The Nostril Picker

Someone must have been seriously joking when they made this film.

Firstly, it is an absolute impossibility that this movie was made in 1993. The fashions and music dictate that this is seriously 80's. My guess is that this has sat on the shelf for a long while before some crazed distributer picked it up and released it to a disbelieving world.

There is a plot. Kind of. A strange loner meets a random man with a beard who tells him that if he meditates while singing his favourite song he will be able to turn into whomever he chooses. At this point I feel obliged to point out that the loner's favourite song is London Bridge Is Falling Down. Why is this his favourite song? Because he's an idiot. We are only a minute into the film and already the film has reached a monumental level of stupidity. It gets even stupider.

The loner is the nostril picker. I can only assume this as there are two scenes in the film where he is seen picking his nose. That clears up the title. He decides to change into a girl so that he can get close to other girls. And kill them. That's more or less it.

The acting is universally appalling. Every single performance in this movie sucks. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the acting is of the standard of a pornographic movie. It really is that terrible. The nostril picker appears to the audience as the nostril picker. The characters in the movie see him as the girl he has become through singing London Bridge Is Falling Down. Man, I feel like an idiot even typing this. Anyway, it is kind of strange seeing a middle aged weirdo hanging out with school girls. And not in a good way. There is even an extended montage of scenes where the nostril picker is at school with the girls and a song plays over the top. It is very possibly the worst song ever recorded. I'm not even going to describe it. You'll know it when you hear it. And you'll agree with me.

There are some scenes of violence, sure. And there is a Benny Hill style chase sequence involving a transsexual. There is even an immortal bit of dialogue, that may or may not have been taken from Shakespeare or John Milton, where the nostril picker says to a prostitute, 'I've got the cash if you've got the gash'. Lovely, I'm sure you'll agree.

Utter nonsense.

Let me tell you this. This is THE video nasty you need to get. The acting is the worst I have ever seen! I saw kids in the remedial class at school put together better films than this in GSE! The special effects genuinely give you that real image.... - of someone, at the side of the set, throwing ketchup across the place!! It is the worst made 'horror' movie I have ever seen, but then don't all real movie buffs get off watching Plan 9 from outer Space, and Glen or Glenda? Edward D Wood jnr had his failures, all of which ended up as cult classics in the 21st century, and if you are into this kind of rubbish, The Nostril Picker is now on general release in the UK, in the 'His Masters Voice' stores, in the 'under a fiver' budget range. The basic storyline is that a layabout weirdo offers his stash to a local hobo living in a box behind a bus shelter, in exchange for the hobo's secret knowledge regarding a voodoo chant he heard in an underpass some time, that once recited, turns a man into a female of his choice. Whether he picks his nostril or not during the chant is unimportant. He can then go on using his female 'cloak' and murder whoever he wants without the authorities discovering him - unless he is photographed. If he is, his real identity will be discovered. Oh, and if he recites the chant too many times, he will go crazy. Sounds crazy? It is! Beyond belief. It is truly so poorly made, you can not watch it without the edges of your mouth curling upward. I have never seen the end of this film, but I have put it on so many times, I have lost count. You won't get to the end because you will fall asleep - laughing. And, you will have a DVD title, no-one else you know has! The Nostril Picker is truly a triumph amongst bad taste films. Did I mention that the sound is so poor you will swear you saw the kid recording it on set with his tape recorder? Or that the end credits have the usual - Gaffer, Best Boy, Make Up, AND - Weak Story Development.? Get this film. Most serious film-ers love to hate it - or hate to love it. I love it and it is the pride of my DVD collection!!!

The Nostril Picker is a crap film, whether you're a lover of trash movies or not. Yet I still feel it has enough good moments to redeem itself. The idea is unique - I've never heard of another film where a man can make himself look like a girl in order to befriend young girls. As silly as the plot is, at least its a bit different. This film could have been so much better if they had of added more gore and used better actors, as the killer is really quite pathetic. The best scene is when the male hooker goes to the police station to report that he was attacked by the nostril picker. "I demand satisfaction, now!" he says. It's hilarious watching him try to explain to the police officer that he was chased by a man holding a dildo. The gore isn't much to wet yourself over, at least not on the Vipco DVD version I watched. A girl gets her fingers chopped off (a poor mans version of the fingers scene in The Burning), the hooker gets his throat slit, and another girl is stabbed to death but all we see is blood splattering over a wire fence. The ending is quite good and actually original, which gets extra marks from me.

Overall, The Nostril Picker is quite boring at times but depending on your opinion, has a lot of good elements like the ones I've described. If you're a slasher fan I would give this a watch at least once, after all, a title like "The Nostril Picker" will have all your friends dying to know what the film is about.

This is one of the worst films that I have ever seen. It could only be barely watchable with a strong intake of alcohol and drugs. It is a seventies porn film but without any nudity. Everything about this film is horrible - the acting sucks, the effects poor, the script bad, the direction dull, there aren't enough words for how bad this is. There are one or two moments of bad brilliance that save this film from total damnation and those bits are the funny bits of the bloke who looks like a bird to other people in the school smoking and drinking; the scene where he is invoking the 'spell'; and the scene where the camera rotates and he does stuff although you can kind of see him running around just off camera. So bad it is good but only for some brief moments of genius.

This film is a good film, I don't mean blockbuster epic good, but beer and pizza night with a few mates good. It's trash, that's all it is, trash. But enjoyable trash, and at times, rather funny.

Okay so there's no good acting, not even a good plot, but watch it and leave your brain at the door and you will found out what an enjoyable film this is.

Pure 80's horror trash. A few people got together and said 'I want to make a film' so they made the most stupid, most puerile film they could think of.

But they watched it back and laughed, so this is a film you can never take seriously, not 1%. And it deserves that, it is a movie to laugh at, not make sense of.