Dumbland   Starring (voice): David Lynch Scanbox Entertainment RRP: £15.99 SCBX9822 Certificate: 15 Available 22 June 2009

Dumbland (2002 - 33 min, 21 sec) is a series of eight animated vignettes wholly created by director David Lynch, which were originally available from his internet site. The best description of the shows is provided by Lynch himself as “... a crude, stupid, violent, absurd series. If it is funny, it is funny because we see the absurdity of it all”. Both the style of animation and the content are deliberately lowbrow. The episodes show small moments in the life of the permanently angry, three toothed, foul mouthed Randy, who lives with his unnamed stressed-out wife and their squeaky voiced son, Sparky, who looks a little like an alien gingerbread man.

Episode one: The Neighbour and Randy takes a shine to his neighbour shed. Rand suspects that his neighbour is having unnatural congress with a duck. This has all the elements of the later shows, the profanity, the absurd situations, but not the violence of the later shows.

Episode two: The Treadmill and Randy attempts to destroy his wife’s treadmill, with inevitable results.

Episode three: The Doctor and Randy hurts himself fixing a lamp; his local doctor arrives and starts pricking him with a needle trying to see if Randy feels pain. This one actually was funny as the doctor attempts to get Randy to feel pain goes to absurd length.

Episode four: A Friend Visits and Randy, in a fit of rage, destroys his wife’s clothesline. Later his friends come over they talk about killing, gutting and skinning animals in the mountains. This one is more disturbing than funny, as Randy says “I like to kill things”.

Episode five: Get The Stick. So what do you think Randy will do when his son points out a man with a stick caught in his mouth? Well, cheered on by his son, Randy breaks the guy’s neck, pokes his eyes out until he finally retrieves the stick. All that Randy can say is: “The f*cker never even said thank you”. Well it’s another slice of mindless violence taken to a level Monty Python would have been proud of.

Episode six: My Teeth are Bleeding and Randy’s world is just perfect Sparky is frantically jumping on a trampoline, crying that his teeth are bleeding, his wife looks like she’s wired to the mains, blood spraying from her head, on TV two wrestles are beating each other to death and there are multiple accidents outside his house, when suddenly this perfect day is spoilt by a fly.

Episode seven: Uncle Bob and someone even worse than Randy - his mother-in-law - makes him stay home and look after his uncle Bob. Under the threat that his nuts will be cut off if he doesn’t look after his uncle. Bob then proceeds to smack himself in the head, vomit and fart. Finally Randy can take no more and punches him, just in time for his mother-in-law to return home.

Episode eight: Ants and its Randy vs the insects. His attempts to eradicate the pests ends up with him spraying himself with the ant killer, hallucinating, hurting himself, ending up in a full body cast with the ants crawling into the cast. This is the most complex or the episodes containing a musical number written and performed by Lynch.

Whilst it is interesting to see other aspects of Lynch’s creativity, it certainly will delight Lynch’s fans, you have to wonder if sixteen quid for just over half an hour is really worth the money.

The black and white shows are presented in their original 4:3 aspect ratio.

5

Charles Packer