The following is my entry in the Short Film Week blogathon, cohosted by CultureSnob and Only the Cinema. The fun continues through Saturday, 12/8. As for my contribution below, am I adding to the cinematic dialogue, or just recycling a bunch of old reviews? I’ll leave that one up to the blogathon gods.

So, a few years back, I found myself with an intriguing, nonpaying side gig. As a staff reviewer for Film Threat, every couple of months I would walk a few blocks from where I was working at the time, and pick up a grocery bag full of screeners that Chris Gore had given to his wife to give to me. The sack was heavy and intimidating, the fruit of FT ’s terrific “we review anything” policy, a boon to zero-budget filmmakers the world over.

Since at least half of the movies I reviewed were basically amateur productions, I was a bit leery at first. What could be worse than sitting through some godawful amateur feature? I was happy to learn later that it was actually no worse than sitting through slick Hollywood dreck. Actually, it was more fun because every film, good or bad, was a surprise.

Shorts were my favorites. The time investment was obviously smaller — though I found some surprisingly good features, zero-budget indie misfires can be extremely painful — and the reviews usually commensurately shorter. Even when they weren’t all that great, even if they weren’t exactly good, they were often little packages of fun and frolic, or pretense and nonsense, or something kind of strange. Even if they weren’t always fun to watch, they were fun to write about. Occasionally, very occasionally, I’d see something that kind of blew my mind, or induced giggle fits.

So, what follows are reminiscences of the best, worst, and weirdest shorts I saw as a regular writer at Film Threat, with links to my original reviews and the films themselves.

* “Side Effects” — I went pretty much bananas for this film, and have probably lost all objectivity over it. After writing the original review, I got to know it’s writer-director-star, all-around talent and good guy Scott Allen Perry. (One of the benefits/dangers of reviewing films by new filmmakers is that they tend to think you’re an okay guy if you give them a rave review.) I think I wound up seeing it at festival screenings about three more times and loved it each time…though I started to feel a certain degree of ownership over something I had done nothing more than watch.

Anyhow, Hollywood is a funny, place and these days Scott Perry is doing somewhat different work these days, like his docu-comedy The Outdoorsmen and a comedy-action-horror script that I sincerely hope gets made. I nevertheless hope it isn’t forever before he gets to do a feature in the pop-Polanski spirit of his first film. “Side Effects” can be seen here.

Oh, and yes — even though I met him more than once through Scott, I actually hadn’t quite realized that the film prominently features Doug Jones, now world cinema’s least recognized superstar. For a change, you can actually see his face and hear his voice in this one.

* I swear I watched an five excruciating minutes of “The Infernal Loop” before I was sure it really was just a loop that might actually go on and on and on for four hours in some version — so I guess technically it’s not a short even if its actual content runs about fifteen seconds and my tape only ran nine minutes. My revenge was typing out the entirety of the screenplay. You can see it at a borderline reasonable length here.

* And what of “Beware of the Hot Dog People” and “The Penis Graduation Song? If a film is short enough, a title alone can make it. Well, not really, but almost. The latter is seeable here. The former, below

* I have a very special place of affection for “The Ball Chair”. I’m delighted that it got picked up by Comedy Central and, according to whoever entered it at YouTube, actually won the comedy short prize at Sundance in 2002. This is a nice little piece of shtick comedy that plays like a latter day Abbott & Costello, gone upscale consumerist. It’s neither here nor there, but the mannerisms of actor Mike Blieden (who I hadn’t realized until just now via IMDb was a regular on The King of Queens at the time) still seems almost uncannily similar to a good friend of mine who actually did spend several years selling high-end furniture in West Hollywood. Eerie.

I only wish I had looked over my review just one more time and realized that the “spherical” was the word for the chair. Not “cylindrical.” Embarrassing. It wasn’t “The Cylinder Chair.”

UPDATE: For whatever reason, the ability to embed this video has been rescinded by the person who posted “The Ball Chair.” Nevertheless, you can still see it by going directly to YouTube.

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I was unable to find it online in its entirety but I’d still like to send shout-outs to are “Whacked,” a funny short about sexual quirks written and directed by the talented Sirena Irwin, now working as a voice actor on Spongebob Squarepants. [UPDATE: I just learned via a top secret source that you can see the trailer for “Whacked” here.]

While I’m at it, I’d also like to throw in a mention of by far the best film I saw my one and only year at Sundance, “Kare Kare Zvaco: Mother’s Day,” which might be one of the most intriguing movies I’ve seen in many years, of any length. It’s also one entry in the growing subgenre of musicals involving cannibalism. If anyone knows where to find this, online or otherwise, I’d be grateful.

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On a somewhat related note, I’m going to throw in a link to one of a series of funny, good natured YouTube shorts, “The Retarded Policeman” starring Josh Perry, the younger brother of the afore-lauded Scott Allen Perry, in the title role. Josh, a personable young man who knows exactly what he’s doing, only came to Hollywood a few short months ago. Now he’ll be appearing alongside Diane Ladd, Peter Falk, Rip Torn, Cloris Leachman, Bruce Dern, and Val Kilmer in the intriguing American Cowslip, currently in production. So, short films don’t always lead to obscurity.