G4, I hardly knew ye.

I knew of you, but never watched you. And what I knew was limited to absorbing media mentions of Attack of the Show!, your channel’s daily flagship program — mostly that you covered video games and launched the career of OKC’s own Olivia Munn.

So when Show! contributor Chris Gore’s look back at the irreverent live TV series opens with a declaration of being made “by the fans for the fans,” I understand I’m not the documentary’s target.

Still, as hagiographies go, I enjoyed Attack of the Doc! all the same. (More still, Gore, where are those Film Threat retrospective projects you talked up years ago?)

Fast and frenzied, the Doc!-umentary functions well as a clip show — a greatest-hits collection for both the fervent and the uninitiated. In an hour and a half, it breathlessly clicks through such highlights as:
• a contest of drinking Cholula hot sauce,
• diving into a giant chocolate cream pie,
• turning someone’s anal canal into a live hot spot,
• James Cameron beating a mannequin with a folding chair,
• James Cameron talking “space dragon sex”
• and comedian Eric André spontaneously demonstrating Buffalo Bill’s dick tuck from The Silence of the Lambs.

Good times. And as the voiceover interviewees emphasize more than thrice, a lot of the things they did then would not go over well today. That’s an understatement, but then again, last year’s Jackass Forever didn’t exactly play it safe (in fact, I haven’t seen that much nut damage since the floor of a Texas Roadhouse after closing).

Whether Attack of the Show! “changed everything” as Attack of the Doc! purports, I’m not qualified to say. (I don’t game. I don’t buy Funko Pops. I don’t worship Stan Lee.) But I’m willing to let them have it on the basis for acknowledging how ridiculous and petty fandom can get. That said, if Show! is truly responsible for Jimmy Fallon’s Celebrity Party Game Ha-Ha Power Hour (formerly known as NBC’s The Tonight Show) as suggested, I reserve to right to take it back. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

With the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street franchises earning their own retrospective documentary features, a Child’s Play one was only a matter of time. Meet Living with Chucky, the first feature for Directors Guild of America student award winner Kyra Elise Gardner.

Was it necessary? Nope.

Am I glad it’s here? Yep.

Why is Chucky’s hair red? Watch.

Movie by movie, the doc chronologically covers this doll of a horror series. To no one’s shock, emphasis is placed on the 1988 film that started it all. Over the journey, creator Don Mancini recounts how his original script of Blood Buddy morphed into a surprise horror hit, then into simultaneous self-parody and LGBT advocacy. Notes Mancini, Bride of Chucky deliberately marks “when we made it pretty gay.”

John Waters turns up to extol his love of watching that film’s doll sex. Child’s Play 3 is barely mentioned — and its inadvertent controversy in Great Britain glossed over. The 2019 remake is included almost as an afterthought, but that may be for the best.

At the halfway point, we learn Living with Chucky bears dual meaning: We’ve lived with Chucky in our pop-culture consciousness for 35 years now, but Gardner literally lives with Chucky; her father, Tony, a Hollywood makeup effects and animatronics extraordinaire, has been a part of the franchise since 2004’s Seed of Chucky. While good-natured, the examination of her family’s and other families’ relationship to Chucky not only feels like a different film, but the lesser half.

Living with Chucky’s highest creative point resides in the first half’s framework, depicting all the movies — VHS, then DVD — atop a TV. When it’s time for one to be discussed by a talking head — Brad Dourif, Alex Vincent, Jennifer Tilly among them — we see that title plucked from the stack and inserted into the proper player. It’s such a simple conceit, yet brilliant. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Who remembers when a tiny little horror film called The Wretched ruled the box office for six weeks straight? It happened! Right after the COVID-19 pandemic sent everyone in America indoors, in fact, leaving drive-in theaters to be the one safe way to see a movie. It led to an attendance boost the drive-in hadn’t seen since in decades — as fine a reason as any for April Wright to follow up her previous documentary on the drive-in, 2013’s Going Attractions.

For Back to the Drive-In, her camera visits nearly a dozen drive-ins across the U.S. Although attendance has dropped since the vaccine re-opened the nation, Wright finds them hanging in there, some by including live bands and livelier alcohol. One is also home to a flea market and mini-golf course.

