The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)

Dir. Rod Amateau

I'd a full collection of Garbage Pail Kids Series 01 cards / stickers in the mid-80s. I felt a bit duped that each character had two different names, requiring me to have the same image twice, but exploiting a customer base has been the norm for trading card companies longer than even I've been alive. I certainly wouldn't fall for that shit now!

Anyhoo, the movie... The protagonist is fourteen-year-old 'Dodger' (Mackenzie Astin), a kind of Billy No Mates, but a good kid at heart. He works part-time at an antiques store owned by Captain Manzini (Anthony Newley), an old world romantic who knows magic and likes to turn every conversation into a moral lesson, or a lament on the past. For reasons known only to Manzini, I guess, he keeps a manky (space-rocket) trash can in the actual shop. That's probably why he has no customers.

Inside the can are the 'garbage pail kids' of the title. Unsurprisingly, they don't stay inside for long. Child-size freakshows, their special attributes include excessive snot, projectile vomit, farting, pissing oneself, and... er... mob violence.

On the surface it's an excuse to gross out parents and thrill schoolkids, but it does have a message to impart. It's a simplistic, underdeveloped one, for sure, but it's something, at least. Basically, don't judge a book by its cover — or its smell, I suppose — applicable to both sides of the equation; an ugly thing can hold and inspire good, and a pretty thing can be rotten inside.

It's not a good movie, it's not even a funny one, but it doesn't hate its audience like modern Hollywood often does, so, in that respect, it's not a truly contemptible movie, either.

- "It's called a book, Dodger. Kids used to read them." -