TRASH HUMPERS (2009)

Four yutes, wearing what look to be the Grandpa masks from the original TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, film themselves going around dry humping trash cans and mailboxes and trees and concrete walls and refrigerators and dumpsters and anything else they can clamp onto. They also dance around and destroy shit. At 30 minutes this would have been hilarious, but at 78 minutes it gets old. Especially the scenes where everybody is just standing around doing nothing. There is no real plot or story and the entire thing is made to look like it was filmed on a 300 year-old VHS camera from the 1800's. 

 

I like the bizarre concept and I'm a fan of Harmony Korine, but TRASH HUMPERS comes off as if he's trying too hard to be different. But hey, it is different and that's something. I just wish there had been more substance. Like maybe a bleak underlying darkness running throughout the film. Stuff going on in the back ground that is silently telling a really, really fucked up story and the viewer doesn't notice it until the end of the movie. Or ever. That's just my worthless opinion. 

 

If you like weird cinema, then TRASH HUMPERS is worth checking out.

JOAN RIVERS: A PIECE OF WORK (2010)

Did you know that Joan Rivers was the narrator of 'The Adventures of Letterman' on "The Electric Company"? Or that she wrote and directed Billy Crystal's debut film, RABBIT TEST? Or that she used to be a writer for "Candid Camera"? Me neither, I just learned all that on IMDb, not in this movie. Outside of the fact that she appears every once and a while on Howard Stern I know very little about Joan Rivers. Her interviews with Howard are always interesting and her commentary about showbiz is engaging, but it seems like she's always promoting something, which is fine. I wanted to learn more about her, so I rented this movie and it's interesting, but I don't think I learned anything outside of the fact that she's a workaholic that seems to be going 50 different directions at once just to support her lavish lifestyle. It was kinda depressing.

The structure of the film is they're just following Joan around for a year. There's up's (winning contest on a reality TV show; still doing stand up comedy) and down's (her play bombed; she fired her longtime manager) and it's all very interesting, but I would have much rather had a straightforward documentary about her career up to this point filled with vintage footage and interviews of her peers and people she used to work with. The highlight of the movie to me was when she spoke about her husband committing suicide! That's crazy. It was a quick mention, but I found that to be completely fascinating and wish they talked about it more.

Joan was complaining a few days ago on Howard about how this movie got snubbed by the Academy for an Oscar nomination nod, but I can easily see why: it's not that interested. I liked it, but I didn't learn anything new and it honestly seemed like it was filmed to be a reality show or something. Worth watching if you're like Joan, but it's not all that great. I was hoping for something more informative and maybe even shocking.

CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH (1986)

"God bless America...limp dick!"

 

Whenever I watch a Troma movie (and thank Satan that's not very often) the only thing that I can think of the entire movie is "Somebody got paid actual money to write this shit?!".  I'm obviously not the target audience for whatever this movie is.

CLASS OF NUKE 'EM HIGH is about a high school next to a leaky nuclear plant in New Jersey. The ooze and radiation causes the students to start mutating with the expected results. For such an promising set up, the movie is a massive letdown mainly due to the fact it looks so goddamn shitty!  It'd probably make a better novel. Also there's way too much time wasted on the normal crappy Troma one-liners and corny humor.

CONEH is better than the stuff Troma would make later on, but it's still shit. The acting is over the top, the violence is silly, the nudity is lame, the special effects are terrible.

Skip it.

Part 2 - Class of Nuke 'em High Part II: Subhumanoid Meltdown (1991)
Part 3 - Class of Nuke 'em High Part 3: The Good, the Bad and the Subhumanoid (1994)
Part 4 - Return to Nuke 'em High Volume 1 (2013)
Part 5 - Return to Return to Nuke 'em High aka Vol. 2 (2017)