Garrett Also Loves Trash: Garrett favorite and least favorite trashy films

I had a hard time narrowing it down to four trashy films as well, but I stand by the four I picked. They're pretty damn trashy.

Maniac (1934)

Learning about mental illness can be fun! Especially when the person you're learning about it from is almost certainly fucking certifiable themselves. This movie is supposed to be about the dangers of mental illness, alerting people of these dangers so that umm...I guess...so that they don't opt to go crazy. Like Prince did after writing the song of the same name.Dwain Esper's 1934 film Maniac tells us about mental illness by introducing us to a wide variety of utterly bugfuck individuals. Like the untalented vaudevillian who makes his living as a mad scientist's assistant. Like the mad scientist himself who wants to prove his artificial heart works by telling the vaudevillian to let him shoot him so that he can bring him back to life. The mad scientist by the way, is played by the worst actor in the history of acting. Horace Carpenter, the actor who played the mad scientist had to have actually been mad to believe that what he was doing on screen was actually acting. It might be the worst acting ever, and I don't hand out such accolades lightly. The vaudevillian decides to kill and impersonate the scientist, and ends up encountering a variety of other crazy people ostensibly shown to demonstrate what mental illness does to people. Like how it makes guys think they're sex crazed apes and forces them to kidnap naked women or how it makes two women get into syringe fights or causes actors to hallucinate scenes from Haxan. Maniac is a truly trashy film and about as educational as Shark Night 3D. I love Maniac so much.


Terrorvision

This movie is what would happen if John Waters decided to remake Videodrome. And then ate some bad shrimp before bed and edited his dreams into the dailies. Terrorvision is oozing with familial dysfunction, neglect, pop culture criticism and weird sexuality. The characters are all ridiculous caricatures. The antagonist is a garbage disposal from space beamed in via a funky satellite dish. Or is the antagonist child neglect or our media obsessions? Any of these are valid. It's smart, nasty, sci fi trash of the highest caliber. This movie is just great.


The Gore Gore Girls

What's trashier than strippers? Dead strippers, that's what. A "classy" private detective is hired by a trashy reporter to investigate murdered strippers. These strippers are murdered by meat tenderizer, scissors and having their faces fried. But this is not a typical slasher movie. This is an H.G Lewis movie. Lewis loves and exalts in gore, has no reason to scare you and came from a background in softcore pornography. He was a big influence on John Waters. So, if you're into trash, check out one of its progenitors and masters. This movie combines gore, surrealism and crazy humor in ways you just can't find anymore. Outside of a good Bizarro novel.




Visitor Q

What if incest was magic and God was reality television? Takashi Miike has done some mean things to his audiences. But Visitor Q is the meanest thing he's ever done and I'm grateful for it. Like Terrorvision, Visitor Q deals with uncomfortable sexuality, child neglect and the negative power of media to transform our consciousness, unlike Terrorvision, it also deals with necrophilia, excrement's efficacy as lube and the magic of lactation (which Gore Gore Girls only touches upon briefly). And unlike Terrorvision, this movie is a spiritual journey into the most rotten parts of ourselves and into the disintegration of the family unit. Dysfunction breaks down the family and we're left watching and wondering what will come in its place. There are no easy answers but Miike's is pure poetry. Obviously, this not for the squeamish, obviously this is the kind of Grade A trash that makes me proud to be a cult cinema aficionado and Bizarro author. Visitor Q is in my opinion, the greatest trashy movie of all time.


Least Favorites

Every Biker Movie

Werewolves on Wheels! Psychomania! She Devils on Wheels! The Glory Stompers! The Peacekillers! Biker movies should be awesome. They have such intense titles and bikers are some bad dudes. But I expected more from this genre. I expected it to be gorier, sexier and deadlier than any other film genre. I expected angels of death and mostly I get hooligans and casual nuisances. I want Edward Lee from biker movies and I get Wes Craven. Maybe it's just a matter of personal preference, maybe it's the genre, I don't know. The Werewolves on Wheels are barely on wheels as lycanthropes. The zombie bikers in Psychomania don't look like zombies. The Peacekillers don't do all that much damage to those hippies. The She Devils are among H.G Lewis' least weird and violent villains. Fuck you, every biker movie. You broke my heart.


Naked Massacre

Speaking of broken hearts, this movie is dead to me. I'm almost angry about deriding it because it means dignifying it with a reply. But I must raise the alarm lest somebody else become the broken hollow sad shell of a man this movie turned me into. Naked Massacre sounds like the most id driven, overstimulating funfest you can watch. It sounds dirty and exciting and more fun than a barrel of naked ladies who get massacred. This is instead the story of a sad Vietnam veteran who holds a bunch of nurses hostage in Ireland. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what to do with a movie called Naked Massacre, but somehow the dipshits that made this movie couldn't do it. Step 1: Nudity. Step 2: Massacre. It's not hard, guys.

