Not Ever Coming to a Theater Near You: 'She-Hulk,' 'Tale of Mermaids'

You probably haven't heard of Wolf Productions, a small company out of Provo, Utah, run by filmmaker Stephen Groo. But if the trailers and demo reels on the firm's website are any indication, you might soon be hearing a lot about them -- probably in the same breath as Troll 2 and The Room and other holy-crap-can-you-believe-how-BAD-this-is? movies.

Groo has made a handful of feature-length films, along with several trailers for potential projects and multiple music videos, developing a cult following in the process. A correspondent of mine in Provo says local bands have started approaching him to make their videos because they want them to turn out as "awesome" (i.e., terrible) as Groo's other work. He graduated from Brigham Young University's film program, by the way, alongside Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess.

What's magical about Groo's films -- which range from sci-fi to comedy -- is that every single element of every single one of them is done badly, and it goes beyond simply having a shoestring budget. I mean, bad acting is bad acting. And letting a 10-second conversation run on for 30 seconds because lousy editing has left two-second pauses between each line of dialogue is ... well, it's hilarious for a while, and then it's annoying.

Rather inconveniently, especially considering he's trying to spread the word about his "talents" and get some studio interest, Groo doesn't embed his trailers or demo reels on his site. Instead, he wants you to download them to your hard drive and play them with Windows Media Player. (If you're on a Mac, as I am, you can play them with QuickTime, but you'll need to download the free Flip4Mac application to translate.)

But trust me, it's worth the effort to see, for example, Tale of Mermaids. It's a 4-minute trailer (I'm not sure if the whole film was ever made) about an American reporter who goes to Ireland looking for a story and meets a mermaid. You will enjoy the crazy old fisherman with an "Irish" accent that sounds more like Swedish, or possibly Mexican. ("Lad, I could tell you stories of when I was a young sailor. I've seen myself a mermaid once.") You will also enjoy the dramatic moment when the reporter learns the secret of the beautiful and mysterious woman he met. (Spoiler: She's a mermaid.)

Groo has uploaded one trailer to YouTube, though, and we've embedded it below. It's She-Hulk -- an 8 1/2-minute pitch to would-be investors, I guess, to show what he could do if he were able to make a full She-Hulk feature. And what could he do? Oh my. Just watch. From what I gather, Groo's story more or less lines up with how the character originated in Marvel Comics (she's Bruce Banner's cousin; gets a blood transfusion from him; etc.), but that's hardly the point, is it? Anyway, enjoy.