Break out the vomit bucket, because The Garbage Pail Kids Movie is (definitely not) the Greatest Movie EVER!
Click on the movie poster or the title above to download our review of the film, featuring co-host Sean “Hollywood” Hunting.
Review in a Nutshell: Half heart-warming kid’s movie with a message, half boorish toilet humor comedy, this film is painfully unwatchable.
The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast 
If you can play PAL R4 dvds, Madman has The Man From Hong Kong on dvd in stock http://www.madman.com.au/catalogue/view/9998/the-man-from-hong-kong
what caught me out was the cheapness of the movie. It was terrible when i was a kid, twice as much now
Mike Toole alerted me to the existence of the PAL R4 DVD of The Man from Hong Kong after this episode was recorded. Unfortunately, that’s not really an option for me.
The record will show that one search was all it took for me to find The Man From Hong Kong, and mere minutes later I was listening to that radical theme song, admiring the hang glider-assisted jumpkick to a helicopter, and being wowed at the notion of an Asian dude being portrayed in film as a non-predatory sexual being. IT’S OUT THERE.
I was never into Garbage Pail Kids growing up, but I distinctly remember the sight of “Kayo’d Cody” making me cry as a child or otherwise too upset to look at it. Thanks to the Internet, I can not only instantaneously recall the visage that once caused me trouble, I can also see that the alternate card name was “Mugged Marcus.”
I recall also being one of those kids whose mom had forbid ever getting those cards, but I had the advantage of having an older brother who traded those GPK’s with his friends all the time, so I often saw the images of those misshapen children though the names I could never recall very much (given they kept reprinting those cards with different names, I suppose it didn’t matter anyway). In later years I had a thing for an umpteenth series of “Wacky Packages” and for a while in 1990, a Simpsons card series whose images were culled from the Tracey Ullman shorts rather than the TV series itself (since it just started that time). You eventually grow out of ’em like I did, and it’s weird looking back at all of this as an adult. I do recall wanting to see this movie however and being told no, and it wasn’t until sometime in the late 90’s when I came across a tape of it in the store and bothered to watch it and then realized how dumb I was for ever wanting to see it anyway.
That Three Stooges short used in the film is probably “Malice in the Palace”, one of 3 or 4 shorts in the Public Domain they can pull from without going through legal/copyright ordeals. I see the company that released this one out in the theaters is Atlantic Releasing Corporation (the only good film they had was Teen Wolf), another cheapo flick I recall that also used PD Stooge material was “Stoogemania”, and I only bother to mention that since I had saw that a few times in the 80’s anyway.
Hearing a mention of “Stand By Me”, I think that would be the best medicine for anyone coming out of this film is to go watch that next! Wash all that ugliness out of you!
Of course that wasn’t the last we had of GPK mis-licensing snafus, there was also the Saturday morning cartoon series that didn’t even show up on American TV at all. I don’t even feel like linking to the show opening here since it’s not worth anyone’s time, really.
I refuse to even see this movie until someone makes my Wacky Packages film.
A Wacky Packages film would be kinda fascinating really (though the way I’m writing the film in my head, it comes off more like the 1990 Dudley Moore comedy “Crazy People”).
Thinking of something completely different for the moment, there’s Mad Magazine’s answer to a certain college film with “Up The Academy”.
In a interview, Mackenzie Astin said that he was dating Tangerine at the time, and they broke up during the shoot. I mean, i was a little jealous of him, wish i could have a girl like her ate that age.
Paul – what’s the issue? Don’t you have a region-free player, or can’t you afford the disc itself?
@Bernardino, and yet I kinda wish he got the girl in the end, but knowing that fact about their relationship at the time, I suppose it makes sense anyway (though I wish the line they had him use instead of whatever emo-ish thing he had to say would be something like “Let me think about it in a coupe years”).
UP THE ACADEMY, Chris Sobieniak – oy, was that a waste of time! I know Robert Downey, Sr. is pretty highly regarded as some kind of satiric directorial genius – but I have to say that I think his stuff is more conceptually interesting than actually funny or all that hard-hitting.
Please don’t pronounce Guzman with a ‘guh’ sound. It’s ‘gooz’ or ‘goos’. I tell you this as a Guzman myself, it’s quite grating to hear Guzman pronounced in the way you guys did. Stop dat
Great show Paul! This review reminded me of my favorite moment on saturday morning television. Watch Sean Astin be super cool while Mackenzie hams it up and fails. Here’s the link