Non-Existent Movie Reviews Part II: Electric Boogaloo

Wanted to do something odd this time but couldn't think of anything too weird. My time was kinda limited 'cuz I spent yesterday driving to Meridian with some friends to check out BigLots. BigLots is crazy... they're selling all kinds of DVDs for $3 each, including stuff like complete Flintstones box sets and such. Definitely worth the drive, I may go again if I can find navigators (I have the directional skills of a toddler, so I need people to be human GPS units for me)n Anyway, here are more reviews of movies that don't actually exist. Again, don't look for these in stores or rental places, I made 'em all up, it's a total lie.

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Johnny Smoke: The Motion Picture (C, 1997) - Possibly the only movie ever to be inspired by a PSA, this unreleased film starred Jason Priestly as a guy who was trying unsuccessfully to give up smoking. He ends up being stalked by a creepy cigarette gunslinger, who murders all his smoker friends and makes it clear that he's after Priestly next. The sight of the villain dressed as a giant cigarette wearing a hat is reportedly hilarious, despite the dim lights they filmed him in. Based on the weird anti-smoking public service announcement from the 1960's, this was a dream project for director/screenwriter Anton Dworkin, who was committed to an asylum soon after a rough cut of the film was shown at Cannes, and it was never finished.

Gerbus Jones, Nipple-Tissue Expert (C, 2003) Bad even by Rob Schneider movie standards, this date-rape of a date movie has Schnieder applying his skills (or skill, rather, given his range) to the role of a scientist who's obsessed with nipples (explained by an extremely tasteless flashback showing an infant with Schneider's face CGI'ed onto it and his fetishized father battling over his mother's tits). His experiments lead to political activism when he starts a semi-terroristic group called "PETN" (People For The Ethical Treatment Of Nipples) trying to pass laws allowing nipples to be displayed in public. An audience with arbiters of moral standards leads to wacky mistaken identities when Schnieder's mistaken for the Pope (he's waiting for an audience with the Pope and can't resist trying on the hat)! Using this to his advantage while he can, Schneider goes on TV as the Pope and declares pro-nipple edicts to an enthusiastic and grateful world, leading to gratuitous scenes of girls ripping off their shirts and showing their tits in cities all over the globe. Of interest mainly to those with crippling tit fetishes and people who like seeing nuns humiliated. The poor critical reviews this film got led the sensitive Schneider to begin a "serious" film that had long been a dream project of his, a biopic of French flatulist Le Petomane. He's still wrangling for the rights to it, because Jim Carrey has also always wanted to make a Petomane film.

Mystery Meat (C, 2005) - A rare Pixar animated film that didn't catch on with kids and childish adults, this was about a bunch of pieces of various types of meat who tried to solve the mystery of who robbed their butcher shop. Such animated chunks of meat as Sir Loin, Bo Loney, Papa Roni, Sal Ami, Sir Francis Bacon, Bobby Que, Porky Chop, and Chet Erlings bickered with each other and made a lot of food-related jokes, such as animated cheese that yells "Don't cut me, man!" during a fight, to which the meat replies "Don't beat me!", or an overemotional piece of pork who's declared to be "such a ham," etc. You know, that kind of juvenile ha-ha shit. The slapstick here was more horrific than humorous; meat flying around and smacking the walls just isn't funny, and the fact that they computer-scanned actual meat for realism didn't help. Add in some racially insensitive portrayals (Italian stereotype accents on the salami and pepperoni characters and their cousin, "Spicy Meat-a Ball", various Jewish deli meats, and Marlon Wayan's extremely offensive take on Chet Erlings) and you have a film that just didn't catch on with parents, kids, or critics. You can often find the related action figures at the Dollar Tree.

Troughs of Heaven (C, 1998) - sad bid at artistic integrity by child star Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, this wasn't quite as enjoyably disastrous as fellow Saved By The Bell alum Elisabeth Berkley's "bid at being taken seriously," Showgirls, but it was bad enough. Playing a girl who lived alone on a farm after her father died, Thiessen slowly goes mad from loneliness and moves into the pen with her pigs, and there finds happiness by retreating from the human race and becoming one of them. A few generous critics tried to talk about the film as an "artistic expression of mankind's search for society and of the fragility of civilization dependent on the proximity of others" and praised Theissen's "bravery at revealing her vulnerablity by allowing herself to be seen foraging for slop," but anybody who wasn't a fancypants collegeboy said, "She's so pretty, why the fuck's she wallowing in filth and gnawing potato peelings?" But of course similar things were said about Berkley's Showgirls.



Your Face And My Ass, Buddy! (C, 2000) - Robert DeNiro and Joe Pesci as a team can never lose, right? Well, yeah, they can. A buddy-insult comedy in the wake of Analyze This, Analyze That, and the unreleased Analyze The Other T'ing, this has Pesci and DeNiro playing a couple of Wal-Mart stock guys who move boxes around in the back all day and harass each other with "your mother" jokes and "you're so stupid" jokes and "you're ugly" jokes. When their uptight manager finally pushes them too far with his bullying, the adversaries decide to join forces and assail their manager with a stream of insults. The final scene has them down at the unemployment office harassing the clerk there, telling him "Fuck you, you prick! I hope you fall the down the stairs, break your back, and strangle to death on your own scrotum!" and "Look at me again, monkeyshines, and I'll come through that window and adjust your colon for ya!" Not successful, but does have a cult following, made up mostly of wall-eyed shitbags and bulldog-faced whoremasters, plus a few crap-minded peckersniffers.

