"It looks we'll have to turn up the juice. Initiate the MENTAL program now."So says the protagonist (I think) of this short homebrew film to his computer (maybe calculator) counterpart right as this story of flying cars and future drama starts to ramp up to epic proportions. I've seen a lot of things on this here internet, but I don't think I've ever seen anything so sheerly insane, contextless, and dendrite-rippingly awesome as this.All I know about said video is that it's called "Flying Car Mental Movie," and it appears to either be a blast from a proto-digital past—the intro's delightful alarm-clock-font glitchiness nearly brought tears to my eyes—or creator Brian Chii has a stockpile of incredible vintage gear.The cold open with a Lamborghini Countach on a background of stars—it's missing its wheels and trademark wing, and has tubes coming out of the hood because it's flying through space, you see—is the stuff of magic.But that serene scene is immediately broken as Chii, utilizing a convincing set of film negative effects and digital graphic overlays, orders his Spaceborghini to laser the living fuck out of what appears to be a mostly-intact Ferrari 308. I'm not sure if it's a commentary on the timelessness of Ferruccio Lamborghini and Enzo Ferrari's postmortal blood feud, but the laser graphics are fucking bitchin'.
Chii's sets are expansive, and capture the fear born of the post-civilization, post-Earth world Chii's created. The plot is muddy at best, largely due to Chii's grittily-produced audio production, but it's clear that Chii's battling against some really bad dudes. But at the end, Chii destroys his enemy's car. Truth and justice and beat up Italian sportscars prevail.If we may assume that Chii's vision was to create a portrait of what would happen if a VHS video camera with a bootlegged copy of Escape from New York was accidentally transported through a time warp 300 years into the future as the last few oligarchs lording over a robot-powered world battled to the death for the last vestiges of handmade luxury, which were prized as being representative of all the long-dead humans, and said VHS tape was recorded over with documentary footage of future horrors and zipped back in time as a warning to humans—and I believe we may safely assume exactly that—then he's succeeded.
It's a triumph of cautionary filmmaking, and a powerful take on the lo-fi space genre the likes of which we haven't seen since the mid-50s. Godspeed, Brian Chii, and may your flying cars always remain mental.@derektmead
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