Writer-director-actor-musician McAbee scored a cult favorite several years ago with his last film, The American Astronaut. He follows it up with a bizarre Western-sci-fi-musical fantasia called Stingray Sam. The story follows the titular character, a two-bit cowboy lounge singer on the planet Mars, and his buddy, the Quasar Kid, as they rocket across the galaxy trying to save a kidnapped girl. The film is told in six 10-minute installments in homage to classic serials, and each installment features the cast breaking into song.

It’s an unapologetically culty, zany, kooky, kitschy (etc., etc.) concoction, thanks in part to McAbee’s stark black and white photography, John Burruso’s spirited collage work and those damned musical numbers.

CineVegas 2009

Stingray Sam

Cory McAbee, Crugie, Joshua Taylor, Willa Vy McAbee.

Directed by Cory McAbee

Stingray Sam

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But, even on its own deranged terms, the movie has to work. It can’t just sound funny. It has to be funny. Stingray Sam has a few winning bits—a planet where male couples beget male sons, a device that shrinks people and installs them inside small robots—but mostly it’s a baffling, pointless and self-indulgent hour that feels closer to two. Hipsters may eat it up, but Stingray Sam isn’t very funny and isn’t very good.

Except for one brilliant song at the very end of the film, about a peg-legged father’s love for his daughter (and hatred of the wife who shot his leg off), that is completely hilarious. It almost saves the whole movie. Had McAbee cut his entire movie down to that one brief scene, he’d have the quirky gem he seems to be working so hard to make.