What A Madhouse! (C, 1997) Bargain-bin comedy about a bunch of bland, hopelessly-normal whitebread office workers who think they're all wacky, crazy, and madcap, even though they're actually boring, conformist, conventional nobodies with absolutely nothing special about any of them. The "humor" is derived from scenes where Kathy agrees with the others that she's an absolute lunatic because she brought in some "exotic" hazelnut coffee instead of their usual Maxwell House, or where Jim is congratulated for the "wild and crazy" funny cat pictures he e-mails around, or when Judy offers her wrists for handcuffs so they can cart her away to the asylum for her audacious choice of wearing some purple tennis shoes with glitter stars on them. David falls for a prank and ends up with 10 copies of a document when he only needed one, and Terrence squeals with laughter when someone leaves a teddy bear on his desk that's wearing a hat just like the one he wore that one time. Spalding Gray, Albert Brooks, Richard Louis, Amanda Peet, and Scarlet Johansen star in this washout that's still fairly popular with the kind of dull, standard, homogenized citizens who love shows like Friends.

Oi, Ya Sad Bastard (C, 1983) Low-budget, verite British film about the trials of Sidney, a dockworker who always talks about starting up his own pub, but blows all his money having a pint with the lads instead of saving it. His friends think his constant talk of pub ownership are pretty pathetic but think he's an alright bloke regardless, so they ask him what the pub will be like and make him promise to give them discounts even though they know it'll never happen. When Sidney's uncle dies and leaves him a few thousand quid, instead of saving it for the pub Sidney spends it on some fancy trousers that he hopes will impress Martha, a bird what lives down the way. When she doesn't pay him any mind, Sidney laments to his friend Trevor that he made a stupid choice, and Trevor says, "Ah, but that's the way o' life, iddnit, mate?" and they go down for a pint and a larf. There's not much to it, but John Goodman wants to produce a remake.

Scary Larry in the House With Ghosts In It (C, 1979) If you actually enjoy stage plays you might be able to sit through this ass-stupid pants-rotting door-slammer comedy about an eccentric doofus who tries to throw a party for his local theatre group but manages to convince himself that his house is haunted, and the other people at the party also start thinking that maybe he's right and run around in a panic, looking for places to hide. This silly, twerpish film breaks down into pointless chaos early and never comes back, and that's why you can find it in bargain bins everywhere.

The Story of Mormon - (C, 1975) Hilarious absurdist comedy in which a wacky con artist named Joseph Smith fools his neighbors by inventing a new religion based on preposterous stories he makes up, things about translating golden tablets he was given by an angel and what-not, depicting a supposed visit to America by Jesus Christ. The movie overplays its hand a bit by making parts of the story too ridiculous; it's just not feasible that Smith's neighbors would let him get away with some of his claims, especially when he keeps getting caught in lies. But the film is helped out by all of the actors playing it absolutely straight. The in-joke, "Produced By The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" credit is hilarious, playing the joke out right to the very end. A great, very funny satire of Christianity.

Tony The Liar Says Everything's Fine (C, 1968) Frank Sinatra straddles both sides of the law as a cop who -- with the aid of a false nose and eyebrows -- is also a Mafia boss. The real trouble starts when he's given the case of arresting his own alter-ego! This causes him to adopt yet a third persona, that of an arthritic, asthmatic stool-pigeon called Tony the Liar, who feeds the police bad info to implicate someone else and take the heat off Frank's Mafia persona. The strain of trying to juggle three personalities begins to wear on Frank, and his partner in the police, Ray Milland, starts getting suspicious. Sandy Duncan shows up to sing "Oh, Hell, It's Only Tuesday," probably just as a favor from Frank. As an in-joke, the Tony character keeps claiming he knows Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin, and everybody claims he's just lying again.

Hail, Bastards! (C, 1972) WWII adventure film in which James Coburn leads a squad of commandos (including female Navy officer Angie Dickenson, whose tits keep popping out whenever she fires a machine gun, providing all the movie's highlights) on a strange mission to stop the German swim team from posing as Swedes to infiltrate a competition from which Nazi Germany was excluded. They plan to win, then reveal themselves as Nazis to demoralize the allies with their superior swimming skills. Coburn and his team of misfits try to stop fighting among themselves long enough to take on the bad guys, and lots of bullets get fired even though not that many people are killed. The kind of movie whose idea of characterization is having a guy who chews gum a lot, and another who wears a hat.

Billy Bitchtits (C, 2006) Medicine taken for a thyroid imbalance gives Adam Sandler a set of large breasts. He gets so upset by his friends hitting on him that he tries taking more medicine to shrink his chest, but just suffers from more side effects (large hands, huge ears, weird voice, excessive flatulence) and ends up hired by a children's TV program as the next Sponge Bob. He's a huge hit, but then a doctor finds a cure for all his conditions. Will he take it and return to normal, or remain a beloved children's icon? This shameless movie wallops you with every kind of offensive, disgusting humor possible, and then makes an eleventh-hour attempt to redeem itself with some message about the happiness of one person vs. the happiness they can bring to millions. It tries to become a tear-jerker when it's actually a finger-puller. Director Pablo Zemekis even had the nerve to claim that Sandler was supposed to be a "Christ figure." Try to remember that when he's farting so propulsively that he's flying around a shopping mall like a balloon that's been released, or catching one of his huge ears in a car door and getting dragged down the street.