Yes, a knife would be faster, but this was the only cutlery he could find.
The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon started as a parody trailer that pokes fun at the horror genre, particularly the "Torture Porn" movies like Saw and Hostel, which focused on, well, see the title. It stars Paul Clemens as a man who is suddenly attacked by a supernatural being (Brian Rohan) for a (possibly imagined) slight against the Powers That Be. This attack is made with a normal spoon, the bowl struck sharply against the target's body, and is seldom ceased. The victim is sent spiraling past the brink of insanity from the constant flogging, and resorts to continually, and comedically, extreme lengths to get rid of his tormentor, all ending in failure, and in some cases even backfiring immensely.
After the immense success of the original parody trailer
in October 2009, The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon (abbreviated HSMWEIW) has become a YouTube series, including an "Ask Jack" featuring an interview with the victim, an interactive adventure which cannot be won, and a new mini-series called "Ginosaji Vs. Ginosaji".
A real movie version, titled Ginosaji, is currently in pre-production. Here is the Kickstarter page for it. The campaign ended with 155.71% fundingnote , but additional funding for the movie can still be made through the Backerkit shop, which has currently made more than $7,000 as of March 2017. In February 2020, Gale announced that the film is currently on hold due to a myriad of family emergencies, but has reassured people that it will still happen.
Tropes featured in The Horribly Slow Murderer With the Extremely Inefficient Weapon include:
- All Just a Dream: Spoon Wars. Even in his dreams, Jack can't fight off the Ginosaji.
- Alien Blood: The Ginosaji has black blood.
- A Handful for an Eye: In Spoon Wars, Jack impales the Ginosaji with a lightsaber. The Ginosaji then spits a mouthful of black blood into Jack's eyes, blinding him.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- All the Ginosaji does to bring Jack into this misery is whack him with a spoon; it does not use the spoon for any other methods of killing, such as cutting his heart/eyes out with a spoon. The awesome part is... care to explain?
- The slow, slow, sloooow mental and physical torture.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In all the videos so far.
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: In this follow up. It doesn't work out for Jack.
- Big Bad: The Ginosaji, an evil spirit who torments Jack for some unexplained reason.
- Big Eater: Jack, because the fat tissue makes for a little protection from the spoon blows, and because he's developed an eating disorder for his torture.
- Bilingual Bonus: The victim in the story is Jack Cucchiaio. The murderer is called the Ginosaji. "Cucchiaio" and "Gin no saji" are Italian and Japanese, respectively, for "spoon" and "silver spoon". The seal that appears in the video repeatedly also says spoon as the English pronunciation (スプン, pronounced su-pu-n) in Japanese katakana. (It is not the native term for spoon, though.)
- Bizarre Alien Biology: The Ginosaji has black blood and is filled with worms.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: At the end of the Kick Him in the Crotch interactive video, Jack's vomit repeatedly covers up the superimposed Try Again image. The narrator replaces the graphic each time, only for it to get covered in vomit again.
- Cerebus Syndrome: By Ginosaji vs. Ginosaji, Jack's situation is so pitiful that it's becoming hard to find it funny, culminating in him being dragged an indeterminate amount of miles by a bus (while still being hit with a spoon) and then suffocated (while still being hit with a spoon) to the point that he hallucinates about a "happy place," only to wake up in a full body cast (while still being hit with a spoon). He attempts to kill himself by jumping off a building... which still fails. It's hard not to feel sorry for him, even though his plight is Played for Laughs.
- Cherry Tapping: It's hard to imagine a less effective and more humiliating way to kill somebody.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Jack will die by being hit by a spoon... eventually. It's especially cruel since the Ginosaji actually prevents Jack from killing himself at different points in the trailer. Not only will the killer eventually kill Jack, he won't allow him any opportunity to cheat the Ginosaji of delivering the death blow.
- Cut His Heart Out with a Spoon: Or being beaten to death by one. The story manages to explore how this can be Played for Laughs (it's the epitome of Cool, but Inefficient) and Played for Horror (the spoon is wielded by an Implacable Man, so it doesn't matter how stupid it looks, death will happen, and it won't be pretty. At one point Jack even tries to kill himself because it's the only way he can see his torment ending — but the Ginosaji denies this to him).
- Cut Phone Lines: Spoofed; it takes a long time when you try cutting it with a spoon, but Jack can't get through anyway, because the police hang up once he mentions that his attacker is only hitting him with a spoon.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: The Ginosaji does this to Jack, though replace "cuts" with "billions upon billions of whacks with a spoon". Worse? Jack starts vomiting actual blood after being hit in the same spot a thousand times too many.
