The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

Ahhhhhhhh the 1980s. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the best of the worst of times. Just look at deeley bobbers, Minipops (seriously . . . search for clips of Minipops and look on in absolute horror), and the Cabbage Patch Kids, which the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards were very much parodying. Cinematically, it was a decade that wasn't afraid to put kids in real peril, wasn't afraid to use ANY fleeting fad in order to make a quick buck (arguably, every decade of cinema does that), and wasn't afraid to deliver something so wild and ridiculous that the only possible explanation for some of the creative decisions made starts with co and ends with caine. And The Garbage Pail Kids Movie ticks all of those boxes.

Directed, produced, and co-written (with Linda - AKA Melinda - Palmer) by Rod Amateau, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is like some kind of Troma-esque attempt to make a modern day fairytale with some of the most unappealing animatronic creations you've ever seen in your life. It doesn't exactly speed along at a breakneck pace, yet it feels that way because the plot just seems to take one erratic turn after another.

The plot, and I'll try to summarise it without vomiting all over my keyboard, focuses on a bullied young lad named Dodger (Mackenzie Astin, impressively looking anywhere between 8 and 15 at any given moment). Dodger has a crush on Tangerine (Katie Barberi), the girlfriend of main bully, Juice (Ron MacLachlan). One scene of mild torture later, Dodger is handcuffed to a rail in a sewer, a pipe pouring nasty waste onto him, and is saved by the Garbage Pail Kids. It turns out that the Garbage Pail Kids have been living in the antique shop of a man named Manzini (Anthony Newley). Dodger is a friend/relative/groomed pet of Manzini and this leads to a plan in which Dodger . . . gets the kids to make clothing that Tangerine can sell as part of her very odd business model of entering nightclubs with piles of clothes for sale. There are many more clothes to be made, one or two bars to be visited, a State Home For The Ugly, and a grand fashion show that serves as the background for the finale.

There you have it. All of it. An adult with an unspecified relationship to a teenage boy. A bunch of "kids" who crawl out of a bin and then are mistreated by someone who decides to make use of them in a way that surely contravenes a number of child-labour laws, and may even veer perilously close to a thinly-disguised sweatshop environment, and a third act that gives you nobody to really root for. 

This could have been better if it had delivered some more memorable characters. Greaser Greg, Valerie Vomit, Ali Gator, Foul Phil, Nat Nerd, Windy Winston, and Messy Tessie are far removed from the more fun creations that I remember seeing on some of the Garbage Pail Kids trading cards that I managed to get my hands on.

To add insult to injury, the soundtrack features two songs that are so ear-offendingly bad the speakers on my TV hatched a plan to detach themselves and dive into the nearby duck pond.

It's no surprise that a number of people involved in this movie went on to do not much else of note. Amateu wrote one story after this (Sunset), Linda Palmer has written one movie since this, and it's about killer ants, and Anthony Newley became quite the fixture in UK TV schedules. Astin and Barberi have managed to move beyond this, fair enough, although I wouldn't be surprised if they still have nights in which they wake up coated in sweat and anything else that may have leaked out while their brain had used this movie for their nightmare fuel. That has been happening to me lately, and I only watched the bloody thing.

Horrible stuff, but undeniably interesting for all the wrong reasons, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is not for the faint of heart, not for anyone after the real gems of cinema, and not for anyone of sound mind. So I KNOW that one or two friends of mine will enjoy it.

4/10

Knock yourself out with this disc.