Precautions Against Fanatics might represent a young Werner Herzog making fun of the documentary format before being fully established as one of the all-time great documentary filmmakers? I know he'd had a few credits before this one, but it can't have been many. Plus, I tend to associate Herzog's 1960s with short films, and his 1970s with feature films (particularly the likes of Aguirre and Nosferatu).
So this, in a way, feels ahead of its time, or perhaps ahead of Herzog's time. It's so stupid and one-note, but it made me laugh a good deal of the time, being a mockumentary about a bunch of very unusual people who work at a horse track that somehow functions, despite their strange qualities. It's either a proto-documentary parody or a depiction of a very funny and surreal purgatory.
At the end of almost every mock interview, an old guy enters out of nowhere and antagonizes the interviewee, the cameraman, or both... it was sometimes hard to tell, but funny in any event. There's just this chaotic and stupid energy to the whole thing that was infectious, but even at just 11 minutes, I feel like it started to wear out its welcome a tad in the final moments.
For anyone who wants to see Werner Herzog trying to replicate Monty Python (this is the best descriptor I can come up with; the 11-minute short film that is Precautions Against Fanatics fried my brain), this is the film for you!
So this, in a way, feels ahead of its time, or perhaps ahead of Herzog's time. It's so stupid and one-note, but it made me laugh a good deal of the time, being a mockumentary about a bunch of very unusual people who work at a horse track that somehow functions, despite their strange qualities. It's either a proto-documentary parody or a depiction of a very funny and surreal purgatory.
At the end of almost every mock interview, an old guy enters out of nowhere and antagonizes the interviewee, the cameraman, or both... it was sometimes hard to tell, but funny in any event. There's just this chaotic and stupid energy to the whole thing that was infectious, but even at just 11 minutes, I feel like it started to wear out its welcome a tad in the final moments.
For anyone who wants to see Werner Herzog trying to replicate Monty Python (this is the best descriptor I can come up with; the 11-minute short film that is Precautions Against Fanatics fried my brain), this is the film for you!