I guess Kenneth Keith Kallenbach is a sort of forerunner to
William Hung, the American Idol contestant,
from a few years back, who was so awful that he achieved a strange sort of meta-fame,
bypassing any and all requirements of manifested talent or hard work. Like
Hung, Kallenbach’s fame — to the degree that it really exists— seems to hinge
on a combination of fortuitous discovery and the snickering derision of those
who from thence forth afford him a platform. All I know is that, Kentucky
waterfall ’do or not, Kallenbach is an awful, awful… comedian or actor, musician
or entertainer, however you want to slice it. (Based on the lanky physicality
and hair, though, I suppose it’s worth noting that Sam Rockwell
could play likely him in a biopic if some suitably grandiose tragic fate should
befall him.)

Billed as a one-of-a-kind jack-of-all-trades, Kallenbach’s bizarre
ascension charts itself back to Howard Stern, on whose very first Channel 9
show he appeared. His outgoing personality and strange delivery — think a
pretty spot-on Bill Paxton, by slight way of Beavis — grabbed one’s attention, I
guess, though since I’m not a habitual listener of Stern’s (favoring XM over
Sirius, sorry…), I’m not sure how Kallenbach is deployed/tolerated, and whether
his apparently recurring guest spots as part of the shock jock’s “Wack Pack” allow for his own brand of air-quote
comedy, or whether he’s really just doing Stern’s bidding.

This single-disc DVD, dubbed American Icon, compiles eye-gougingly atrocious clips of Kallenbach’s
almost two decades in entertainment, from ramshackle, man-in-the-street bits
where he rephrases passersby’s replies to his queries and adds a random lame
observation (on someone’s favorite talk show host: “Yeah, I like Ellen
[DeGeneres] too… I think she’s a lesbo”) to longer-form sketch material. The
entire affair employs production values just below your average cable access
show (sleeping bags duct-taped to a wall serve as the backdrop for an
interstitial talk show wraparound bit, wherein Kallenbach interviews himself)
and, simply put, none of it is funny. Kallenbach talks about bits like cutting off
and eating his own hair, or putting firecrackers in his pants and the like, but
we see precious little of this type of thing, and his humor certainly doesn’t
even fall into the Jackass category
of classification, which might have some goosing, occasional entertainment
value, no matter how insipid the host. Instead, here we get Kallenbach
prattling on and on about himself, and starring in stupid Superman sketches that
will have even the biggest Bryan Singer
detractors yearning for the relative comfort of Superman Returns.
Clocking in at over 90 minutes, this title doesn’t even have the decency
of brevity; bits with an eponymous musical side project, old stand-up footage and
phony phone calls (in which Kallenbach’s “victims” get off much better
one-liners than he) round out the slate.

Housed in a regular Amray case, American Icon is presented on a region-free disc in a cruddy full
screen transfer, with source audio that also sometimes (against considerable
odds) manages to grate almost on par with the material itself. There are no special
features, per se, just the cold comfort of knowing that this DVD is billed as
being comprised of never-before-seen sketches and shorts, etcetera. It should
stay that way, really. F (Movie) D+ (Disc)