The Garbage Pail Kids came out in 1985 from Topps and were created by Art Spiegelman. Yes, the same cartoonist who made Maus. He and Mark Newgarden worked together as the editors and art directors of the project, with Len Brown — the same person who Wally Wood named T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agent Dynamo after and one of the creators of Wacky Packages and Mars Attacks — as the manager and art by John Poundart for the first series, then Jay Lynch, Tom Bunk, James Warhola — the nephew of Andy Warhol — and more.

These cards were a huge success and sold worldwide (they’re called Mr. Creepy in Japan, Totally Broken Kids in Germany, The Filthies in France, Snotlings in Italy and The Garbage Gang elsewhere). They were quite controversial and banned in many schools. And then Original Appalachian Artworks — the same Xavier Roberts who stole the look of Martha Nelson Thomas’ soft sculptured dolls that came with a birth certificate — sued and they had to change the logo. But by 1988, the kids were gone. yet they came back in 2003 and never went away. You can even get blockchain backed high-end versions of them now.

Look, I’m someone who doesn’t believe that there’s “so bad it’s good” and has found the light in the darkness within so many so-called bad films. This one challenged my will to live, but there are times during it when the overwhelming badness of the film approaches surrealist art and I laughed so hard that my head began to throb and I was sure this was the stroke that would wipe out my lifelong hard-earned knowledge of Mattei, D’Amato and lesser scumbag directors.

Dodger (Mackenzie Astin) works in the junk store of magician Captain Manzini (Anthony Newley) and is also the target of a gang of toughs led by Juice (Ron MacLachlan) while loving that bad dude’s girl Tangerine (Katie Barberi) from afar.

To break up all that preteen angst, a garbage can falls from the sky containing green ooze and the Garbage Pail Kids: the always snotty Messy Tessie; the Hawaiian shirt-wearing flatulent Windy Winston; the throw up on command Valerie Vomit (played by Debbie Lee Carrington, memorable as the small-statured Martian rebel in Total Recall); the whining baby Foul Phil; the acne-scarred superhero Nat Nerd and the toe eating reptilian hybrid nightmare called Ali Gator.  None of these characters are in any way endearing or cute ugly. They’re borderline upsetting and the more I think about it, the more I love this movie for being so dead and vacant.

After having our protagonist covered with sewage and abused by the gang, only to be saved by the Kids, it still has Dodger in love with Tangerine, who wants to be a fashion designer and puts the GPK into service as pretty much slaves. The kids steal a Pepsi truck — I can’t imagine Pepsi would have loved how they’re presented in this — and then go to a Three Stooges festival which makes them so insane that they drink beer with bikers and Ali Gator gets to eat some toes. Despite being babies and children, the GPK get drunk on beer, which is encouraged by the film, and sing songs so inane that I again started to laugh the kind of frenzied guffaws that only happen when I endure serious physical pain.

Despite the kids being put into the State Home for the Ugly, a place where Gandhi and Santa Claus are executed because this is a movie for children, they escape, ruin a fashion show and refuse to go away, not even following the rules of Mr. Mxyzptlk.

If it seems like Dodger and Tangerine seem on again, off again and ill-matched, well — Astin and Barberi dated and broke up mid-movie. That wasn’t Austin’s only issue. He got the movie without telling his father, John Astin, who tried to get his son out of this film.

Rod Amateau directed and co-wrote this and his career was, well, something. He started his career doing stunts in movies like Rebel Without a Cause and Mighty Joe Young (he was also a stunt driver for Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker and Thunder Run after this directing career took off) and then wrote and directed episodes of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, produced and directed 78 episodes of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, produced and directed The New Phil Silvers Show, directed nearly every episode of My Mother the Car and also made  The Statue, one of the few movies Roger Ebert ever walked out on, as well as High School U.S.A., the movie that convinced Joel Robinson to leave Hollywood, Son of Hitler, a Peter Cushing movie that never played outside of Germany and wrote Sunset, one of the many Blake Edwards films — and mistakes — that a nascent Bruce Willis would make.