LEZA'S TRASH PICKINGS

Doing this post reminded me how truly passionate I am about trash. It was hard to narrow it down to these few, but here goes:

FAVORITE TRASH:

GLEN OR GLENDA-1953-ED WOOD

This movie was considered trash when it came out and that opinion has not softened with time. It is still a very misunderstood movie, with just cause. Glen or Glenda is not particularly lewd by today's standards, but that does not diminish its strangeness. It is a halfhazard patchwork of styles. It is delivered in documentary format, though it most certainly is not one. Entire scenes are conveyed solely via V/O and a fixed camera on an empty room. There are dark surreal sequences that attempt to convey the confusion of the protagonist, played by Ed Wood himself, who is conflicted about his proclivity for cross dressing. He asserts that he is a normal heterosexual man who wants to marry his girlfriend, played by his real life girlfriend, Dolores Fuller. Her acting is beyond awful, which adds to the magic somehow. Ed Wood appears in all his angora clad glory. He argues for the stigma of cross dressing to be lifted, which is brave. He makes up fake statistics and claims men's clothes are simply too uncomfortable and men's hats cause baldness, which is confusing. The fact that this film is disjointed adds to its novelty. The fact that Ed Wood is dead serious is hilarious. The fact that he made this movie on no budget in a time when this subject was clearly taboo, is beyond admirable and makes me love this man more than I can say with words. Hooray for Ed Wood, king of the trashheap!


FEMALE YAKUZA TALE: INQUISITION AND TORTURE-1973-TEURO ISHI

This movie kicks all kinds of ass and it stars the lovely Reiko Ike who will stop at nothing to bring down the rival Yakuza gang who have been murdering women and getting them hooked on smack so that they will be obedient drug mules. The violence towards women is very disturbing but the revenge is so much sweeter because of that. If you like to see hot Asian chicks kicking ass this is the movie for you. The tone is a strange cross between hentai and a dark gangster film. There is little that is not shown and the colors are vivid and gorgeous. This movie does the amazing job of being a voyeurs ultimate fantasy and having a powerful message of female sisterhood and empowerment. The grand finale is pretty much the ending of KILL BILL VOL. I but with nakedness and golden showers. I dare not reveal more. It will blow your mind in all kinds of ways.


BLACK BOOK-2006-PAUL VERHOEVEN

When a woman must survive in the Nazi occupied Netherlands she does what she can. She is beautiful. She was a once successful singer, before the war forced her to go into hiding. She is also Jewish. In order to infiltrate the enemy she worms her way into their company and seduces a high officer. Somehow this movie is thoroughly trashy and not any less smart because of it. Somehow you are with her, every step of the way. Only Mr. TrashKing AKA director of Showgirls and Basic Instinct could pull off this feat. The marriage of sex and violence is beyond awkward in Showgirls. But Black Book is basically a mash up of Hitchcock's Notorious and Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, if they were hot and wildly un PC. In this dark tale of seduction and suspense there is a palatable sense of horror and tragedy. War creates situations that would be unthinkable in times of peace. It turns an unblinking eye to the jaded adult world of compromises and deceit, and of heartbreak and courage in the face of all adversity. This is a movie about what the heart can stand, what the body can endure and what it looks like to try to be a human being in inhuman times. The grand finale is brutal and chilling. Her punishment for betrayal is something that can only be seen to be believed. Watch this if you dare!


SWEET MOVIE-1974-DUSAN MEKAVEJEV

My most recent discovery is this gem of precious filth and depravity. It is guerrilla cinema at its best. is haunting, magical and strange. It is viciously satirical, politically thought provoking and a decadent feast for the eyes and senses. It is like diving into a pig trough and finding so much delicious candy that gets you high and makes you want to be wild, take off your clothes, fuck like a maniac, start a revolution and rejoice in your bestial humanity! This movie is like Jodorowsky and Bunuel on crack. Sweet Movie was banned in Poland and got all kinds of people stirred up in all kinds of ways. This movie is dangerous because it is an active assault on the senses. It aims to confuse and discombobulate. And it succeeds. When you are done you don't know which end of you is up but you feel awake in a whole new way. There are two women the plot follows, one goes through a strange series of adventures including getting packed in a suitcase, sold to a millionaire as his virgin bride and getting her naked body covered in chocolate for a commericial. The other lives on a boat that has a huge Karl Marx face on the front. She is a revolutionary and she has more sugar than she knows what to do with but her love is deadly. Everybody should see this movie right now! WARNING!!The most disgusting scene in the movie is real and was not in the script!!


BAD TRASH:

Bad trash is disappointing trash. Trash that is trash but not fun at all! SHAME SHAME SHAME on these!

