Principle Cast:  Nigel Hazeldine (Dr. Benderfax), Caroline Hazeldine (Nurse Clench), Steve Gouveia (Andrew), Merodie Patterson (Carmen), and Nick Berry (Farance)

Production:  Sixth Avenue Pictures

Web Site:  http://members.aol.com/BENDERFAX/BENDERFAX.html  (further information and videos available for purchase!)

Copyright:Dr. Benderfax and all images and sounds used in this review are copyright 1997 Tom Hosler & Kata Jacobson

Here's how writer/director Tom Hosler describes his first full-length film:
 

"DR. BENDERFAX is the story of a highly esteemed medical researcher (Nigel Hazeldine) who will do whatever it takes to reach a scientific goal.  Unfortunately, the doctor's experiments often result in the termination of his subjects, so he and his partner Nurse Clench (Caroline Hazeldine) acquire a psychiatric hospital and use the resident mental patients for their enigmatic research.  As the formidable duo near the pinnacle of their scientific careers, the discovery of an elusive psychic phenomenon called the telefaximial field, a do-good young doctor named Andrew March (Steve Gouveia) stumbles upon the truth about the Benderfax Institute and threatens to expose the deadly operation.
DR. BENDERFAX is a hilarious, offbeat, often twisted comedy of bizarre human experiments, love, and unexpected body parts."
 

That pretty much covers this fun, well-made, and surprisingly professional first feature from Sixth Avenue Productions (no, not Sixth Avenue Heartache) in San Diego.  I say "surprisingly professional" because we expected a lot of the movies for our "Student Films" section to have roughly the quality of a cable access show crossed with a 10th grade English class video project.  Our inaugural film, however, has the look and feel of a real movie, right down to the special effects and most of the acting.  It's so much of a real movie, that Alan and I are both shocked that it has no distributor yet (yet, somehow, Starship Troopers does).  It's better than 80% of the movies that go straight-to-video and certainly a lot better than just about every Sci-Fi Channel Original I've ever seen.  In fact, except for the last 10 minutes which, truthfully, are a bit of a let down, the movie's better than most of the "real" movies we've reviewed for this site!

The plot of the movie is pretty much summed up by Mr. Hosler's synopsis above.  A young man (Andrew March) gets a job at the Benderfax Institute and slowly learns that the good doctor is not as good as he seems.  He's doing evil experiments and when Andrew tries to let people know about them, Benderfax frames him for murder.  Oh, yeah, there's also some stuff involving an elderly woman and her crabby husband, a romance between Andrew and a nurse, a not-so-sane orderly with some interesting hallucinations, and a police detective's missing dog.  All of these different elements are mixed together well, and the story zooms along quickly without too many glaring plot holes (let's just say there are a lot less than Air Force One).  As I said before, the acting is on a totally professional level, even for the man playing Dr. Benderfax, who had never acted before.  He's even better than the police detective who screams "character actor" from the get-go (why is it that all cops, no matter where they're being cops, are from New York?).  The technical credits are great.  There are dozens of locations in the movie, and the lighting, film quality, and sound in all of them are top-notch.  It's just a really good movie.

There's a lot going on in Dr. Benderfax, so here's a quick list of just some of the things you'd find within:

-A short movie-within-the-movie involving a Robot Monster remake
-A whole lot of Delta 100's (the official cigarette of Dr. Benderfax)
-Some not-so-great dog illustrations
-Lots of miscellaneous crazy people 
-Some really good looking computer displays and graphics that Tom did himself (they're really, really good!)
-The cranky old man and the pictures of his wife (one of them in a bee-keeping outfit!)
-A random crawling hand, body parts in the fridge, and other hallucinations
-The greatest scene of a headless-body-shaking-someone's-hand that we've ever seen (and we mean that)
-"Laugh it up, fuzz ball!" (Tom gets extra points for using a more obscure Empire Strikes Back reference than any Kevin Smith has used)
-Benderfax's true purpose (trust us, you won't expect it)

These are just a few of the truly funny and great things about Dr. Benderfax.  Believe us, if there's one thing you'll notice in the next few months, is that all of the amateur and student films we look at will not be praised.  In fact, a lot of them will barely be watched.  Benderfax (or Bendy as we like to call it), is a great all around film, and we highly recommend that the next time you go to buy Invasion of the Bee Girls from Reel.com, you head on over to Tom's Benderfax site and use your money more productively.  You'll be glad you did. 
 
 
 

(Oh, and just so you know, Tom did not pay us in any way for our glowing review.  We just really liked his movie and think you might, too.  Now go away, son, you bother us.)