Few things are more depressing than bad comedy. That’s probably why comedy is mostly absent from the so-bad-it’s-good cultural economy. The charm of a low-rent thriller or sci-fi wannabe is that it isn’t in on the joke of its own categorical failure. A comedy, though, wants to be in on the joke. There are no bad laughs. There’s only the agonizing silence of a dismal open mic night and its sad, obsequious clowns.
It was with some surprise, then, that I discovered some comedies among the wares of the Asylum. Burbank’s premier knock-off factory has turned out a steady stream of direct-to-video genre fare since the early 2000s. Almost all of it is explicitly derivative, and alongside titles like Atlantic Rim and Paranormal Entity sits The 18-Year-Old Virgin, Barely Legal and Sex Pot.
And really, it makes perfect sense. Comedy is as prone to formula as anything else, and the teen sex farce/gross-out comedy sub-strata is especially simple and cheap, requiring no star power or sophisticated camerawork and very few special effects beyond the occasional bodily fluid. Following its resurgence in the late 1990s, the teen sex comedy became a DTV staple. The American Pie and National Lampoon franchises have been well-served by DVD and streaming markets: American Pie Presents: Band Camp remains one of the most profitable DTV titles of all-time.
Until now these titles completely eluded me, for reasons I must confess are entirely prejudicial. It’s one thing to follow a series into DTV territory. Somewhere in the barren outskirts of the cultural landscape, someone is aching to know what makes Stifler’s little brother tick. But absent the pressing needs of canon completists, what could the store brand equivalent of Van Wilder possibly have to offer? Is there an audience for the badness of bad comedy?
2014’s Alpha House yields no insight into this question, or much of anything else. Asylum’s most recent comedy doesn’t imitate any property in particular, instead imitating about a thousand in general. A notorious frat has its style cramped when forced to share their house with a sorority. Hijinks dutifully ensue. The boys and girls eventually join forces to take down a nefarious dean. There’s a perfunctory romance. Even the pop songs are warmed over, settling for no-name facsimiles of the Black Keys, Kings of Leon, and other pillars of indie-cum-Coke-commercial rock during the many scenes of appallingly tepid bacchanalia.
Alpha House is rather old-fashioned in its insistence that nudity constitutes a credible joke. A typical setup has the boys clamoring to see bare breasts. A typical punchline reveals said breasts. The excuses for display are consistently absurd; a scene involving nyotaimori verges on the non sequitur. More often, the pretense is public humiliation of the sorority sisters, which alongside their bubble-brained vamping, habitual undress, and subliterate commentary, is meant, I imagine, to be the payoff of an introductory scene that finds them listening with rapt attention to a lecture on the wage gap. Think the “Down with sexism!” Duff ad, stretched to 90 minutes for undersexed Gamergaters.
Richard Brody once commented that toplessness tends to bring him outside the movie and onto the casting couch. In this regard, Alpha House is basically a demo reel, its young women availed to the gatekeepers of dubiously brighter futures. Otherwise, it’s a relic of a bygone era, when outside unkempt porno theaters, one’s mammary fix came from either nudie mags or smutty comedy. The possibility that Alpha House might still serve this function for anyone fills me with profound sadness.
I am no Victorian. I was prepared for the possibility, however minute, that I might laugh. I consider myself a connoisseur of fine bad taste, after all, and formal rigor is not my highest priority when assessing low culture (see John Waters, Frank Henenlotter). All Alpha House needed was the slightest iota of extravagance, of the desire, even for a moment, to transcend its own cliches. Some of the go-for-broke spirit of Asylum’s Mega Shark series, for example. No such luck: Alpha House is contentedly somnambulistic. The filmmakers don’t even bother to spring for any gross-outs, the comic last resort par excellence. Surely the proud purveyors of four Sharknado films are not above an enthusiastic trip to the toilet?
If one surrenders to the nihilistic state a semiotic void like Alpha House generates, there are a few bad laughs to be had. A grand finale involving an Asian dominatrix, furry fetishes, and anal penetration was funny once I began to imagine the states of Earthly existence that would render these things fiendishly outrageous. Cult survivors. Victims of head trauma. Trump supporters. Elsewhere, the film bows fully to heteromasculinity, but when the overeager twink protagonists first meet the studly, sultry fraternity president, Alpha House suggests, all-too-fleetingly, a far more worthwhile re-edit as gay porn. There’s also a running gag about a token Black guy whose speech patterns nobody understands. Negros, amirite?
I mentioned Van Wilder. Terrible movie, but I yearned for its sense of timing and polish here (to say nothing of its formidable laxative scene). Alpha House is the type of film that makes one appreciate the little things. Overzealous extras. Convincing establishing shots. Boom mikes kept out of sight. Adequate lighting. End credits.