If there's a band many people know of, but have never heard, it would be Gwar, the shock rock heavy metal band whose members - with names like Oderus Urungus, Flattus Maximus, and Beefcake the Mighty - dress up in wild sci-fi/fantasy costumes and whose shows are packed with monsters and all sorts of simulated bodily fluids soaking the crowd like a Grand Guignol Gallagher show. They are every parents nightmare and every kid who wants to piss of their folks' dream.
But who and/or what is behind this wildly long-running freakshow? That's what This Is Gwar does a pretty good job in recapping starting from their surprising origin in Richmond, VA when a pair of Virginia Commonwealth University students named Hunter Jackson (who would go on to become Techno Destructo) and Chuck Varga (Sexecutioner) set up what they called The Slave Pit as a production space in an artist collective set up in an old dairy bottling plant to make a movie called Scumdogs of the Universe.
A neighbor in the complex was a band called Death Piggy fronted by singer Dave Brockie asked to borrow the costumes from they'd made so that Death Piggy could masquerade as their opening band, Gwaaarrrgghhlllgh, barbarians which hailed from Antarctica. When Death Piggy realized people were coming for the opening joke band then leaving before they played, they phased out Death Piggy and committed to Gwar.
They built a following for their outlandish stage shows, but the musical direction was in flux. We're they serious metal, were they seriously goofy, were they something in between and beyond imagination? A self-released videotape called Phallus in Wonderland earned them a Grammy nomination for Long-Form Video and they signed to Metal Blade Records in the early-1990s, but promptly wrecked the label's chances for distribution with Warner Bros. because they wouldn't tone down some of the more extreme lyrics.
Band members also came and went with replacements donning the costumes leading to a real Band of Theseus situation where now there are no original members left after the death of Brockie in 2014 of a heroin overdose. The creative tensions between artistry and commerce also clawed at the band as well as crazy incidents like a guitarist being shot (in an incident the movie makes sound like he was shot by cops, but I can't find any confirmation for) and another dying of a blood clot in his tour bus bunk with the band only missing one show, choosing to grieve by soldiering on.
Jackson and Brockie seriously clashed with Jackson either quitting or being fired (depending on who's telling the story) and the animosity was so strong that after Brockie's death he refused to attend the funeral because he was afraid he'd say what he really thought of the deceased. (He would eventually join the band onstage years later.)
Ironically, as the band's music got more accomplished, their shock value declined though part of that may've been that what's shocking had shifted in no small part due to Gwar's shifting the Overton Window. (To paraphrase Elvis Costello, what used to disgust us now amuses us.) With over 100 people having played in or participated on the periphery of Gwar, portraying the "slaves" and operating the elaborate props there's obviously going to be picking and choosing as to what's featured, but in reading other reviews I've learned that there was a brief post-Brockie attempt to have a female singer (Vulvatron) that is glossed over in favor of the return of the OG Beefcake the Mighty, Mike Bishop, to front the band as Blöthar the Berserker. (To be fair, she was only there for a year whereas Toledo native Todd Evans, who was Beefcake for five years is relegated to a mass roster title card at the end).
While not exhaustively complete, This Is Gwar, is a good primer on a band more known-of than known with a more colorful backstory than the surface joke implies.
Score: 7/10. Catch it on cable/streaming. (Viewed on AMC+; also on Shudder)
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