Minisode - The Roly Poly Man - The Strangest Film You've Never Seen

THIS EPISODE CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS 

Join Val for a short episode on the little-seen, little-known, criminally-underappreciated Australian splatter comedy, "The Roly Poly Man".

A film SO obscure we could find out almost NOTHING about it. So Val does his best to explain the movie's INCREDIBLY strange plot and tells you why you NEED to track this film down!

Featuring giant Amazonian leeches, the murder of a giant TV bear, huge testicles, horny nuns. several horrible children and a horse driving a taxi, you owe it to yourselves to listen to this episode and FIND THIS FILM!

Transcript

My Dear Willing Participants,

Welcome to our second minisode. As you well know, typically I try to group films together into a themed episode. But this time I bring you an episode that is unclassifiable. Ungroupable. 

Rrrrreally fucking weird. 

Tonight we shall be talking about Australian horror/comedy “The Roly Poly Man”.

 This episode is sort of a PS to my previous episode on Peter Jackson. It’s another splatter comedy, but this time an Australian one, and with the emphasis more on the comedy and less on the splatter. 

I do not think this film was successful. I have never heard of it from anyone. Except me. I caught it on late night tv here in New Zealand back in the year 2000 and if it were not for the fact that it is SO strange, so off-the-wall, so bizarre, so FUNNY, I doubt I would ever have seen it again. 

But as soon as it was finished. I knew I had to own this film.

Now I always like to do some serious research on a film before I present it to you. But, sadly, that is not possible with The Roly Poly Man – search for it and you’ll see what I mean. There are a few web pages that mention it but hardly any that describe it in detail. Nothing about the making of it, very little about the star. And there are two – yes TWO reviews of this film on IMDB. THAT’S how obscure it is 

The Roly Poly Man stars deceased Australian comedian Paul Chubb who I have never seen in anything else. According to Wikipedia, he had a successful tv and film career in that country, and appeared in “Home & Away”. But there’s not much further information about him. Please do get in touch if you have more. 

Wikipedia helpfully adds that, The Roly Poly Man “is one of the more unusual films made in Australia”. 

Let me tell you something, Willing Participants. They are not fucking kidding.

The film opens like a classic private eye movie. The atmosphere is seedy. The tone is downbeat. We find burnt-out, down-at-luck private investigator Dirk Trent in a seedy bar in downtown Sydney, having his usual breakfast of black coffee, cigarettes and mescal. Actually, forget the mescal con quisano. Actually, forget the mescal. There’s a worm in it.

[DIRK’S MONOLOGUE]

Dirk is a chubby, cowardly man. He’s not particularly quick-witted. He wears an ill-fitting suit. And he’s a little bit sweaty.

As is often the case with these sorts of film, when Dirk enters his office, there’s a dangerous, glamorous woman awaiting him. 

Unfortunately for him, it’s his ex-wife, wanting to drop off his several horrible children on him later that week. Dirk’s right hand man is an old fellow in a flat cap called Mickey, a technical genius, who makes all sorts of handy devices for him and also functions as his forensics expert. 

Dirk is hired to follow a man called Ted Lewis by his wife. She believes he is cheating on her because of his glands. “You can tell a lot about a man by his secretions,” she adds. But when Ted disappears, Dirk heads to the morgue. “I like to cut to the chase,” he says, “I went looking for a body.”

This brings Dirk to Sandra, the sexy pathologist and Axel the weird mortuary assistant with a habit of putting wedding dresses on female corpses, and serve them champagne.

Dirk’s investigations lead him to discover that Ted is DEAD.

And it soon becomes apparent that Ted is just the first victim of a spate of exploding-brain incidents across Sydney. Dirk’s access to Sandra the sexy pathologist gives him the opportunity to gather some evidence – in the form of brains – which he suavely sticks in his trouser pocket. Unfortunately this ruins the date, “and I’ve still got brain-juice in me shoe” complains Dirk.

Mickey investigates the brains, and discovers something strange – what appears to have caused the head explosions are some foreign matter – some ALIEN matter in amongst the brain tissue. Soon, heads are exploding all over the city, including that of beloved children’s entertainer Woozy Bear.

Dirk knows what he has to do – he has to STEAL the head of Woozy Bear so that Mickey and Sandra the sexy pathologist can look for more clues. 

What Dirk discovers in the brain of Woozy Bear is SO horrible, SO disgusting it betrays description…

It transpires that Ted, Woozy Bear and a host of other victims have been infected with a carnivorous giant Amazonian leech, that slowly eats their brains, while growing and growing… All signs point to a deranged neurologist called Henderson – who appears to have undertaken some research on the medical appliance of leeches which has gone horribly wrong.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, this is exactly when Dirk’s wife shows up with the kids. For the weekend. The killer takes the opportunity to frame Dirk for murder. Dirk knows what he has to do to make things right –

And just how big can these leeches grow anyway…

The Roly Poly Man may not have a big budget. To be honest, most of it looks like it was shot in other people’s kitchens and front rooms. It may not have the best special effects. The leeches look like they are made of old carpet. The direction may lack the flash and inspiration of Peter Jackson or Sam Raimi – it kind of looks like a tv film. 

But what it does have are genuinely funny jokes – ones that made me laugh out loud. Paul Chubb seems to have a knack for delivering classic PI lines in his hangdog manner but that manage to upend the conventions with classic Aussie cynicism. And actually the whole cast is good, overplaying their roles to just the right degree – from sexy pathologist Sandra, to Mickey the unlikely scientific genius. 

And it’s just a film brimming with inventive good humour. There are plenty of jokes I haven’t mentioned simply because they don’t fit in with the plot. Like a brilliant mini-sketch about a nun -  

And then there’s the scenes in the pub which are all subtitled – including the phone going “ring ring” because no-one can be heard over the noise of the in-house band.

I should warn you that some of the humour may not have aged well, politically speaking. This movie is from Australia in the 1990’s and so I would defend the film by saying you might find parts of it offensive now – but at the time we thought it was progressive.  

There’s not much gore – but the film isn’t afraid of blood and guts – well – brains. And there are some truly surreal moments, such as when Dirk gets picked up by a horse driving a taxi. 

My reason in recording this minisode is to do everything I can to encourage you all to watch it. This film deserves a place alongside the splatstick classics of Peter Jackson and Stuart Gordon. It’s not really a horror film. It’s not scary at all. But it is fast, gory, stupid and silly. 

It goes well with beer. It’ll be fine accompaniment to pizza. So do yourself a favour and TRACK THIS FILM DOWN. 

Don’t leave me alone as one of the few people in the world who has seen it. Come, let us start a cult of the Amazonian leech. Let us join in with The Roly Poly Man…