looking for "cabin fever" clip

August 30, 2005 12:54 PM

I'm trying to find a brief video clip from the movie Cabin Fever. The clip is of a young, mullet-haired boy (named Dennis) shouting out "Pancakes! Pancakes!" while doing some martial arts moves. I've found the clip on the web before (over a year ago), but haven't been able to locate it recently. I've tried Google searches with no luck. Any help would be much appreciated.
posted by pinky to media & arts (10 comments total)

I'd love this clip as well. Not only for the MeFi link, but it's one of the funniest bits of dada cinema I've seen in years.
posted by mkultra at 1:14 PM on August 30, 2005

I found it on Yahoo video search.
posted by essexjan at 1:18 PM on August 30, 2005

thanks, essexjan!
posted by pinky at 1:42 PM on August 30, 2005

what the fuck was that? is the rest of the movie like that???
posted by hototogisu at 6:12 PM on August 30, 2005

No, but there's a lot of random stuff in there. The movie itself is, by turns, brilliant and terrible. But Eli Roth has a lot of love for 70's backwoods horror flicks, and there's a running current of "well, I may only get one shot at this, so I may as well throw everything in that I can" to it that's kind of endearingly bizarre.
posted by mkultra at 6:33 PM on August 30, 2005

I like pancakes, but I think Dennis likes them more than I do.

Umm..so is that clip a completely isolated incident in the film, or do those characters (especially "Dennis") play a larger role?
posted by freshgroundpepper at 6:55 PM on August 30, 2005

Isolated. If I remember correctly, dennis only appears at the beginning and end of the film.

The movie would have been a great comedy...

The way it is it's funny at the begining, the brutally violent to the point of being unwatchable, then funny at the end (including a hilarious joke that starts with "who's that gun for?").
posted by drezdn at 10:36 PM on August 30, 2005

I read a bit about the character at the time the film came out. It turns out the guy that played Dennis was not an actor, but just a kid that was hanging around the set a lot. The director/writer/whoever decided to include him in the film just busting out some moves.

I myself have attempted to recreate his actions on numerous occasions. Many people were confused by a bearded 24-year old man shouting "Pancakes! Pancakes!" whilst kicking and punching the air.

Isolated indeed. That film is terrible. Dennis's little bit is the only redeeming feature.
posted by xpermanentx at 4:52 AM on August 31, 2005

Man, don't listen to the haters. That movie is one of the most brilliant bits of cinema to come out in a long time. First off, it's not "isolated," in that there are several other Dennis scenes, and several other randomish bits of gleaming humor tucked inside a weird horror flick. I highly recommend it if you like that scene (though you have kinda ruined it because it comes out of nowhere, and now you'll be looking for it).
And c'mon, the "Please do not touch Dennis" thing is genius!
posted by klangklangston at 9:27 AM on August 31, 2005

Oh, c'mon. The film is neither completely terrible nor brilliant. It is flawed, and amateurish in many respects, but it's also endearing for its enthusiasm and the obvious love for the horror/hick/paranoia genre to which it owes its every move, the sort of thing that people who love crappy horror films (present!) tend to get a real kick out of, that people who love film in general tend to at least understand and appreciate, and that people who hate horror films (crappy or otherwise) tend to hate. The rest of the mix are people who might or might not like it, depending.

There's something fascinating about the way that someone who really, really loves FOO movies can make their own FOO movie and run down this checklist of things that must (or must not) be in the perfect FOO movie yet manage to fail some of those basic sensibility tests that the average moviegoer can pass. Zealous, enthusiastic love for a thing seems to totally destroy a much-needed sense of objective distance when it comes to these indie horror flicks. See also the recent filmic works of Rob Zombie -- flashes of excellence, obvious understanding of and devotion to the genre (Rob has a great house that sort of underscores his obsession), but, well, the sort of fundamental problems that could be addressed by someone willing to step back and take a really objective look at the script, bring in a different writer, etc.
posted by cortex at 4:00 PM on September 27, 2005