Doc Watch: Spare Parts

FINDERS KEEPERS (B) - This is a story that tells itself, and it does so with a southern twang that makes it even more entertaining.

Shannon Whisnant, a scavenger and a bit of a grifter, bought a barbecue smoker grill at a sale of assets from a storage facility. Inside he found a mummified lower leg and foot. That foot belonged to John Wood, who lost the body part in a small-plane crash, had it preserved, and then stashed it in the smoker in a storage locker that he stopped making payments on. This movie is about the legal battle over which man had the right to the leg.

Whisnant and Wood grew up in the same town, Maiden, N.C., but ran in different circles. Wood's father was fairly prominent in town, and it was his private plane that he was piloting when it crashed, injuring John Wood and killing his father. Wood

It feels a bit lurid to watch these backwoods characters banter back and forth. Wood, missing a front tooth, looks like a cross between Dan Quayle and Mortimer Snerd. In home-movie flashbacks he sports a mullet. Whisnant lapses into "Sling Blade" patter. When he speaks, the word "media" comes out more like "meteor"; when he means "transpire" he says "perspire." His wife sports an Aye Caramba Tequila T-shirt. He's a connoisseur of the truckstop humor of Gene Tracy, who specialized in harelip jokes. Whisnant's lifelong dream was to be a TV star. (He made an appearance on "Jerry Springer" at one point, and more recently was a regular on a reality show called "Dukes of Haggle.") Whisnant and wood eventually agree to settle their dispute on the "Judge Mathis" show. Whisnant fondly recalls emerging from the judge's courtroom to a sea of cameras. They were "a-clickin' and a-flashin', and a-flashin' and a-clickin'," he recalls, tearing up.

Wood is a lovable loser who struggled with drugs and alcohol his whole adult life and then was overcome with guilt over the plane crash. He is estranged from his mother, who got fed up with his addictions during his recovery period. "Most of the time I don't love him," she tells the camera. "I like him." Ouch. Wood's sister Marian eventually kicks him out of the house, and she blurts out her frustration over the ongoing dispute: "We cain't move forward till there's an ending for this leg." The dispute eventually strains Whisnant's marriage.

It's mostly a guilty wallow in the black humor of two tetched good ol' boys squabbling over a severed leg. Newcomers Bryan Carberry and Clay Tweel manage to rise above the easy freak-show trappings and manage to inject some humanity into their film. The result is often a hoot. 

THE FINAL MEMBER (2014) (B) - This documentary about a penis museum in Iceland somehow develops dramatic heft in the story of the curator's quest to land the first human specimen.

Sig Hjartarson for a couple of decades accumulated the male sex organs of various species, from hamsters to whales, and he transferred his home collection to an actual museum in 1997. But his own white whale was a human penis. Will Hjartarson, 70, live to see his dream come true?

Rookie directors Jonah Bekhor and Zach Math, apparently shooting over several years, patiently allow a dramatic story arc to form and the characters to deepen. Hjartarson isn't just some eccentric in the shadow of the Arctic Circle; he's a wistful old man with a passion. Enter two candidates for his human specimen. Paul Arason, around 90 years old, is the Wilt Chamberlain of Iceland: He was the playboy of his day, bedding about 300 women over the decades. And then there's the weird American, Tom Mitchell, who is obsessed with his own dick (he has dubbed it Elmo) and wants it immortalized -- to the extent that he's planning to have it removed while he's still alive and mounted in the museum.

But Arason is shriveling in his old age, and Hjartarson worries that Arason's member won't meet the 5-inch minimum requirement. And Mitchell is a nutcase. He tattoos the Stars & Stripes on the head of his penis. He seeks medical and psychological treatment to prepare him for his gelding. He harasses Hjartarson by email.

The filmmakers corral the silliness and inject a somber mood into this masculine competition to celebrate their phallic wonders. In a brisk 75 minutes, they create an epic tale of ego and epitaphs. 

BONUS TRACK
John Wood suggests his theme song, Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried," a version of which plays over the end credits: