A fuzzy MTV clip making the rounds advertises the 1991 “SACRIFICE YOUR DAUGHTER TO GWAR!!!” contest, and it’s so good that it might give the very young a mistaken impression of what MTV’s programming used to be like. In fact, before that terrible Ugly Kid Joe song came out, the network showed almost nothing but the videos for “Janie’s Got a Gun,” “Silent Lucidity,” “More Than Words” and “Every Little Step.” In other words, it was a fat, sad sack of shit, and you would have been waiting a long time if you were waiting for Downtown Julie Brown to cue up live video of GWAR doing “Sick of You” in Antarctica. No, the GWAR contest was not part of MTV’s regular programming, but a sketch on the network’s best original show to date, The Idiot Box.
 

 
Even if he had never achieved fame as Bill S. Preston, Esq. in the Bill & Ted series (part three now in the works!)—even if he was not currently slated to write and direct the official documentary about the life and work of Frank Zappa—Alex Winter would still be deserving of two Kennedy Center awards, a statue in every town square and a place in every American heart, because he is the director of the Butthole Surfers’ immortal Bar-B-Que Movie, for which John Ford would have gladly schlupped out both his and John “Duke” Wayne’s prostate glands and let them splat upon the floor, proclaiming, as he prised out both organs with one fluid motion of two callused hands, that’s cash on the barrelhead, son. Nor do Winter’s contributions to our culture end there.
 

 
Bar-B-Que Movie surfaced in 1989 on the first (and only?) issue of Impact Video Magazine, directed by Winter and his frequent collaborator Tom Stern. (The pair met as film students at NYU, where they directed the short Squeal of Death.) I haven’t seen much of Impact, but the roster is unimpeachable; along with the Buttholes short, the video included interviews with Public Enemy and Robert Williams, comedy from Bill Hicks, and footage of Survival Research Labs. Armed with this small triumph and the success of the first Bill & Ted movie, Winter and Stern scored a sketch show on MTV: the six-episode run of The Idiot Box.

Though some of the show’s references are now ancient, it holds up quite well on its own. What is hard to communicate is how demented, sick and bad it seemed in the context of the time. Back then, some citizens complained that The Simpsons was obscene and harmful to children, and the vice president of the country inveighed against the corrupting influence of a sitcom for the elderly called Murphy Brown. It was in this inhospitable cultural environment that Eddie the Flying Gimp took wing. Who can say how much higher he might have soared in friendly skies? (This analogy falls apart because Eddie the Flying Gimp is from outer space, but I had a long day and I did my best.)
 

Hideous Mutant Freekz: Alex Winter and Tom Stern on the cover of the June 1993 issue of Film Threat
 
After The Idiot Box, Winter and Stern co-directed their gut-busting first feature, Hideous Mutant Freekz, released as Freaked in 1993. Twenty-three years on, I have yet to meet the person to whom I would not recommend this movie. Visit the Freekland channel on YouTube for more Winter and Stern video madness. (The first episode of The Idiot Box is here.) And even if you never got a chance to be baptized by Oderus’ body fluids in person like I did, you can still purify your soul with days of long-form GWAR videos.

Below, in the last episode of The Idiot Box, the GWAR contest appears at 1:43:

 
Every weekday after school, I used to tune into KDOC to watch Wally George spit right-wing hate from a dingy studio in Anaheim. I must have found it comforting in the same way procedural dramas or reality shows can be comforting. The simplicity of the dramatic formula, the banishment of thoughts and thinking from the action, and the very narrow range of rhetorical and emotional possibilities are all balm for the soul.

Wally’s set was austere and his talismans were few: a gavel, an American flag, a photo of a space shuttle launch with the caption “USA IS #1,” and an outrageous combover. Somehow, I had learned that he was estranged from his daughter, the actress Rebecca De Mornay. He seemed like he was maybe not the most sympathetic resident of Orange County.

George was all assertion, no argument, and he didn’t actually say very much—it was all about how he said it. With his voice always rising in pitch and volume, George punctuated his screams by slapping his desk or banging his gavel. His laconic cries left no doubt about his political views. He was for Reagan, Bush, televised executions, Star Wars, the war on drugs, the war in Iraq; against abortion, health care, gay people, evolutionists, devil worshipers, obscenity, metal, punk, and women. He did think racism was a bad thing, or said so.

Gauging the sincerity of these opinions was never easy because the show was so theatrical. To give you a taste of the level of discourse, here’s a brief exchange about the death penalty with regular Hot Seat guest Rick Scouler:

“First of all, what we have to admit is that the death penalty does not cause a downward trend in murder. Okay? That’s proven. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a jerk.”

“No, Rick—the first thing we have to admit is that you are an idiotic nerd!”

(George also liked the insults “stupid moron,” “freako” and, for women, “bimbo.”)

As with George himself, it’s often hard to tell how committed the audience was to any position. On every show, spectators would chant “SICK! SICK! SICK!” and heckle the guests, but the crowd looks and sounds more like it belongs at a pro wrestling event than a hate rally.

Whatever the level of cynicism in the room, the beliefs were bad enough. As one-time Hot Seat guest Timothy Leary told People in 1984, “George is part of the 1984 George Orwell nightmare.” Here’s Wally advocating the quarantine of people with AIDS and explaining how you can catch AIDS from a sneeze:
 

 
There are now hours and hours of Hot Seat episodes and clips on YouTube, but you, citizen, will most likely want to skip right to the GWAR and Mentors episodes. The GWAR interview on Hot Seat remains, for me, their definitive TV appearance. Presidential candidate Sleazy P. Martini earnestly defends a key plank in his platform, a modest proposal to legalize crime.
 

 
More Wally George madness with GWAR and The Mentors, after the jump…