Shirley Pimple in John Wayne’s Temple of Doom

Shirley Pimple… is one of the strangest films to emerge from the cutting room in recent years. Dimitri Estdelacropolis (‘Next to the Necropolis’, in his own words) has apparently been working on this project for seventeen years. In brief, this surreal action thriller essay is about the epic duel between heroine Shirley Pimple and the evil warhorse, the legend of John Wayne. Shirley Pimple (a fantastic role by Chelsea McIsaac) is an apathetic girl of seven, who looks remarkably like Shirley Temple. She becomes the star of the propaganda film factory ‘The John Wayne Institute for the Preservation of American Ideals’. When puberty comes along, Shirley develops murderous tendencies. The Institute tries desperately to keep her under control and even attempts to make her a heroin addict. It doesn’t help. A subplot is about the struggle of the Institute against the enemy from within: The Psychotic Weaklings, pant-wetting child- molesters, in other words the anti-John Waynes. In her obsessive hatred of the Institute Shirley links up with The Psychotic Weaklings. In this unique film we hear the echoes of a whole century of film-making: from German expressionist horror and thirties Hollywood spectacle, to seventies punk and gore and splatter. The bizarre and amusing result is a subversive analysis of what is hidden under the grass of American popular culture.