- Determinator: The Ginosaji will not stop. Ever. The dark energies animating his body will not allow rest... neither for him, nor Jack.
- Driven to Suicide: Jack tries to shoot himself at one point. The Ginosaji knocks the gun out of his hand...with a spoon.
- Dual Wielding: In the sequel, Jack gets a spoon to fight against the swatter and he winds up losing the spoon to him.
- Epic Movie: "A major motion picture event, twelve years in the making, filmed on five continents, with a running time of
over nine hours." - Even Evil Has Standards: At least to the extent that even the Ginosaji seems to visibly cringe when Jack saws through his own crotch. Not that it changed anything in the end.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The plot is about Jack suffering an excruciatingly slow death by spoon over the course of years.
- Face–Heel Turn: Jack decides to "become" a Ginosaji to stop the torment. It doesn't work. At all.
- Failure Is the Only Option: All of Jack's attempts to escape his fate whether it be killing the Ginosaji, killing himself, or trying to trick the Ginosaji usually backfire horribly and only cause him more pain.
- From Bad to Worse: The result of pretty much anything Jack tries to fight the Ginosaji.
- Fun with Acronyms: Chaotic Rampage American Pictures.
- Funny Spoon: Funny to the audience, that is. Not so much for Jack.
- Glamour: The Ginosaji has some sort of supernatural effect that prevents it from being witnessed by anyone other than its victim. Jack tries to photograph it but it comes out as a blurry picture, Jack runs across a crowded beach with no one noticing the Ginosaji chasing him, and a piece of art early on in the second trailer has the Ginosaji attacking someone to an indifferent crowd.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: In "Save Jack: The Interactive Adventure", the "Wear Protective Clothing" option backfires on Jack since the noise from his helmet being whacked with a spoon drives him to madness. It's so horrible that he begs the Ginosaji to go back to beating the rest of his body. The Ginosaji, realizing the helmet beating is more effective torture, ignores him and even puts the helmet back on Jack when he tries to take it off.
- Groin Attack:
- Inverted, as the Ginosaji throws the spoon at Jack, armed with a buzzsaw... and Jack winds up cutting his own testes off.
- In "Save Jack: The Interactive Adventure", if the "Wear Protective Clothing" option is picked, the Ginosaji hits Jack in the groin before he can put on his cup. If the "Kick him in the Crotch" option is picked, it backfires horribly.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: It's never revealed why the Ginosaji has it in for Jack.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Hilariously averted (yet also played straight) in the follow-up video Spoon vs Spoon, in which Jack decides to attack the Ginosaji with its own weapon: a spoon. The Ginosaji merely knocks it out of his hand, picks it up, and starts beating him up with both spoons.
- Hope Spot:
- At the end of the original trailer, the spoon breaks and Jack looks relieved that his torment has finally ended, then the Ginosaji unzips his hoodie and reveals he has at least a dozen more spoons strapped to his chest.
- In "Save Jack: The Interactive Adventure", picking the Giant Magnet option will lead to this. The magnet actually works and stops the Ginosaji from using his spoons until he pulls out a wooden spoon. To Jack's dismay, being beaten with a big wooden spoon is even more painful than being hit with a small metal one.note
- Humanoid Abomination: The Ginosaji, of course. He's an Implacable Man with Alien Blood, apparently a different nervous system (or at least one that allows him to shrug off groin strikes), and a Hammerspace arsenal of spoons, and the implication that he was sent to torture and kill Jack as some kind of curse makes him a parody of vengeful spirits like Sadako.
- Immortal Assassin: The Ginosaji takes a knife to the throat, gunshots, and two explosions without any harm done.
- Implacable Man: Again, the Ginosaji takes a knife to the throat, gunshots, and two explosions without any harm done.
- Informed Ability: Jack is supposedly a forensic pathologist, though we never get to see him at work.
- In the Hood: The Ginosaji sports a black hoodie.
- Interactive Narrator: In "Save Jack: The Interactive Adventure", getting Jack to give the Ginosaji a hug requires some persistent encouragement from the narrator.
- Karma Houdini: So far, the Ginosaji has avoided karmic retribution for his torture of Jack. Then again, it's implied that he is Laser-Guided Karma being meted out against Jack — for what, we have no idea.
- Lodged-Blade Recycling: Subverted. Jack stabs the Ginosaji in the neck with a knife. The Ginosaji pulls it out, points it at Jack... and discards it so he can keep using the spoon.
