Video Review: “Glitch In the System” Directed by Jacob Young (VHS, Dancing Outlaw Video, thirty minutes, $24.95)

Once upon a time there was a chemical engineer named Elmer Fike. Elmer was sent by The Big Concern he worked for to the wilds of West Virginia to help run a plant. While there, he ended up doing what every kid who ever owned a chemistry set has ever dreamed about: starting his own chemical company.

Now in most cases, that is the “And they reacted happily ever after” conclusion to the story. But Elmer had one little problem: he didn’t know how to take out the trash. And when the trash began piling up, the Environmental Protection Agency came calling. Because by the early 1980’s, Elmer’s company, then called Artel, had created a major toxic waste site.

This short film should be required viewing for everyone in the chemical industry. Produced for PBS’ Different Drummer series in 1989, it is informative, funny, and sad. This video is a work of absolute brilliance. It’s an amusing documentary that avoids the snide remarks of other documentaries on the chemical industry travails, such as Blue Vinyl. Video documentarian Jared Taylor chronicles Elmer Fike’s battles with the local community and federal government. The problem is, Elmer has no sense of public relations. He doesn’t know when to quit talking and gets an attitude with anyone who suggests that he might be a major polluter. And the director of this documentary never lets up. Even the one moment when Elmer appears to be at peace, when he’s doing an experiment in a makeshift laboratory, is introduced by The Edgar Winter Group’s song “Frankenstein” as Elmer drives to the lab.

The most surreal moment in this short video originates with an EPA crew. First Elmer smarts off to the investigator at the front gate of his plant. Then, while the guys in the HAZMAT suits are trying to figure out what’s in his steel drum graveyard, Elmer starts shaking a partial drum. No comedian alive could have conceived the unintentional hilarity of watching these EPA guys jump back in fear. Discovering a leaky tank of hydrogen cyanide, the EPA is then forced to blow it up rather than risk a disaster by moving it.

To chemists everywhere: buy or rent this film. And then remember why you DO safely dispose of all your waste.