Back in the early 1980s when the Cabbage Patch Kids were at the height of their popularity with their soulless eyes and impossibly cherubic cheeks The Garbage Pail Kids emerged as a form of backlash. Where the Cabbage Patch Kids were cute and cuddly, the Garbage Pail Kids were horribly disfigured, maladjusted, or just plain gross and uncouth. The Garbage Pail Kids were the brain children of the Topps chewing gum corporation. Not content with just baseball cards anymore, Topps decided to create collectible sticker cards depicting Cabbage Patch rejects in the most disgusting and disturbing ways possible.
Children all over the world, myself included, immediately fell in love with the cards and started one of the more bizarre trends of the 80s. The fact that numerous teachers and tastemakers couldn’t stand them only fuelled the buying spree.
If there was one thing I remembered about the trading cards that stands out the most, it was that even as a child I knew Topps were a shady bunch of motherfuckers. In every package (which could be purchased in almost any convenience store) there was a checklist with the names of every card in a given series of designs. There were roughly 100 cards in each series to collect, but you really only needed 50 to technically have a full set; the reason being that Topps created two different names for the same picture and attempted to pass them off as two different cards. The girl who projectile vomited into a pot over a stove was known both as Patty Puke and Valerie Vomit. The girl who was a dinosaur skeleton was Farah Fossil and Dinah Saur.
My biggest problem as a child rested with Mack Quack. I didn’t care that I had every other card in the third series; I even had all the alternately named duplicates including his counterpart Fowl Raul. They were both duck faced youngsters that shouted squiggled obscenities, but if I got Mack, I would have the whole set of something for once in my life. I don’t know how much allowance money I blew on buying pack after pack of duplicate after duplicate in search of one card I shouldn’t have given a shit about, but I was hopelessly addicted. Once I found what must have been one of the few Mack Quack’s in existence, I walked away from it. The thrill was over for me and when the feature length movie was released I could have cared less. I never even bothered to watch it one of the numerous times it appeared on cable.
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie was released in theatres in 1989, at what would ultimately be the end of the stickers’ popularity. The conceit was that if feature length films based on toy lines like Transformers and G.I. Joe could be successful, the Garbage Pail Kids could more than hold their own. The movie ultimately came and went from theatres to the sound of thunderous silence; finding defenders in only the heartiest of fans of all things retro and fans of the trading cards who never learned better.
At first I decided to revisit GPK: The Movie simply because I thought it could be fun to revisit a movie that was based on a dying fad. On top of that, and movie featuring midgets with oversized, latex, animatronic masks can’t be all that bad, can it? Sadly, I ended up looking into the abyss and the abyss was too bored to stare back. I have been to funerals with more laughs, intentional and otherwise, that also had far more grotesquery. They were also far more entertaining.
The excruciatingly long opening credits introduce us to all of the main characters, each of whom gets their own trading card, while we watch a metal garbage can outfitted with afterburners circle a picture of the earth several times; circle meaning moving back and forth in front of the camera. The cards themselves are digitally rendered, but they are shown over something that looks like it came out of an Ed Wood movie. Sadly, this is the best looking sequence in the movie.
Apparently the Garbage Pail Kids are from space. This can seems to have found its way to the antique shop of Captain Manzini. How a garbage can that houses hideously maligned youths ends up in an antiques shop is anyone’s guess. Manzini is apparently a magician or a warlock of some sort; the movie never specifies. Either way, the movie never explains what he even wants with the can in the first place. Manzini is the kind of character who speaks only in philosophical phrases that make little to no sense. Not once did he say anything that was remotely noteworthy or at least unintentionally funny, but he is the only interesting human character in the entire movie.
Dodger, played by Mackenzie Astin, has worked for Manzini for “a few months now” and is the type of young person you only see in films: not an orphan, but his parents are never mentioned be they alive or dead. What he does other than gawk wide-eyed at the goods in Manzini’s shop is anyone’s guess, as well. He is also terrorized by a minivan driving, 40-year old looking thug named Juice and his band of cronies; all of whom look like they just got kicked out of an off-off Broadway production of Grease 3: Man, weren’t the 80s Just Like the 50s?. The reasons why these thugs constantly single out Dodger is anybody’s guess. It is mostly because the villains in this movie just seem to be a lazy afterthought. Actually, everything in this movie feels like an afterthought.
One of the members of Juice’s crew is his girlfriend Tangerine. Who the fuck thought of the names of these people? Seriously, did the writers just look around the room when they got stumped? Dodger has a crush on Tangerine, who just so happens to be Juice’s main squeeze and is also a fashion designer who sells her creations out of the back of her car behind a club named the Tropicana. Okay, I made the name of the club up, but the rest is accurate.
