Doug Clark: Despite ‘Hills 2,’ future is bright for Big Ed

It’s generally a bad sign when a new film isn’t allowed to be screened in advance by reviewers.

Especially when the movie is about cave-dwelling cannibal mutants.

No matter. On Friday I hurried to River Park Square and bought a ticket for an afternoon showing of Wes Craven’s new gorefest, “The Hills Have Eyes 2.”

Normally I don’t have to pay to see mutants. I just go to Spokane City Council meetings.

So why, you ask, would a sensitive man like me waste time in a dark, near-empty theater watching atomically deformed humanoids vent their bloodlust on the witless and the hapless?

It’s called loyalty and support.

My pal Eric “Big Ed” Edelstein has a solid part in this movie, stinker though it may be.

About six years ago, I urged the Spokane comic/actor to go to Hollywood. So the better he does, the smarter I look.

Big Ed is listed seventh in the credits for “Hills 2.” He plays the part of Cpl. Spitter, arguably the biggest boob in a squad of National Guard nitwits.

Cpl. Spitter is a doughy disgrace to his uniform.

He accidentally blows away his sergeant and then whimpers like a baby. Payback arrives shortly, when Cpl. Spitter unsuccessfully breaks the law of gravity.

I don’t want to give away too much. But Big Ed stands 6-foot-5. He weighs 270 pounds. Putting him on a rope and letting him rappel down a cliff is just asking for trouble even when there aren’t any angry mutants around.

In a way, Edelstein got off lucky. His cinematic death is far less disgusting than the fate of the poor dude who comes crawling out of a well-used portable outhouse.

Prediction: Next year at the Academy Awards, we will not hear “The Hills Have Eyes 2” preceded by:

“And the Oscar for Best Picture goes to …”

But that’s OK. What matters is that things are beginning to happen for Big Ed.

He will soon appear in an episode of the television sitcom “Ugly Betty.” He has a major part in an upcoming movie with Jason Ritter, Tom Arnold and Charles Durning.

Edelstein also landed a development deal with NBC for a TV pilot with his writing partner, Jake Johnson.

As clichéd as it sounds, success couldn’t happen to a sweeter guy.

I met Edelstein seven years ago. He was a Gonzaga University student doing standup comedy all over the region with his buddy, Mike Nilson. Edelstein could deliver dead-bang impressions of basketball icon Bill Walton and the Crocodile Hunter. He is a quick-witted goof with natural timing and a great sense of the absurd.

Edelstein has some of that large, funny-man appeal that turned John Belushi and John Candy into stars.

After graduation, his parents wanted their son to settle down and make practical use of his pricey private-school education. Fortunately, I was there to counter any common sense with good old-fashioned illogic.

PARENTAL WARNING: Do not let your child seek career or financial guidance from this man.

Edelstein did not listen to reason. He took my advice and moved to Southern California, where he scraped by working as a bouncer. His apartment was so cramped that the kitchen was a George Foreman grill teetering on top of the toilet.

But Edelstein kept on pursuing his dream. He landed small parts in TV shows and movies.

He got his soldier role in “Hills 2” after first auditioning for the part of a mutant. That was fine by Edelstein. “More face time,” he said.

Edelstein spent six weeks filming the movie in Morocco. He said some of the conditions there made the worst VA hospital look like a Hilton.

His GU buddies will be pleased to note that Edelstein ad-libbed a secret message to them in the film.

It comes in a scene where Edelstein is barking into a radio.

“Stark 9, Stark 9,” he keeps repeating.

Stark 9?

The phrase is not military lingo. It comes from a practical joke Big Ed and his pals pulled on a poor pizza delivery guy while they were living in a rental house near the Gonzaga campus.

One night Big Ed ordered a large pizza. He said he was homeless and living in the alley outside his real address. He said he wanted half of the pie made with raw meat for his vicious guard dog, Sarge.

Big Ed didn’t have a dog, of course. But the pizza dude didn’t know that.

Here’s where Edelstein’s warped comic mind kicked in. He told the delivery man the dog was trained to not attack whenever it heard the words “Stark 9.”

Sure enough, the panicked driver drove to the alley. Edelstein said he and his friends nearly died laughing as the victim got out of the car and nervously started hollering you know what over and over again.

Edelstein said Craven knew there was something fishy about what Cpl. Spitter was saying, but he left the lines in anyway.

Another of Edelstein’s practical jokes is now backfiring on him. Back when he was unknown, Edelstein gave bogus biographical information to the Web site IMDb, which tracks the careers of actors.

If you look up Edelstein’s info you’ll see he pitched two years for a minor league baseball team, was an original member of the “seminal hip hop group Naughty by Nature” and “grew up the Shoshone Reservation just outside of Spokane.”

Hilarious hooey.

Trouble is, now that he’s getting more recognition, Edelstein is being asked by reporters to explain these odd tidbits. And the Web site, despite the actor’s repeated requests, is refusing to have the material removed.

“It’s starting to bite me in the ass,” he said.

Of course, once Edelstein wins an Academy Award he can behave as bizarrely as he wants.

“I haven’t heard ‘The Hills Have Eyes 2’ getting any Oscar buzz,” added Big Ed with a hearty laugh. “But it’s still early.”