Garbage Pail Kids - The Movie

Garbage Pail Kids - The Movie

Sometimes it seems like nearly every horrible thing ever filmed has been released on DVD, and then astounding crud like The Garbage Pail Kids Movie comes sliming out from under a rock.

Or is it Garbage Pail Kids - The Movie? Not even the titles sequence knows for sure.

But alas, we're certain that this is one of the most horrific, wrong-minded ideas ever put on film. Was there really even an audience for a live-action version of a low-rent series of bubblegum trading cards that rudely lampooned a popular line of dolls? Perhaps a few-thousand abjectly confused ten-year-old boys? Suicidal ten-year old boys?

Mackenzie “Facts of Life” Astin, and his weird old bud (an antiques-dealer/ god-figure played by a disoriented and desperate Anthony Newley) are discussing the huge, disgusting garbage can sitting in the middle of the antiques shop: “Cap'n Manzini, how come we can never use that garbage can?”

Decent question. It's because it contains six or seven overweight little people with huge, hideous rubbery heads, awful voices and names like Valerie Vomit and Foul Phil. Quasi-mystical beings who delight in flatulence, mucous and the desire to help us learn that beauty is on the inside.

If you can imagine, like, two twenty-four-year old guys getting into a really bad space after five days being cooped up together in a motel room, high on acid and speed, never sleeping, becoming evil, crabbed and paranoid - then cranking out this script that makes Pryor's Place seem like opera - you know there is a hell-on-earth, and this movie is it.

One of the rubbery, moronic kids does tell us “drink the red and you'll get dead.” I wish I remembered to what he was referring.

Then it briefly turns into a musical featuring the kids spouting this Lennon- esque line: “we have a job to do, we are me and you.”

Nat the nerd proudly wets himself frequently, while Valerie vomits only twice, and one time it's just a playing card. Machiavellian pedophile and Mackenzie Astin love-interest Tangerine sells tons of Garbage Pails Kids designed fashion.

Now let's all slap our foreheads.

I could go on, but I want to kill myself now, as must have all those involved in creating this cheerful defeat of all that is good, funny or interesting. Hear me, this movie is an abomination, but so completely upside-down it first demands you watch, then crushes your soul.

Or (you know who you are ...)