Back before the Internet (was there such a time), people had to turn to various places to do research. Any regular visitor to this site knows that I love horror movies, and I used to love to get book on horror films. I had a bookcase full of books that tackled the genre from different angles; some were just list of movies with brief synopses; some were intellectual studies of horror movies; and some gave more of a cultural view and would often describe rare movies from foreign countries. The only thing better than these books were documentaries on horror movies. While these often had a limited scope, they were superior to the books because they could show clips. My interest in these docs continues to this day (I just finished a look at the Nightmare on Elm Street films), and I was curious about S&Man.

S&Man is an interesting experiment in mixing real-life and (I think) fiction into a package which is ostensibly a documentary. While there have been plenty of documentaries which focused on well-known, mainstream horror films, Petty has decided to look at no-budget underground movies which feature non-stop violence and nudity. These are films which are completely unknown to general audiences, but have a following in horror circuits. As someone who is in the horror field, Petty is able to get access to Bill Zebub (Kill the Scream Queen) and Fred Vogel (the August Underground series) and have them speak frankly about their movies. Zebub (who looks just like long-haired Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump) is pretty honest about the quality of his films and that if people want to see them, he'll make them. (Petty has actually been involved with Zebub's work in the past.) He also goes on-set to watch Zebub at work. Petty also interviews author Carol Clover, who writes about how horror movies makes the viewer a participant in the acts of on-screen violence. (Her book was one of the residents on the aforementioned bookcase.)

I'm fairly certain that the scenes with Eric Rost (the credits read "Eric Marcisak as Eric Rost which everyone else is playing themselves) are phony, as is the "S&Man" series. Petty has introduced this character to contradict the somewhat flippant and playful (?) attitudes of Zebub and Vogel. Rost is very serious and while he clearly enjoys discussing his work with Petty, he dodge direct questions about how he makes the movies and how the women get involved. Rost is edgy and evasive, whereas the others were open. This leads to an ending which presents a twist. Can documentaries have twists?

But, for all of its promise, S&Man is a dismal failure. I suppose that it would have felt like a rip-off if Petty had simply described the kind of movies which he was studying instead of showing them. But, the clips here show some pretty brutal stuff, including nudity and very graphic violence. (My wife happened to walk through at one point and asked what the hell I was watching.) These clips demonstrate the films in question, but many will turn the movie off once they start, and it's not far into the film when they start. While Petty asked the filmmakers (and I use that term loosely) about why they make the movies, he misses the boat by not further exploring why in the world anyone would want to watch one of these movies. We quickly get the feeling that there may be something wrong with the people who make and appear in the movies, but what about the fans? Are they just as unhinged? None of the people interviewed in the movie are particularly interesting and their comments are often edited in a way where we feel like we missed the question or the first part of what they are saying. The parts with Eric Rost are slightly more effective, but as we sense that it's not real, they don't quite work. The twist ending, if I understood it correctly, is a great idea, but it's presented in a way that many may miss.

While I in no way care about or support underground gore movies, I can understand the thought of exploring this sub-genre and those involved in it. But, Petty, perhaps because of his proximity to the subject, doesn't really teach us anything. I feel like I don't know any more about these movies before I watched S&Man and the fake parts would have worked better as a separate project.

S&Man shows that directors sometimes wear awful shoes on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Magnolia Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 1.78:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 26 Mbps. Petty apparently shot the project on HD cameras, as the image is always sharp and clear. It's a bit dark at times, but otherwise the colors are realistic. There is some mild blurring in some shots, but otherwise the image has a nice crispness to it. (The clips from the various vides are often 1.33:1 and don't look very nice.) The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 2.7 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sounds. Being a documentary, there aren't any dynamic audio effects here, but the participants are audible for the most part and their speech is rarely muffled.

The S&Man Blu-ray Disc contains a few extras. "The Complete "S&Man Episode 11" (27 minutes) offers the entire stalk and kill video of which we only see clips in the movie. In addition, we get trailers for five more episodes of "S&Man". The Disc contains nine DELETD AND EXTENDED SCENES which run about 12 minutes. Most of these seem to fall more into the extended scene category and there's nothing truly new here. "Underground Film Clip" (8 minutes) offers scenes from "August Underground's Mordum", which is discussed in the movie. The final extra is the TRAILER for S&Man.