Friday, January 20, 2017

Short Film: Billy's Dad Is a Fudge-Packer (USA, 2004)

The directorial debut and to date only directorial project of scriptwriter/director Jamie Donahue, seen below, a woman generally seen on the screen in low-budget independent productions like Cellblock Sisters: Banished behind Bars (1995 / trailer), Stop It, You're Killing Me  (2000 / trailer) and the abysmal The Dead Hate the Living! (2000 / trailer).
Billy's Dad Is a Fudge-Packer premiered at Sundance and went on to tour the world before, like so many short films, falling off the face of the earth. A persiflage of the ancient educational flicks our teachers used to kill time when they were too hungover to teach — see One Got Fat: Bicycle Safety (USA, 1963), the Short Film of the Month for June 2012; A Day in the Death of Donny B. (USA, 1969 — starring an uncredited Jim Kelly), the Short Film of the Month for February 2012; and Boys Beware (USA, 1961), the Short Film of the Month for September 2013, for three notable and real examples — Billy's Dad Is a Fudge-Packer takes a look at the 1950s family life of young Billy (Spencer Daniels, of The Midnight Game [2013 / trailer], California Scheming [2014 / trailer] and Wolves at the Door [2016 / trailer]). Given the homework assignment of writing about what he wants to be when he grows up, young Billy turns his eye to the world around him.
As Gay Celluloid puts it, the short is "laced with more double entendres than a host of Carry On films and […] proudly proclaims that Billy's dad (Robert Gant of Teaching Mrs. Tingle [1999 / trailer] and The Thinning [2016 / trailer]) is a fudge-packer! […] Yes you've guessed it, for this parody of the educational films of the period has clichéd jokes abounding left, right and centre. All of which works well, given it is but a send-up of the wholesome image of the traditional '50s family unit and in particular the view as was then, of a woman's place in society. Thankfully the cast play the whole scenario 'nudge-nudge, wink-wink' style, lapping up the seemingly endless series of sexual innuendoes and visual gags. Politically correct or incorrect — you decide […]."

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