The Day of the Return of the Revenge of Pee-wee...4!

This one really takes me back. For that reason, it has a special place in my heart as probably the favorite of the films I’ve ever done. It was a labor not of love, but of boredom that summer of 2000. It began when my brothers (Dan and John) and I realized that we had never fully exploited the humorous yet frightening potential of a Pee-wee Herman doll I had held on to since I was a youth. We quickly corrected this situation, and put the result on film.  The result would be something that would live on forever in infamy among the three of us An animate Pee-wee doll naturally makes a creepy villain for any horror film.
The premise is very straightforward. Pee-wee escapes from the Puppet Institute for the Criminally Insane (apparently he was put there after his frequent demonic possessions during the Christmas 1999 season), and he goes on a killing spree. He starts with my brother John in a rather melodic pre-credit sequence. Later, he breaks back into the institute and frees the rest of his corrupt, plush cronies.
My brother John skips about merrily before being killed.  Breakdowns of the villains are as follows: Mosquitor is a mosquito whose deadly farts are equivalent of atomic blasts. Pruneface is a ravenous creature who will eat essentially anything. Dr. Neo is the stereotypical mad scientist. Snailey is a malevolent  sprite who has the ability to make things suddenly disappear into this air with a whistle. Highly Deadly Black Tarantula is just that. Nameless Random Tech’s Evil Twin Brother is self-explanatory as well. Animal is a homicidal version of the Muppet Show character. Finally, Woody is a spasmodic, homicidal and limp-necked version of his lovable "Toy Story" self.
Left to right: Just a few of the antagonists of the film.  Gang leader Pee-wee, the nightmarish Pruneface, and the short-lived Nameless Random Tech's Evil Twin Brother.
Basically, we took a bunch of lovable children’s toys and perverted them as far as we could for the sake of our macabre sense of humor. As far as the storyline goes, Station Manager Frog and Studio Manager Snail learn that the band of villains is on their way. They barricade themselves with a few others into the newsroom and do their best to save coworkers in other areas of the studio complex. The majority of the film is introducing various shows in the different studios and watching them shut down as the cast is slain by one of the aggressors. In the end, only a few survive and the villains are recaptured and incarcerated again. It’s definitely a low budget (or essentially a no budget) endeavor that rises above the level of all of our previous films. Station Manager Frog, Studio Manager Snail and Show Producer Chip Monke (yeah, real original names), discuss how to get out of the building alive
My brother John reads a book in an exaggerated pantomime fashion before being slaughtered. We created opening and closing credits, added music to most scenes and created numerous sets for the different television shows. It’s still technically primitive by any standards, but the writing is what makes it count. We wanted to establish more specific roles for the usual cast of characters, delegating them duties that a normal television studio would have to do (i.e. the producer, the news anchor, etc.). Of course, we were still limited to puppets for the sheer reason that it provided us with a larger cast than if my brothers and I had simply cast ourselves into the film. However, we actually incorporated ourselves into the film for the first time as well. As I mentioned earlier, my brother John was the first victim of Pee-wee’s killing spree.
He would also reappear as the taste tester for the Tigger Butt Crunch commercial. The Tigger Butt Commercial was definitely lowbrow humor at its best. That summer, we were watching a cat named Tigger for a friend of the family’s. The feline seemed utterly inept at cleaning its own ass due to its prodigious girth and as a result, crap would dry on its butt and flake off all over the house. Thus the creation of “Tigger Butt Crunch,” a new breakfast cereal from "Nacrispco" (the makers of “Poop Tarts,” another silly notion of ours). In actuality, the “butt crunch” was Cocoa Pebbles, but when left to get soggy, it could pass for a tepid bowl of cat feces.  "It's gooooood!  Bwa ha ha!" attests John after eating a bowl of Tigger Butt Crunch.
As senior staff psychiatrist, Dan's hilarious faces made it difficult for me to do my lines.  My brother Dan would appear as two characters as well. One was my backup agent when we arrive from the Institute to recapture Pee-Wee, and the other being the lisping senior psychiatrist at the Institute. The latter role cracked me up to no end. Primarily because he made strange, geekish faces when he would talk to me on screen. My two roles were the lead security agent from the Institute in charge of recapturing Pee-wee, and the Duke Earl Baron who has a very brief appearance before being shot in the head. Pity too, because I liked the character. I used a magnifying glass as a monocle and dryly began every sentence with the phrase: “I say, and I do say it rather woodenly…”
"We believe he hath intenth to kill your thtaff," a lisping Dan warns the studio employees. Both Dan and I arrive from the Institute to capture Pee-wee before he can kill again, but we're too late. "The Puppet Network seems to be off the air," I woodenly state as the eccentric Duke Earl Baron.