SUICIDE GIRLS MUST DIE-2010

The plot is that there's a Suicide Girls photo shoot in some spooky cabin in the woods. They don't know why the're going to such an unglamorous location and are kinda confused but go anyway. Girls start to disappear. The remaining girls panic slightly. More girls get killed. More girls panic slightly more. If there was a script to this trashorama, it was not a very good one. The dialogue is wooden and predictable and the continued ignorance is laughable. The chicks in the movie were either high the whole time or were pretending to be, in any case, there is very little dramatic tension or titillation. The only reasons for watching this movie were not present: hot chicks exposed, hot chicks getting scared and slaughtered in horrible ways. If you wanna get off, get off this train, 'cause it ain't going nowhere!


HAVOC-2005

Anne Hathaway and Bijou Phillips play two rich girls who are bored with their privileged lives and decide to slum it with the local gang scene. They get a rush and come back for more, which leads swiftly to getting their stupid asses raped and hooked on crack. Their lives fall apart faster than you can say jailbait. You feel bad for these girls for getting fucked, but they are so goddamned stupid, you just throw your hands up in the air.

Dollarbin Massacre Goes Trashpicking with Constance Ann Fitzgerald

When Constance Ann Fitzgerald isn't working in a sex shop, she writes Bizarro fiction. In fact, she's one of this year's New Bizarro Author Series, like Spike Marlowe and Justin Grimbol. Since Constance's book Trashland A-Go-Go revolves around a stripper's adventures in a magical, fucked up world of trash, we thought we'd talk about trashy movies, films that test, stretch and shatter the boundaries of good taste. Films we should be a little ashamed to like whose creators showed no shame at all. So, she gave us a list of her four favorite and two least favorite trashy, trashy movies. And here it is.



Trashpicking by Constance Ann Fitzgerald

I love:

Pink Flamingos – In the interest of making this a proper list I have selected the quintessential “Trashy” movie to represent the entire John Waters catalogue.
This. Man. Knows. Trash. And better still, he isn’t afraid of it. He embraces it. When you think of trashy cinema John Waters should be the first thing to come to mind. In his films you can expect depravity in all forms. What makes his work special is his approach. Things that normally make you cringe probably still do, but you also laugh. His films make me want to visit Baltimore even though I know nothing interesting happens there. Ever.




Mommie Dearest – All the backhanding fun of Dynasty! Joan Crawford’s twisted discipline, withholding nature and all around bizarre parenting techniques reek of a hybrid Jackie Collins /V.C. Andrews novel. But, you know, with less incest.
Once you get passed the fact that this movie is based off of the book written by Crawford’s daughter Christina, and that these acts were alleged to have happened, it’s actually kind of fun.
You want to get lost with Joan. You want to see her succeed; you want to see her be glamorous and divine. And instead what you get is her face covered in cold cream shouting “NO MORE WIRE HANGERS!” and beating a little girl with a coat hanger. You want to see her rise above and
gain a sense of humanity. But you won’t. So just enjoy the ride.



Meet Monica Velour -- Kim Catrall plays a washed-up, boozey, aging porn star/single mom that goes back to stripping to make ends meet. Her biggest fan, and dork supreme, Tobe Hulbert tracks her down to catch her show and an awkward, uncomfortable, semi-sweet friendship is formed.
Anyone who has ever been a superfan roots for Tobe. Regardless of the uncomfortable age difference.





Party Monster - What makes this movie trashy isn't just the hedonism- it isn't just the pursuit of feeling good and being fabulous, no matter what the cost.
It's that these thing's ACTUALLY happend and they made a movie that makes it look like a really fucking good time.
Michael Alig built an entire scene and got so strung out that he killed and butchered his friend and then partied for 3 months until he was finally found guilty.
But Seth Green and Macaulay Culkin (his best work since 'Uncle Buck') prancing around on screen more than softens the blow. It makes you want to throw glitter on your hunchback and get out on the dancefloor covered in raw liver and fake blood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=F7TGNhVsa94



I loathe:

Showgirls – I want to like a movie about a workin’ girl just trying to make a go of it. But I can’t. This movie was bad. Really fucking bad.
I grew up as a fan of Saved By The Bell. I remember Elizabeth Berkley’s finest moment vividly; Jesse Spano wacked out on caffeine pills crying in her bedroom singing “I’m so excited” until she broke down and fell into the arms of platonic best friend Zac Morris.
Bad actress then. Bad actress now.




Poison Ivy 3:The New Seduction -- Did anyone else know that they made FOUR of these movies?! FOUR!
In the third installment “Poison Ivy: The New Seduction” Jamie Pressley plays the little sister of Ivy named “Violet”. Big fucking surprise, every girl in all four films is named after a flower but behaves like a complete fucking tramp.
Violet is no different. She’s a dominatrix hooker seeking revenge on the people who threw her family out of their home due to her mother’s scandalous ways. Scandalous indeed.
Poison Ivy 3 must be a late night Skin-a-max favorite. It’s basically soft core porn. I recommend it to hormonal undersexed males everywhere.





