Rubber Johnny

Dir: Chris Cunningham

2005

****

Chris Cunningham’s bizarre Rubber Johnny is a cross between a short film and a music video but without a single to promote. The film is as technical as his music is and is presented in infrared vision, starting with an out-of-focus closeup of Johnny (played by Cunningham), babbling incomprehensibly while being interviewed by an unseen man. At one point Johnny mumbles the word "ma-ma" twice, after which the man asks if he wants his mother to come in. This causes Johnny to start breathing erratically and lose control, so the man gives Johnny a sedative injection to calm him down. The video cuts to a fluorescent light turning on, then a mouse crawling over a press-sticker credits list, followed by the title, "Rubber Johnny", which is shown written on a condom, in a backwards-playing scene of it being pulled off a penis. It should be stated that ‘Rubber Johnny’ is what we English kids used to call condoms in the 1980s. Johnny is first seen leaning backward in his wheelchair with his oversized head hanging over the back of it. As the Aphex Twin track's intro, distortions of a male voice begin to play, and Johnny moves his mouth in time with the vocalizations. After this begins the main electronic rhythm of the track, which Johnny begins to follow while his dog watches. His dancing involves him performing balancing tricks with his wheelchair, and deflecting light beams with his hands as he dances. About a minute into the video the music stops, a door opens and he is interrupted by someone who appears to be his father. During this, Johnny is out of his delusion and is shown sitting upright in the wheelchair, turning to look. His father is heard yelling at him indistinctly, a slap to Johnny's face is implied, and the man slams the door. After he leaves, Johnny is seen insufflating a large line of cocaine. After this, the video becomes even more erratic and delusional. First there's a period in which the music comes to a standstill, and Johnny is first heard screaming in the dark and then hiding behind a door, avoiding white light beams, while his dog watches once more. Then the music goes into a distorted version of the one in the first passage of the video. Nearing the end of the video, it appears as if it was filmed from behind glass, with Johnny's face seen repeatedly getting smashed into it, and each time chunks of his face are seen articulating the vocals in the song. After this, he is interrupted a second time by his yelling father, after which the video ends with Johnny, once again, reclining back in his wheelchair and babbling at his chihuahua. The credits then roll over a night scene of a train passing in the distance. It is often hard to tell whether Johnny is real or not as he is often a distorted mash of different body parts. At one point I thought he was a pair of testicles and I’m sure I saw an anus at one point during the unsettling mania. It is easily one of the weirdest things I have ever seen, not to mention one of the most disturbing. To me it felt like a digital version of a Jan Švankmajer movie. It is incredibly inventive (I still have no idea how he did it) but it's not Cunningham's best work in my opinion as it is far too experimental. His other work is also disturbing but it is always thrilling and I can watch videos such as Window Licker and Come To Daddy over and over again, while Rubber Johnny warrants just one watch. It is probably his most disturbing film and anyone who has ever seen his Apex Twin videos knows that is saying something. Linsey Dawn McKenzie was supposedly in the film as a female Rubber Johnny in a deleted scene which featured both Rubber Johnnies playing outside really fast at night. McKenzie, a voluptuous porn actress, might have added a sexual edge to the film which I’m sure the censors wouldn’t have appreciated, so I’m guessing this is why it was removed. I nearly stated that it is a funny film but it really isn’t, you just laugh out of shock. It is essentially a horror but the reality is that there is nothing like it, so it is without genre of category, a unique oddity.