The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987) · 4:51am Sep 7th, 2016
Does anybody want to hear about my weekend at Dragon Con? No? Good. It wasn't bad but it was uneventful. I'd say the biggest four things I managed to do were as follows. On the first day of the convention my roommates and I went to Jalapeño Charlie's where they ran out of food and had to shut down the kitchen for a half hour. When we ate the food was good and when we left we took the elevator.
We hit the button to go down but instead it went up into an abandoned section of the building. It was dark. There was plenty of crap lying around. We closed the door and went back down.
The second biggest thing was I got to see Qiet in concert again. They're a really good band that deserves better sales and more notoriety than they get. I also hit up Wasted Wine, Tuatha Dea, and I-Scintilla. None of them were bad but, I was happiest to see Qiet.
Number three would have to be that one of my roommates found a stack of free stuff on a counter. I grabbed the copy of House of 1000 Corpses and the Cruxshadows CDs. I left the Abe Sabien comics though because I don't like Hellboy and find him and his group to be dull. I have little hope for the movie but, it was free.
Finally, after eating fish and chips and drinking whiskey I developed a shitty irish accent and hit the walk of fame. I walked around in circles for awhile. Then saw Trevor Duvall and said hi. I told him I liked his work on Guardians and that my niece liked Iron Will. I told him how when she was younger she bowled over two other toddlers and took the toy they were fighting over and shouted, "I rock!" Then I said she could play rugby and my accent started to slip. Then I got his autograph.
The rest of the weekend was spent shooting the breeze, watching movies and occasionally wondering how a super short story I did for a contest was doing. To nobody's surprise it sucked noodles and got booted out of competition. That's fine though because I watched The Garbage Pail Kids Movie. Screw my terrible story in the ear!
Anyway, back in the mid to late 80's The Garbage Pail Kids was a popular set of collectable cards. They were the anti Cabbage Patch Kids who instead of being cute and adoptable were bizarre and gross. So, due to the popularity Topps Gum Company (known for trading cards) decided to cash in and make a movie that on a budget of around a million dollars made 1.5 million dollars. Many have said that this movie is one of the worst movies ever made. I don't think they've seen enough movies. We'll get back to that in a second.
The movie focuses on a kid named Dodger (Mackenzie Astin) who is bullied by a guy named Juice and his gang. One of the members, a girl named Tangerine, is the girl that Dodger thinks is hotter than Princess Celestia during menopause and wants to go on a date with her. This of course backfires.
Through an accident he releases the titular characters from a trash can who ultimately try to help him win the girl over. This doesn't sit well with Captain Manzini (Anthony Newley) who intends to put them back in the garbage can for safety but, agrees to help them find their friends beforehand (the world doesn't like ugly people and will put them in state homes). As would be expected all sorts of shenanigans ensue.
So is this a good movie? Not really. It's also not the worst movie I've ever seen. I've seen dozens of movies worse than this one and at the very least I can safely say that if I were seven years old the fart and pee jokes would probably be right up my alley. The weird little song they sing is mildly entertaining. They also have a few visual jokes that I smiled at. On the downside the movie is weirdly dark with certain consequences facing the Garbage Pail Kids for not being cute. Certain plot points aren't as flushed out as you'd hope as well.
The thing about this movie though, it didn't make me mad like Equestria Girls did. It didn't make me fall asleep like Howard the Duck or Halloween: Resurrection did. It also didn't give me a headache like Blood Car, Vampire Dentist, E T: The Extraterrestrial, or Thelma and Louise. In short it didn't cause me pain and killed some time between things and sometimes that's all you can ask for.
Stats: 0 dead bodies, 0 breasts, 1bare Astin, eye eating, toe chomping, sewage rerouting, Fart fu, vomit fu, urine fu, biker fu, gratuitous black market clothes selling, gratuitous whimsy.
Shoutouts:
Mackenzie "Iron Will" Astin as the plucky Dodger who can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'
Anthony Newley as Captain Manzini for having more whimsy than you'd expect from a character in this movie.
Marjory Graue as Blythe the muscle of Juice's gang who kind of looks like Violet from Friday the 13th part 5 and that's okay in my book.
I remember seeing promos for that movie once and then everything about it just disappeared. I heard they made a Saturday morning carton series as well but it was never released due to parents protesting about it.
4196399 It was a fad more than anything. Sort of how Madballs was and Dinosaurs Attack tried to be. Eventually the show aired but, by that point whatever push the product had faded. I think they still make the cards to some degree and there was talk of a new movie in 2012 but, nothing has come of it as far as I know.
Ya know I don't think I have ever seen this
4197180 Well, I wouldn't pay to see it but if you are honestly curious about it I'm sure it's somewhere for free.
4197696
Not really? I mean it seems like something I would have seen at that time/age. I remember the cards and I think something animated? But never saw the film.
Ah yes, Garbage Pail Kids. I vaguely remember seeing the cards at some point, and having a brief moment of uncertainty about whether I was intrigued or grossed-out. In the end I went with option #2, but I'll confess that I remain somewhat curious about what I missed. Good to know the movie isn't a total loss if I ever choose to take a closer look.
Oh, and for the record, the story wasn't bad. Slap another 250 words on there somewhere and FimFic that sucker. If nothing else, if you check the rankings, yours (45/67) beat the absolute pants off mine (61/67).
4197886 Eh it was animated but, it got delayed and had a short run on TV. Mostly it was just a series of cards.
4198375 If you do check it out, again it's not good and much like I said to another guy, only watch it for free if that. As far as the story goes, I probably will do that and dress it up some. I can't recall how many times while writing it I cursed the word count. Honestly yours wasn't as bad as the rankings said either. That word limit though can be a real buster though.
Also, when you look at the breakdown is left side red dot better or right side red dot better?
4198407 Yeah, mine likely got creamed for not being a complete story. The word limit is a killer with these short rounds.
I think you want red dots on the left. I say this because the top rated story has 'em there, and mine has the opposite.