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JUVENILE DELINQUENCY-LEZA PICS

THE 400 BLOWS
1959 Francois Truffaut

This is the original movie about delinquent youth. Before Animal House, before Ferris Bueler's Day Off there was a little film by the Cahiers Du Cinema film critic, Francois Truffaut. Inspired by his own turbulent boyhood on the streets of Paris, The 400 Blows follows Antoine Doinel, played by Jean-Pierre Leaud through various misadventures that get him into increasingly hot water, first with his parents, teachers, and ultimately, the police. Underage drinking, smoking and theft are some of the misdemeanors enacted by Antoine and his best friend Rene. All these adventures flow in a natural rhythm in one of the first films of the New Wave of French cinema. This movie is refreshingly honest and effortlessly brilliant. It is a movie about the sacredness of the human spirit. The message: resist conditioning at ALL COSTS!



HEATHERS
1988 Daniel Waters

Winona Ryder had just done Beetlejuice and wanted something interesting to do next. She fell in love with Veronica and the crazy world she inhabited. Her agent warned her not to do the film, fearing it would be too controversial. But she took the part anyway and the rest is history. Veronica is a girl who feels at odds with the environment she belongs to. Veronica hates her friends. Veronica hates her clueless parents. Veronica hates her school. But there's one thing Veronica does not hate, and that is new kid on the block, JD, played by Christian Slater. He's mysterious, wry and cynical. He represents everything that her surroundings do not. Together they target the demons of the status quo, as they see it. At first it's all fun and games, but soon Veronica realizes she is in love with a psychopath. The cartoonish characterizations in the Heathersverse are painted in very broad satirical strokes. It's expressionistic. Nightmarish.
This is my high school fantasy. I admit, I was one of those angry loners who would love nothing more than to see the whole goddamned edifice blown up, especially towards the end of senior year, when I'd about had it with everything. I'd go home and blast Antichrist Superstar in my room and gradually come back to normal. I'm a coward and am sufficiently socialized to never consider violence against others. But nevertheless, Marilyn Manson kept me from wanting to blow up and shoot all my classmates. Other people are not so lucky. Other people have easy access to guns and are learning to make explosives as kids. Other people do unleash their rage on their classmates. What I love about this movie is that, years before Bowling for Columbine, it deals honestly with the plague of bullying in high school and the toxic environment many kids are living in every day. It's not preachy, though, and that's the best part. In the end Veroinica needs to face up to the monster she has helped to create. It's quite a ride and it is a viciously hilarious youth culture satire.



A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
1971 Stanley Kubrick

Alex is just your average teenage boy. He loves Beethoven and his pet snake. He loves milk in the evening. Milk Plus, that is. He's got his own little gang of druges and they like to go out and have themselves a good old time. After milk dispensed from porcelain teats, they are good and ready for a little of the old ULTRAVIOLENCE as well as a little of the old IN OUT. He sleeps in and ditches school so he can go to the record store and pick up chicks to have marathon threesome sessions. Perfectly normal. Sometimes you gotta steal a car and go for a joyride with your fellow druges. Sometimes it leads you to a house out in the country and you assault the innocent residents, just 'cause you're bored. When you see something you like, you take it. This classic film, inspired by the great book by Anthony Burgess, is one that once seen cannot be unseen. The violence is the most stylized and operatic you will ever see outside of a Takashi Mikae movie and Malcom McDowell as Alex is magnetic, terrifying, fascinating and yes, sympathetic.
When his friends turn on him he gets put away, he decides to volunteer himself for a new revolutionary behavioral modification treatment. The outcome is tragic. The message powerful. This is still one of the most compelling studies of the human animal in all its brutal glory; RAW, REAL and DEADLY.




GIRLY
1970 Freddie Francis

There are many stories about naughty little boys and girls. Girly puts them all to shame. Sonny and Girly are brother and sister. They live with Mumsy and Nanny in their beautiful estate in the British countryside. They are rich, they are bored, they are spoiled. When these two come across a potential new plaything, at the park, the meddlesome girlfriend of the new toy must me done away with. When they bring the unfortunate man home, strange games and twisted sexual manipulations drive this surreal horror romp down a very dark rabbit hole. This movie's level of antisocial weirdness is truly unparalleled. This dark family drama is also a social parable about the idle and incestuous rich. This movie is definitely shocking, and it is extremely original. I recommend this dark fable of extreme naughtiness to the most jaded of delinquent movie lovers.



Least Favorite

THE DOOM GENERATION
1995

By all accounts I should love this movie. It's got Rose McGowan who's a hottie. It's got youth mayhem on a pretty grand scale. It's got crazy sex stuff. But I was unimpressed. Color me flaccid, bummed and bored. On the surface it's all teenage angst, rebellion and rage. But under the layers of cool visuals and some great gore effects, its got a sickly and negative energy that I find to be ANTI-LIFE ANTI-FUN ANTI-LOVE and ANTI-YOUTH.



