The Blair Thumb

How disrespectful can you get? Those poor students, Heather, Michael and Josh. This isn’t how to pay homage to them! Those unfortunate students whose documentary became The Blair Witch Project, a true story documenting the their final days... oh... it’s fake? Oh, well that changes everything. This is just one hilarious short taking the absolute piss out of The Blair Witch Project. And while Scary Movie attacked horror films generally, this is just 28 minutes of pure obnoxious entertainment, thanks to the recent cult film's success.

"I don’t know where this snot is coming from because I don’t have a nose."

Steve Oederkerk, creator of Thumbation, brings the simplistic nature of the human thumb to life with oddly disturbing creativity. Do you remember when you were in junior primary school and you drew faces on your thumb then let your imagination go wild? Well Oederkerk has now brought your imagination to life, seamlessly transposing real moving eyes and mouths onto the pads of dressed-up thumbs – Barbie doll arms and all. Now it may just be The Blair Thumb, but they do tend to look slightly... um let’s just say “blonde�, it’s a polite thing to say. So we have the “vacant� sign over the face, a glassy gawk from the eyes and a mouth that is easily 70% of the face. But who cares – it’s funny! Delayed reactions, overreactions and intensely stupid dialogue (not to mention the screams) add to the mood of this filmette and give this parody a life and feel of its own.

This is the sort of thing that needs you to love and know the source of the parody in order to gain as much as possible from it. So nothing else will be said about what it's about, except that it is a stab at the 1999 blockbuster The Blair Witch Project. Anything else that is said is a major spoiler so let’s just leave it at that. Have a slighty relaxing drink, be in one of those sugar-induced moods and sit down with a group to watch this – and while you’re at it, get the rest of the series too!

Made for television/direct-to-video release, this full-frame 28 minute video fits easily (duh) onto a single layer, and on the whole looks great, given what it is making fun of. Let’s see, The Blair Witch Project was full of artefacts, grain and what not, and has all of these, but they're purposely added, not an actual fault. Black and white as well as colour footage is used, again in synch with the whole Blair Witch thing, and it all looks good. Colours are adequately saturated, capturing the realism of the woods as well as the luminosity of the disco. Yes, disco. And yes, you’re still reading about The Blair Thumb. But does Steve Oedekerk need an excuse to do anything? Just look at Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Compression related artefacts are limited to slight aliasing throughout the un-anamorphically enhanced picture, but there's nothing remotely considerable, again given what it is trying to jab a stick at.

Out of the six included audio tracks, only two are worth listening to. One is a Dolby Digital surround-encoded English track and the other is one of the commentaries. More on the commentaries later though...

Dialogue is clear throughout, and the included subtitles are fine turned off for the entire filmette. There is nothing terribly wrong with this transfer, as it is nearly totally dialogue-driven. The only issue is the lack of a 5.1 track that is on the Region 1 versions of this disc. Oh well, it still sounds great given its encoded surround-ness. Directional effects are severely limited, with the overall sound similar to a plain mono track driven through multiple speakers. No biggie, it isn’t necessary, as bogus activity would distract from the intended humour in the film.

The 4:3 menus are the first thing you see when you stick this baby in the DVD drive (after all of the introductory clips) and they are simply terrible to use. You are initially faced with a compass which has no labels except for 'N', 'S', 'W', 'E' and ‘Death House’. But what goes where? You tell me, you’re guess is as good as mine. All you do is just go from one label to another trying things out, and eventually you get somewhere. But this is just damned annoying! Where is the play button? Where is the language selection button?

Here is what you can eventually do with the menu if you can get it to work properly. Sometimes you are taken to a clip, other times to a menu page – its totally random. But here we go anyway, for those who want the pleasure (um?) of doing it themselves, don’t read this, and for those that want to know, highlight with the mouse to read on.

• N - Scene Selections 1 - 3
• S - Set Up Options
• W - Scene Selections 7 - 9
• E - Scene Selections 4 - 6
• Death House - Extra Features

After a few wrong choices you are shown different clips from the film, and these can be a bit of a spoiler for those who hadn’t seen the filmette yet. But enough bitching... oh wait, it’s just started.

The two audio commentaries are the next port of call, after finding the extras page that is. The first is titled Sane and is an interesting discussion on the filmette from the major crew behind its development. The second, titled Insane, is just an utter waste of time. It features laughing, giggling, muttering and so on for the entire length and is giving me a headache even reminiscing about it. Does it advertise drug use or were a few guys dropped on their heads when they were younger? A few times?

OK, now the bitching is over – promise! We now move on to some rehearsed Blair Thumb outtakes which add a little more humour to the film, and also show real hands interacting with the thumbed actors making it appear more like a “making-of�. The behind the scenes featurette is worthy of its 4:11 watch, as it is just a good giggle, featuring interviews with the cast and director bitching about one another – the exact opposite of the usual “praise the cast and crew� discussions seen in these promotional clips.

Two deleted scenes have been included, which run for 0:46 and 0:23. For the length of them, they could have been left in adding just over a minute to the running time, but still are fairly meaningless and trivial on their own. Storyboards for the original planning of the filmette have been included and the clip runs through a sequence of sketches. This adds a little credibility to the filmmaking, but still a proper making-of would be good accompanying this.

The trailers come in thick and fast, and feature six in total. Some of these trailers, notably Bat Thumb, Thumbtanic and The Blair Thumb, blatantly attack the original theatrical trailers of these films and re-shoot with thumbs in place. The trailers are for Thumb Wars (1:45), Frankenthumb (0:56), Bat Thumb (0:36), Thumbtanic (3:47), The Godthumb (1:07) and The Blair Thumb (0:48).

Turn up the volume. Turn off the lights. Turn up the stupidity levels. Turn on this DVD. Have a giggle, have a laugh, and just be silly for one evening. It may only be 28 minutes, but it still packs a cornily funny punch.