Back in the day(probably around 1999-2000), I used to run a fan page for a little Canadian show called Big Wolf on Campus. At some point in time, I received an e-mail from a guy named Chris Seaver asking me to link his own BWOC fan site. The site consisted of a few paragraphs about how Seaver hated the one of the original actresses, due to her breasts not being as large as the actress that replaced her, and about how much he enjoyed said actress's breasts, and some fan fiction stories. Since the show was airing on the Fox Family Channel at the time, I thought it'd be best not to link it, as I didn't want to be responsible for some parent discovering their child reading about the mammaries featured in their afternoon entertainment.

However, while browsing the site, I discovered that Seaver was a filmmaker. After reading the titles on the site, such as Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker and Anal Paprika, I couldn't help but wonder if this guy was for real. However, as I began to get into Troma, I found out more about Seaver's Low Budget Pictures. One night, I get a totally random instant message from one of the other Big Wolf webmasters who had been reviewing for DVDTalk.com. He had just reviewed some DVD Tempe had released and told me about a short film Chris Seaver directed that was featured on the disc. His only description was "at one point, a character masturbates and uses his own feces as lubricant."

By the time I began working on my first feature film, I had already known that Seaver's company Low Budget Pictures was quite an item on the underground filmmaking circuit. So when I was at the Horrorfind Weekend III convention and saw him walking around the dealer room, I felt I was finally obligated to meet him. He gave me a copy of his film Quest For The Egg Salad and then later, a friend of mine picked up the double feature DVD with Mulva: Zombie Ass Kicker/Filthy McNasty.

When I finally got to see these movies that had been subconsciously following me on the internet, I was not as impressed as I expected. Quest and Mulva both had their own inspired moments that made me chuckle, but overall were pretty lame. The only one I enjoyed entirely was Filthy McNasty, which could be due to the fact that it gives Debbie Rochon a chance to have an incredible amount of fun and get a great performance or possibly the fact that LBP's flagship character TeenApe is featured prominently and always manages to get a laugh out of me.

The other day, I got a random instant message from Chris Seaver. We talked about our own respective films and at some point, I asked him to send me a screener of one of his latest films, Heather and Puggly Drop A Deuce, as it had recently been picked up by Troma, along with the soon-to-be-shot sequel Heather and Puggly Crucify The Devil.

The ultra-cheap shot-on-MiniDV film stars Meredith "VanBonage" Host and Lauren Puschkin as sisters Heather and Puggly, who are complete polar opposites. Heather is fairly attractive and trying her hardest to fit in with the popular crowd and get the attention of The Meistro, the most popular guy at her high school who dresses and acts like a cowboy. On the other side of the spectrum,  Puggly is an atrocious lesbian comic book geek with horrid teeth (they unfortunately use those thrice-damned "Billy-Bob Teeth") whose only friend is a fellow comic book geek named Shemp. One day, while Puggly is at the local comic shop, she discovers a bovine (I'm using their vernacular, here) young girl named Venus who loves the same comic books as she does. Puggly falls head over heels for her, much to the dismay of most of her school (which isn't hard, since we only see about 8 students in the entire school) who are attracted to Venus, especially Heather, as she fears The Meistro's interest might end up shifting toward Venus and away from her. But once the students of Bonejack High start turning up dead, the remaining students begin to discover that Venus may not be what she seems and that Puggly is in danger.

In case you can't tell from that synopsis, Heather and Puggly Drop A Deuce is not your average movie. Hell, it's not even your average Troma movie. Chris Seaver has developed his own incredibly bizarre style, complete with insanely odd overacting, intentional obnoxiousness, and cheap effects. His characters speak in cheap ebonics (meant to make fun of current catch phrase trends) and some of the most creative sexual euphemisms you'll ever hear, like characters from the most bizarre porno film you've ever seen. Some of the ones I wrote down in my notes included "saggy nuptuals" and "cave pudding." I'll allow you to make your own connotations for what those mean.

The technical specs are about what you'd expect from a film shot on MiniDV for $35: poor colors, uneven white balance, and fairly poor audio from the on-camera microphone. However, the film is pretty well shot despite those limitations, with well composed shots and framing and inventive uses of skateboards. The editing is mostly good, except for a few awkward cuts of dialogue (which tends to be a trademark of LBP, as I've seen similar things in other Chris Seaver films). The copy I saw had a few video glitches (including one really bad one about 18 minutes in), but whether that will be in the final DVD version is unknown.

The acting leaves a good bit to be desired, personally. The overacting tends to grow old after a while, though I did enjoy the over-the-top antics of Johnny Douchebag (played by Chris Seaver) and his cohort T-Bone McCloud. Their characters were the right amount of "wacky" and "over-the-top" and whatever other synonymous adjectives you can think of. On the contrary, the characters of The Meistro and his Indian friend Proudfoot tend were the exact opposite. They were just dull compared to the rest of the film's style. Of the entire cast, I'd say Meredith Host gives the best performance. She keeps everything at the right level with her line delivery.

What I consider to be the most tragic part of the film is the cameo from Debbie Rochon as Puggly's mother. Not that there's anything wrong with her performance, it's just the scene is too utterly tasteless and demented to be funny. Worst of all, the thrice-damned "Billy-Bob Teeth" Debbie was fitted with are WAY too big for her mouth, causing most of her dialogue to be incomprehensible. The scene is saved, however, by a cameo from former Troma head of production and current head of Backseat Conceptions, Doug Sakmann, who has some incredibly Lloyd Kaufman-esque dialogue (probably because the role was originally written with Lloyd in mind, but he was unavailable for shooting that day). Another big problem I had with the film's humor was that there's a good bit of it that relies on farting and fecal matter, to the point that it becomes trite and overused and at least one of the current pop culture references falls so flat that it made me cringe (I'll give you one hint: it's a quote from an infamous Chappelle's Show episode). However, there's also some incredibly witty dialogue to be found, including a line about The Passion of the Christ and Mel Gibson's previous work that I know the majority of my friends had thought of as well. I'm just glad someone finally had the balls to commit it to film.

You know, when it came to the point of reviewing Heather and Puggly Drop A Deuce, I was uncertain what score to give it. I didn't think it was a great film, but I didn't see it as entirely unwatchable (and trust me, when you run a film festival, you end up with boxes upon boxes of unwatchable films) and I still rank Filthy McNasty as the best work I've seen out of Low Budget Pictures. However, the simple truth is that Chris Seaver's humor isn't for everyone: some people love it, some people hate it, and some people (myself included) are somewhere in the middle. When I first screened the film, I was with a friend who hated it so much that I ended up watching his reaction to the film more than the film itself. He threw things at the television, claimed to have panic attacks, screamed "GODDAMNIT! THAT'S NOT FUNNY! STOP IT!", and at one point dove across the couch and grabbed me by the neck in an effort to steal the remote from me. Though when I played a few minutes for someone else, they laughed a good bit and commented on how weird the film was.

So to put it simply, I decided the best way to rate a film like Heather and Puggly Drop A Deuce is to put it right in the middle of the scale. If you've seen any of Chris Seaver's other films, you know what you're in for. If this is your first venture into the insane world of Low Budget Pictures, I can't predict what your opinion will be. I can only explain the style of this film as a mix of Troma, John Waters, and production values you'd see on public access. But when you watch it, just keep one thing in mind: the Low Budget Pictures crew are having fun doing what they love and finding a loyal audience and supporters along the way. The people that don't get it or dislike it aren't of concern.