GUMMO
1997

Hopelessness, angst and decay. All worthy subjects, I guess. Somehow, what this movie was aiming for and what it was never came together for me. The aimless kids of post-hurricane Xenia, Ohio have nothing to live for and while away their days sniffing glue and painting their nails. There are probably many towns like this in America. I was looking for more of a message. Watching this movie felt like watching a bunch of baby ducklings getting diarrhea poured all over them and then impaled on long spikes while they scream pitifully. I felt like I was getting my soul sucked out through a straw in the angst center of my brain. If you feel like a slow soul death sounds fun, this is the movie for you.

Garrett's Four Favorite and Two Least Favorite Juvenile Delinquency Movies

That Justin Grimbol sure knows his delinquency. Well, I am not without my own opinions on the subject, it being a subject and me being a film geek and one of this blog's two main contributors. What are these opinions? If you're here, I assume you've asked this question or you just click every link I post on Facebook. Either way, thank you and you're about to see what my favorite and least favorite films about juvenile delinquency are.

Fun

Told in black and white with color flashbacks, two teenage girls in prison (Alicia Witt and Renee Humphrey)remember the best day of their lives. They lie, they cavort, they joke, they snuggle in bed...and they murder an old lady for fun. Pretty big day. The transition between their harsh reality and the wonderful daylight world of their friendship leaves you feeling sympathetic for them, lets you see how much they've lost and what it felt like for two girls to have fun for just one fantastic day. Witt plays Bonnie, a pitch perfect psychopath, sexy, villainous, a wall of lies that even she can't penetrate. Humphrey is Hillary, her accomplice, sweet underneath a tough exterior and deeply in need of love and acceptance. This film is highly underrated and has every right to be ranked among the modern indie film classics. Fun is well shot, well acted, sad and tender and cruel and heartbreaking. I think it's a must watch. Nothing is more scary and poignant than seeing adults interviewing these kids and starting to get it...and seeing that maybe, just maybe, these girls had no choice.



Slacker

Another great independent film, not just about but made with the true spirit of youthful rebellion. It rebels against society, against conventional wisdom, against good taste and even against filmmaking itself. It's a film that, like the generation it's about, defiantly refuses to be any one thing. One viewing, it might feel like a horror film with occasional slides into comedy, another, a vicious black comedy, another a fun filled romp that just isn't afraid to make a mess. There's no better movie about being a young artist that feels infinite potential but is afraid to make one specific statement or bring anything to its terminus. This movie will try to sell you a Madonna pap smear, beg you to shoot your television, argue in favor of the McKinley assassination and explain how Smurfs prepare us for the coming of Krishna consciousness. It might not be about smoking dope or robbing convenience stores, but it's about things that society might think are even worse.





The Lost Boys

Run away from home. Go to California. Hang out on the boardwalk. Groove out to shirtless oily jazz musicians. Run your own business without adult supervision while waging a two kid war on the supernatural. Join a biker gang and feast on the blood of the living to survive. The adolescents in this movie are some of the worst influences in movie history. And they're having a good time. And you'll have a good time. Is there any better image of juvenile delinquency than immortal teenagers in black leather hanging out in a shrine to Jim Morrison? If there is, I don't want to see it. This movie flouts and plays with the conventions of the adult world to the point at which any observant child watching it would have to come to only one conclusion: that those conventions are bullshit and growing up is a dangerous stupid ordeal that you might not want to go through. This movie's just awesome.





Rock 'N Roll Highschool

This is another film about pale freaks in leather teaching young people to liberate themselves from good behavior. But the freaks in this movie are The Ramones. And their music makes mice explode. It's just that cool. Come on, weren't you worried about your physiological integrity the first time you heard Beat Up the Brat? No? I don't believe you. P.J Soles plays Riff Randell, a rebellious rock and roller who defies Mary Woronov's tyranny to give her school a much needed punk enema. Clint Howard is fixer savant Eaglebauer. You know that kid from high school who worked out of a closet and could procure anything you needed for a price? Well, that's him. Eaglebauer is one of the greatest characters in the history of juvenile delinquency. He defies logic and authority alike and makes a mockery of the adult world. And also there are The Ramones and Paul Bartel plays a teacher that decides rock and roll is good for the teenage soul. And also there are The Ramones. And The Ramones were there too. Gabba fucking gabba hey. Rock 'N Roll High School is a template for teen comedies, but is stranger and more gonzo than any of the films it influenced, none of which have The Ramones.



And my Least Favorites


Ghost World

The first time I saw this movie I loved it. It depicted a curvy beauty with alternative sensibilities falling for a loser that liked jazz and collected vintage everything. It was more than likely I would one day become someone like Steve Buscemi's sad loner Seymour. And maybe I'd win the love of a free spirited curvy teen goddess with a fuck-the-man attitude. On the surface, that makes this movie an awesome geek love story and a beacon of hope. But after reading the graphic novel this movie was based on and giving it several more views, I discovered that Thora Birch's Enid no longer struck me as a way cool free spirit, but a snarky sociopath with an urge to break everything she loves to liberate herself from the wheel of reincarnation or something. She's less a girl that you would fantasize about dating but more a girl that you thank God you broke up with. The delinquent glee is short lived, the rebellion is shallow and empty and in the end nobody is happy. I'd take Alicia Witt's vivacious Bonnie over the disappointing poster child for Borderline Personality Disorder that's at the center of this narrative.




