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Released by: Intervision Picture Corp.
Released on: June 28th, 2022.
Director: Josh Miller
Cast: Pat Casey, Andy 'Hippa' Kriss, Maria A. Morales, N. David Priestwood, Jack Schreck
Year: 2003
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Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! – Movie Review:
A genuinely amusing horror-comedy (which a lot more emphasis on comedy than horror) made for five hundred dollars over a month in the summer of 2000, Josh Miller’s Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! Opens at St. Olaf College where Herman Schumacher (Pat Casey) finds out he doesn’t have as much time to get out of his dorm room as he thought. Without a ride anywhere, he hitches a lift from a scruffy guy in a Beatles t-shirt who jokes about being a serial murderer. Herman graduated with a degree in world history and needs to find some work to support himself.
With nowhere to go, Herman is relieved to find an advertisement looking for a roommate. He heads over to the house and introduces himself and soon enough moves in with four other guys all around the same age. Oddly enough, the guy who had the room before him never bothered to clean up or take any of his stuff with him when he left, but Herman doesn’t pay this as much mind as he should. The same can be said about the holes out in the yard with different names painted above them on small, wooden signs. Shortly after his arrival, one of Herman’s new roommates starting writing a musical about him.
Soon enough, Herman meets nymphomaniac Carrie Mirvis (Maria A. Morales) and they start dating, but it isn’t long before we realize that something is off with Carrie, just as something is off with Herman’s new roommates. Regardless, he does what he can to get through the day and soon takes a job digging holes, because he doesn’t really seem to have any other prospects. If all of that weren’t weird enough, Herman then has to deal with a gorilla-esque monster in the basement and figure out which one of his new roommates is a murderer.
A genuinely wacky and, at times, seriously funny horror send up that somehow avoids most of the clichés of the countless other SOV horror send ups made over the years, Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! might not win over those who don’t enjoy vintage no-budget endeavors, but then again… it might. The writing here is pretty smart and quite witty, and the script was written to play to the different strengths of the various friends who all got together to make the movie in the first place. The acting, as such, is better than you’d probably figure it to be, while still feeling very much like the DIY project that it is, given that the cast wasn’t really made up of professionals.
Regardless, it’s funny. There are some great running gags that are scattered throughout the movie and while the cinematography is fairly basic, the production values are generally just fine. The ending feels a bit tacked on and overdone but for the most part, this one moves very quickly, using Herman’s endless string of bad luck as a launching pad for all manner of unexpectedly bizarre occurrences, many of which build off of one another very effectively.
Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! – Blu-ray Review:
Intervision Picture Corp. brings Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! to Region Free Blu-ray framed in 1.33.1 in an AVC encoded 1080i high definition picture that looks pretty good for a movie shot twenty years ago on Mini-DV. The image is bright and colorful throughout and while detail levels are obviously limited by the source material, but it’s quite a nice upgrade over the previous DVD edition. Compression is pretty solid here, the movie has been given a strong bit rate and plenty of breathing room, and black levels stay pretty strong here as well.
The only audio option for the feature is a 24-bit DTS-HD 2.0 Mono track in English only. Optional subtitles are provided in English. Sound quality is pretty solid. Again, limitations of the source are evident but the track is pretty clean and there’s a surprising amount of depth to the movie’s supremely awesome synth score.
Extras include a six minute introduction by director/co-writer Josh Miller and co-writer/actor Pat Casey that gives some quick background info on the movie and its history. They are then joined by actor Andy Kriss for a commentary track that is informative and amusing, making it a pretty fun listen. They talk about how they wound up making the movie, how the various actors in the film wound up in the picture, filming the opening in an actual dorm room in St. Olaf, Minnesota, the movie's quick one month shooting schedule, the different locations that were used for the movie, the difference between shooting no budget pictures like this one and bigger budgeted Hollywood movies (they’ve gone on to make the two Sonic The Hedgehog features!), how a lot of what happens in the first five minutes of the movie sets up a lot of punchlines later in the film, where some of the props came from, why the cops got called on them at one point, how the film is about anxieties of adult life in many ways, where rare reshoots were inserted and lots, lots more. This is definitely worth listening to if you want the behind the scenes story of the making of movie.
