Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?

Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?
Soundtrack album by The Residents
Released 1985
Recorded 1984
Length 35:57
The Residents chronology

George & James
(1984)
Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?
(1985)
The Big Bubble: Part Four of the Mole Trilogy
(1985)
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The Residents had begun a movie in 1972 called Vileness Fats. The concept of the movie was to shoot it on a new media form (reel-to-reel video) and tell most of the story through music. The story itself was about a village under siege by bandits stealing the meat supply, forcing the population to exist on vegetables. Unbeknownst to the population, the leader of the bandits is their own spiritual leader. To take care of things, the village hires Siamese twin tag-team wrestlers to be their saviors. Unfortunately their saviors also have other problems, including an Indian princess whose lovers always die.

The film itself, despite over 14 hours of footage, was never finished. In 1984 it was edited to approx. 32 minutes and released on a VHS videocassette titled Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?; the companion soundtrack was also released the same year. Another re-edited version (approx. 17 minutes) of the footage was released on the Icky Flix DVD in 2002.

Track listing

  1. "Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?"
  2. "Atomic Shopping Carts"
  3. "Adventures of a Troubled Heart"
  4. "Search for the Short Man"
  5. "The Importance of Evergreen"
  6. "Broccoli and Saxophone"
  7. "Eloise" (not included on the MVD CD reissue)
  8. "Disguised As Meat"
  9. "Thoughts Busily Betraying"
  10. "Lord, It's Lonely"
  11. "The Knife Fight"

Bonus tracks

These bonus tracks were included on the 1991 CD release. They were originally from their soundtrack to the film The Census Taker

  1. "Creeping Dread"
  2. "The Census Taker"
  3. "Talk"
  4. "Hellno"
  5. "Where Is She?"
  6. "Innocence Decayed"
  7. "Romanian"
  8. "Passing the Bottle"
  9. "The Census Taker Returns"