Never mind that this short film is about a team of covert operatives sent out to protect Earth from a hive-like race called The Orlontix who have traveled intradimensional space and infiltrated our society, feeding off the biomolecular lifeforce of humankind because once all that nonsense is explained to us during the opening title sequence, the whole piece goes haywire and you won’t know what the hell is going on other than that you’re watching one of the trippiest shorts ever created.
Honestly, I didn’t know who the bad guys were and who the good guys were, but I didn’t give a good goddamn! “The Removers” is marvelous eye candy and nothing more. The saucy looking characters, all decked out in cyberpunk chic, are thrown into director Jon Schnepp’s vibrant blue-screened world, where one second they’ll be kung-fu fighting at a club and the next they’ll be floating through what looks like somebody’s acid fried brain. The spastic sound design does a lot to enhance this psychedelic journey as spacey beats, meld into high-pitched screeches and feedback. The characters keep flipping back and forth from running through city streets to floating around in vibrant, digital stew until there’s a Lisa Hayes, Rick Hunter type scene where a kiss freaks out the bad guys. Then a giant robot rips open Earth and zaps the alien swine who were hiding at its core and only then is the Earth free from this menace. Or something like that at least.
Interesting thing about this film, other than it’s completely insane, is that all of the dialogue is done telepathically, leaving the viewer to read subtitles and letting the actors just jump around and look good without having to deliver any lines. A good way to avoid bad acting if you ask me.
“The Removers” – best taken with a handful of shrooms.
