Review of “The Legend of Hallowdega” (2010)
Terry Gilliam (director).
Seen in 2019.
Professional “investigators” on supernatural reality TV show World of the Unexplained look into rumours about the Talladega Superspeedway, a NASCAR race track.
Written by TDS (1996) alumnus Aaron Bergeron, it somewhat resembles a TDS field piece. There just aren’t any real people involved, and therefore no reasonable resistance to the deliberately absurd premise. As a result, everything goes over the top: The jokes about the poor production quality of reality TV are hammy and exaggerated, so are the supernatural clichés, and so is the main premise that accidents on the track are caused by people throwing banana peels. This is ultimately a poop joke. Bananas were introduced in theatre as a less-censorable symbol of poop. In line with this motif, fart sounds are added for comedy. There is nothing subtle going on here, but the energy is good and I like the only clever idea: Ghosts, while real in this fiction, are a red herring: They cannot interact with matter, except “scientifically unsound” cameras running on film-school tears.
References here: “The Wholly Family” (2011).