The world is divided into two halves, those who know who the Kipper Kids are and those who don't. If you are one of those unlucky individuals to be unfamiliar, well this post should send you on the insane road to the other side.
My first experience with these characters, made up of Brian Routh and Martin von Haselberg was sometime in the mid 80's on The Mondo Beyondo Show, the clip posted above. It was one of the funniest goddamn things I'd ever seen and has stayed in my head ever since. At the age of 11 I saw UHF (yeah I was one of the few people who actually did see it in the theater) and there was a cameo appearance of the Kipper Kids. The only time I'd get to see them rootin and tootin around on the big screen. They appeared during the fundraiser for the channel. Then many years go by and in 2004 I discover Richard Elfman's film Forbidden Zone. This movie is a perfect fit for the surreal insanity of the Kipper Kids.
If you have the chance you should check out the dvd and watch the cut out scenes. One of them is a full sequence of the Kippers doing their thing, throwing food on each other and grunting about. At some point one of them starts saying "smokey bacon! smokey bacon!" and they say it back and forth. It is insanely funny to watch.
I'll bet you thought this had nothing to do with comics. No, as it turns out Brian Routh made a comic about the exploits of the Kipper Kids in 1977 titled "Kipper Kids ComiX" which can be viewed and purchased here. You'll see in this comic the Kipper clones which are also running rampant in this clip.
Another point of interest are the songs created by Brian Routh.
And while I find this duo of bizarre characters incredibly funny, they get into such abstract surreal and wildly bizarre scenarios as can be seen in their numerous short films. they are also very artistically inspiring to me. I have plans on making a large digital work that is a tribute to the Kipper Kids. It's still in the floating around inside my head stage but I know it will involve hundreds of the Kipper clones with the original two in some peucliar situation.
Be sure to check out the websites of the Kippers, Brian Routh and Martin von Haselberg to see the peculiar arry of things they are up to now.
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4 comments:
Ha! I saw UHF in the theatre as well, & remember seeing the Kipper kids on the fund raiser bit. That was a pretty fun movie... it's too bad they didn't just go crazy with it, instead of making some commercial concessions. Anyhow, Kipper Kids! Love them in the Forbidden Zone as well, hadn't seen that until last month weirdly enough. I thought i'd seen pretty much every weird B-movie.
I was pretty shocked that Forbidden Zone had been around since 1980 and that I'd never heard of it until the time I saw it. I blame not having seen or known about it on the fact it was next to impossible to find until the dvd release in 2004.
I first heard of the KK reading the interview in Re/Search Pranks! great stuff about their origins, Herman Nitsch, vaudeville and Karl Valentine.
The comics on the site are very good!
I have that Re/Search book around somewhere and I was actually going to quote it for this post but couldn't find the damn thing. The part where they're talking about shooting off firecrackers in the art gallery causing pandemonium then creeping in through the windows and doing their crazy kipper thing... fuck I wish I could have seen that.
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