Bright
Red Rocket presents
Gilbert Hernandez's
The
Naked Cosmos
NTSC DVD All Regions • Color •
88 mins.
This Deluxe Edition comes with a free
20-page comic
book.
In what is evidently
an attempt to exorcise childhood demons of cheap childrens' television
programming,
Gilbert Hernandez, the brilliant comics maestro of Love and Rockets and
Palomar fame, has, in The Naked Cosmos, created a truly
odd work -- think Captain Kangaroo
as produced and directed by Ed Wood, Jr. Produced on a
budget so small you'd probably need a microscope to see it, this DVD
contains four complete 22-minute episodes
in each of which all the characters are played either by Gilbert
(Quintas, Mr.
Mims, Ego, Kalisto, Zansky and possibly others we're forgetting) or his
wife, Carol (Mistress Velda and The Chief). This show beggars
description, but it's a limited edition -- 2000 copies -- it
comes with an original 20-page comic book written and drawn by Mr.
Hernandez himself, and it's fairly easy on the
pocketbook. Be the first -- and probably only -- person on your
block to bring home The Naked Cosmos!
Here's
the official party-line hyporama:
The Naked Cosmos contains four
episodes hosted by the enigmatic "Quintas," a TV prophet promoting his
Cosmic Connections to the Collective Mindstream. He does so through
"The Naked Cosmos," his weekly program.
To help him along is an unlikely crew of regulars: Mr. Mims,
the
nervous, anxious announcer; Mistress Velda, the lovely cataloguer of
celestial events; Ego, Master of Teleportation; The Chief, who wears a
leopard mask and barks out orders in Spanish; and Zansky, the strange
collector of bizarre films who hails from Dimension 9.
But the show doesn't always go as planned. Despite his regular guests
and allies, Quintas has a deep and troubling conflict with his own
clone, the dark and mysterious Kalisto, whose philosophies are
scientific and rational, in direct contrast to the intuitive Quintas.
Tensions build, initially as a result of rivalry over the
beautiful Mistress Velda. But soon no power can stop the Battle of the
Century, as the two clones duke it out at Area 51, the infamous nexus
of cosmic, alien power.
"If Luis Buñuel, Captain Kangaroo, and L. Ron Hubbard
collaborated on a TV show, Quintas would be foot-stamping furious at
the shameless ripoff of THE NAKED COSMOS."
-Coop
"I love the eerie opening of each episode, and the rigid format... it's
like a kid's show for crackpot adults. People have to see this."
-Daniel
Clowes
"This show is like a really weird B-movie you see late at night and you
can't believe somebody even made that thing. It's bizarre, but a very
entertaining and funny bizarre."
-Tony
Millionaire
The Naked Cosmos is like
nothing you've seen, unless you are regularly tuning in to television
from another galaxy. It's made all the more impressive because the
writer and director is also playing most of the parts. Comic artist
Gilbert Hernandez, award-winning co-creator of "Love and Rockets,"
shows a hidden side of his talents as a rubber-faced comedian, able to
take on half a dozen roles with distinct voices and personalities. No
less remarkable are the female roles, all acted by Carol Kovinick, who
brings a natural balance to Gilbert's crazy energy.
This show is like Pee-Wee's Playhouse
if Uri Geller produced it on Saturn. It's a fond homage to the kid's
show and horror hosts who have long disappeared from the UHF bands, and
a love poem to the B-movie science fiction and monster films that used
to play late, late at night when you should have been sleeping.
retail price - $15.00
copacetic
price
- out of stock
prices and
availability
current as of 16 May 2006