In Excerpts from Behold Goliath, Tom Kalin presents four experimental short films inspired by American writer Alfred Chester (1928-71), who in 1964 published a collection of short stories of the same name. Each of Kalin's films, Some Desperate Crime on My Head (2003), The Robots of Sodom (2002), Every Evening Freedom (2002), and Salad Days (2004), devotedly exploits Chester's words with computer voice-synthesizers, and juxtaposes them with music, film and hand-drawn images. Chester, a seminal figure in the early use of homosexual themes in literature, was both revered and disregarded during his short life. In childhood he was stricken with scarlet fever, a disease that left him completely hairless. Arguably, this affliction and his subsequent physical transformation cast Chester as an often tormented pariah and directly influenced his writings.