[Panic Fest 2023 Review] The Once and Future Smash is the Mockumentary Punch Line to End Zone 2's Joke

If End Zone 2 is a satire of the horror boutique restoration companies putting out movies no one’s heard of but all of us need to buy immediately, The Once and Future Smash is about horror movie documentaries covering the very same movies that practically no one has seen. In this case, The Once and Future Smash serves as both a mockumentary of the fake End Zone 2 but also acts as the joke that film set up. It’s also a slightly more successful film, even though it would have benefited from not being feature length. 

Set mostly at Mad Monster Party (a real life convention in North Carolina), The Once and Future Smash satirizes horror documentaries and the way we talk about horror films, presenting real life people talking about a fake film as if it were the holy grail of the horror genre. Cameos from notable people in the Friday the 13th franchise bring a metric ton of in-jokes to the film, starting with director Victor Miller (the OG Friday the 13th), introduced leaning against a shelf of Daytime Emmy Awards as he deadpans that the original End Zone was better than the sequel. Later, he’ll state that he thought it was brilliant that the mother was the killer in the “far superior” original film. Other Friday the 13th luminaries, including director Adam Marcus (Jason Goes to Hell) and writer Todd Farmer (Jason X). To show the level of in-joke here, Todd Farmer offers to get naked (“Can we put dick on this?”) to show his Smash-Mouth tattoo. 

If you get the in-joke here, you’ll probably get enjoyment out of this film.

The Once and Future Smash careens from interview subject to interview subject, bringing in, for example, the mask designer Blaze (Joe Castro) who deadpans, “it’s the mask that matters. The actors don’t” and Topher Brandon (Ian S. Peterson), a young producer wanting to capitalize on the film and make a requel. Even journalist/Etheria Film Festival founder Heidi Honeycutt gets involved to explain that End Zone 2 actually passes the Bechdel test.

Other things lampooned are painfully dumb interview segments with actors (“I can relate to Angela because, as a mother, I’m always trying to find food for my kids,” the actress who played Angela says at one point) as well as attaching thematic depth to the cheaply made film. Cinematic Void’s James Branscome attempts to posit the film as a meditation on the Vietnam War, comparing Smash-Mouth to Martin Sheen and Marlon Brando’s characters in Apocalypse Now. 

The main thrust of the narrative, though, goes back to the original cut of End Zone 2 that was 30 minutes longer and brings in two fantastic performances. You see, it turns out that Mikey Smash (The Greasy Strangler’s Michael St. Michaels), the actor who played Smash-Mouth, was fired from the film and was replaced by William Mouth (cult film actor Bill Weeden) for the final, missing 30 minutes. Here is where The Once and Future Smash hits the punch line of the joke that End Zone 2 set up, as the two actors hate each other. 

William Mouth’s Smash-Mouth apparently ran around shouting, “Touch down!” in the last 30 minutes of the film (how this would actually work with Smash-Mouth’s mangled mouth is another story). But because that footage was lost, no one knows he also played the slasher and he’s lived in Mikey Smash’s shadow ever since. Bill Weeden’s character is the best part of this mockumentary. He completely commits to the bit as he runs around shouting, “Touch down!” at random people, but he’s also the forgotten heart of the film, as well. 

Between the in-jokes, the wide range of genre filmmakers involved (Hi, Jared!) and Bill Weeden’s performance, the first half of the film is brilliant and reduced me to fits of giggles multiple times. When people say a film is a “festival film”, The Once and Future Smash is exactly what they mean. It’s a film that works best surrounded by people who understand horror conventions and film festivals and know a lot of the indie people working to make the films we love to watch. The kind of film that begs for a group watch with your libation of choice. It does, unfortunately, overstay its welcome a bit and I think it would have worked better as a condensed stinger to End Zone 2’s story than as a full length film. The Once and Future Smash has a lot of good going for it, but a Christopher Guest level mockumentary about horror fans, it’s not. Still, with the right audience, it’ll make you chuckle.

Read my review of End Zone 2 here.