I can’t even imagine the horror movie that John Carl Buechler — who did the effects for this as well as TerrorVision, Dolls, Hard Rock Zombies, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers and many, many more, as well as directing Cellar Dweller, Watchers 4 and Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood — had planned.

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie made just $661,512 during its opening weekend and eventually $1.6 million on a million dollar budget, but was still seen as a major disappointment. Astin told Mental Floss, “The heroes of the entire experience are the seven little people actors in costumes every day in triple-digit heat in the San Fernando Valley. They couldn’t see or hear. There was only so much time they could have the heads on before they ran out of oxygen.”

Effects artist William Butler went even further: “I think it was a stupid idea of a stupid screenplay, with stupid designs, that made for a cacophony of stupidity.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey, Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he contributes to Drive-In Asylum. His first article, “Grindhouse Memories Across the U.S.A.,” was published in issue #23. He’s also written “I Was a Teenage Drive-in Projectionist” and “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover” for upcoming issues.

The explosion of the horror genre in the 80s gave us lots of slasher films and films loaded to the brim with gore. Every once and a while though, there was something different, something special, a small gem. Lady Beware (1987) sports a title that sounds like a Lifetime movie of the week and a visual aesthetic that sometimes looks good, but mostly looks like a TV movie. But it’s an endlessly fascinating film that straddles the line between art film and exploitation film. It’s not your typical woman-in-peril film. Director Karen Arthur with this, her passion project, is much too intelligent and sophisticated to make a simple young woman vs. stalker thriller. Instead, she gives us a smart, though flawed, film with a nice feminist slant that doesn’t beat you over the head with its gender politics, like so many current arthouse horror films.

Katya, played by a young Diane Lane, rides the bus from boondocks Pennsylvania to the big city–Pittsburgh, that is–to seek a career as a window dresser at Joseph Horne’s, one of Pittsburgh’s once-iconic department stores (the other was Kaufmann’s). She’s ambitious and aggressively convinces the store manager to hire her. Then she makes friends with co-workers, including dated 80s movie token gay guy and black woman, and designs some windows with lots of sexual content. (Arthur’s a good director, so you suspend your disbelief about these store windows that feature partially clad mannequins posed in “interesting” positions—and then there’s that use of aerosol-can whipped cream to top things off.) Soon, she’s attracted not only the attention of Cotter Smith, a Pittsburgh magazine reporter, but also a radiology technician from a building across the street, who has a family and is a closet stalker. He’s played by Michael Woods in a low-keyed, creepy performance.

Soon the expected stalking starts. Woods makes obscene phone calls, leaves messages, steals Lane’s mail, and even rappels down the side of her locked building in broad daylight to break into her apartment. (More suspension of disbelief on that scene.) Once inside, he does as many awful things as you can imagine from taking a bath in her tub, to writhing around naked on her bed, to using her toothbrush (Yuck!). This unhinges Lane to the point of a near nervous breakdown, but in the end. she finds her inner feminist strength, plays mind games with Woods, and eventually turns the tables on him. This leads to a memorable final shot, where the stalker symbolically becomes trapped in his own perverted fantasy. 

Unfortunately, the Scotti Brothers, successful record producers who had recently moved into movie production, took the final cut away from director Arthur and drastically reduced the film’s running time. Viveca Lindfors’ part as Lane’s mother was eliminated, and Smith’s ineffectual boyfriend was watered down even more. (I’m not sure either of those decisions was a bad thing; they strengthen Lane’s lone stand against her stalker.) Also, to make the movie more exploitable, the producers added repeated shots of a naked, nubile Lane, defeating the point of the film by objectifying its lead character. Arthur was unhappy and thought about taking her name off the film. She didn’t, and I’m glad she didn’t. Even in its bastardized form, it’s a film to be proud of. In addition to being a solid thriller with good ideas, it’s a beautiful travelogue of Pittsburgh in the late 80s. And those of us from the area who grew up during that era will enjoy spotting local actors in small parts, such as Don Brockett from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood; Bingo O’Malley, who was in just about everything filmed in the city from Dominick and Eugene to Creepshow, Two Evil Eyes and Bob Roberts; and even Ray Laine, the star of George Romero’s There’s Always Vanilla.

