One of the many fan films that really started the fan-made products taking off was Horrible Turn, a 2009 fan-made musical prequel to Joss’ 2007 independent venture Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Concieved by a couple of college students in Houston, the whole 30-minute film was written, cast and shot in five months with young adults who had no experience in filmmaking whatsoever, though many were musically talented or had done previous musical theater work. Horrible Turn tells the story of Billy Buddy, a young Dr. Horrible and again desperately, painfully in love; and Kenny Hammerstein, a ridiculously conceited high school jock who will grow up to be the equally ridiculously concieted Captain Hammer. When a group calling themselves the Evil League of Evil threatens to destroy their school, Billy, Kenny, and Billy’s crush Katie must reluctantly work together and save their school. The film is full of original musical numbers, all of which help to set the stage for the rivalry between Horrible and Hammer to come later in their lives, in addition to multiple references to the events that will soon take place (one of the other main characters is Johnny Snow, and we learn why Horrible later wanted to give Penny a “shiny new Australia”). This fan film was made, like Dr. Horrible itself, on an extremely low budget, but despite that, it managed to begin influence the prevalence of other fan-made productions and even got the attention of the Whedon camp. Joss viewed the film and described it as “itsy kitschy glitzy”, which could very well be a compliment. Maybe.