Introduction

Blah. Blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah; blah blah. Blah.

Oh, sorry, you wanted more than that? Oops. Okay...

Blahsting out...

So, you don't know what this whole "Blahbalicious" thing is? You obviously joined the on-line gaming scene after 1997, then. Blahablicious, released in late 1997 to a wave of critical acclaim greater than any "Quake Movie"/Machinima piece before or since, certainly wasn't something you could miss whilst it was around.

Created by Mackey "Avatar" McCandlish and Brian "Wendigo" Hess, as a direct result of some evenings spent watching early Quake Movies like Operation Bayshield and Die Fette Faust, the surreal comedy of Blahbalicious took the world of Quake by storm in December 1997. Gathering acclam from Quake luminaries like Stephen "Blue" Heaslip (" the funniest Quake movie since Operation Bayshield, call it Kentucky Fried Quake Movie (mature audiences discouraged)") and Sean "Redwood" Martin ("I could barely stop laughing long enough to post this."), hardly anyone could believe that such a professional-looking movie (the first, and still one of only three or four Quake-engine Machinima to use almost totally converted maps, models and skins for a really different feel to the game) had been created by two enthusiasts, mostly over what Wendigo describes as "a 36 hour weekend marathon post production session as we rushed to beat the release of Quake 2."

Sadly, the movie never saw a sequel, not counting the Blahbalicious Outtakes Avatar posted shortly after the release (and after Blah won 7 out of 8 awards at the first Quake Movie Oscars- it came very close to winning "Best Comedy" again the next year). Wendigo explains:

"It's pretty interesting to go back and look at all the stuff that I made. I got so burned out watching Blah when we were doing final editing that I still don't laugh anymore when I watch it, although when we were making it, it seemed endlessly hilarious. For awhile, we were planning a sequel, but so much other stuff was going on and Avatar moved down to Georgia to go to SCAD, so that kind of got shelved."

The Fat Guy

So, why's Blah such a classic (and it is- even today, it still stands up with anything in the Machinima world)? Partially, it's the professionalism of the entire production: perfectly in-scale maps, with textures uniquely created for the film, balance against new models and skins (we never see an original Quake skin throughout the entire film) and some superb music choices to give it a totally unique feel: as with all the best game-engine Machinima, Blah doesn't feel like Quake any more, it feels like Blah.

However, the reason that it has hung around so long and is still amongst the must-see Machinima productions is its style. In Blahbalicious, Avatar and Wendigo managed to perfect a surreal, hilarious style that has justifiably been compared to Monty Python's Flying Circus and the Kentucky Fried Movie. Sure, occasionally the humour feels a bit sophomoric, but then something jumps out of the film (the "falling" skits, say, or the bizarre assassination scene) and pulls you back into its surreal hilarity.

In short, the reason that Blah is such a success is that, despite having shown it to over 100 people and seen it myself well over 30 times at various shows, I've yet to see it fail to raise a laugh in anyone, and I still laugh at it myself. That's impressive.

Avatar, in fact, is probabally one of the people least impressed with Blah in the gaming world:

"Blahbalicious was a very fun experience (both creating and in how it was received). In many respects it's a little embarassing to look back at, especially given the amount of production work that members of the game-movie community put into their work now, but it worked well for its time."

And it still does now.

Download Blahbalicious (RealMovie version, 9.5 Mb, 320x240)

Download Blahbalicious (Machinima version- Quake I required to run. 11.5 Mb)

Visit the Blahbalicious Website