'Stranger in a strange land,' I found myself repeatedly thinking during my latest review odyssey courtesy of Mr. Lawrence Raffel. What I was to watch was a triple-feature of sorts (though nothing was technically 'feature' length), consisting of three films: Vomitorium, Holy Moly, and Skitzo Reunion: Die Like It's 1999. All of these concerned the band Skitzo, with which I was unacquainted with, yet, being the brave and ever-curious little cinephile I am, I plugged my DVD in and began my journey.

Starting my disc out was Vomitorium, a 51-minute documentary that centers on Skitzo's lead singer, Lance Ozanix. What makes Lance worthy of a 51-minute documentary is the fact that he has the rather unique ability to will himself to vomit. This he uses as part of the band's act, generally culminating a set by regurgitating on himself, over his guitar, on the audience, or on any girl from the audience willing to come up on stage and endure it. That's basically the 51 minutes. Clips of Lance vomiting at various concerts are shown, followed by interviews with Lance, Skitzo, and Lance's mother and grandfather, both of whom seem rather stymied, if also bemused, by his talent. Following this we get some more vomit shots, and then the whole thing repeats itself ad nauseam (pardon the pun), with a music video or two thrown in to spice up the proceedings.

Feature two, the 31-minute Holy Moly, is a shot-on-video short from 1992 staring Ozanix as Holy, a small town priest. When Holy meets a strange man in sunglasses after a sermon, odd things start happening. In his sleep he is haunted by visions of demons, and, the next day, he finds himself vomiting profusely (why waste good talent?). It's rather obvious that Holy is possessed and little surprise that he ends up killing. Horrified by what he has done, Holy resolves to face the strange man in sunglasses and break the demonic spell he has over him.

Feature three, Skitzo Reunion: Die Like It's 1999, consists of 27 minutes of footage from a Skitzo concert. That's all: set after set, poorly shot on a handheld consumer camera and livened up occasionally with polarized clips from Olaf Ittenbach's The Burning Moon.

Stranger in a strange land indeed. I'm still not quite sure what to make of all of this. It must have a purpose; indeed, to Skitzo fans, I'm sure, it's probably a great evening's entertainment. However, I am not a Skitzo fan, and, as such, it was of little interest to me. I suppose it was smart to try to sell the DVD as gross-out material (the box comes with warnings galore), yet this still didn't particularly hold my interest.

With respect to Vomitorium, watching Ozanix vomit grows old very quickly. After seeing the man puke once, the next hundred times really hold very little surprise. It's good that interviews are included to break up the pace, and, admittedly, it is slightly interesting (for a while) to hear what others think of all this, but I still would have rather been watching something else. While it's expected that the documentary angle be a little tepid, it's kind of sad that the gross-out factor failed so terribly as well. I suppose there was potential here, but again, it all grows a little wearisome after a while, so much so that, eventually, I had to get up and make myself a sandwich in order to keep focused. Indeed, this is sad, but it is true. And I wasn't even all that hungry...

At least I, as an outsider, could enjoy Holy Moly on the same plane as a regular viewer since it is a story with (kind of) a plot. It's definitely, in my opinion, the most entertaining piece on this DVD. Still, while it contains some effective gore and is a vaguely entertaining little 30-minute time-waster, it's hobbled by the fact that it really has no point or ending and sort of just stops after a half hour. Still, as entertainment is concerned, for me this definitely has the highest value, if only by default.

Reunion held, for me, the least interest of all. Since it's just footage of the band playing, there's really nothing much to look at, and the sound is so terrible that there's really very little to hear. You know there's a problem with what you're selling as entertainment when its two biggest points of interest are "Hey, I wonder if they paid for that Burning Moonâ footage?" and "Hey, why hasnât anyone put Burning Moonâ out on DVD anyway?" I freely admit that I started fast-forwarding through this after a while, hoping to see more Ittenbach.

Along these lines, the quality on this disc is rather abominable. All of the features are shot on video (and most of it is shot hand-held) and use only the camera's microphone system. This means that the audio is terrible and many times barely intelligible while video often looks like it was shot by a blind, epileptic Jess Franco. All video on the disc also shows many signs of aging, and there are even a few drop-outs to be found as well. This is no Unearthed Films Guinea Pig job here, folks; what we're getting is basically a VHS-quality transfer dumped, sans extras, chapter stops or even mastering, onto a DVD.

In the end, however, I'm really just left with a feeling of futility. While the technical problems of this DVD are inarguable, none of these, nor my opinions, really matter in the end. This Skitzo triple-feature is really just something for Skitzo fans only; not being one, my opinion is pretty much moot. If you're a Skitzo fan this is going to interest you and you are going to pick this up regardless of what I say; if you're not, there's as little point in you watching this as there was in me watching it. That's not to say either way is right, just that you probably knew what to do before reading my review.