- Mickey Mousing: Parodied during the first part of Spoon Wars. The music swells every time their weapons meet... except the battle starts dragging on and the music direction has nowhere to go.
- Mundane Made Awesome:
- Jack arms himself with all types of guns to beat the spoon-wielding Ginosaji. The Ginosaji wins anyway.
- Another scene that would qualify is that when the Ginosaji's spoon finally breaks, he backs off for a moment, then ominously opens his hoodie to reveal that his shirt has a dozen more spoons hanging from it. The maker confirms that the Ginosaji has an infinite number of spoons hanging from it.
- Neverending Terror: The Ginosaji attacks his victims with a blunt spoon. They typically die of terror and/or boredom when they realize that he just. Won't. Stop.
- Oh, Crap!: The ending of the original where Jack realizes the Ginosaji has dozens of back-up spoons after the original breaks.
- Once is Not Enough: Jack shot the Ginosaji down. The Ginosaji simply continued to hit Jack's hand with a spoon.
- Out of the Inferno: The Ginosaji does this after Jack tried to blow him up with a ton of TNT.
- Overly Long Gag: The Ginosaji will hit you with a spoon again, and again, and again... and again, and again, and again... and again, and again, and again... and again... and again... and again... and again. And again. And again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again... Well, you get the picture.
- The Interactive Adventure also becomes this if you don't make a choice, as it has Jack being beaten with a spoon by the Ginosaji non-stop while the narrator chides the viewer for not picking an option for Jack to try and stop the Ginosaji.
- Police Are Useless: Somewhat justified, as the movie suggests that Jack is never able to get any solid enough evidence for police assistance.
- "Psycho" Shower Murder Parody: Except instead of being stabbed to death, it's being hit with a spoon.
- Real Trailer, Fake Movie: Though one could argue the trailer is the movie.
- Scratch Damage: The spoon is more irritating than actually harmful, but over the course of 10 years, it does some serious damage.
- Shout-Out: Psycho, complete with being Deliberately Monochrome.
- Simple Solution Won't Work: Wearing protective clothing? Running away? Grab a gun and fight back? Against the Ginosaji, it's completely worthless. Jack also tries at one point to call the police, and not only is his situation too stupid to be considered anything other than a prank call, after everything Jack does to end the situation himself, it's easy to tell that having police protection would do nothing. Trying to kill himself so as to get a less painful demise is also out — the Ginosaji will make sure Jack survives just to make damned sure he will die by spoon.
- The Slow Walk: Subverted. The Ginosaji actually runs if Jack runs.
- Stern Chase: The Ginosaji and Jack equally try to hit each other, with the latter usually failing and being harmed in the process.
- Suddenly Shouting: The Overly Long Gag montage of the Ginosaji chasing and beating up Jack with the spoon (anywhere, even underwater and to Japan, and most importantly at one point smacking the gun Jack was going to blow his brains out with out of his hand) ends with Jack screaming "STOOOP IIIIT!"
- Throwing Your Sword Always Works:
- A rare instance where the villain uses this trope, though with a spoon, of course.
- Twice; he used it again in Spoon Wars. And it was epic.
- Too Dumb to Live: In Ginosaji vs. Ginosaji, Jack tries to become a Ginosaji and go around hitting someone with a spoon. As he is not in fact a Nigh-Invulnerable demon like the real Ginosaji, it doesn't work out too well.
- Took a Level in Badass: Near the start of the trailer, Jack is able to gun down the Ginosaji with a handgun, if only momentarily. Later on, it's able to shrug off point-blank assault rifle fire, a direct hit from an RPG, and small minefield rigged to blow. Its glamour also improves, as it initially only attacked Jack when he was alone, but later on it's chasing him in broad daylight across a crowded beach with no one noticing.
- Super-Persistent Predator: The Ginosaji never stops.
- Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Jack ends up traveling the galaxy to find something to kill the Ginosaji. He ends up finding a lightsaber. It doesn't work. And it was All Just a Dream anyway. Poor Jack.
- What the Hell, Player?: If no choice is selected during "Save Jack: The Interactive Adventure", the narrator and Jack call out the viewers on enjoying Jack's torment when all they have to do to help him is to push a button. Not that it matters, since Failure Is the Only Option.
- The Worm That Walks: What the Ginosaji seems to be, if Kick Him In The Crotch is anything to go by.
- You Can't Fight Fate: The Ginosaji has to kill Jack, meaning all his attempts to take himself out will fail.
- You Have to Believe Me!: At one point Jack calls the police. He manages to finish his statement of "someone is trying to kill me with a spoon" before the cops laugh at him and hang up.