No matter the locale, the owners face daily repair and upkeep, threats of weather, staffing challenges, supply issues, razor-thin profit margins, constant worry, constant hope and an unwavering belief in the magic of the movies. Says Rod Saunders of Ohio’s Field of Dreams Drive-In, “You can’t put a price on that.” I’m inclined to agree, seeing as how he built his theater literally in his own backyard. Not for nothing are many of the featured places family businesses.

No-frills yet full of heart, Back to the Drive-In doesn’t have a lot to say, but what it does say means a lot to those who will watch. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Watching Hollywood movies for 50 years has left me with many probing questions, like:
1. How do actresses fake fellatio?
2. How does one make a merkin?
3. How did Jane Fonda handle floating naked in the credit sequence to Barbarella?

The answers can be found in Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s documentary Body Parts. I’ll only reveal the secret behind No. 3: “I just got drunk, basically.”

Definitely not to be confused to with the same-named Jeff Fahey horror film, Body Parts is a moles-and-all look behind the scenes of depicting sex onscreen … and how one gender has a much tougher go of it than another. Through no apparent order, we’re taken to a training for intimacy coordinators, shown the process for digital de-aging and allowed a peek at the body-doubling biz.

That’s about 50% of the mix; the other half explores the political side, full of coercion and exploitation in a town more comfortable with violence. As Rosanna Arquette says, not without firsthand experience, women “have to fight for ownership of their own body.” As if her words weren’t enough, Sarah Scott (Soaked in Bleach) gives a chilling, enraging account of alleged sexual harassment by The Rules of Attraction actor Kip Pardue.

By design more interesting than entertaining, Body Parts also features Emily Meade, Sheryl Lee and Rose McGowan among the interviewees. One of its indisputable takeaways involves America’s double standard surrounding nudity: “Penises are pornography; tits are art.” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

To enjoy the documentary about Rochester-based moviemaker Chris Seaver, you don’t have to be a fan, assuming you’ve even heard of the guy. You need not have seen Anal Paprika or Scrotal Vengeance or even Anal Paprika 2.

Just know he’s made upward of 75 flicks now, and, as one of his regular cast members notes, “most of them have come out.” My sole exposure to his work was a tasteless segment he contributed to the Hi-8 shot-on-video horror anthology. His backyard epics may be hard to like for the average viewer, but Zero Budget Heroes: The Legend of Chris Seaver & Low Budget Pictures is easy to love.

For this introspective retrospective, first-time director Zach Olivares captures the shooting days (all three of ’em!) of the ska-obsessed, rarely not ball-capped Seaver’s then-latest crass comedic opus, A Stoinkmare on Halloween Street. His titles — and penchant for terminology like “clam flaps” — suggest a juvenile approach to cinema. Proud yet humble, Seaver doubles down on this risk-free theory, telling Olivares’ camera, “I am a very immature human being.”

And he doesn’t apologize for it. (Well, except for playing the role of Bonejack in blackface. But hey, when an actor doesn’t show, it’s the director’s job to make lemonade.)

A modern-day Andy Hardy, Seaver enjoys a loyal band of repertory players eager to debase and deride themselves in the likes of Filthy McNasty, Moist Fury and Taintlight — barely scripted vehicles for “boobs and cum and poop jokes” — for no monetary reward.

And you know what? Now I kinda get it.

The more Seaver and company revisit his relative hits, affectionate misses and never-weres, the more you see the appeal — foremost for them; the audience, second. That’s by design, as no one is more surprised than Seaver at the level of success he’s enjoyed in the DIY realm. He and his friends make the movies to amuse themselves; that anyone devotes attention or time after that is pure bonus. One would think the enemy of this real-life story would be monetary deficiencies, but the Low Budget Pictures gang has turned that into an asset. (Also, the true enemy is Troma.)

I didn’t expect this doc to move me. But, like Seaver responding to the magnetic pull of making movies, I couldn’t help it. By the end, Olivares has done an excellent job of getting to the heart of the man’s work and why he and his comrades even bother. You’ll be glad they do, even if Sexquatch and Terror at Blood Fart Lake never, ever land in your queue. —Rod Lott