Igby Goes Down

I love the title of this movie. I love saying Igby. But now, I love saying "fuck Igby and everything about him." If somebody forgot to roll cameras for or sell tickets to the All Star Game, it would waste less talent than this painfully dry indie snooze fest. Susan Sarandon is great as Igby's very depressed mother, but the story doesn't really lead much of anywhere. This movie is icy and it doesn't make delinquency look like fun. I can't remember entirely why I hated this movie so much, but I did. Maybe I expected Igby Goes Down to be as much fun as saying Igby Goes Down. It's not.

Justin Grimbol on Juvenile Delinquency

New Bizarro Author Series author Justin Grimbol knows juvenile delinquency like the back of his hand. His book The Crud Masters is a fun story about a gang of loveable teen miscreants who have to overcome giant robot adversity with only the help of a giant monster and a bear with gigantic breasts. It's a great read and it's very pro delinquency. So, we asked Justin, "what are your favorite and least favorite films about juvenile delinquency?" Well, Justin gave us this list.


THE OUTSIDERS
This movie is a classic. Each character is so loveable. They’re rough and sleazy, but, at the same time, very affectionate with each other. That’s what makes the movie so great. It does an incredible job showing the affection between these boys.
And then there’s the brawl at the end. It’s epic as hell. It gets me so hyped. Watching this movie makes me want to get drunk and cry and hug/wrestle with my buddies.
My only problem is that it spends too much time showing how tragic the Greaser’s lives are. There are not enough scenes showing them just hanging out and partying and being rascals. There’s also no sex in the movie. I hate it when movies don’t have sex scenes.
Still, it’s a classic. It gets sappy. But I like that. I’m sensitive.




FREEWAY
This movie stars Reese Witherspoon. She plays Vanessa, the most misunderstood teenager girl in history of cinema. She’s a sweety pie, and has nothing but the purest intentions. But she constantly gets fucked over.
At one point Keifer Sutherland gives her a ride. They bond. He gets her to open up about her dysfunctional family life. Then he turns on her. He tells Vanessa he’s going to kill her then fuck her dead body. Vanessa’s not as innocent and vulnerable as she seems. She ends up beating the shit out of him and leaving his body shot-up and mangled. Somehow he survives. Vanessa gets arrested, but escapes from prison. The rest of the movie is one long ass kicking.
This movie isn’t just a great movie about juvenile delinquency. It’s a great revenge flick. Vanessa is the most badass femme fatale---ever.
There’s a sequel to this movie. It stars Natosha Leon. She plays a fifteen year old prostitute named White Girl. She’s not as misunderstood as Venessa. White girl is just violent. This movie’s is not as good as the first movie, but still really fun---that is, if you like watching teenage girls killing people as much as I do.



Dazed and confused:
This film has inspired more pre-teens to smoke weed and party than any movie ever made. I was straight edge when I first saw this movie. What a waste of hormones. I didn’t start to truly appreciate this movie until I was much older.
What I love about this movie is that every single kid in it is a complete delinquent. None of them have any respect for authority. They are all born to party. The nerds, the jocks, the pot heads, all party together.
Partying is an important part of being a kid. This movie should be part of everyone’s early adolescents. It teaches kids how to be kids.



YOUNG GUNZ
Emilio Estevez’s depiction of Billy the Kid makes Clint Eastwood look like about as tough as Ellen Degenerous. He’s such a rascal. And he’s so charming. His role in life is to make everyone else in the world seem like complete wussies.
His whole gang is great. It’s like the kids from Breakfast club were all given revolvers and told to kick ass.
I first saw this movie when I was ten years old. I fell in love with it instantly. My parent’s friends would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I would tell them I wanted to be an Outlaw, like Billy the Kid.




KIDZ.
A good delinquency movie should make you want to party and break shit. This movie did the opposite for me. It was soulless and dark. The characters were despicable. Each scene made me cringe. I saw this movie when I was young. It made me want to hold on to my innocents with all my strength. It made want to hide at home, and watch Full House and eat popcorn and hide from the scary world of adolescents. Any movie that makes me watch to watch Full House is a product of the devil.
It was written by Harmony Korine. I loved his movies. His movie Gummo is amazing and a runner up for my list of great Juvenile Delinquent movies. But KIDZ is a scare flick. Most juvenile delinquency flicks are. I like the kind of movies that glorify the being a delinquent.