In what appears to be many moments of the antique store being left in the hands of a 14 year old boy, Juice goes into the store and beats up Dodger. Why he does other than because he talked to his girlfriend is anybody’s guess. During the fracas, “Pandora’s Pail” is tipped over and the Garbage Pail Kids are unleashed on an unsuspecting, um, world, and not a moment too soon since Juice has just dragged Dodger into what is supposed to be a sewer but looks nothing like one and has just covered Dodger in shit. Upon retrieving Dodger’s shit-coated body, they awaken him by farting in his face, and I couldn’t be any more bored if I had been watching a David Lynch film.
We are introduced to the crew of misfits that Topps thought were deep enough to be deemed celluloid worthy: Valerie Vomit, Windy Winston, Foul Phil (who as far as I can tell doesn’t really fucking do anything), Nat Nerd, Ali Gator, Greaser Greg, and Messy Tessie. They are all played by really short people forced to wear the least convincing headpieces ever used in a movie. The faces barely move and are so off putting that it doesn’t matter what nasty habits the kids possess. I just don’t want to look at them.
Apparently normal people hate the GPK because they are ugly. It is in no way because they will fart in your face, vomit on you, or try to eat your toes and fingers. Nope, it is just because they are ugly. The movie’s only real joke that works is that in this town there is apparently a State Home for the Ugly. No one questions its existence but Dodger and Manzini just things it’s damn wrong. Needless to say the kids will end up there because they refuse to go along with Tangerine-Juice’s sweatshop scam.
I stopped giving a shit around the time of the pointless musical number. I kept getting distracted by chores (as did the person who reviewed this film for badmovies.org) and the undeniable feeling that I had wasted my life. This movie is such a staggering failure that it really isn’t worth writing about; why I bother to soldier on is anybody’s guess.
The movie is completely lifeless. No one seems to be enjoying themselves and is directed at a pace so slow that it feels like the characters are walking even though you can clearly see them running. It also doesn’t help that there appears to be only three sets that are constantly redressed and recycled, leaving the audience feeling like they have been sequestered. I have never seen a movie that screams out to be wacky and zany that ended up being this inert.
The movie can’t even get the logic of its titular characters right. Valerie Vomit doesn’t even do anything until the last ten minutes of the movie. In one scene the kids all go for a night out on the town and Ali Gator (oddly enough the one character other than Manzini that I didn’t want to kill) and Windy Winston go to a biker bar and get into a bar fight where Winston ends up saving the day.
My problem with this scene other than the mind boggling message sent to kids that a fart can end a fight, is that you already have a biker kid in the movie (Greaser Greg) and you instead have the fight broken up by a few weak kicks and a fart. That’s like having a knock-knock joke where the punch-line ends up being “to get to the other side.” Also, the GPK are apparently looking from their friends, but at the end when the kids are saved from the State Home for the Ugly, Manzini tells us they were too late to save the others. THEY ARE ALL DEAD. They were crushed by a trash compactor. The kids are just too damn happy to be saved that they don’t care all their friends are fucking dead.
The biggest sin this movie commits in the end, however, is that it writes checks its ass can’t cash. On paper, the prospect of a GPK movie should promise a level of grossness akin to a carnival sideshow. This movie isn’t even as gross as the parking lot of the same carnival. This movie doesn’t even deserve to be mentioned in the same paragraph as carnivals.
Inspired by this (which seems like a habit now, as I also picked up a copy of The Glove to watch), I find myself in possession of my own copy of The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. Something about 80s films that just make me want to join in with some pain.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid I didn't understand that movies were released on different levels. That there was a different public perception regarding, say, ET or Return of the Jedi compared to Masters of the Universe or The Garbage Pail Kids. I only gauged things by personal reaction, and since I was the sort of kid who loved Garbage Pail Kids cards and He-Man, then that shit was ultra important.
But what I always thought was weird about The Garbage Pail Kids is that it's a movie based on a parody of a toy, but is really bizarre taken out of that context. It's something REALLY of the 80s.. when everyone knew Cabbage Patch Kids and everyone knew the Garbage Pail Kids cards. But today you could easily find a teenager who doesn't know what either of those two things are. And since there was never a Cabbage Patch Kids film - at least a non straight-to-video (there were cartoons and things) - it makes this whole movie look ever weirder.
I also believe there was a Garbage Pail Kids cartoon.. which if I remember correctly was cancelled before it was even aired (but is available on DVD).
Anyway, I've yet to revisit The Garbage Pail Kids, but it trumps a lot of movies when it comes to asking "How the FUCK did this get made?!?".