Lady Beware was clearly made on a low budget with an eye on home video. It didn’t have much theatrical play but became a staple of pay-cable in the late 80s. Then after a VHS release, it disappeared. It has never had an official DVD release in the U.S., and you can find a soft-looking rip of the VHS tape on the Internet Archive, where the poster noted that the film is in the public domain. I don’t know about that, but I do know that this film doesn’t deserve its obscurity. It’s striking in tone with an atypical handling of some fairly pat material. I liked it a lot. And I think you will too.

Katt Shea was in My Tutor, Preppies, Hollywood Hot Tubs and Barbarian Queen before working with Andy Ruben to make The Patriot for Roger Corman. She’d go on to direct several films and even earn a four-day retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, where Poison Ivy debuted. You can check out her movies Dance of the Damned, Stripped to Kill II: Live Girls, Streets, Last Exit to Earth, The Rage: Carrie 2, Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase and Rescued by Ruby.

While working undercover, Cody (Kay Lenz) and her partner Sergeant Heineman (Greg Evigan) are too late to save Angel (Michelle Foreman), a dancer who has been thrown off a bridge and set on fire. Of course, this means that Cody must become Sunny, dancing at the Rock Bottom for its owner Ray (Norman Fell).

As she gains the trust of the dancers, they’re all being killed one by one. Cody keeps dancing at the club, defying the orders of her superiors, sure she can catch the killer. Is it Pocket, the one handed creep? Is it Angel’s lover Roxanne (Pia Kamakahi)? And how does Roxanne’s brother Eric fit in?

In a New York Times article, Shea explained how she was inspired by a trip to a strip club: “I didn’t want to go because I felt it was humiliating to women. But I finally got myself there. I sat down and began watching these acts and they’re performing as if they really cared.”

So — spoiler: Roxanne is dead. Eric is Roxanne, taking over her life as he was sure Angel would take his sister away. You can imagine that this is incredibly problematic, as they say, but it’s also a Roger Corman movie. In fact, Corman was convinced that only a woman could be a convincing woman on stage. Shea surprised him and showed him up by fooling him. She would later explain: “He [Corman] turned every shade. He was purple by the end.”

Also, as this is a Corman movie, all the songs that are danced to in this film were added in post-production. They had been filmed with popular songs, but those songs had to be replaced in post, because clearing licensing would be too expensive.

Shea worked with real exotic dancers, teaching them to act. Debra Lamb was one of them and she has been in plenty of movies since this, including Deathrow Gameshow, All Strippers Must Die! and Point Break, often displaying her fire-eating skills. Shea works as an acting teacher to this day, with students including Christina Applegate, Alison Lohman, Sophia Lillis and Drew Barrymore.

She also claims that this was the first movie to show pole dancing.

It would not be the last.

At the thirtieth anniversary of Revenge of the Nerds, Julia Montgomery (Betty) revealed that she originally had a scene in this movie, but turned it down, as it had her cheating on Lewis (Robert Carradine) with a jock. She felt that after her character fell in love at the end of the first movie — never mind that whole weird assault thing — it just didn’t feel right to cheat on her nerdy man.

She was right and understood her character better than the filmmakers.

This was also the last time that Anthony Edwards would play Gilbert, as he shot all of his scenes in one day.

As for the rest of the Lambda Lambda Lambdas, they’re headed to Fort Lauderdale for the national fraternity convention. Yet even amongst their own brothers, the Lambdas of Adams College are attacked at every turn.

Now, they’re up against Bradley Whitford as Roger Latimer — finally Ted McGinley is the one getting replaced — and Ed Lauter, who has stopped bothering Charles Bronson to ruin the hijinks for our geektastic protagonists. And how did James Cromwell get cast in this?

That said, I do love that Ogre (Donald Gibb) joins the Lambdas, as well as James Hong playing Booger’s mentor, Edgar Poe “Snotty” Wong.

I guess you can’t expect the sequel to teen sex comedies to live up to the dream of the original. Then they made two more of these, including one where inevitably the nerds win and become the bullies they once hated.