February 22, 2023
You’ve reached the place where all the bad, but oh-so-satisfying entertainment exists. Here, in the Trash Vortex, we provide you with only the trashiest, most bingeworthy recommendations. It’s a dark hole you won’t escape!
Food-Based Stories
Ratatouille. Julie & Julia. Eat, Pray, Love. We’ve all seen films about the transformative power of a good meal… but what about when food is used in a less conventional way? This week, take a bite out of a movie about the foods you don’t want to be eating—for better or for worse. Bone apple teeth!
Troll 2
You may be wondering: What does a 1990 film called Troll 2 have to do with food? A lot, actually. The plot of Troll 2 revolves around a family on a vacation in a small country town called Nilbog. Yes, for you sharp-eyed readers, that’s “goblin” spelled backward. This is because Nilbog is a town run by goblins—goblins who feed unsuspecting victims delicious, slime-covered meals in order to turn them into plants. Incidentally, the goblins are vegetarians. I’m sure you can tell where this is going.Technically, this is meant to be a horror movie. But between the performances that sound as though the actors were given their lines ten minutes before rolling the cameras, the unfortunate dialogue, and the baffling set design, Troll 2 has become known by B-movie fanatics as one of the worst movies of all time. In 2009, its infamy spawned a documentary about the making of the film titled Best Worst Movie—but its true legacy lies in its appearance in dozens of “funniest scene ever!” YouTube compilations.Look out for my favorite scene, in which a particularly sexy snaggle-toothed goblin seduces a teenage boy into eating corn.
—Kana Coonce, Trash Vortex Editor
The Peanut Butter Solution
When you think of “so-bad-it’s-good” movies, what usually comes to mind? Typical responses I hear are something like Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, or maybe a hastily written Hallmark movie that trips and falls over every cliché in the book. To me, the de facto “so-bad-it’s-good” movie is 1985’s The Peanut Butter Solution. This Canadian children’s movie is nothing short of a fever dream and is definitely a movie you’d want to watch, and make fun of, with a couple of good friends.The core plot revolves around a boy named Michael, whose friends dare him to enter a haunted house, which proves to be so scary for him that he loses all of his hair. After some failed attempts to hide his baldness, he receives the recipe for the titular “Peanut Butter Solution” from the very ghosts that scared him in the first place. This serum, once made correctly, makes the user’s hair grow overnight. Unfortunately for our hero, Michael made a mistake while preparing it, and now his hair just won’t stop growing. I know that may seem like a lot already, but trust me, this is only the tip of the iceberg.This gets you about 20 minutes into the movie, and it already sounds deranged. Without getting much further into it (mainly to spare you the gruesome details, but also just in case you actually wanted to watch it), the rest of only gets progressively more and more insane. There’s an evil teacher with a funny pet dog, a major town-wide conspiracy, brief depictions of unpaid child labor, as well as magic paint brushes, which just feel par for the course at this point. When I tell you this movie is a fever dream, I really am not lying to you. I’ve seen it countless times at this point, and I swear I only get more confused on each watch. I’m lucky enough to have a VHS copy, but a couple of people have just uploaded it to YouTube for free. If you want something utterly baffling, yet wildly entertaining, check out The Peanut Butter Solution one of these days.
—Andrew Wiegman
Chainsaw Man feels like what would result if Quentin Tarantino made an anime, which is to say it’s violent, irreverent, and every character is the worst person you’ve ever met. It’s also a great time!
Shiki follows a rural village beset by a rash of mysterious deaths, with several shifts in perspective along its 22-episode run. Don’t let the silly character designs fool you; Shiki is one of the more reflective horror anime out there. What begins as a slow-burn mystery turns into a study of the human spirit when faced with something incomprehensible, to devastating results. Shiki is an underappreciated (and frankly underrated) gem. Also, few openings are cooler. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, Shiki is unavailable for legal streaming in the United States—Funimation’s license for the series expired in June of 2018. Anyone wanna go splitskies on a box set? Only $150 on eBay!
One of my all-time favorite films, Perfect Blue is a 1997 psychological thriller directed by the masterful late Satoshi Kon. When Mima Kirigoe, a member of a Japanese pop-idol group, decides to quit the group in order to pursue a career in acting, she finds her sense of reality shaken as she is pursued by a stalker.