I was asked on Twitter if I’d like to watch a short film called Bad Acid, after a few weeks I finally got round to seeing it. I’m really glad that I did and here are my thoughts on this enjoyable short!
Bad Acid follows Marvin Maskelyn a washed up TV hypnotist who’s fame is disappearing as well as his ability, for younger people hypnosis was on TV quite a bit when I was younger and was really popular and funny. Marvin seems to have lost his touch of late and his shows are extremely poor with him failing to even hypnotise anyone let along get them doing silly things.
Also along on the journey is his seemingly long suffering manager who can clearly see him slowly fading away.
Marvin gets his hands on the magic lamp
Part of his act includes trying to convince people there’s a genie who can grant them wishes, Marvin acquires an old lamp and inside of the lamp is a load of drugs. Down on his luck and with nothing left Marvin takes one of the acid tabs he finds inside and is granted a wish.
This is where everything goes wrong in the style of the Outer Limits or Twilight Zone the short tells the story of what happens when he makes his wish. These things never go according to plan do they?
Things go terribly wrong for the washed up Paul McKenna wannabe
After watching this I went onto the internet to see what some other opinions were and I saw someone mention Phoenix Nights. This confirmed what I thought, when Marvin is failing to perform on stage it’s almost like a clip from an act in the Peter Kay comedy. Even the camera pans around to the normal peoples reactions who’d fit right in if they were plonked into the Phoenix Club with Brian Potter himself.
I found this short to be very entertaining, like all shorts it brings up questions and only the good ones make me wish for more and this one certainly did that. The effects were damn good as well, sure there’s not many of them but what is in there is really well done. I’m not a fan of trippy dream sequences but Marvin’s “trip” was done so well I enjoyed watching it, I’d highly recommend this short to any one.
Overall Rating
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Acid Horrors 