Toilet humor, accidental amputations and sexual deviance are once again being featured on screen at the Sacramento&s Crest Theatre.

Spike and Mike&s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation is here again, bringing the usual formula of ghastly humor to its devoted fans.

Spike and Mike&s is a yearly film festival that comes to major cities across the nation.

The festival was created by Craig &Spike& Dekker and Mike Gribble in 1990. The pair had been holding animation festivals since the late 1970s when they decided to create a festival dedicated entirely to cartoons of a &sick and twisted& nature.

Gribble passed away in 1994, but Dekker has continued to produce the festival every year for the past 15 years.

While many of the cartoons featured are student productions from previously unknown artists, several successful artists got their start with projects featured in the festival. Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken got his start at the festival with his classic &No Neck Joe& shorts. Beavis and Butthead made their debut at the festival, and so did four boys named Stan, Kyle, Eric and Kenny in &The Spirit of Christmas,& which was the basis for the Comedy Central show &South Park.&

This year&s show was no departure from the norm. Toby Grauberger&s &Baby Hunter& is among the most disturbingly hilarious, featuring a fake ad for a first-person shooter game about hunting ravenous infants.

Spike and Mike&s veteran Bill Plympton has a new cartoon titled &Krazy Kock.& The animated short depicts the antics of a high school mascot rooster after consuming a large dose of an aphrodisiac.

Other highlights from this year&s show include new episodes of &Happy Tree Friends,& an SUV adventure story titled &Hippy Juice& and &The Answer by Tennessee& (the answer referring to the classic chicken versus the egg question). This year also featured for the first time an animated introduction starring Spike and Mike.

While the content of this year&s festival rivals past shows, the presentation is less entertaining than usual. In the past the festival was held inside the historic main theater at the Crest. It was also accompanied by a stage show and intermission. This year the festival takes place in the two smaller, modern theaters downstairs. The usual stage show has also been cut to a single announcer telling people to behave themselves.

&It&s kind of disappointing,& said Spike and Mike&s fan Josh Peckham at the opening night on March 4. &The show&s still funny, but it feels like watching a regular movie on a small screen.&

Spike and Mike&s Sick and Twisted is playing at the Crest Theatre Friday and Saturday nights now through April 9.