Cheap Disinformation: The Complete Series (DVD) (Richard Metzger) Price

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Customer Reviews of Disinformation: The Complete Series

Then, there's the content. I have not finished watching it, but it is so far a very mixed bag: the episodes end with commentary from Brother Theodore, who was tedious a decade ago and who has not improved with age.

There is an interview with a "mind-controlled sex slave," and her story is interesting to watch, but a better account of her books can be found in the book Apocalypse Culture II. The section on painter Joe Coleman was definitely worth watching. Genesis P-Orridge will be familiar to readers of the Re/Search series of books; you can get a lot more out of reading about him. The excerpts from the "Uncle Goddamn" video are horrible to watch: like watching the Bumfights video, it is just appalling, and everyday cruelty is rather uninteresting.

If you're in this for titillation value, you're probably better off watching porn or HBO's "Real Sex" series. I have not finished watching (and may not bother). It is amusing to think that some people may have stumbled upon this by accident since it appeared in the UK immediately after Ally McBeal!

Entertaining, interesting, and a bargain (especially used).
Four uncut episodes, with some extra footage on infiltrating McDonalds and Howard Bloom, plus a documentation of a live Disinfo event in NYC are included in this 2-disc set. It's not all fascinating, I don't care about Joe Coleman, Grant Morrison and Kembra Pfahler (they just strike me as wannabe celebrities), but I like the satanist and conspiracy stuff-it's more funny than scary, and I'm not sure if that's the intention or not! Other bits on outsider music and porno (extreme and trannie) are fairly interesting, and the late Brother Theodore always makes me laugh. Host Richard Metzger is a little self-conscious and annoying, but tolerable enough.

The NYC event is a mixed bag, I wish Adam Parfrey and Kenneth Anger would have spoken longer, while Morrison and Marilyn Manson would've spoken less. Still, it's worth a look.

Much of this stuff was taped around 2000 it seems, and it's interesting how little an effect this stuff has had on George W. Bush's America. As Americans have become more frightened to leave the house, this counter-culture weirdness really seems to have taken a backseat to the foibles of the New World Order.

If you have read...
...either the AMOK catalogs or any of the Apocalypse Culture books, this would be the visual equivalent--I do not consider myself a part of the "fringe" or the "counter-culture"--I am middle-aged and have a white-collar job but I have always been interested in the unusual and sometimes downright weird, call me a cultural voyeur, if you want...although my reading encompasses the aforementioned works as well as books on serial killers, goth culture, New Orleans voodoo, etc., I cannot afford to be as liberal in my tastes when it comes to the unusual in music, movies and TV--I can usually get the gist of what I will be reading from the cover, title, back comments, etc. but with music, movies and TV the information contained therein is not so straight-forwardly apparent (unless I see a trailer, read a review, hear a sample, etc.)...

That said, I bought this DVD set as it seemed to me a kind of "60 Minutes" of the unusual for the beginner (thanks to that previous reviewer for the analogy, altho I don't think Christopher Guest would even think about most of this stuff, let alone film it), and as that goes, I was not disappointed, but if you bought a DVD set of the best of 60 Minutes episodes, would you really keep it and rewatch it? For instance, I've seen more of artist Joe Coleman's work and lifestyle from a IFC documentary, I didn't really need video footage of Mr. Terrific or Fantastic or whatever after reading about him one of the aforementioned books, and as for the "Uncle Goddamn" and "Brother Theodore" excerpts throughout the show, I only have to see a flaming, drunken, inbred redneck or a rambling, mentally-ill, pretentious New Yawk "artist" ONCE to get the picture, OK?

For the price, you might want to stick to the books--even with the 2nd "bonus" DVD you get with this set which is speaker-only segments of a live convention in which only the Adam Parfrey and Marilyn Manson speeches are interesting (you can get the Parfrey stuff from the, yes, "aforementioned" books, and probably the Manson stuff from his website)...

Aside: From the wonderful comics he writes, you wouldn't think Grant Morrison would be such a self-amused, drug-addled, bloody boring git, but...he IS!