UPDATE: Copies are now sold out.
Hello, Chewers. Josh here. Let me take you back for a sec…
It was the summer of 2000. 9/11 hadn’t happened yet, the first season of Survivor was all the rage, and my friends and I were just a couple of months away from embarking on our respective senior years of college. The terrors of looming adulthood no doubt inspired the film my writing/producing partner Pat and I (under my nickname Worm) committed to Mini-DV that summer — Hey Stop Stabbing Me!
This surreal horror comedy tells the heroic tale of recent college graduate Herman Schumacher, whose optimistic foray into adult life takes a strange turn for the worse when he begins to suspect that one of his roommates is a murderer. In Herman’s new house, tenants don’t seem to move out so much as they just disappear. This is but one of the many dark perils that Herman must navigate along his post-collegiate rite-of-passage that leads to kinky sex, secret graves, a battle to the death, and a mysterious creature that steals socks and lives in a labyrinth under the house.
Making a movie wasn’t anything new for us. This was the fourth feature-length film that my friends and I made during school breaks while back home in Bloomington, MN. But the outcome was quite different. By the time my lazy ass had graduated and edited the film, it was now the height of the DVD boom, when distributors were eager for fucking anything to toss at ravenous consumers. So, crazily, a movie made by a bunch of 20-year-olds that cost less than $500 to produce found its way into the market. And even more crazily it actually found some fans.
We got some dandy reviews from critics…
“One of the ten best films of the year.”
“No-budget filmmaking at its finest; a twisted and delightful example of clever writing and understanding genre. Plus it has a clothes-stealing monster and a battle to the death”
– Jason Shawhan, Nashville Scene
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““Hey, Stop Stabbing Me!” is a very silly movie… But more importantly, it’s a funny one, filled with ideas both creative and bizarre.”
“Yeah, it’s goofy, and yeah, it’s cheap, but it’s got charm and funny to spare.”
– Joshua Grover-David Patterson, Film Treat
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“An extremely clever independent flick.”
“Smartly written, executed and acted.”
– Lawrence P. Raffel, Monsters At Play
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The film was recently featured in Mike Watt’s book Fervid Filmmaking: 66 Cult Pictures of Vision, Verve and No Self-Restraint, who said of the film “A good script can overcome just about any technical shortcomings… One of the best examples I’ve ever come across is the modest, zero-budgeted and very funny independent black comedy, Hey Stop Stabbing Me!”
A fan of the film even took it upon herself to make a commemorative plate…
But, alas, the film has been out of print for years.
Now, marking the 10th anniversary of its release, I’m quite happy to announce that its original distributor Sub Rosa is presenting a special very limited edition VHS/DVD combo pack of the film, that comes with an iron on (for T-shirts, seen below) and a 11×17 poster (seen above) signed by yours truly. The set goes on sale today and only 50 copies shall be run, so order it now while supplies last!
