Attack of the Doc! (2023)

This documentary covers the cult cable television show "Attack of the Show!" on the old G4 cable television channel. After watching the film, and doing a little reading online, the internet troll vitriol was sometimes more entertaining than the film.

I never saw "Attack of the Show!" or anything else on the G4 network. My first marriage had ended four days before the 9/11 attacks, and I was too busy sulking in a basement apartment or renting a spare bedroom from my best friend to sit down and watch cable television much, when I could afford it at all. I was not a gamer anyway, getting that out of my system back in high school thanks to popping quarters into arcade machines or suffering through the Intellivision system at home. I didn't know AOTS was a thing, and I'm not even sure if G4 was on my cable system. One thing I was familiar with, however, was Chris Gore. I used to frequent a rundown little gas station in my then-hometown because they carried Film Threat magazine for some ungodly reason I never figured out. I read and re-read every issue I could get my hands on, along with the Film Threat Video Guide, before loaning my collection to a friend and never seeing them again. I was going to be a film maker back then, carrying around well-worn issues of Entertainment Weekly, Movieline, and Premiere. I shot one music video, graduated from college with a degree in Broadcasting (no, everyone in my life, it's not "the same thing"), and never pursued my film making career. Writing about film, on the other hand...

When I was in elementary school in the late 1970's (I'm the epitome of Generation X), I used to flip through Leonard Maltin's TV and Movie Guide. I started writing capsule reviews on 3x5 inch index cards, and put them in a little recipe file box. It was stuffed full by the time I got to high school, but it eventually disappeared during one of many moves in my life as an Air Force Brat. Once I discovered the internet, all bets were off. I wrote reviews for Epinions, and then eFilmCritic/HollywoodBitchslap (all of those sites are now long gone). I had 10,000 TV and film rankings on IMDb, which consistently crashed my local library's computer. I'm now on Letterboxd, where I have over 6,500 films ranked, and I have almost a thousand reviews there, as well as my new IMDb incarnation. All told, I've made approximately $1.75 from my decades of online film criticism.

I've been watching and reading Chris Gore since he had dark hair, and I had any hair. I don't have time to do entire podcasts, but I enjoy Film Threat's clips on YouTube, and reading the written reviews on their website. Gore pops up on Film Courage's YouTube channel as well, and his long interview had me nodding in agreement consistently. I found a kindred spirit in Chris Gore and his Film Threat sidekicks, as well as Heath Holland at Cereal at Midnight, and they're among my must-watches. I don't necessarily agree with them all of the time, but I like hearing their views on film, television, and physical media collecting- I own almost a thousand shiny discs and about five hundred books, too.

But what about the film?! Sorry, I'm talking about the film maker more than the film- something most of the reviews I read online are guilty of. "Attack of the Doc!" is a fun, nostalgic trip down memory lane for a show I have no memory of. Gore couldn't get interviews with the most famous hosts (Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn), and I don't know why. He covers it well, though, with plenty of old footage from the show as well as voiceover interviews with people involved in the production. Gore himself appeared on over eighty episodes, according to IMDb, and he appears onscreen in recently shot footage. I was never bored, the show seemed like something I could have watched in between episodes of "The State," "Mystery Science Theater 3000," "The Whitest Kids U'Know," "The Kids in the Hall," and all the other subversive comedy I absorbed if I had known it existed.

The trolls lambast Gore for an anti-woke section of the film. From my reading, I expected an hours long diatribe, and was laughing out loud at the very few sentences I heard. They really couldn't do a lot of the material found on AOTS today, and it was funny to read about how "alt-right" Gore is. "A biased Gore inserts himself into the documentary on a show he was barely on and made it all about himself!" I'm hard pressed to think of a documentary that is unbiased, and when it comes to a film maker putting himself into a documentary, have the names Michael Moore and Nick Broomfield, as well as almost every "reality show" been completely forgotten? I wouldn't call eighty episodes "barely on" the show. Gore is criticized more for his honest takes about current pop culture, which is something I appreciate in the left-leaning world of Hollywood and film criticism. Sometimes I just want to read a writer's thoughts on a film without detrimental comparisons to the latest Trump rally, which has NOTHING to do with the film being reviewed. This is why I also frequently read John Nolte, Armond White, Bret Easton Ellis, and Christian Toto, and old material from Pauline Kael, Roger Ebert, and Gene Siskel. I don't agree with any of them all the time, but I'm not insulted for being a Midwestern Conservative either.

So yes, if you were a G4 fan back in the day, you'll like this film. If you are like me and had no idea what the show or network were about, I think you'll still like this film. Chris Gore is "doing the work" as Gary Vaynerchuk preaches, and I for one appreciate that.

Contains physical violence, some gun violence, some gore, profanity, sexual references, adult situations