When it comes to henchmen, you can certainly do worse than an anthropomorphic bulldog.
Barry (voiced by Mark Hadlow) is the loyal minion of Bletch (Peter Vere-Jones), the owner and director of The Feebles Troupe. But what the funk is a Feeble?
Meet the Feebles (1989) is Peter Jackson’s second full-length film and his thoroughly demented tribute to Jim Henson’s beloved Muppets. The film follows the efforts of the Feebles to land a network television time slot for The Fabulous Feebles Variety Hour, but where Kermit the Frog had to deal with demanding stars, a prima donna pig, and general incompetence, the Feebles are plagued by every vice known to man and puppet.
Bletch has his flippers in a number of other business interests besides the Feebles, all of them illicit. In the scene below, he sends Barry and Trevor the Rat (Brian Sergent) to pick up an overdue shipment of drugs from Louie (Mark Wright), a courier employed by the notorious crime boss Mister Big (no relation to the “rock supergroup” of the same name). Things do not go as originally agreed, and the situation takes a decidedly violent turn. Enjoy!
(would-be drug use, violent death, murder).
I love the sound effect for Dennis eagerly snorting a line. Clearly a voice-over.
Barry joins Bletch in an assault on Mister Big’s dockside operation, including a scene with puppets driving a Morris Minor through another gigantic puppet. No human actors appear in the film, though Abi the contortionist is a humanoid Indian mystic puppet. He spends most of the film trying to get his head extricated from his posterior. Rectum? It nearly killed him.
A couple months back, I had quite the internal debate over including this little Kiwi gem in my countdown of “Bizarre Movie Musicals You Have to See to Believe”. After all, it’s not every day you see a fox puppet wax rhapsodic about the appeal of anal intercourse.
At least I hope it isn’t.
As seen in the clip below, Sebastian (Stuart Devenie), against the express wishes of Bletch, tries to save the Feebles production with his signature song, blissfully unaware that Heidi the Hippo (also voiced by Mark Hadlow) has had a psychotic break backstage and gone on the rampage with a machine gun.
Also, a rampaging hippo with an M60.
Please join us for the rest of these infamous “Dog Days of Summer” as we count down
“A Dozen Diabolical Dogs”.