Still Stabbing After All These Years is a cast and crew reunion featurette that clocks in at thirty-nine minutes and features Miller, Brian Casey, Andy Kriss, Matt Sell, Sean Hall, N. David Prestwood, Nate Morales, Maria Morales, John Bungert and Drew Ailes. They cover growing up in Bloomington, Minnesota, getting to know one another when working at the city's public access channel on a show called 'YRU-Up?' that they took over. From there, we learn how they got into movie making, cranking out five or six features while going to school and working jobs. They then cover film school and post high school endeavors, dressing the sets, working off of a very basic script, casting the picture, different behind the scenes memories, how the film connected to the first season of Survivor, the music created for the movie, and plenty more, and the featurette, recorded over Zoom, features lots of clips from the different projects discussed.
The State Of Stabbing Mike — The Unmaking Of The State Of Being Mike And The Making Of Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! is an eighteen minute making of featurette that is made up entirely of vintage behind the scenes footage shot during the making of the movie to document its progress and history. It's a pretty fun product of its time that shows off some fun footage from the shoot and which also serves as an interesting time capsule.
There are also two alternate endings here, running four minutes in total.
Severin has also included a second bonus feature on the disc in the form of the eight-three minute Sledgehammers At Dawn. The film takes place in a part of rural Minnesota known as The Forsaken Zone, a small community that has severed ties with The United States and declared itself a sovereign nation. As you'd probably expect, most of its population is a little off kilter. Our hero, Frank (Pat Casey), recently split The Forsaken Zone to move to sunny Los Angeles but when his father, The King (Jerome Casey), passes away suddenly he returns and is instantly embroiled in the bizarre politics that play out to determine who will replace The King. Armed with a sledgehammer, Frank engages in various acts of combat against lunatics and cannibals in hopes to woo the lovely Mug (Sarah K. Bizek), who only says the word 'mug.'
As wacky as it sounds, Sledgehammers At Dawn works on much the same level as the feature attraction, though it isn’t quite as polished and is decidedly a little rougher around the edges. Still, it’s a fun watch with a lot of great humor, quirky characters, good location work and plenty of wacky, and fairly violent, hijinks to laugh along with. It isn’t quite as good as Hey, Stop Stabbing Me!, but it is a really enjoyable companion piece.
Extras for Sledgehammers At Dawn include an introduction Miller and Casey as well as a commentary where the two are joined by co-writer/actor Pat Case and actor Drew Ailes that goes over how the movie came to be, who did what both behind and in front of the camera, the locations, where some of the ideas for the movie came from and more. There’s also a second ’Party Commentary’ included here that features director/co-writer “Worm” Miller, Casey and actor Sean Hall and “anyone else at the party who wanted to talk” from 2005. This second track is a little harder to wrap your head around as it features an assemblage of random, and fairly intoxicated, participants contributing varying degrees of usefulness to the track, but it is entertaining in small doses.
In the Short Films section, we’re treated to yet more of the group’s earlier efforts, starting with Magma Head (A Film Best Viewed Drunk). This thirty-three minute short tells the story of Guymoe (Pat Casey), a young man working his way through film school who becomes inspired to make a movie called Magma Head. As he becomes obsessed with completing his project, he also starts killing a bunch of the people he collaborates with on it, and eventually becomes romantically involved with a corpse. It’s a ridiculous but very entertaining exaggerated look at what goes into making a low budget/student film and, like the other content on the disc, it’s pretty funny.
Extras for Magma Head include a four minute introduction Miller and Casey as well as a commentary from Miller, Casey and actor Craig Sherman that, as you’d guess, goes over the making of the short in quite a bit of detail and with the same sense of humor that made the rest of the content on the disc as fun as it is.
Three other shorts are also found on the disc, the four minute Big Hit Little Fish, the six minute Free Chair and the ninety minute Special Studies Film II. Finishing up the extras on the disc are two trailers for Hey, Stop Stabbing Me!, menus and chapter selection options.
Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! - The Final Word:
Hey, Stop Stabbing Me! is really well done, especially when you consider the super low budget. It’s wildly creative and genuinely funny and the Blu-ray release from Intervision Picture Corp. presents the movie in a surprisingly good presentation on a disc absolutely loaded with extra features, all of which are also pretty fun. All in all, a great package that will hopefully bring this underappreciate indie gem to a wider audience.
