Okay, Film History for Dummies is now in session. Our subject today upholds the long comedy tradition of re-dubbing vintage films with goofy dialogue - a practice that more or less coincided with the discovery of Irony in the mid-'60s. Woody Allen, one of Irony's first practitioners, first applied the technique to a Japanese secret-agent flick in 1966's WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? In the decades to follow, comics of all stripes have lined up to have a crack at the re-dub subgenre - arguably the chief inspiration for the "remake the movie in your own living room" approach later mastered by Mystery Science Theater 3000 (pause now to genuflect and light a votive in their honor). Other attempts at this method have resulted in, well, let's say varying degrees of success.

After all, transforming the dialogue, plot and characters of a full-length "serious" feature into a zany comedy, though obviously cost-effective, is a risky undertaking for even the cleverest comic, as it requires the audience to go along with essentially one joke for over an hour. It's proven to be quite an effective acid test for comedy writing chops. Sketch groups often overcame this obstacle by editing the re-dubbed films down to skit length. However, the venerable Firesign Theater surmounted the task by cutting together literally dozens of separate cliffhanger serials at breakneck speed in order to keep their stoner jokes buzzing for 90 minutes in J-MEN FOREVER. They also incorporated newly-shot inserts to help tie the new plotline together - a device also employed by the makers of today's feature.

Yes, I am getting to the point. Shut up, put down the bong and the Cheez Doodles and try to stay with me.

Though it's nothing unique in comedy terms, DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL is one of the first (if not THE first) of this sub-genre to incorporate DVD technology into the mix, transforming what could have been a tiresome exercise into a fun cross-section of the re-dub process. During key scenes, viewers are given onscreen prompts enabling them to bounce between the new dialogue and that of the original film, KILLERS FROM SPACE, which was already pretty damn goofy to begin with.

The new version's "hook," as it were, is to morph the original film's tale of pop-eyed alien invaders who surgically transform a jet pilot (Peter Graves) into an unknowing spy... into a new tale of pop-eyed alien invaders who surgically transform Graves into the gayest jet pilot that ever handled a joystick. Yes, that's the angle, and it's played for all it's worth - which frankly isn't much, but there it is. Despite the one-note material, there's still plenty of gut-busting fun on hand, assuming you're the kind of viewer who gets a chuckle out of a lead character named Doctor Fartin. If not, I'm betting you'll really hate this one.

After a failed attempt by the U.S. government to rid the military of homosexuals by dropping atomic bombs on them, our hero Doug Fartin (who repeatedly insists his name is pronounced "Far-taahn"), finds himself abducted by aliens with ping-pong-ball eyes (same as in the original), who implant a device in his chest that will eventually cause him to use the word "Fabulous" in every sentence and imbue him with a fondness for Peter Allen. His gradual transformation arouses suspicion among his colleagues, whereas Doug's suspicious lack of arousal in the bedroom is rather disconcerting to his wife (who can now only satisfy him sexually by propping a photo of Ted Kennedy on her ass). Fartin's increasingly odd behavior leads to a clumsy investigation by his dim-bulb colleagues (one of whom is dubbed to sound like George W. Bush), whose ingenious deductive techniques include eating pancakes off a woman's bare butt.

Interspersed with the re-dubbed footage are several short vignettes featuring a variety of loony characters (most of whom are played by the same comic, usually in drag) populating the township of Inbred, Texas, where one of the anti-gay nukes was accidentally detonated (though hardly anyone seems to notice). These don't really tie things together as well as they could have, but they're generally pretty cute. The most creative of the newly-shot scenes is a hilariously awful dance routine in which the aliens detail their nefarious plans in the form of a song: "We are the men who make you gay/we monkey around with yo' DNA/it's scientific and very complex/but in the end you have same-sex sex." Uh huh. It's all part of a master plan by beings from - wait for it - Uranus (insert rim-shot here) to reverse the sexual orientation of every human on Earth. I won't reveal the details, although I have to say the brief musical number explaining the rise and fall of Hitler's gay clone "Titler" made me do a noser.

Comedy aside, the package quality is a mixed bag. the source print of KILLERS FROM SPACE (a public domain title) is pretty crappy; it's torn all to hell, and the re-packagers haven't really devoted their energies to making it look much better - obviously, that's not the point. The new inserts are well-shot, but they don't always blend well visually with the older material. Attempts to key some of the new characters into shots from the original look pretty crude, but their deliberate corniness adds to the humor. Unlike the crusty original audio (only available in the aforementioned key scenes), the new track is in fairly decent mono, but lends most of its weight to the music (contributors include "Frenchy Burrito" and "Zen for Primates"), while sound effects tend to be a bit hollow, and the audio during the new scenes is a hair too low.

In addition to the fun interactive feature, there are also a few more goodies, including a music video of the alien dance number, and a loopy commentary from the folks at "Refried Flicks," namely director Doug Miles, as well as the "writer, alien and beer runner," in which you get a peek at the inner workings (so to speak) of the drunken lunatics responsible, and it all starts to make sense... or not.

Okay, sure, DON'T ASK is crass, silly, and over-the-top. But what seemed at first to be little more than an extended locker-room homo joke turned out to be a bit more subversive than I suspected. Though the metaphor is not exactly subtle, it plays cleverly on the whole "gay by nature vs. gay by choice" argument that always seems to polarize extremists on both sides. Me, I'm a "live and let live" kind of guy who doesn't bother with whys and wherefores, and who thinks that people who argue about things like that are usually pretty stupid. The makers of DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL seem to harbor the same cynicism, and that's a good thing to have in anyone's comedy arsenal. It also seems to give them license to be obnoxious as hell, but there's a time and place for that too.