Mike Diana Film Collection (BLU-RAY)

Infamous for his arrest trial and conviction in the 1990's for his self-published comix, artist Mike Diana also made a string of homemade films. Starting with 8mm in the early '80s and graduating to video, Diana enlisted his own family and neighborhood kids in an array of bizarre, gross, and hilarious movies, to varied levels of completion. The 1989 feature Blood Brothers is Dianas demented update on the slasher trend. Quite literally a "backyard movie," it mostly stars children, and what it lacks in its zero-dollar budget it makes up for with unhinged charm. Illicit substances, coat-hanger abortions, mutilation and decapitation have never been so fun. 1990's Baked Baby Jesus is a loud, unapologetic shot-on-video revolt against the downfall of American society. As if it was designed to be seen by Diana's enemies instead of his peers, the shorts marry together real abortion rally footage, a necrophiliac love story, and perhaps the most infamous sequence of all, a tour of the infant-only cemetery Babyland. Both films were originally traded through the mail, and have only been available directly through Mike Diana himself. Factory 25 has gone back to the original video sources and provided higher quality than ever before possible (previous versions had primitive sound dubbing and editing) and has overseen the reconstruction of several otherwise lost short films, some completed here for the first time.