Vileness Fats

The Residents shot over fourteen hours of film and videotape for the project, but were not even two-thirds of the way through their incomplete script before they cancelled the production.

The defeat of the Atomic Shopping Carts leads to another problem for Vileness Flats – the Bell Boys, a gang of midgets who live in the desert on the other side of the bridge.

Honeydew is part of a plan to dispatch the twins so that Lonesome Jack and the Bell Boys will be safe to attack the village.

The Residents had just moved into a studio at 20 Sycamore Street, San Francisco, which featured a completely open ground floor, perfect, it seemed, for a sound stage.

The Residents hired people as they found a need, grabbing Graeme Whifler to do lighting and some directing, and J. Raoul Brody to act.

They financed it all themselves (one of them selling his sports car for $1200) and could only work on it during evenings and weekends due to the jobs they were holding down in order to pay for it all.

To make things worse, 1/2" black and white video tape had become obsolete due to the introduction of the Beta and VHS colour formats, so the footage looked dated even though it was brand new.

The "Arf & Omega, featuring The Singing Lawnchairs" track from Santa Dog is taken directly from the film's soundtrack; Margaret Smik joined the Residents as Peggy Honeydew for the "Oh Mummy!

In 1984, the Residents discovered that the state of video technology had advanced to the point where they could salvage their old 1/2" Vileness Fats work and transfer it to VHS.

The new video focused on Arf and Omega's story, from the Atomic Shopping Cart battle to the knife fight at the nightclub.

It also spends a lot of time on Steve's mother, but touches only briefly on the Bell Boys, Lonesome Jack, and Weescoosa.

This version focuses mainly on Steve, touches only briefly on the Atomic Shopping Cart battle, and features the Bell Boys and Lonesome Jack more prominently.

This is considered the best place to see the Vileness Fats footage, as it has been cleaned up and restored to its best quality, taking into consideration the age of the tapes.