Right when I saw the trailer for this it hit me right in my sweet spot, I was literally salivating with desire and pleasure. A whole movie of twisted stop motion, oh to the fucking yeah, but when I saw the trailer I was wondering if it had already come out and searched around and realized, nope, it hadn’t and I’d probably have to wait a long fucking time before I’d see this or maybe not see it at all. SIGH. As we speak it is making its way through the festival circuit and then Nightstream came to the rescue. Luckily they are featuring some movies for streaming from festivals. I jumped all over “Mad God”. One hour and twenty minutes of awesomeness, a dark hellish world with stabs of heaven like brilliance.
Directed by Phil Tippett who did the effects for “Alien”, “Robocop 2”, and “Jurassic Park” among a bunch of other movies, he started making this in 1988 while he was working on “Robocop 2”, after doing “Jurassic Park” he thought the art of stop motion was dead so he then shelved “Mad God” until the year 2000 when he really started working on the movie and just finished the movie not long ago. He worked on this project in between his other higher paying gigs, using volunteers and getting money through kickstarter. To sum things up, pretty much an assassin is sent by a pope like figure to “kill God”, as he descends in a weird ship into this post apocalyptic, hellish world that this god inhabits, he is shot at by cannons, and he lands in an area full of statues of different gods and faiths, not to mention brand name mascots of products.
Alot of what happens “Mad God” is metaphors. Some critics have described this as a movie length Tool music video but its more than that, I don’t want to give away too much. The world looks slimy, one crazy image after another gets thrown out at you before you can fully recover from the last shock, in fact that is its major drawback, its almost sensory overload. Even taking that into consideration you’ll fall under its Bosch like nightmarish spell. This movie proves that art can be both beautiful and ugly at the same time.
In “Mad God” there is some live action actors filmed in stop motion style, like director Alex Cox and Niketa Roman, after “Mad God” ended my eyes were bulging out of my skull and my jaw was on the floor collecting flies. When and if this hits Blu Ray I am snapping it up. Full length stop motion movies are few and far between these days, getting this one from a special effects master is very rare treat, this is one I can’t wait to see again.
So where do you watch this? Well you can’t yet, unless you streamed it during its festival run.
Here is Phil’s web site where you can get the trailer and other info on the movie: https://www.madgodmovie.com/
Pretty cool vid on Phil designing his stop motion figures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLKxoo9hO84
Interview with Phil on “Mad God”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDVj0a9h8I4
Post Script: This is now on Shudder not on blu ray yet (cross my fingers) but you have to have a subscription, you know what to do *wink*wink*: https://www.shudder.com/movies/watch/mad-god/af7abd4d3ae6f0ad
