Philadelphia Weekly

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation is the ultimate swede.

Sitting in a car in a sunny park, a guy faintly resembling Sam Neill goes slackjawed as he spots something in the distance. He gets out and dramatically removes his sunglasses. In front of him stands a two-story cut-out of a brontosaurus, possibly made out of cardboard. "How did you do this?" he gasps. "I'll show you," replies another guy sporting shaving cream and a bad Richard Attenborough accent.

"Everybody makes their own fun," Rebecca Pidgeon tells Philip Seymour Hoffman in State and Main. "If you don't make it yourself, it isn't fun--it's entertainment." Combine the two--fun and entertainment--and you get the above-mentioned DIY version of Jurassic Park, and the strange but potent current glut of no-budget (and heavily abridged) remakes of huge-budget fare.

We're in the eye of a swede storm inspired by the just-released comedy Be Kind Rewind in which Mos Def and Jack Black make their own amateur versions of Ghostbusters, Robocop and The Lion King.

The film's YouTube channel encourages everyone to make like director Michel Gondry and "swede"--the film's inscrutable, never-explained term for recreating the polished and pretty as rinky and dinky. (Rewind's end credits promise its own full-length sweded movies will be available on the film's site, although they've yet to materialize.)

Next month sees the U.S. release of Son of Rambow, a semifictional comedy about a group of British boys who swede First Blood.

Meanwhile super-producer Scott Rudin has bought the life rights of Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos and Jayson Lamb--American boys who spent their teenage summers through the '80s making the ultimate swede--Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation--a shot-for-shot camcorder remake of the first Indiana Jones picture. Adaptation has toured the country with great success since 2003, and finally makes its Philadelphia debut this Saturday.

Sweding has a long history.

Stagy, early films like the 13-minute Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903) or the 10-minute The Fall of Troy (1910) aren't too far removed from the uploaded swedes of today.

Modern sweding can probably be traced back to twin brothers George and Mike Kuchar, who became underground sensations in the '60s with their campy 8 mm and 16 mm imitations of Hollywood movies often shot in their parents' basement and featuring loud bursts of Sirkian color.

Kuchar classics like Mike's futuristic Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965) and George's Hold Me While I'm Naked (1966) might not have been remakes, but they paved the way for 1969's Jr. Star Trek, an eight-minute 16 mm fan film made by Peter Emshwiller that's long been a favorite at Trekkie conventions.

Recently a six-minute film from 1973 called Star Trek: The Klingon Incident surfaced on YouTube, featuring kids with stick-on Enterprise emblems on their shirts and audio recorded on cassette tape.

But the true dry run for The Adaptation would have to be a 1980 Super 8 remake of Star Wars by three Massachusetts kids. Lasting 50 minutes (15 of which are available on Google Video), it tries to ape many of the shots from the original. But what's most impressive is the costume work, with a passably mobile R2D2 and spot-on Tusken raider masks. Sure, the finale is shot in front of a public school, but at least Gredo still shoots first.

A more recent epic remake is L.A. video artist Michele O'Marah's 2002 art-sweding of Martha Coolidge's teen pic Valley Girl. The 1983 original featured a young, scenery-chewing Nicolas Cage, but O'Marah's version is staffed with her nonactor friends (all well into their 30s) while the sets are made of construction paper--intended as both a loving paean to the original and a cultural critique.

Then there are the many sweding offshoots. British company Backyard Productions does lavish feature-length parodies. Their first film Geriatric Park, made soon after Jurassic, twists the story so it's zombie old-timers rather than prehistoric beasties wreaking havoc. (Subsequent offerings include their own twists on Indiana Jones and Star Wars.)

And the documentary VHS Kahloucha features Tunisian director Moncef Kahloucha, whose off-the-cuff knockoffs of American actioneers are so DIY they're shot with bulky '80s VHS camcorders.

And consider the following: The Phantom Edit (the illicit and disrespectful fan cut of The Phantom Menace); the fake trailer for The Shining that makes it look like a heartwarming family comedy; and the music-video-length take on The Lord of the Rings from Flight of the Conchords.

Root around Be Kind Rewind's YouTube channel and you'll see The Shining's bleeding elevator recreated as a diorama. You'll see Rocky boxing a small turkey, the T-1000 Terminator wrapped in aluminum foil, and Thelma and Louise's MatchBox car being pushed off the cliff by a giant pointer finger. And in a Matrix swede people do bad fake slow-mo while someone else makes wooshy sounds into the mike.

By the way, people of the world: Please stop sweding the same four goddamn movies. Where's the Wages of Fear swede? The Un Chien Andalou swede? No Star Wars scene needs to be sweded ever again, with Legos or otherwise.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation