FireBlade DVD Review: South Park Volume 4

Review by Jerry Stratton, 12/31/1999

No way, dude! We’re not staying alone in your house with your wee-wee chopping parents!

I was first introduced to South Park through the movie (which also kicks ass). The television shows are amazing. Variety, of all things, calls it “gloriously subversive art”. Yeah, whatever. It’s great shit that you must eat. I recommend buying the collected three-DVD sets. Make sure you check the pricing, however: at Amazon, the sets are more expensive than buying the individual disks! The first set, at least, contains nothing but the individual disks: there is no bonus to buying the set. (In fact, now that the second 3-pack is out, the pricing is all fucked up for South Park, so pay attention.)

South Park kicks ass. It kicks more ass than a barrel full of four-assed monkeys! Volume 4 includes not only four South Park episodes, but also the much-reviled “Not Without My Anus”. “Not Without My Anus” aired as an April Fools’ joke between the two-part “Search for Cartman’s Father”. South Park fans tuning in to find out who Cartman’s father was got hit by “April Fools” and having to wait another week. Fan outrage, apparently, reached new heights. Honestly, folks, we know who Cartman’s father is. It’s Matt Stone and Trey Parker. Anything else is just a joke.

The first two episodes on this DVD are “Cartman’s Mom is a Dirty Slut”, and “Cartman’s Mom is Still a Dirty Slut”, the two-part search for Cartman’s father. There’s a special father and son celebration coming up, and Cartman has gone round the deep end. He finally gets up the nerve to ask his mother who dad is, and discovers that there’s a pretty wide selection to choose from. Genetic testing at the Genetic Engineering Ranch outside of town solves the riddle, but creates more questions than it answers.

“Chicken Lover” is my favorite episode, South Parketeers. Officer Barbrady resigns after confessing that he doesn’t know how to read. He deputizes the children (“night sticks for everybody”) and Cartman takes it seriously.

In “Ike’s Wee Wee”, the children discover that Kyle’s little brother is going to undergo a late circumcision--and they believe that a circumcision means chopping the whole damn little fireman off! So of course they try to save Kyle from a snip worse than death. Meanwhile, Mr. Mackey (“drugs are bad, mkay?”) loses his job and descends into a drug-filled horror, which ends in marriage and the A-Team. It’s a horrific example of what happens when you give in to the depression of life. Or something like that. The stoners are introduced in this episode as well. We’ll see them later in the Planet Arium episode.

These are great episodes. It isn’t really that great of a DVD. It was obviously set up for VHS and then the VHS parts were transferred to the DVD product as well. Don’t get me wrong, the transfer is fine. But you end up with things like the “Comedy Central” preview talking about how you’re going to be “fast forwarding” through it to get to the real movie. The Comedy Central preview is just a separate menu item on the chapter list.

The DVD also includes introductions by Matt Stone and Trey Parker. They’re in sets of two: apparently, the VHS tapes include two episodes each, so every even intro mentions the previous episode as well as the upcoming episode. In this DVD, the introductions all take place at an old folks’ home, where Matt and Trey “entertain” the residents with guitar playing and light-hearted games. The sound level on the introduction is significantly quieter than the sound level on the actual episodes. When I turned the sound down to a reasonable level for late-night apartment viewing, I could barely hear the intro.

This DVD collects some of the better episodes. If you’re only picking and choosing which South Park collections you want, this is probably one for your list. Otherwise, you should consider the Volume 2 3-pack, which, depending on whether or not Amazon has figured out their pricing scheme, should be cheaper.

Recommendation: Purchase
Alternative: Volume 2 3-Pack

Comments?

If you have comments or questions about this page, please, leave a message on the Negative Space Comments Page.

Jerry