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“Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?”
The Sun Also Rises
~Ernest Hemingway
The feeling of buyer’s remorse I had staring at the cover of Brush With Death was alleviated after I popped it in the ol’ VCR and watched the opening montage of low quality video promising Stunts! Crashes! Riots! Animal Attacks and More! But since this was set to a soundtrack reminiscent of training videos new employees for Applebee’s and Staples watch on their first day I had my doubts. The same anxious feeling I had on my first day at those jobs set in and I wondered if I was lying to myself that this was the right decision in my life at that moment. I pressed pause and took the high road with my new favorite mix of orange GG 257 pills and pink COR 135 pills, waited for the blind nervous optimism to set in and pressed play on the VCR. Yes, watching Brush With Death IS the right decision at this point in my life.
Like the title promises, for the first part of this tape people literally have on a ‘Brush’ with death. Stock video and bootlegged news clips mash up depicting lame ass stunts like Jumpin’ Joe Reed jumping his motorcycle over a whole bunch of helicopter blades, ski jumping mishaps, and motorcycle races where the worst accident resulted in a few guys hitting hay bales. All of the narration insists that there were minor injuries but the survival rate was 100% But then a glimmer of hope happened that kept me in my couch with my fat hand firmly planted in my bag of Honey BBQ Fritos Twists; a hot air balloon plunges out of the sky to the ground. After the dry thud, the cameraman runs through a crowd of AWFUL looking people from the early 90’s to get right next to the emergency crew administering CPR and life saving procedures. Unfortunately though, Bobby Balloon did not survive. Even though there was finally a fatality in this purported ‘Death Film’ I had my doubts on how many ‘Brushes’ I was going to see.
The movie rolled on with a lot more brushes with death: Soccer Riots, a horse race where the jockey was dragged down the track, European car rallies, a crocodile doing a death roll and snapping an animal wrangler’s wrist and more Northern European ski jumping accidents. Then America had to step in and show how death really works with footage of a dragster’s enormous wheels coming completely off of the car and flying into the arena audience. Unfortunately Surge Cola and Wrangler Jeans render Americans in the mid-90’s superhuman because, although 11 people were seriously injured, there was no death and the driver escaped unscathed. FUCK AMERICA! Do something RIGHT!
Brush With Death keeps this formula going through the whole 78 minute runtime. The movie has no real rhyme or reason from one clip to the next. It jumps from avalanches, to snake wrangling, to more air show disasters, to a lunatic driving a tank in San Diego. Then, as if blonde haired caucasian Jesus heard me yelling at the TV, things start getting at least a little interesting. Although there still is no death footage, video of Muslim Imam followers stabbing giant spears through their chests and distended abdomens, Pakistani religious nuts cutting their heads open and slapping the wounds until they are covered in blood, and a Filipino woman having nails driven through her hands and feet to hang her from a cross reestablished my interest with Brush With Death. Other clips like a huge bear attacking a television host until the trainer dressed in a Karate uniform steps in and wrestles the bear away from her, a news conference with a guy (who looked like he gave a blow job to a dermatome) who was attacked by numerous pit bulls for a half hour, and wacky 1930’s video clips of people grabbing onto the hoods of old-timey cars and driving though brick walls on fire kept me interested to watch the entire video.
You could take or leave Brush With Death. There is a lot of fluff for sure and it’s a great movie to have in the background that you don’t have to commit to watching while you clean the living room or prepare your lunches for the upcoming workweek. Every now and then there is a great clip thrown in there and a lot of the religious insanity and Pamplona bull running footage has some good historical information for the history buffs in the audience. My thoughts are it might be a good segue film for younger siblings or friend’s kids to get interested in death films with the promise that there is a lot more totally insane movies available for their Chipotle catered high school vaping parties.
