1987 garbage pail movieRating: 3/20
Plot: A frequently-bullied, delusional kid accidentally frees the seven disgusting titular puppets from their garbage pail prison in a magician's antique store. They wreak havoc in disgusting and unfunny ways.
This came very close to being the first movie in the nearly four year history of this blog to be too embarrassing for me to admit that I watched. I could attempt to justify spending an hour and a half with this movie, one without a single redeeming value, by saying, "Well, I've seen it on some 'Worst Movie of All Time' lists, and I'm on a quest to find the worst movie of all time," but that wouldn't make it any less embarrassing. I could say, "Well, you know. It had puppets in it" or "Hey, I was watching it ironically!" or a variety of other things that would make it a little closer to OK that I watched this, but I don't think anything could make it OK that I watched this. Don't get me wrong! I did learn a couple valuable lessons from this thing: 1) Don't shake hands with Messy Tessy. 2) Don't watch anymore movies produced by the Topps baseball card company. Apparently, there is something more difficult to digest than that nasty gum they included in those card packs. Farts, projectile vomit, puppet rapping. If somebody shoved a copy of this into an 80's time capsule, likely to get rid of it so that none of their friends would catch them with it, then whoever digs that up is going to likely want to invent a time machine just to go back to the mid-80s and eliminate the race of man before this movie or any movie like it could be made. Here, I'll tell you a story to illustrate just how painful and embarrassing the experience of watching this movie is: I saw a can of Pepsi yesterday, remembered that the Pepsi company had for whatever reason decided to include a little product placement in this movie, remembered that I had watched this movie a few days ago, and attempted suicide by running head first into a cement wall. So this movie, out of the hundreds that I've seen and written about on this blog, came the closest to ending my life. True story.
Hey, thanks for checking out the cigar box banjo thing. I put more time and effort into that one and I'm glad to hear it shows. You know, it's never too late to take up an instrument. In fact, I think you should build one just so you're inspired to learn to play it. Maybe something along the lines of an Aquaggaswack.
ReplyDeleteI realized I forgot to answer your question about weird puppet movies. Apart from the Garbage Pail Kids, the weirdest one I can think of is "The Amazing Mr. Bickford." Bruce Bickford was one of Frank Zappa's damaged proteges and although the movie is crude, the final ten minutes are a tour de force. "Strings" is also worthwhile if you're a weird puppetry completist. Deep down it's a corny fantasy movie, but the main conceit is that the puppets know they are puppets and accept that they have strings that dangle from heaven.
By the way, I was impressed by the year-end round. That's attention to detail...