This Sick, Twisted Fest Won't Bowl You Over

MOVIE REVIEW XX "Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation." King Cinema. No one under 18 admitted. -------------------------------

With its gross-out skewerings of David Koresh and "Jurassic Park," this latest collection of adults-only cartoon shorts is nothing if not topical, and occasionally it's even funny.

Making sure to include most of the gore Steven Spielberg left out, "Triassick Parking Lot" is a gruesome acknowledgment that a faithful movie of Michael Crichton's book probably would have been rated NC-17.

"One Ration Under God" takes place in purgatory, where Koresh is waiting in line for judgment behind Hitler and J. Edgar Hoover. Like the undead in "Beetlejuice," he looks just like he did when he died - a clump of ashes topped by a pair of glasses.

Koresh also makes an appearance in a "Chainsaw Bob" cartoon in which he cavorts in the nude, propositioning anything that moves, before getting sliced in half as he wails "Wait! I haven't opened the seventh seal yet."

At moments like this, "Sick and Twisted" makes you wonder why this generation hasn't yet had its "Dr. Strangelove," a satire so bold and tasteless as to question the sanity of civilization at this moment.

Other satisfyingly cynical stuff: "Brian's Brain," in which an abnormal, rejected child learns that only money can buy acceptance from his peers; "Slaughter Day," starring a terminator pig who turns the tables on a human butcher; "Bulimator," which will be appreciated most by those who enjoyed the infamous restaurant scene in "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life"; and "Stubs," which makes mincemeat of perhaps the worst dating show in television history.

At its worst, unfortunately, this is just another two-hour collection of stupid cartoons about nose-picking, flatulence, necrophilia and bathroom functions, complete with stale reruns of such tired Beavis and Butt-head shorts as "Frog Baseball."

True, the audience laughed at "Puke a Pound," "Mutilator II," "Deep Sympathy" and several cartoons whose titles cannot be printed in a family newspaper. As stand-up comedians have long known, some subjects and four-letter words are still so rarely aired in public that they always get a response.

The program, which plays through Oct. 24 at the King, comes complete with emcee and an intermission in which audience members are invited to an on-stage bowling competition in which the bowling pins are plastic dildos.