GLOBSTER

noun
globster (plural globsters)

An unidentified organic mass which has washed up on a beach.

anagrams: blogster

Chuck Norris you sick fuck. Taken from ‘Silent Rage’ 1982. 

The first time I watched Killer Nerd I almost immediately watched it again to make sure I hadn’t dreamt my White Whale. I took notes, sent texts and wrote e-mails. Maybe I was a-bit overzealous for a film that to most is certainly unwatchable but something in it struck me (the last time I laughed so hard at a movie I was stoned watching the Master of Disguise with Dana Carvey). It was the sort of viewing experience that made me want to screen capture every other second and find that single frame that would say it all. Needless to say I couldn’t find it. Killer Nerd is essentially the most hastily produced anti-bullying after school special imaginable. It’s a Cinderella story about a hopeless nerd who gets cool, dances at a goth club, almost does drugs and then ultimately is rejected. Battered and alone, he sets out on a quest for vengeance and none are spared as the wake of gore crescendos to a grisly and hilarious climax. Toby Radloff is a nerd. A big nerd. Radloff stars as the fictionalized nerd Harold Kunkle in the 1991 video release Killer Nerd. Radloff had somehow gained modern cult status as the resident weirdo on MTV after his depiction in Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor comic. Pekar had been doing the rounds on David Letterman and apparently at this time under-dog weirdo eccentrics had become a fascination. Somehow, Radloff had been appropriated by cultural interests and was now on MTV butted against Pauly Shore and Daniel Johnston. Actually that’s a pretty good comparison. Johnston was to pop music what briefly Radloff was to T.V./spring break, and at some point this film was produced. Radloff and Kunkle are interchangeable entities right up to the last half of the film where Kunkle kills everyone. Everyone dies, it’s very satisfying. With complete sincerity, Killer Nerd is one of the most strangely crafted and entertaining low budget champions I have ever come across. How it escaped myself and the recent pop cultural bolstering of ‘nerd’ culture is a mystery. Radloff, unintentionally or not, gives the rare performance of a lifetime without the crutch of a foil or ongoing love interest or anything. He essentially IS the film. Which gives Killer Nerd this sort of post-modern-Death-Of-A-Salesman introspection on a character helmed not only by an untrained actor but one who seems to be propped up in scenes unaware of what’s to come. The supplementary characters are even more cartoonish when placed beside Radloff’s effortlessly likeable incarnation of the nerd. Tony Zanoni plays ‘Leelee’, one of two bullies that get their heads blown off with dynamite. On occasion, Zanoni possesses this sort of Chrispin Glover-ish execution that seems promising but when I searched for his name on-line I found only wedding photos. Inexplicably, Killer Nerd appears to be shot on both film and VHS. Moments where they may have been accidentally rolling catch brief shots that give the film this weirdly documentarian hue. That sick feeling you get remembering your aunt’s basement or the smell of a kitchen at a house you were forced to have play dates seems to hang over the whole thing. Radloff, being the ‘genuine nerd’ he is (all questions regarding Autism, bi-polar, Aspergers, fetal-this or that and any other condition we may attach to the treatment of his performance and the making of the film have been left out of this review) seems casual in these impromptu settings now frozen in the 1991 landscape. There is a voyeurism to Killer Nerd that is very satisfying when viewing extras and countertops in the backdrop, both scarcely altered. I also just want to say that I found myself constantly thinking of Kenneth Anger, though I highly doubt the filmmakers ever did. It’s a dirty film with dirty ideas and fluid execution. I don’t think writer/director/producers Mark Steven Bosko & Wayne A. Harold intended Killer Nerd to be some grand piece of outsider art, but for me that’s what it is. It’s like finding a notepad in the rain outside a middle school. Some parts are washed away and don’t make sense and the rest is so funny you only feel fortunate to have found it. 

The first time I watched Killer Nerd I almost immediately watched it again to make sure I hadn’t dreamt my White Whale. I took notes, sent texts and wrote e-mails. Maybe I was a-bit overzealous for a film that to most is certainly unwatchable but something in it struck me (the last time I laughed so hard at a movie I was stoned watching the Master of Disguise with Dana Carvey).

It was the sort of viewing experience that made me want to screen capture every other second and find that single frame that would say it all. Needless to say I couldn’t find it.

Killer Nerd is essentially the most hastily produced anti-bullying after school special imaginable. It’s a Cinderella story about a hopeless nerd who gets cool, dances at a goth club, almost does drugs and then ultimately is rejected. Battered and alone, he sets out on a quest for vengeance and none are spared as the wake of gore crescendos to a grisly and hilarious climax.

Toby Radloff is a nerd. A big nerd.

Radloff stars as the fictionalized nerd Harold Kunkle in the 1991 video release Killer Nerd. Radloff had somehow gained modern cult status as the resident weirdo on MTV after his depiction in Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor comic. Pekar had been doing the rounds on David Letterman and apparently at this time under-dog weirdo eccentrics had become a fascination. Somehow, Radloff had been appropriated by cultural interests and was now on MTV butted against Pauly Shore and Daniel Johnston. Actually that’s a pretty good comparison. Johnston was to pop music what briefly Radloff was to T.V./spring break, and at some point this film was produced.

Radloff and Kunkle are interchangeable entities right up to the last half of the film where Kunkle kills everyone.

Everyone dies, it’s very satisfying.

With complete sincerity, Killer Nerd is one of the most strangely crafted and entertaining low budget champions I have ever come across.

How it escaped myself and the recent pop cultural bolstering of ‘nerd’ culture is a mystery.

Radloff, unintentionally or not, gives the rare performance of a lifetime without the crutch of a foil or ongoing love interest or anything. He essentially IS the film. Which gives Killer Nerd this sort of post-modern-Death-Of-A-Salesman introspection on a character helmed not only by an untrained actor but one who seems to be propped up in scenes unaware of what’s to come. The supplementary characters are even more cartoonish when placed beside Radloff’s effortlessly likeable incarnation of the nerd. Tony Zanoni plays ‘Leelee’, one of two bullies that get their heads blown off with dynamite. On occasion, Zanoni possesses this sort of Chrispin Glover-ish execution that seems promising but when I searched for his name on-line I found only wedding photos.

Inexplicably, Killer Nerd appears to be shot on both film and VHS. Moments where they may have been accidentally rolling catch brief shots that give the film this weirdly documentarian hue. That sick feeling you get remembering your aunt’s basement or the smell of a kitchen at a house you were forced to have play dates seems to hang over the whole thing. Radloff, being the ‘genuine nerd’ he is (all questions regarding Autism, bi-polar, Aspergers, fetal-this or that and any other condition we may attach to the treatment of his performance and the making of the film have been left out of this review) seems casual in these impromptu settings now frozen in the 1991 landscape. There is a voyeurism to Killer Nerd that is very satisfying when viewing extras and countertops in the backdrop, both scarcely altered. I also just want to say that I found myself constantly thinking of Kenneth Anger, though I highly doubt the filmmakers ever did.

It’s a dirty film with dirty ideas and fluid execution. I don’t think writer/director/producers Mark Steven Bosko & Wayne A. Harold intended Killer Nerd to be some grand piece of outsider art, but for me that’s what it is. It’s like finding a notepad in the rain outside a middle school. Some parts are washed away and don’t make sense and the rest is so funny you only feel fortunate to have found it. 

Cavalcade Literary Magazine Vol. 2

Cavalcade Literary Magazine Vol. 2