"Turn around, you sick little monkey!" - Ren Hoek in "Sven Hoek"
The Ren & Stimpy Show: Uncut: The First and Second Seasons DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
If Salvador Dali and Rat Fink creator Ed Roth (whose grotesque monsters graced everything from Revell models to T-shirts throughout the '60s and '70s) had collaborated on a cartoon, surely they could not have come up with something as surreally warped as The Ren & Stimpy Show. The show, which premiered on Nickelodeon in August of 1991, is wonderfully fun and indescribably cracked. With the release of The Ren & Stimpy Show: Uncut: The First and Second Seasons, viewers who missed the series in its initial run (and in its recent revival on Spike TV) can now catch up with this sublimely weird show.
The series follows the adventures the titular best friends. Ren Hoek (voiced by the show's creator, John Kricfalusi) is a high-strung Chihuahua with the voice of Peter Lorre and the twisted soul of Norman Bates. Beneath his scrawny little chest beats a sometimes compassionate heart, but Ren is usually a hairsbreadth away from going postal over the tiniest of slights. His pal Stimpson J. Cat (voiced by Billy West) is perhaps the world's dumbest cat. Sent into convulsive spasms of joy by his smelly litter box (his "first material possession"), this fat cat has a brain the size of a half-eaten jellybean - and he's not afraid to pop it out of his head and pass it around.
Each episode contains one or two segments. The plotlines play like Looney Tunes or The Three Stooges on acid: the boys try their hands at short-lived jobs ("The Boy Who Cried Rat," "Baby Scam," "Rubber Nipple Salesmen"), appear in fairy tales ("Robin Hoek," "The Littlest Giant"), and even poke fun at their own fame ("Stimpy's Fan Club").
There are several standout segments. "Ren's Toothache" is a horrifyingly funny tale of poor dental hygiene. As Stimpy brushes his teeth (to gum-numbing industrial machinery sound effects), Ren chides his feline comrade for spending so much time on what Ren considers to be a useless activity. After all, Ren's mossy, decaying teeth serve him just fine. Sure, his choppers are infested by the "tooth beaver" - a tiny varmit who feasts on nerve endings - but at least Ren gets a few extra minutes of sleep each night. Ren has a change of heart when all of his teeth crumble away ("Now my teeth are gone and all I have left are stinky holes!"), leaving a stench so bad that even the flies hovering in Stimpy's beloved litter box are grossed out. Tasteless and painfully funny, this over-the-top romp is almost giddy in its repulsiveness.
In "Fake Dad," Ren decides to join the Fake Dad program, becoming mentor to a fatherless tyke. Things don't quite go as planned when the adoptee turns out to be a two hundred pound convict named Kowalski. Kowalski's uncouth ways and excessive girth annoy Ren, but with the help of a now Donna Reed-esque Stimpy, he begins to come to terms with the product of his "fake loins."
Another kookily imaginative effort is "Sven Hoek." Fed up with Stimpy's imbecilic behavior, Ren is thrilled to learn that his long lost cousin Sven is coming for a visit. Ren's joy turns to frustration when he realizes that in the years since he last saw his beloved cousin, Sven has turn into an even bigger nincompoop than Stimpy. He even LOOKS like Stimpy. Now Ren is faced with two blithering fools. While Sven and Stimpy bond over Sven's jar of spit and Stimpy's collection of "magic nose goblins," Ren struggles to maintain his sanity. This episode is gleefully scatological, from Ren's prized collection of "dinosaur droppings" to Sven and Stimpy's behind-closed-doors "let's play circus" game involving Stimpy's litter box (sword swallowing, anyone?). It may not be everyone's cup of kitty litter, but brutally funny.
Just-this-short-of-tasteless jokes like those in "Sven Hoek" and the show's comically excessive violence have led The Ren & Stimpy Show: Uncut: The Complete First and Second Seasons to be probably the only kids show to be released with a parental warning for explicit content. Yep, a show that once ran as part of Nickelodeon's SNICK programming block ("It's SNICK or It's Not") is now "recommended for mature audiences only." It's hard to believe that the show even ran on a network aimed at kids. After all, Ren & Stimpy's idea of a Christmas show involves Stimpy's search for his missing fart.
That episode, "Son of Stimpy/Stimpy's First Fart," is a pitch-perfect send up of maudlin Christmas specials. Scattered throughout the series, one can find echoes of other cartoons, from the snarky riff on Mickey Mouse in "The Boy Who Cried Rat" to the Casper meets Droopy spook in "Haunted House." Individual episodes often serve as a tribute to and parody of TV. Mindless consumerism is the target of commercial parodies for products like "Sugar Frosted Milk" and "Log" ("It's Better Than Bad - It's Good!"). Stimpy, who has the brainpower of a crumpled sheet of paper, is often seen vacantly watching his favorite TV shows, Commander Hoek & Cadet Stimpy and The Muddy Mudskipper Show. The show even pokes fun at its own fans. Even while being disdainful of TV's flaws, however, the show manages to revel in the medium and rejoice at its conventions.
The Ren & Stimpy Show is visually interesting - bright, shiny objects are often decrepit upon closer inspection, as when Stimpy's shiny coat gives way to reveal boils, pimples, and dirt any time he is shown in semi-close up. Its visual gags and off-kilter dialogue make for fun viewing. If the series has one flaw, it is one that it shares with Saturday Night Live and other sketch comedy shows - even the funniest of the segments tend to peter out in the end. The show's writers and animators obviously have vivid imaginations, but seem to have a problem putting a cap on their ideas.
There has been no small amount of controversy about the fact that even though this DVD set is billed as "Uncut," some of the episodes do still contain edits. Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, who was personally involved with the creation of these DVDs, has indicated that he restored all of the cuts of which he was aware. Apparently, a few additional moments were censored by Nick after he stopped working on the series in the 1990s. These slipped by him. Diehard fanatics may notice these snips, but the fact is - apart from a few fades-to-black in the middle of a scene - most viewers won't even notice that anything is amiss. It would be a shame if fans of the series missed out on the neat extras presented in this set simply to protest a few missing seconds of footage.
The eighteen episodes that make up the first and second seasons are divided onto three discs. The discs are housed in slim, clear keepcases. The front cover of disc one features a stylized drawing of Ren, disc two features Stimpy, and disc three features Ren holding Stimpy. These images are duplicated on the DVD faces. The back covers include brief plot synopses of the episode segments found on the DVDs. The three keepcases slide into a cardboard outer sleeve. The outer sleeve uses the same Ren holding Stimpy drawing found on disc three.
The DVD menus each begin with a brief clip from a segment found on the individual DVD. The action then freezes at a screen which allows viewers to play all episodes, visit the individual episodes menu, or visit the bonus features menu. Upon making a selection, the action briefly starts up again before jumping to the next screen. The episodes are divided into chapters, but there are no scene selection menus.
