‘Phallus in Wonderland’: how Gwar made the most bizarre concert film ever
If you’re at all familiar with Gwar, then you must also know that they do the most bizarre version of basically everything.
They’re as much a visual art project as a rock band, despite how much the characters that make up the band would laugh in your face if you called them that. Probably following it up with a swirlie if they like you or ripping out your lower intestine through your ears if they don’t. It’s true, a cursory glance at them shows that they do things slightly different from most bands. In that anything they do as a band, they do under seemingly half a ton of moulded plastic. Half of which seems to be used on singer Oderus Urungus’ dick.
Just in case you’d missed how puerile Gwar are, easy to miss considering they’re a hardcore punk band that look like sex dungeon rancors from Star Wars, then consider this fact. Not only is there a special name for the lead singer’s package (‘Cuttlefish of Cthulu‘, the more you know), but it’s also a major plot point in their 1992 long-form music video. Which makes sense considering the name of the whole video is called… (Sigh) Phallus In Wonderland.
If the idea of a long-form music video having plot points seems a little strange to you, then I remind you of what I said earlier. We’re in the weird and wonderful world of Gwar, a band that does the most bizarre version of everything. Rarely has so much effort been spent on something so gloriously dumb. While the video is technically a long-form music video, it’s really a full-on, low-budget monster movie with a bunch of songs splattered around it like so many rubber guts coated in fake blood.
It’s all appalling, shocking, lowest-common-denominator nonsense and proudly so. Featuring sodomized religious leaders, a giant T-Rex destroying New York City, and the official Gwar cereal, made with real crack to make it more-ish. What’s more, it might just be more authentically Gwar than any of their actual records.
But how did Gwar make this film?
You see, the men under the Gwar suits would tell you that they owe their existence as much to their cinematic influences as their musical influences, if not more. The band would never in a million years “do a KISS” and unmask for the sake of an album being marketed as “the real Gwar”. The suits make the band as much as the music does, and the band owe those suits to Hunter Jackson and Chuck Varga, two men who have absolutely nothing to do with the music of the band, yet are also responsible for their soul.
They date back to the very formation of the band. Oderus Urungus (Dave Brockie to his mother) used to front the band Death Piggy, who set up a rehearsal space in an abandoned bottling plant, the Richmond Dairy. Down the corridor from them, Jackson and Varga had set up the production space for Scumdogs of the Universe, a movie they were making.
The band, Jackson and Varga, struck up a friendship with each other, and when Brockie started wearing Jackson and Varga’s costumes onstage, the filmmaking duo were drafted into being members of the newly formed Gwar, taking pseudonyms to match. Jackson was Techno Destructo, Varga was the wonderfully named Sexecutioner.
Thus, Gwar themselves were as much the product of D-movie monster mash filmmakers as they were rock n roll musicians, making Phallus In Wonderland one of the best depictions of themselves the band ever released. Don’t believe me? In 1993, Phallus In Wonderland saw the band nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Long Form Music Video.
Gwar lost to Annie Lennox, which is somehow even funnier than any actual joke in the film.