Dirty Sanchez

When I was about seven years old my friends and I would hang out in the backyard. We would go as high as possible on the swings and jump off. In the summer it was particularly fun to try to jump into the above ground pool. Usually we hit the little fence between the swings and the pool resulting in getting to know the emergency room personnel. Now in just about every country with some form of MTV there have a band of guys who think up the most outlandish stunts imaginable typically resulting in harm inflicted on them. The difference between this and the stunts we all pulled as kids is simple, we were seven years old, and these people are at least legally adults. Usually each group has to make itself know by going further and more disgusting than the last one. There was Steve-O who gave rise to Jackass, then on to BAM and overseas to the Dudesons. Now a group of four guys from Wales called Dirty Sanchez seem to have come up with the ultimate in strange and repulsive stunts.

Dirty Sanchez is the nom voyage of a group of four young Welsh men; Matthew Pritchard, Lee Dainton, Dan Joyce and Mike ‘Pancho’ Locke. Without a doubt they are the ruling kings of extreme stunts and gross out humor. Their name is derived from a particularly unsavory sexual practice. A few minutes on Google and you will get the exact meaning and I am sure you will agree it suits this merry band of revelers. It is their goal to go beyond good taste and reasonable judgment and after only a few minutes of watching this DVD you will agree they have succeeded. The concept, if you can consider a drunken idea in such terms, is to create stunts based o the traditional seven deadly sins. I’m sure it must have seemed like a good idea to the quartet at some point. Then again at seven jumping off a swing to a nearby pool seemed cool too. In the opening scene of the film three of the group are trying to convince Pancho, the shortest among them, to lie down in a trailer while they drive a car through it. He refuses but it appears that when he is unconscious they put him in it and proceed to explode the car as it passes through the trailer. One should note that any stunt that requires the ‘subject’ to be passed out in an alcoholic stupor will not require much time to wait. These four seem to have a consistent blood alcohol level of about 50%, It turns out that this stunt was a set up, not really done. It supposedly left them all dead and dragged down to hell. There, a disgusted devil shakes his head and makes them a proposal. He wants them to go back to the world, wreak havoc and commit all seven deadly sins. If the succeed they get their lives back, fail and they stay in hell. Now for these guys the offer just seems like a typical week for them.

The first sin to be explored is sloth. While Pancho is asleep the others crazy glue is nostrils together. As his friends laugh Pancho tries desperately to regain the use of his nose. Finally in a stream of blood he reopens his nostrils. They then go to a skeet range where they put on a little outfit complete with bunny ears. They then have the clay pigeons shot at them. They also play around with the guns which is a great case for the gun control lobby. Two of them then sit in a lazy boy chair with their shirts off and shot BBs at each other. Dainton has to up the action by shooting himself in the penis. For the sin of anger they go off to Russia. There Pritchard tries to get another tattoo on his leg saying "Sleep When You're Dead" in Russian but it actually reads "I love Johnny Knoxville". As the boys travel the world each stop is more bizarre than the previous one with stunts that can only be described as insanity. Another tattoo is shown when Pritchard gets a tattoo on his penis that reads ‘I <heart> Dainton’. That should be something to explain to his girlfriend if there is a woman out there that finds him attractive.

In one of the most disgusting and upsetting stunts I have ever seen, and I’ve reviewed a lot in this genre, the guys head off to Bangkok. There Pancho undergoes liposuction without the usual benefit of an anesthetic. Now that may seem gross but wait there’s more. Joyce then takes the sucked out fat and drinks it. In Tokyo the group challenges the local extreme stunt troupe, the Tokyo Shock Boys. When Pritchard has the tip of one finger cut off with a cigar cutter it is too much for the Tokyo group. They decline a live show because the Dirty Sanchez boys are too extreme. Now if you have ever seen Japanese television shows you know that they love strange stunts but these guys go beyond anything they would do. I thought Steve-O stapling his scrotum to his leg was the worse thing that could possibly be done. The things these guys do to themselves and each other go far beyond the realm of even insane behavior.

There is something called the Darwin Awards that are given to people that do something so stupid and so dangerous that they take themselves out of the gene pool through death or injury that results in failure to reproduce. Dirt Sanchez should receive a life time achievement award from the Darwin Award people. For the sake of the human race I can only hope that theses guys are not able to pass down their dubious genes to subsequent generations. If there is intelligent life somewhere out in the galaxy and they judge mankind by these people we can expect the aliens to explode our sun any moment now, just to prevent us from spreading to other worlds.

This is one of the strangest DVD releases the Weinstein Company has ever come out with. It is sick, perverted and in its own way funny. Anyone can look at this and feel good about your own life. The first indication of just how extreme and gross these stunts are is one of the extras. Each DVD contains a barf bag with the warning ‘You’re going to need it’. The video is a bit grainy which is to be expected considering most of this was recorded on a hand held digital camera. The color balance is also a bit dim but for better or for worse you get every sickening detail. It is in a 2.35:1 anamorphic transfer since you need to see not only the stunts but the reaction of the troupe. The Dolby 5.1 audio is full of the heavy metal sound track. The dialogue is difficult to understand but that is due to the thick Welsh accent more than the quality of the sound. This film is a bit above the rest of the pack since they do have a theme, of sorts. The deadly sins aspect is used to tie the stunts together and move the group from country to country. Of course, they use their own off beat definition of each sin. This is probably not the film to watch with your girlfriend or wife present. Wait until they are out of town, invite some friends over and have plenty of beer around and kick back. You will appreciate your friends a lot more after watching this. After all when was the lat time one of your friends tattooed your penis?

Posted 09/11/07