Bedhead (1991)

It's 1991, Robert Rodriguez is in his mid-20s and casts a whole bunch of his siblings for his very first movie, a nine-minute short film on a normal brother-sister relationship which takes a turn for the supernatural. It's in black and white just like the majority of his trademark film Sin City roughly 15 years later. When two siblings fight outside the house, the girl falls hard and awakes realizing something happened with her head when her brain hit the ground and all of a sudden she's able to move things with the power of her mind. She uses the newly-acquired ability to go full rampage on her brother and exact her revenge. However, in doing so, she falls again shortly after and may have lost her power again? Or has she?Bedhead is a decent, occasionally funny effort that doesn't really hold a candle to much of what Rodriguez has done afterward though. Actually, I think it's a pretty nice watch for children even, maybe more than for adult, who may find the eating of a cockroach, the girl constantly flying through the air etc. funnier than people our age group. Recommended to Rodriguez completionists, otherwise you can give this one a pass.

What better way is their to start off your career than with a black and white short film? Well, there's a lot better, but all of these filmmakers who's early films consisted of short, cheaply made films have left their fans with a treasure trove of their early work, and how they originally started their soon to be careers. "Bedhead" is an impressive looking short that fits in well with Rodriguez's company Los Hooligans which later just became known as Troublemaker.The narrator of this story is a little girl in the hospital who bumped her head. She flashes back and tells us the story of when she bumped her head and gained psychic powers, and the ability to get anything she wanted. Her biggest pet peeve is her brother's awful bedhead, so her top priority with her powers is to remove his awful hair style.This is just a cute little short. The plot is original enough, though somewhat reminiscent of the Twilight Zone. The acting from the kids is good. The synthesized music sounds professional. The opening animation is simple but cool looking. The direction is really interesting. Many shots can be compared to Sam Raimi's "Evil Dead II", with sped up shots and all kinds of interesting angles. Rodriguez outdid himself with the strange surreality of the direction and it looks great.This isn't a perfect short, but it's a fun way of seeing early Rodrigguez and why he ended up the success that he is today.My rating: *** out of ****. 9 mins.

I don't believe I knew of this short film before I got El Mariachi on DVD and found it among the special features. Rodriguez did it all by himself, with the cast consisting entirely of his siblings. The plot is simple and silly, but you find yourself watching it all, never particularly wanting it to end, and when it does, it hardly feels like any time has passed at all. Granted, not an awful lot of time *has* passed, but still. The pacing is perfect. The cinematography is great. The story-telling is relatively simple, but it works very well. Instead of giving up on having sound, or limiting it, on account of not having a camera that could record sound(I'm going to assume he did, as he describes having and using one such camera in making his feature debut, El Mariachi, which was made not long after this), Rodriguez creates all of the sound in post-production, and gives it a rather cartoon-y feel, one that is present in every facet of this production. The difficulty of dialog(as it must all be recorded separate from filming) is a problem he solves by making the dialog off-screen, and, whilst it is arguably a story-telling crutch, the narration works wonderfully well, and helps tell a story that could easily have taken far longer than 8 short minutes, ensuring a tight little short that does not overstay its welcome. The acting varies, but always works. The lead enunciates reasonably well, and good enough for all she says to be understood. The score, editing and camera angles create drama, and cheap effects sell the supernatural idea. There is some gross-out comedy, but very little. There is also some violence, and it is shown without the realistic outcome(not unlike, say, a Tom & Jerry cartoon). This short is undoubtedly created mainly for children, but adults can enjoy it too. You'll find the minutes flying by, and you may very well enjoy Rodriguez doing what he does best. I recommend this to any fan of Rodriguez, as well as children who have the sense of humor for it. 7/10

This short film shows Rodriguez films' characterstics, fast, low budget, and unique camera works. The idea of this film is very original and fascinating. The acting is very good also. I love Rodriguez's action films but hopefully he will make more films like Bedhead for variety.