst of the aforementioned directors’ efforts. On the DVD’s special features, he repeatedly contends that the film was only financed because then-hot Judd Nelson was attached and the budget was so small. He figures that the production company probably didn’t even read the script.

Upon consideration, he’s probably right, because if they had, they would have joined the dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of others who eschewed it. The truly amazing thing about its creation is that Rifkin had the innocence of the naïve, and managed to get backing for a film he was allowed to both write and direct, yet this is what he chose to do with that freedom.

It’s not surprising that Nelson would latch onto the leading role of miserable, geeky, garbage man Marty Malt as a way of breaking his identification as a “brat packer,” but it’s wondrous that his participation lured the likes of Bill Paxton (energetically/hysterically playing what the director termed a “human cockroach”), Lara Flynn Boyle, Wayne Newton, Rob Lowe, and James Caan to also pitch in intemperate performances.

The plot is simplicity itself: a socially-inept idiot’s dreams of becoming a stand-up comic are given hope when a third arm grows out of his back — allowing his strident, insane, compost-chewing, corpse-molesting, fellow trashman to put together a joke/accordion nightclub act. Sadly, the film cannot even claim to be “original.” How to Get Ahead in Advertising took on the same sort of alienation (this time with a separate cranium growing out of the protagonist’s shoulder) to much better effect a full two years earlier.

Staggeringly, the extras on this “challenging” DVD are quirky, to say the most, and amateurish, to say the least. The cast and crew make excuses or rationalizations on the audio commentary, a 15th anniversary Q&A reveals that Judd Nelson doesn’t seem to understand what a microphone does, and the deleted scenes add garish insult to self-indulgent injury. The outtakes are interesting, however, because, like the film, they are diametrically opposed to most other movies. The latter usually contain much mirth as the actors laugh over screwed-up lines and unscripted behavior. The Dark Backward “bloopers” are largely indistinguishable from the rest of the film, with hardly a chuckle. (more…)