Doughboy's Hair-Raising Tale of General Enthusiasm

Review from back in 2004, just adding it cause I noticed it wasn't up.

For all his dumbassery, Doughboy did a pretty good job on this.

Doughboy's Hair-Raising Tale of General Enthusiasm
Directed by Matt Waguespack

To trace the career paths of Tom Bown and Doughboy after their collaboration on the abysmal Killing Ramza Brave is to reveal a surprising rift in the growth of their abilities. While Bown has allowed himself a few spur-of-the-moment indulgences (Newbie, Veteran), Hair-Raising Tale is Doughboy's first release since KRB in late 2003. Quietly biding his time and growing in skill by doing work as the man behind the curtain at the 3DMMers United Monthly Magazine, he now springs this short, twisted little Halloween-themed comedy. A little stiff by the last two or three minutes and boasting an unfortunate number of cut corners and amateurish directing techniques, Hair-Raising Tale is nevertheless a huge step forward for Doughboy, and if it's not destined to become a 3DMM Halloween classic, it probably is destined to finally put his name on the map of rising stars in the community.

Despite the animation and HMC construction standing out as being much better than you might expect, it's surprisingly the writing which really shines here. Playing like the snarky little Halloween-themed brother of cinema classic "It's a Wonderful Life", we're introduced to protagonist Marc, who is awakened in the dead of night by Zander, a ghost representing a celestial company called "Final Wishes, Inc.". Zander informs Marc that he's going to die in exactly one day; he can't explain how he's going to die, lest he prevent the death (which is a big no-no for the realm of the already-deceased), but he explains that he can let him know it's going to happen so he can do all of the things he wanted to do in life in advance. Marc makes his list overnight and sets off the next day to make his existence complete, not without a few surprises and at least one macabre twist to be had.

The exchanges between Marc and Zander really come alive, thanks to Kayl and the surprisingly talented Deacon Search, who sounds so much like Jon Barton it's almost frightening. Their major conversations at the beginning and end of the movie are witty, entertaining, and very well-written, though a noticable amount of the effect is lost due to poor direction -- Doughboy is still in the amateur stage when it comes to camera angles, as the whole conversation alternates between two dead-on closeups of the two characters' faces. Observe conversations in films like Powerplay or Ghost in Shell: Even though this is an effective technique, a third or even fourth medium- or long- angle is needed to pull back to when the conversation gets long, to provide an objective look at the conversation and give us room to breathe. Some other conversations, such as the one just before we cut to Marc's house for the last time, fare much better with multiple angles.

Music is pop-friendly (a lot of Green Day) and serves mainly as brief interludes between more dialogue-driven scenes. There are some sound issues, like Zander's lines being much louder than Marc's, making you reach for the volume control frequently to either hear what's being said or prevent it from waking up the person next door to you. The hand-made characters have a tendency to seem stiff and reluctant to move, but when they do, it's at least as smooth as anything from Yeti & Squidworth, and there are bits of character animation here that'll probably make even Goro come back for a second look. Construction seems sketchier than it should thanks to an abundance of black scenes, but for the 70% of the movie that we are looking at real scenery, it ranges from competent to stellar, the morning sky being a high point for me.

A sort of stilted sloppiness drags the film down in a lot of places, like when a line is played over a black screen, presumably to avoid animating the character's mouth, and some general rough spots in animation or camera movement that wouldn't stand out if not for the sketchy parts from earlier. But as a whole, Hair-Raising Tale does a good job of keeping our attention focused on the story rather than the stumbles. As a halloween-themed movie, it deals with an intangibly creepy feeling rather than any out-right scares, and does so in a comedic and occasionally unsettling way. There's something suitably dark about the ending that makes you laugh and wince a little bit at the same time; once you've puzzled through the surprisingly intelligent implications about causality, which earns Doughboy at least a couple extra points in my book.

Critical Score: 78/100.
Personal Score: 83/100.