Les Crados, le film

Everyone involved in the making of this movie, from the coke-vacuuming, muckraking scum who financed it to the gaffer's newest apprentice, is going directly to hell.

This isn't just a bad movie. It's a psychotic, surreal journey into the realm of the profoundly grotesque. The Garbage Pail Kids themselves are terrible in their deformity, with exaggerated facial features and apparent elephantitis of the cranium making them hurtful to witness. Poorly-done animatronics make them all appear as if their facial muscles have been injected with lidocaine. They have a collective IQ of approximately 58.

It's not pleasant to watch. It's not funny, it's not kitschy, it's not camp. The dialogue is pat and smarmy, the characters stupid and forgettable, and the whole slimy mess reeks of greedy bastards trying to make a fistful of money on the flavor of the week. TGPKM is another example of how depressingly low the common denominator really is...and this was BEFORE the reality TV craze.

It hurts.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

1/2 (out of 4)

I must admit that I was seven years old when this movie came out. I was a fan of the cards and I remember begging my mother to take me to see this on opening day, which she did. A couple of my friends went along and I still remember the sold out crowd of pre-teens laughing and having a blast with the film. I believe I watched it a couple more times when it first hit VHS but I haven't seen it since....until this latest viewing.

What did I think of the film twenty-two years after being a kid who loved it? Well, it was the pits. It really shocked me to re-watch something I found entertaining as a kid and I know that saying that many kids never grow up but thankfully I did. Now I'm not going to sit here and put this film down for being disgusting, vile or featuring "ugly" jokes because nothing here offended me today. What I will put down is the entire screenplay, which really makes one scratch their head because the story is so bad that you can't help but wonder if any real attempt was made to come up with something good or if this was just thrown together to make some quick cash.

The story pretty much as the Garbage Pail Kids coming to the aid of a weak boy (Mackenzie Astin) who might just be getting taken advantage of by a girl (Katie Barberi) he has a crush on. I think the biggest problem with the screenplay is that it tries to tell too much story in regards to the GPK and this wasn't needed. The cards told us all we needed to know so the film should have just stood back and delivered the goods that the cards did.

Valorie Vomit, Ali Gator, Greaser Greg, Nat Nerd, Windy Winston, Messy Tessie and Foul Phil are the kids here and most of them never really get to dig into their "tricks" from the cards. Valorie Vomit, for one example, only does her thing once at the end of the movie. Now, a lot of parents back in the day would have said that's a good thing but every generation has its thing that parents object to and this was one from the 80s.

The performances are all pretty brutal with Astin not delivering anything and Barbieri delivering a really, really bad performance. You do have the costumes by John Carl Buechler who previously did the film TROLL and would later do Friday THE 13TH PART VII. While watching this horrid movie I couldn't help but smile at thinking back at some of the cards and passing them around class in the school. It's a real shame that this film didn't do anyone any good but I can't help but wish that a real R-rated remake would come along and really do things right.

I already knew this movie was legendarily bad, so I only have myself to blame for sitting down and watching it when it came on TV. To understand how this atrocity came to be, you have to understand what they were thinking when they were making it. Garbage Pail Kids was a trading card parody of the Cabbage Patch Kids that was basically a gross or ridiculous take on them. They were so popular that someone somewhere thought, "What if we took this shallow concept completely dependent on making fun of another property and turn it into a feature length film?" It's notable that the Cabbage Patch people never actually tried to go that far (or at least, never succeeded).

What we got was an ill-conceived dumpster fire that is an abject failure in every way conceivable. I could spend all day talking about how the story is nonsensical and aimless, how the suits/animatronics are creepy and nightmarish, etc. But that stuff's been covered a million times, so I'm going to focus on the real odious aspect, and that's the characters: a collection of paper thin, unmotivated tropes. Dodger is your typical bullied kid daring to look for bigger and better things. He's antagonized by a bunch of bullies for no reason other than for us to feel sorry for him (though if they bullied him because of his stupid name, I'd understand). Then there are the Garbage Pail Kids themselves, who are bizarrely portrayed as protagonists despite being repulsive physically and personality-wise. You can imagine the type of comedic depth you will encounter with characters like "Valerie Vomit" and "Windy Winston." When the characters aren't constantly farting and peeing on themselves, they're at each others' throats or even aggressively stepping to Dodger. I can only imagine the audience's reception to E.T. if he repeatedly threatened to shank Elliott if he didn't get to phone home. We're supposed to be rooting for these guys?

The most bizarre part of an already ridiculous movie happens when the bullies kidnap the kids and send them to the "State Home for the Ugly," where people deemed too ugly are executed. Wait, what? What is this twisted, alternate Earth where they kill off ugly people and why is it so out of place in what was beforehand (and after) a disgusting, cliché 80's mess? Lincoln and Gandhi are locked up here so I guess it's insultingly implying the Kids are unconventional in appearance but important for their contribution to society, some sort of misplaced Aesop about true beauty coming from within...despite the Kids being genuinely horrific on the inside. The kids are rescued (unfortunately) but their execution would have been a fitting end to this disaster. There's also a silly romance plot with a girl named Tangerine of all things, facilitated by the Kids' sudden ability to sew fashionable clothes for her fashion show.

So yeah, it's offensively bad. Don't make the same mistake I did and waste you time with it. There's nothing here for you but tears and fecal matter.

I can make a solid case on it being the worst I've seen because at least other movies can turn into "So bad it's good" or "So bad it's hilariously bad" or have multiple features that generate enjoyment. This movie had Anthony Newley. That's it. It encompasses the worst of the 80s, complete with unlikable characters, repulsive aliens who move their mouths with minimal effort, repetitive gross-out gags, the antithesis of warmth, joy, empathy or entertainment and one of the worst original songs spawned by rejects of Satan's orchestra.

This movie is terrible!! One of the fascinating things about the cast is that the two main characters 'Dodger' and 'Tangerine' happen to look at least 8yrs apart, but are in fact only 12mths apart.

The 'Garbage Pail Kids' themselves have awful costumes that are very poorly designed and really badly operated. The puppeteers need to be shot!!

I decided to find this movie and watch it because I hadn't seen it since it first come out, and I was sure I enjoyed it as a kid- What was wrong with me!!!

Save yourself a disappointing hour and a half....