The Backyard
Release Date:
August 29, 2003
Limited release
In what could easily pass as the fourth entry in the Decline of Western Civilization series of films, English director Paul Hough brings us The Backyard, a documentary focusing on the brutal pastime of backyard wrestling, a ”sport” popularized mainly by white trash.
Backyard wrestling, for those who miss the exploitative commercials for ”The Best (?) of Backyard Wrestling” that air late at night in between “Girls Gone Wild” spots during shows like Howard Stern and Jerry Springer, takes professional wrestling and transplants it into the backyard where wrestlers duke it out on either dirty old mattresses, crude imitations of real rings, or sometimes nothing but the ground in an attempt to put on a “show” for an audience no doubt of equal white trashitude (I feel myself getting dumber and dumber as I write this). The wrestlers (if they can even be called that) are allowed such fun toys as barbed wire, light bulbs, cacti, thumbtacks, baseball bats, tables, staplers, fire, fireworks, trampolines, ladders, trash cans, street signs, canes, guitars, chairs, and even weed-whackers (one wonders if they are making a wrestling match or remaking an old Peter Jackson horror flick) to inflict as much pain as possible on their opponents before laying on them for three seconds. Since there is no real competition, one wonders why they do this. Matches end with bruised and very bloody wrestlers (think Ash in any Evil Dead flick) just stumbling around a backyard covered in various weaponry and trash. Do they understand going into these matches that they are going to have to clean up the mess they make? How can poor folk afford all the weapons they use?
Director Hough travels across the US and parts of England and provides us with a glimpse into the world of backyard wrestlers and attempts to figure out why they participate in this barbaric hobby. We learn from that film that white trash aren't the only group in love with backyard wrestling and that some people actually think backyard wrestling will help them become legitimate professional wrestlers (becoming paralyzed seems a more obtainable goal). Perhaps most disturbing, we learn that some parents actually support the ultra-violence in which their kids take part.
If you take anything away from this film, it looks like it'll either be a great respect for the kids that participate in this butchery or an even deeper sense of disappointment in today's modern youth. (Kris Terrell/BOP)
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