“Honky: The Movie” is what happens when you give a video camera to a bunch of guys who really enjoy Monty Python and “The Kentucky Fried Movie”. Cool thing is, this crew seems to really understand what makes that kind of humor tick and without stealing too many jokes, manage to fashion a pretty entertaining feature.
It’s rather surprising that something of this length and production value stayed entertaining all the way through. “Honky” seems like one of those shot on video pieces that’s been honed by a group of friends with a lust for movies and way too much time on their hands. Normally, this leads to disastrous results because for some reason, you put a camera in anyone’s hands and all of the sudden they think they’re (insert director’s name here). Fanboy films. That’s what I’m talking about here. And even though these guys seem to fall into that category, they’re also damn funny.
Hank Halloway the 11th is called Honky by all of his acquaintances, including his little blue clay buddy Arnold. Yeah, Honky’s a honky all right and all of his acquaintances are honkies too, but they call him honky anyways. God, I love the word HONKY! Anyways, Honky is a happy-go-lucky goof who wakes up one morning to find a dead guy on his porch. A note is attached to the body and it reads – HONKEY. Figuring that someone is out to kill him, Honky thinks back to a number of situations where he may have pissed somebody off. We’re taken through these brief situations that include Honky ripping on a blind guy, breaking up an AA meeting, unleashing killer gremlins on the town and even running across a guy that swears to kill him some day because Honky’s bad service at a tire shop was responsible for the death of his wife and kids. Of course, Honky being the dope that he is doesn’t realize the obvious, so he sets out to confront each person or couple he feels may be responsible for the plotting of his death.
The first half of the feature has us follow Honky around as he interrogates everyone, discovering that they are indeed innocent of this charge, however they’re all up to something no good, so Honky either winds up killing them or getting them killed. During this search and destroy mission, Honky winds up finding his true love. Her name is…True Love. This is where the second half derails from the plot a bit as we’re treated to Honky’s comedic courtship stylings. But soon enough, the man that swore to kill him re-surfaces as super villain Tire Man, disguised by a rubber bondage mask. Tire Man kidnaps Arnold; so Honky must rise to the occasion to save his little buddy, as well as take down his arch-nemesis.
It’s not a work of art and even though the laughs aren’t sidesplitting, “Honky” is consistently funny. Rollins and company knew what they were doing.
The 81-minute running time includes an opening shot on video trailer, by Rollins, of a bogus movie called “Giraffe”, a spoof on “Jurassic Park”. “Giraffe” isn’t very funny, so immediately I got worried. Lucky for me, “Honky” panned out. Also included at the end of the feature is about five minutes of outtakes and alternate scenes. Enjoy!
