The film Vulgar not only lives to its name, but also gives new meaning to the word. Will Carlson (played by Brian Christopher O’Halloran) scrapes out a living as Flappy, a party clown. Aside from his best friend Syd (played by Bryan Johnson), he is bullied by everyone, including creditors, but kids and parents love his performances. Even his mother Wilma (played by Jay Petrick) tonguelashes him when he visits her in a dark room at a nursing home. One day he scours through the classified ads, several of which offer payment for twisted fantasies, and he gets a brilliant idea. He will perform as a clown in drag at bachelor’s parties to surprise a groom under the stagename Vulgar. However, his first customer is a perverted man and his two gay sons (played by Jerry Lewkowitz, Ethan Suplee, and Matt Maher), who proceed to rape him. Syd, on hearing about the experience, urges him to go to the police, but Will is too embarrassed to do so, a typical reaction of a rape victim. One day Flappy is hired to perform at a birthday party, but by the time he arrives the husband has taken his own daughter hostage, demanding full custody from his estranged wife. Although police surround the house, and the husband has a gun, Flappy sneaks into the house, overpowers the husband, and becomes a national hero. A TV program director (played by Kevin Smith) then persuades a TV executive to sign up Flappy, a surefire meal ticket now that Mr. Rogers is no more. Accordingly, Flappy’s Funhouse is a hit, and even Will’s mother is charmed by his successful show. However, the rapist also sees the show, blackmails Will for money, and then demands a repeat performance of the rape scene. After Will then tells Syd falsely that the three rapists instead want Vulgar to kill them, they get guns and take them to a motel where the three plan to rape Vulgar again. However, Syd gets mugged. Vulgar enters alone and nervously drops his gun. But one of the sons picks up the gun, and soon shots are fired, and the three rapists are soon dead. Although Vulgar has not pulled the trigger, he runs off, and the film ends. The point of the film, according to Kevin Smith in a Q&A at a first night screening in Los Angeles, is to make an exploitation film, a genre that once was popular. Indeed, the movie does show that civility is hard to find among lower middle class whites in American society nowadays, replaced by the pursuit of either filthy money or sick fantasies. The dialog is coarse, the sets seedy, and the normality, if lack of sophistication, of Will and Syd seems out of place amid the vulgarity depicted in the film, but how else could the message get across? Americans, or at least those identifiable as white trash, do not want to see how vulgar they have become, so the low-budget film was not sold out on opening night. Even the distributor, Lions Gate Films, declined the honor of planting its logo in the opening credits. MH