BASKETBALL DIARIES
This movie had so much potential. It starts a young Leo DeCaprio and Marky Mark. They are so good at acting like delinquents. I love the scene where they huff spray paint and then barf on that old guy. It’s hilarious. Glorifying inhalants takes some real skill. But they rushed into the heroin shit too quickly. It’s another scare flick.
The book is better. Jim Carrol was a bad ass kid, filled with tons of mischief and poetry. I love that book. Most of it is just him bragging about his exploits. It’s not as sappy and tragic as the movie. The kid just took on being a teenager like it was an extreme sport. Which it is, if you do it right.



So there you have it. Justin Grimbol clearly knows how much fun juvenile delinquency should be. Keep this in mind when you're wondering if you should buy The Crud Masters. The answer is yes. Buy it HERE.

LEZA'S OWN ROMANCE SPECIAL

Here's the movies that have reached out and grabbed me by the heart and then the ones that made me piss myself with rage!

LOVE:

ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND-2004
-Michel Gondry

The fragile and ever fluctuating atmosphere of the psyche is beautifully depicted with blazing colors and a graceful, whimsical touch in this super romantic movie. If you want to see what memories look like, through the funhouse mirrors of subjective distortion and fantastical visuals, this is the thing. What begins as an interesting what if? blossoms and unwraps into a beguiling and enchanting love story that will keep you at the edge of your consciousness. This movie somehow pulls off the extraordinary feat of being so real, moment to moment, while sweeping you off, further and further into the unraveling mental labirynth of a man who has decided that the pain of remembering someone who has left him is too much to bear. This brings up great questions about the pain love often brings. You come to realize what a treasure the negative as well as the positive aspects of a person you love truly are. Unconditional love seems near impossible most of the time. But nobody is perfect. Sometimes the things you love most about someone end up being the things you hate most, once you get sick of their perpetual presence. It's all relative. But there is a message of hope and a warning to not judge the person you're with before you have taken a good look at yourself. Also Kate Winslet looks fucking awesome and hot in all those crazy hair colors!



SECRETARY-2002
Steven Shainberg

This is the sweetest movie about S&M you'll ever see. It's also extremely hot, surprising and unique. The characters, played by James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhall are painfully real and flawed. He has near crippling OCD and she's a recovering cutter. Each in their own position, attempting to fit in to a socially prescribed behavior, they collide and challenge what each has come to accept as possible, acceptable and fun. There is a real tension in the push and pull between them, which is psychologically profound and pretty damn erotic. At its core, this is an old fashioned love story. If you think of Clark Gable smacking all those ladies who would just not behave and sassy charmers like Caudette Colbert giving him a run for his money, you see a similar dynamic. But this movie is honest, challenging, and ultimately raw and poetic. A must see for adventurous hearts.



THE NIGHT PORTER-1974
Liliana Cavani

This is a movie that walks the PC line of acceptability and flat out taboo. An unlikely romance between a young woman in a concentration camp and the guard who favored her blossoms in the most bleak of circumstances and is re-kindled after the war when she ends up in the hotel where he is now the night porter, with her conductor husband. He is living in hiding and has a network of fellow Nazis who must lay low now that their time is passed and war tribunals are hot on their tails. This love story is so wrong and yet it makes sense. It is a raw, beautiful, heart-wrenching battle for love against ALL odds. After all that has happened, it is his turn to prove his loyalty and devotion to her in any way he can. This movie blew my mind, and turned me on despite all that decency proclaims to be acceptable.



NEKROMANTIK-1987
Jorg Buttgereit

Best for last. Ahhh necrophilia. Romantic? Oh yes!
What do you do when your day job is crime scene clean up and you decide to give your girl a nice little surprise? You bring her a corpse she can play with of course! But then what happens if she likes her new toy more than she likes you?
This is the ridiculous premise of this moody German film by the questionably sane Jorg Buttgereit. Questions of insanity aside, this movie pulls off its premise with flying colors. True eroticism lies on the fault line between life and death. When I had finished watching the final scene of this surprisingly profound movie, I felt more alive than I ever had before. It was like drinking warm blood from the neck of a freshly slaughtered chicken, it was like shooting heroin must feel like the first time, like bungee jumping, like driving a racecar and barely surviving with your life. Man, what a hit. I'm not endorsing necrophilia. It seems unsanitary. But this movie uses a corpse as a fabulous metaphor for the need people have for true intimacy. This is a lovey film and is absolutely beautifully shot, but definitely not for the faint of heart.




HATE:

LOVE ME IF YOU DARE-2003

What begins as an adorable lover's romp darkens and twists in the most unpleasant ways and before you know it, the two kids who had performed casually escalating pranks on each other have become adults and are actively ruining each other's entire lives without mercy, all in the name of their DARE based interactions. Dying for love was never depicted this literally. Please don't see this. It is a HUGE bummer and not sweet or cute or awesome at all!




