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The latest video from Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios is a wacky infomercial gone awry

The latest video from Neill Blomkamp’s Oats Studios is a wacky infomercial gone awry

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‘Makes you just want to cut something’

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Last week, Neil Blomkamp released Rakka, the first short video from his experimental short film project Oats Studios. The alien invasion film feels as though it’s ready to be scaled up into a feature film, and is one of several that he will release this summer. However, those serious projects aren’t the thing that we’ll see from him, and the latest video is a good example of what else they have up their sleeves: a twisted infomercial.

Indeed, the trailer for the studio promised some “weird shit” was headed our way, and Cooking With Bill - Damasu 950 certainly falls into that category. The three-minute video is set in a 1980s-era kitchen before a studio audience, where a presenter unveils a ridiculous-looking kitchen instrument called the Damasu 950. He asks viewers if they’ve ever had trouble cutting something in the kitchen with a traditional knife. He proceeds to demonstrate the contraption, a gas-powered machine with some insane spinning knives and a chainsaw blade. The result... doesn’t go well.

When he spoke with The Verge a couple of weeks ago, Blomkamp noted that he wanted to put together a studio that could turn out any number of short films, ranging from the serious to the wacky, in what he described as “a playground for creativity.” This seems to include creating ridiculous mock infomercials.

It’s silly, but it’s a cheap content stream to keep fans engaged with the studio

Where Rakka is clearly a short film with some production value backing it up: this seems far cheaper. As the studio looks to capture an audience to buy into their model, a stream of cheaply shot videos should help keep their fans happy with a steady stream of content, tiding them over until the next big short film hits. While maybe not the forefront of cinematic greatness, infomercials are perfect for satire, and this could certainly become a running gag from the studio. With a props department and a perverse sense of humor at his disposal, Blomkamp shouldn’t have any trouble coming up with wacky ways for more kitchen-related body horror.