The main task for us to deal with was coming up with enough voices for all cast members since we had nearly sixty puppets to work with (yeah, yeah, say what you will, but you know you’re jealous). When the smoke cleared, I ended up doing the voices for thirty-three of them (Pee-wee’s being the hardest on my throat since I strained my voice as hard as I could to get his ungodly, shrill pitch just right). My brother John had a hefty load too, and only Dan managed to do about five or so (and those few still all sounded the same). Father Grey screams "Sacrilege!" before being vaporized by Snailey (both characters voiced by me).
Pruneface chugs peroxide and then obsessively grooms himself. Still, I won’t judge Dan too harshly. He was responsible for the voice of Pruneface. A new humanoid villain, he was my brother John in a Pruneface mask (from “Dick Tracy”) with two painted ping-pong eyeballs pushed into the eye sockets. John would take off running, smacking into walls and furniture as he went since he couldn’t see a thing, and Dan would make this great voiceover that sounded like a slobbering mongoloid chuckling maniacally with a mouthful of taffy. That is the only way I know how to describe it. And every now and again, he’d insert random dialogue, such as “Mmmm…bathroom delectables!” It was the sort of thing that makes you laugh to the point of nausea, yet you’re forever haunted in your nightmares by the sight of it too. I believe it's called "pure genious." Also, Pruneface’s tyrannical rampage marks the point of the film where things really began to get depraved.
On Movie Reviews with Sitstill and Eburt (gee, I bet you’ll never guess who those two are a spoof of), the two critics decided to air the deleted scenes from Toy Story 2. The first clip shows Woody and Buzz in bed, under the covers and in one another’s arms as Woody takes a long drag on a cigarette and lets out a smarmy, “Yee-haa.” Sitstill then refused to show the rest of the clips claiming they contain “Forbidden boobies and bloody naughty bits.” This is another example (like “bathroom delectables”) of where ad-libbing produces some great phrases. The movie, while roughly scripted, provided each person with an outline as to where he needed to go with the puppet in each scene. After that, it was all up to you as to what they said. The spontaneity usually lends to hilarity. Other shows that were introduced and subsequently shut down by the villains were: the “Dino Bible Hour” (where the dangers of angering a swarming hive of Maccabees was discussed), “Jacques Escargot’s Semi-Deadly Undersea Misadventures” (where Effeminate Piranha and Ventriloquist Eel were introduced as supplemental villains), and “Father Gray’s Quiet, Little, Fun-filled Exorcism Hour” (which speaks for itself).
Woody enjoys a post-coital cigarette with Buzz during Toy Story's deleted scenes. Ventriloquist Eel kills Jacques Escargot and jokes with his dummy Eeley. Father Gray performs one of many exorcisms on his prize-packed show.
In the end, there were over forty casualties, five rapes, a demonic possession and an unnatural birth before the villains were recaptured. They were lured into their old prison cells when Nameless Random Tech (who happened to survive being strangled and flushed down the toilet by Pee-wee) has the foresight to refill their empty food bowls. Simple yet effective.
This movie is definitely one that I’d love to go back and reedit. I would like to add more professional intros to each of the shows, as well as redo the credits. That and chop out a little bit from sections where things get especially silly and tedious. One scene would be the public access station of Puppet Studios, where a local group of actors is reenacting “Poopsie Doopsie’s Day Out.” That title was often referred to in many of our previous films, but never seen (as the infamous “noodle incident” that forever remained a mystery in the strip “Calvin and Hobbes”). When we did it, I had lost the lyrics I wrote for the song, so I made it up as I went, the whole thing gets excessively incoherent and the result is sheer bedlam. Poopsie Doopsie reels before vomiting, being sexually assaulted multiple times and contracting scabies on her grand day out.
Pee-wee flushes Nameless Random Tech down the toilet, but he will return. Weary of Tiny's complex queries, Animal decides to devour the host. The memorable sign for the studio's breaking news story about a gas cloud.
The title page for the sequel that may never reach completion.  All that exist thus far is a pre-credit sequence and the titles themselves. Still, the majority of the movie’s juvenile sense of humor and manic pace works well and still holds up over time (or it does for me at least). Madame B. Fantasia making out with her reflection, Pee-wee breaking into Puppet Studios by emerging through a toilet, “Tiny’s Game Show” with its ludicrous questions about the molecular structures of protein kinases, trigger happy game hunter Lionel Hutch and Anchorman Wolfie’s breaking story about a poisonous gas cloud that results in “gushing blood” will never grow old for me. My brothers and I have started on a sequel entitled: “What’s for Breakfast? (And is it in a Sauce?).” But due to constantly-conflicting work schedules, it may never come to be in its entirety. Still, we will always have “The Day of the Return of the Revenge of Pee-wee…4!” to remind us of that golden summer (and screw you if you think this is a sappy way to end this page).

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