LUCIDMEDIA

For the uninitiated, Uwe Boll (pronounced Oo-vay Bowl) is a German film director who has been behind the horrid video game adaptations House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and BloodRayne. In the last few years, his name has been brandied about in the same leagues as Plan 9 from Outer Space auteur Edward D. Wood Jr., earning a reputation for helming scandalously awful movies. But after the critical pelting BloodRayne received earlier this year, Boll had had enough and came up with a bold (and original) idea: he challenged his worst critics to battle him mano-a-mano.

“When we read this, we thought, ‘this has got to be a joke – it can’t be real, nobody does this,’” says Alexander of when he first encountered the press release for the bout while working with Rue Morgue radio partner Stuart Andrews.

Alexander, as an appreciator of horror films and other eccentric cinema, was one of the most critical of Boll’s many critics. Don’t go thinking that Alexander is a film snob either though; he counts William Castle, Samuel Arkoff, James Nicholson and Roger Corman among his favourite filmmakers. However, he takes special exception when it comes to Boll. “Uwe’s stuff is just dreadful; he’s the modern day Ed Wood but working with a huge budget, and I find it phenomenal that this guy is so oblivious to how poor a quality his films are, and I think it’s beautiful because he’s almost an innocent, the way Ed Wood was, but again, he’s working on this large scale.”

You can tell in talking to Alexander that he has a deeper appreciation of Boll’s body of work than nine-tenths of the critics in print and on-line. He thinks that a lot of critics take cheap shots at the filmmaker without taking into consideration the fact that Boll is one of the hardest working guys in the industry, averaging a film a year. Alexander’s initial scoff at Boll’s chutzpah soon turned into a bizarre admiration. “It’s insane, unprecedented, very tacky, and unbelievable. The guy’s got balls and film critics don’t have balls; all we do is take five minutes out of our lives to shit on somebody else’s life’s work, so this is a way to say ‘Back up what you say. I’m going into the ring to defend my movies, so if you want to diss me, you should do the same’, and I admire that and had to be part of it.”

In the blink of an eye, Boll went from someone Alexander loved to hate to someone he hated to admire “This is pop culture history in the making. He’s a very smart man and whether he wins or loses these fights, it doesn’t matter; he’s become a household name. His name is certainly on the lips of people who wouldn’t otherwise know who he was. It’s a very smart, very insane PR move that’s going to draw a line in the sand with a lot of people because a lot of critics think it’s ridiculous and that it lowers the prestige of the film critic community to even engage in something like this, and I say that we don’t have a lot of integrity.”

Alexander and fourteen other critics eventually answered the call, and a dance card of five was chosen from the field. Boll has already fought and won against Spanish critic Carlos Palencia Jimenez-Arguello in Madrid Spain. This Saturday, in Vancouver, Alexander will have his turn, along with SomethingAwful.com’s Richard Kyanka, Ain’t-It-Cool-News’ Jeff Schneider, and web critic Nelson Chance Mintner. “If I can get three hits on the guy, one for House of the Dead, one for Alone in the Dark, and one for BloodRayne, then I’ll be happy,” says Alexander of his fight strategy, “just cue the Benny Hill music, and then I’ll run around the ring as fast as I can.”

Alexander had been itching to do something on Boll for Rue Morgue for a long time and saw the impending fight as an avenue to have some fun. So he had a documentary crew follow his training progress and when Rue Morgue was at the Festival of Fear at the recent Fan Expo, the crew got footage of Alice Cooper, Roddy Piper, Verne Troyer, and others giving Alexander tips on how to box. “I don’t want to look like a complete chon out there, so I got a sponsorship from an amazing gym in Toronto called Centre Ring, and its run by Wayne Bourque who just so happens to have a sense of humour about this as well, and he’s been teaching me form. But I’ve been hitting the bag for a couple of hours every other day and by the end of it, I feel like a sponge that’s been rung out.”

The boxing match is affectionately being referred to as “Raging Boll” and has been getting a lot of press, both for Boll and for the film critics who are taking him on. When it’s all over though, Alexander will return to the quiet life of the film critic and composer; he’ll have to make a decision about whether he’s going to release his next album or sit on it some more. He also has a rock opera in the works which he compares to the War of the Worlds rock opera from ’78 with the Richard Burton narration; he hopes that this one will end up being released on Rue Morgue records.

Alexander is content with his soon-to-be-minted place in the annals of pop culture history, but Uwe Boll shouldn’t think for a second that a positive outcome for him will mean less static in his ear from the fearsome voice of Rue Morgue. “Even if he kicks my ass, which it’s pretty much assured that’s going to happen, I’ll still scream into the camera lens that his movies still suck. But I admire the guy, and I’m happy to get my head crushed by him.”