TITANIC-1997

Have you ever been raped by a movie? I was. I am a Titanic survivor. I was only 16 and still technically a virgin (I think). I sobbed a third of my weight in water that night. And the night after that. And the night after that. My boyfriend, brave soldier that he was, sat by my side, stifling laughter, as I got repeatedly skullfucked by this piece of sappy ass nonsense. I even bought the soundtrack!
Finally I woke up out of my trance, after the thousanth time they tried to soak my ears up with Celine Dion's Oscar winning hit, My Heart Will Go On, on MTV. (I guess watching MTV WAS kinda my choice, but again, I was 16)
I felt debased and made a fool of. There is no way to recover from that shame. But I take it one day at a time. Each day, the memory of why I ever cared about some rich bitch letting her boy die and not caring about all the people who died on that boat, fades a bit more. Maybe one day, I will be human again.

Romance Special continued: Garrett's top romantic movies

You've read about Spike Marlowe's favorite romantic movies, and here are mine, some traditional, some unorthodox, but all, in my opinion, the best.



1. Vertigo

The sexiest Hitchcock movie. A film that's intense and nuanced at the same time with no simple explanations or easy solutions for any of its characters. Jimmy Stewart losing his mind is a beautiful thing. Kim Novak driving him to distraction is an even more beautiful thing. It's a film that poses questions that are important to answer in any relationship. Questions about whether we can actually love someone or we can only love the self they project and if the self we project can break a lover's heart and our own heart alike. If you haven't seen this, you're losing out on a great, tragic romance.




2.Say Anything

Lloyd Dobler (Jon Cusack)is a likable but shiftless slacker. Diane (Ione Skye) is the valedictorian. Their relationship is a teen movie cliche, but there's a lot more to it. Say Anything is about two young people discovering life and love and what they find out isn't what you'd expect and isn't what other romantic comedies would tell you. Say Anything is about how there is no outright solution to life, how the answers and the values instilled in you aren't necessarily the be-all and end-all. It's ending, a sort of riff on that of The Graduate conveys how relationships take you to scary places, how growing up brings you to scary places, but together a couple can survive them. In a genre that thrives on everything being just so, this is a movie that stays romantic but tells it like it is in regards to life's uncertainties.



3.The Abominable Dr. Phibes

You're probably going to think I've gone out of my fucking mind. This violent cult curiosity and horror masterwork seems an unlikely choice for one of the most romantic movies. This is a movie about real devotion. A mute beauty's devotion to her misshapen master. A man's devotion to his dead wife. There's nothing more romantic than avenging your loved one's death in ludicrous, gory ways like having them devoured by locusts and exsanguinating them completely. Every time I see this movie, it makes me wish that I could buy vendetta insurance so anybody who accidentally kills someone I love will have to face my impractical steampunky vengeance.






4. Bringing Up Baby

One of the great screwball romantic comedies. Cary Grant is a paleontologist. Katherine Hepburn is a nuisance. They seem like an unlikely couple. In fact, as charming and sweet as Hepburn's character is, Grant would have to be out of his mind to fall for her. But somehow in spite of everything, these two end up together, having survived a ridiculous ordeal and seen the best and the worst in each other. And that's one of the things that love is really about. It might have been a prototype for a lot of stupid and cliche romantic comedies in the future, but it's message, its entertainment value and you know...a fucking leopard make it one of the best and most entertaining romances.



My Least Favorite

And here are two movies that I don't recommend bringing anywhere near your special romantic evening. These two nasty pieces of work from great directors leave me with a bad taste in my mouth and an ache in my heart.


1.Matchpoint

Is there anything more erotic than watching a sociopathic dick get away with murdering an innocent young woman? Murder can be sensual. Murder can be an exciting transgressive meeting of Eros and Thanatos. Or it can be disgustingly banal and sad, the sort of shit that's "ripped from the headlines". This movie is about as erotic as sitting on a hot steampipe and watching this movie, it feels like Woody Allen's parents made him sit naked on this very steampipe. This is not a sultry noir full of Scarlett Johannsen sex. This is about an awful person who does awful things and ends up killing to maintain a life of respectability. If this film gets your heart or your hardon aflutter then you might want to consider committing yourself.



2.Talk to Her

Ah, Almodovar. A master of bad romance. Until seeing Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down! I hated this director like I hate broccoli and fascism. And I hate broccoli and fascism. The reason I developed this hatred was Talk to Her, a harrowing film about a man who is in love with a matador in a coma. Makes you want to rush out and buy it right now, huh? Sounds like an exciting, sexy time. It isn't. It seems to say that the ideal relationship paradigm is nonparticipation. Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down! is a claustrophobic romance as well, but not nearly so claustrophobic as Talk to Her and has the charm of Antonio Banderas to keep it afloat. Talk to Her does not. By the end of the film, I felt like I was about to fall into a coma, or would be better off being in one.




If you'd like to further make use of my expertise in the arts of romance,you can order a custom sonnet from me. Tell me the name of your loved one and two things about them and for only five dollars, you can get your own one of a kind sonnet. FIND OUT MORE