Alt-comedy weirdo Chris Elliott brings live-action mayhem to Adult Swim in Eagleheart, in which he plays a hypervengeful U.S. Marshal who surgically alters his skull, journeys to the center of the Earth and punches big-bads so hard they explode.
Produced by Conan O'Brien's Conaco Productions and Troy Miller's Dakota Pictures, Eagleheart, premiering at midnight Thursday, is a bit of an odd duck for Cartoon Network's late-night programming block, although its cartoon violence and witless high jinks fit right in with ambitious animated series like Metalocalypse and Superjail.
But it's good to see Elliott back in his first lead television role since the underrated, deranged '90s series Get a Life – and made even better to see him luminously resplendent in the worst blond wig you have ever seen.
As hot-tempered U.S. Marshal Chris Monsanto, Elliot gets to smash his fists into anything that moves and school his green sidekicks, played by bearded dope Brett Gelman and fetching babe Maria Thayer, on the merits of rough justice.
The fact that every sidekick Monsanto has ever had has been mercilessly gunned down at his side fuels his bottomless fury, and more than a few laughs. Especially when Monsanto's commanding officer, Chief (played Mad Men's Michael Gladis), enters the picture looking like the long lost portly ghost of Orson Welles.
Episodes are shot through with pop-culture in-jokes that should keep television addicts busy for quite a while. "Get Worse Soon" features Monsanto's enemy Vargas (a hilarious Roger Guenveur Smith), who has killed every one of his partners so far.
After Monsanto exacts his revenge on Vargas in a hail of bullets that sends the character into a regressive, childlike state, the revenge-addicted U.S. Marshal decides to nurture his nemesis back to normalcy so he can properly kill him later. It's a ridiculous episode that nods in the direction of everything from Miami Vice and Walker, Texas Ranger to Awakenings and Regarding Henry.
Meanwhile, the strange episode "Creeps" lampoons stalker-horror and zombie tropes, as it follows Monsanto and his sidekicks into a nefarious plot hatched by an unrepentantly dorky scientist who develops and spreads "creepetin," a toxin that turns men into chubby losers who haunt Thayer's every move to an overwrought musical score. From its bizarre billionaire who collects Gene Roddenberry's toenails to its horny humor, "Creeps" is classic juvenile television. It's a perfect vehicle for Elliott, a classic juvenile antihero whose politically incorrect idiocy doesn't seem to get old as fast as it should.
Like most of Adult Swim's pop-culture vultures – including the peerless Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law and the nerdtastic toy stories of Robot Chicken – Eagleheart is a metafictional spoof self-aware of its genre limitations. And like most of Elliott's deranged comedy experiments, it's as freaky as it is funny. Eagleheart could benefit from more transgressive genre satire and less self-conscious snark and smirks, especially if it wants to last longer than Get a Life.
For fans of Elliott's strange work, it's mostly a load of stupid fun.
WIRED Merciless violence, Gelman's wide-eyed idiocy, Elliott's hilarious wig.
TIRED Police Academy ambition; Chuck Norris parodies himself just fine, thanks.
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Image courtesy Adult Swim
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