The Census Taker

The small but affluent suburb of Appleton is burdened with the nuisance of a special census survey. Harvey McGraw (Garrett Morris), a profoundly irritating statistician who likes to abuse his power is sent there to ask a long, tedious series of invasive questions.

McGraw makes the faux pas of visiting the Dade household interrupting dinner and inviting himself in. The Dades are locally known for being disagreeable and obsessive about their privacy. Head of the household George Dade (Greg Mullavey) - an argumentative crank & right-wing libertarian is instantly perturbed by McGraw.

When McGraw doesn't let George's wife Martha Dade (Meredith McRae) get away with giving her age as 29 things deteriorate further. The Dades alligator shirt-wearing Hitler Youth/android sons Edward and Robert then question the constitutional validity of the survey and are blatantly recalcitrant.

As the questions become more personal McGraw realizes first, that he wore out his welcome on the doorstep and second, that he might not leave the Dade residence alive. The subject of how many firearms are in the house prompts the method of extermination - a shooting which is neither completely on purpose nor entirely accidental.

The constant bickering in the family impedes their attempts at covering up what they are sure will look like murder. They have company visiting i.e. Martha's lover/George's best friend Pete Taggert (Sam Bottoms) who happens to be a cop and his wife Eva (Austen Taylor) who happens to be Mrs.Dade's sister and George's lover.

An awkward evening ensues as the Dades attempt to hide their affairs from each other and a corpse from those whom they are having affairs with.

They entire rhythm of the performances are like that of a stage play, That approach doesn't work on film. The timing of what absurdist humor there is to be found gets thrown off by that undermining all of it. The result is that comes off like bad dinner theater performed on the sales room floor of a rattan furniture store.

Jennifer Precious Finch - beloved former bassist of grunge era band L7 appears briefly as a punk rocker girlfriend of one of the Dade brothers.