Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (2002)

Posted on Apr 20, 2005 under Comedy, Sci-fi |

Directed by Doug Miles
Written by Tax Hauser
Starring
- Lloyd Floyd
- Peter Graves
- James Seay
- Steve Pendleton
- Frank Gerster

My experiences in the past with “Tiger-Lilied” films have not been great. On the other hand, my most recent foray into the genre was Night of the Day of the Dawn of the Son of the Bride of the Return of the Revenge of the Terror of the Attack of the Evil Mutant Hellbound Flesh Eating Subhumanoid Living Dead, Part 2 (1991), so just about anything would look better.

Oh, make up your own punchline.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s your insta-background: In 1966, Woody Allen got ahold of a Japanese spy film (Kokusai himitsu keisatsu: Kagi no kagi (1965), if you must know) and then got a bunch of friends together to dub a new and humorous voice track. The gag has been used several times since: A bunch of L.A. comedians (including some unknown guy named Jay Leno) took the old B-movie The Hideous Sun Demon (1959) and redubbed it under the startlingly original title of What’s Up, Hideous Sun Demon (1983) (available now on DVD as Revenge of the Sun Demon). There was also the aforementioned Night of the Day of the Dawn…, which had the hubris to try the same schtick on George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (proof positive that Hell takes advanced reservations); more recently, Steve Oedekerk gave us Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002), which combines the Tiger Lily gag with the modern technological trick of “Forrest-Gumping” an actor into the old footage.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell takes as its basis/victim the old B-movie Killers From Space (1954), which I just happened to review only last week. Boy, what are the odds of that? And the new plot, which the astute will deduce from the new title, is about a different kind of invasion — of homosexuals!

“So! Did somebody order a ‘latex fantasy’ in here?”

As part of Project Manhole, 30,000 homosexuals are lured to ground zero in Sodom Flats with the promise of a Barbra Streisand concert. The bomber The Enola Gaybasher then drops a huge bomb on them. (Given that this footage in the original was used by courtesy of the Department of Defense, we’re looking at twice-repurposed footage here.) Unfortunately, the bomb goes awry, landing just to the north of Inbred, TX, represented with some new black-&-white digital footage. Mind you, the new bits involving Inbred amount to very, very little; I think that director Doug Miles couldn’t resist doing a little bit of primitive Forrest-Gumping¹ of his own.

Well, project director Dr. Fartin (a revoiced Peter Graves) — and that’s pronounced the French way, “far-TAHN” — is a little upset that his program to remove these gays went so awry. But things are about to get worse for him; when a flashing light mysteriously brings his plane down, he awakens on the operating table of the ping-pong eyed aliens. (Gee, I’m glad I didn’t make a “My HMO won’t cover this!” joke in my review of the original, because of course that’s the first thing out of Fartin’s mouth here.) He is taken to meet their leader, a lisping homosexual alien who apprises Fartin of the sex-change operation he just underwent. He is now, himself, a homosexual!

So THAT’S where the budget went.

When Dr. Fartin stumbles back onto the base, he insists he’s all right — in fact, he’s “fabulous” — but base surgeon Major Problemo (with actor Shep Menken’s very visible Jewishness played to the hilt) quickly notices that Fartin has himself become a homosexual. Colonel Butts (James Seay) immediately encourages Fartin’s wife Helen (Barbara Bestar) to apply all of her heterosexual charms to turning his head back. Insert footage of a model wearing Helen’s dress displaying her G-string. Also insert footage of Dr. Ziggy Freud (also Lloyd Floyd, who actually played all inserted characters who don’t display breasts),a helium addict, sitting ostensibly in the other corner of the room from the other characters and explaining about how maybe internalized guilt from the attempt to eliminate all those gays is behind Dr. Fartin’s team change.

Unfortunately, Helen’s charms don’t quite measure up to the task,; even in their hot-and-torrid loving (yup, more edited-in footage), Fartin has to look at a picture of Teddy Kennedy (!!!) to keep going. And in the morning, he finds himself relieved of his duties at the Project — after all, if he can’t control these same-sex urges, how can he be trusted with the military’s anti-homosexuality project? Why, he can’t even keep from using the word “fabulous” every other sentence!

Yes, this is the least phallic microphone I could find.

After much of the plot follows the general outlines of the original, he’s once again caught and forced to recount his abduction experience. (Gee, that HMO line was so good, we get to hear it again!) The aliens, naturally, are from Uranus — yes, you should have seen that one coming — and are the appointed protectors of homosexuals throughout the universe. And because their efforts to engender an equitable and gay-friendly society on earth haven’t borne fruit (like the time they switched Hitler to driving on the other side of the road — that turned out so poorly, they had to rescue him, and now old Adolf is a nightclub singer on their home planet), they’re ready for their final solution: A massive bombardment of gay-rays which will change the sexual orientation of every heterosexual on earth!

It seems there’s an almost irresistable temptation when Tiger-Lilying² a film to go for the cheapest jokes: Sex and poop. Given the premise of the redubbing here, there’s absolutely no hope of avoided that temptation, but by the same token, having a focused premise for such ribald gags keeps the whole enterprise from seeming entirely sophomoric. And while most of the inserted footage³ with Lloyd Floyd is extraneous at best, some of the other new scenes verge on being inspired, such as the “We’ll Make You Gay” dance number.

What Binars do in their spare time. (Yes, that was extra-geeky of me.)

The high and low ends of the Tiger Lily subgenre aren’t really that far apart, but Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell definitely falls on the high end. The focused gags, and the fact that the redubbing actually has a plot, helps it avoid the “all my friends thought was funny when we were drunk” level of scattershot dumbassery which characterizes Night of the Day of the Dawn… I guess that’s a recommendation. Run with it.