Dumpster Baby

Troma are best known for their cheap and nasty little horror flicks, and despite many proclaiming that this film is a cut above a lot of Troma's stuff, it's still not really that good. The idea is a good one, however, and I dare say that the film would have been great if it had been gifted with better handling. The film takes place in a very sleazy city, and the main plot follows a baby wrapped up in a blanket. It's the offspring of a crack whore, who decided to throw the child in the bin so that her boyfriend, whom she hasn't has sex with for two years, doesn't find out about it. We then watch as the unfortunate kid is passed from pillar to post! The film remains interesting at all times because of the way that the plot constantly changes. The kid is with one set of people one minute, and then with someone else the next; so we've always got a fresh mini-plot to deal with. The fact that the city in which the film is set is completely sleazy is a bonus, and directors James Bickert and Randy Hill make good use of their central location; as it really is believable that someone living there would dump their baby in the trash.

As you might expect, the acting is terrible and it didn't come as a surprise to me that most of the 'stars' didn't make another film after their debut in this one. The way that the plot changes is good, but none of the segments in the film are really that interesting in their own right and so it's not necessarily an advantage that the film changes often. There's not a great deal in the way of horror in the film for most of the running time, and it plays out something like a crime drama with various people being killed. The baby isn't really all that important to the plot for most of the film, as it exists merely as an excuse for the audience to get an insight into the various people living in this city, and we don't even get to see it for most of the film. It has to be said that the ending is rather predictable, but it's also very disgusting and provides a decent climax to a trash flick such as this one. Overall, I can't say that this film is anything like a classic; but despite its shortcomings, it's not actually that bad and even though I'm not Troma's biggest fan - I will recommend this film to those who are, as it's likely to be better than a lot of the Troma films you have seen.

This glorious, surreal fable is a riotous feast of provoking imagery, spectacularly dysfunctional relationships, and existential concerns, but don't let that stop you. It's also quite linear and coherent for such a film. It's about innocence, faith, love, forgiveness, and redemption. Quite successful in it's execution. It's only flaws are an inexperienced cast, and violence (except for a chilling rape sequence) that is never quite pushed far enough. That said, this is a promising new direction for the modern horror film. Worth a look.

Recently watched the DVD Troma released of this movie. It wasn't at all what I thought it would be: something more like Sewage Baby. It's more like Twenty Bucks, except with a baby instead of a twenty dollar bill.

The sound quality is unfortunately pretty bad. A lot of the dialog is missed, and without it, there's not much to follow.

A woman is shot at and climbs some stairs. How she relates to the rest of the movie isn't clear. Two women do some crack; the fat one announces she's having a baby. The other one helps deliver with the use of a chef's knife. Somehow she delivers without ever taking her shorts off. The baby is dumped in a dumpster after an altercation with a gang. A guy in a bar discovers it after a hooker starts blowing him in the alley. A pimp shoots him, and he and the baby are dumped into a cab.

Somehow the baby keeps winding up with other people, but it's not always clear how it gets from place to place. Maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention, or I missed something in the dialog. There's also a pale man in black who wanders through some of the scenes; he's reminiscent of the Thorn characters from the Halloween series to some extent. He seems to be supernatural, although he kills people in conventional ways.

There is some nudity in the movie, for those looking for that. Not a whole lot of blood, but some. It plays more like a drama than a horror movie, despite the deaths and weird figure in black.

I listened to some of the commentary track at the beginning and end of the movie to see if it shed any light on the story or what they were aiming for with the movie. They didn't touch on that in what I listed to at all, unfortunately. It wasn't interesting enough for me to listen to the rest.

The DVD has a number of trailers on it; Poultrygeist looks like it will be fun. There's also a music video for a Russian band's song "Wild Man" in which Troma head honcho Lloyd Kaufman stars as a blind man stumbling through a bar in which the band is playing. The Toxic Avenger shows up a couple times, and there's a sex scene and a shooting spree, so it's fairly Tromatic. The music is fairly catchy, and at least some of the lyrics are in English, like the chorus "Wild man in big city, wild man empty heart."

This movie, which was made by Troma Entertainment, which is only partly known for a movie they have done twenty years ago, Toxic Avenger, (which is still Troma's mascot, more then likely because it was the only movie that has made them any money)-is the most awful movie I have ever seen. Dumpster Baby is like watching the subjects dealt with in Jerry Springer in real life for 2 hours.

This film deals with subjects such as, videotaping a raping, suicide after being videotaped while being raped, murder, suicide after a murder of an innocent, crack-prostitutes, pimps, and it also deals with a mysterious man in black who just comes around to kill people involved in the baby's life out of nowhere. This is just what you'd expect from this film's beginning which had an intro where a French-man states "Maybe if you Americans didn't fart so much you wouldn't have hurricane Katrina down in New Orleans." .

The sound quality of this film is horrible as well; I would feel upset about not catching certain spoken words because the quality is that bad, but I'm not upset because nothing spoken carries the plot at all, mostly because the plot is "hand the baby off to the most irresponsible person ever". One scene involved a retarded man, after having acquired the baby, sticking the child inside a drawer so that he could answer the door. When he does answer the door two kids basically bully him and tell him that they are going to call the F.B.I., as they are telling him this they are seriously playing toss the baby to each-other. There are far too many scenes that I could reference that are equally if not more, horrible, so I won't but you get the point.

The plot is ridiculous. The acting is worse then an elementary play. Sound and video quality is by far worse then Charlie Chaplin movies. Characterization of the film is extremely shallow. This is by far the worst movie I have ever seen and I don't mean that in an exaggerated "THIS IS THE WORST MOVIE I'VE SEEN!!!!111! , LOL." kind of way. This seriously is the worst movie I have ever seen.

Ha ha, just kidding. The sound is awful. The actors were indecipherable for most of the film.

It's low-budget, trashy, apocalyptic stuff. I like Troma for the over-the-top gore and laughs, and this was lacking in those areas. A raving mad cannibal provided a few chuckles, but that was about it.

I got the impression the directors were intending for this to be much more disturbing than it actually was. They did succeed in one cringe-inducing scene, making me feel uncomfortable to the point of skipping ahead to the end of the scene.

The screenplay and some of the acting was one positive aspect of the film. What dialog I could make out seemed particularly realistic and strikingly out of the low-budget league. In particular, the teenage boys drinking and discussing their discovery of "dumpster baby" was fairly well-acted.

The best part of the DVD is the trailer for Poultrygeist. That movie looks fantastic.