Yuppies (Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, and pushy Brazilian couple Taylor Negron and Bertila Damas) are headed for Atlantic City, but make the mistake of taking a shortcut through a hellish dump called Valkenvania, and Chase further erring by running a red light. They are pulled over by no-nonsense cop John Candy, who takes them to the local courthouse/mansion (which looks like some kind of booby-trapped Gothic Funhouse), which is apparently surrounded by the local junkyard/toxic waste dump. There they are brought before the Centenarian JP Dan Aykroyd, an uber-cantankerous, bizarre man with a penis for a nose (!). He finds them guilty, sentences them to death (for traffic violation!), holes them up in his abode...and well, you don’t even want to hear what the preferred manner of execution is.

Candy turns up in a second role, in drag (!), as his character’s horny (but mute) mechanic sister (!). Daniel Baldwin (y’know, the beefy and frequently substance abusing one who walked out on “Celebrity Rehab” when it was discovered what a tool he is) and members of Digital Underground (including some dead guy named Tupac) play other ‘criminals’ awaiting trial, and perform a (terrible) song. It’s time to get jiggy wit’ Danny Aykroyd and his peeps, ‘yo! (My humble apologies. White guy in the building, y’all!).

Notoriously awful vanity project from 1991, the disastrous directorial debut of the genuinely talented actor/comedian/writer Dan Aykroyd (co-writer and co-star of the greatest comedy of all-time, “The Blues Brothers”) who drags some of his buddies to cinematic Hell with him in this self-consciously weird, pathetically unfunny oddity. The elaborately garish production design by William Sandell (“Robocop”, “Total Recall”, “The Flintstones”, “Hocus Pocus”) is the only thing in this atrocious misfire that is of any merit whatsoever. Unless the idea of the prosthetic nose on Aykroyd being made to look like a penis, is an instantly hilarious thing to you. Even at age 11, that idea was a lot less funny in actuality than it originally sounded. And yet, even the production design is a sign of how horrible the film is, because it clearly cost a lot of money (around $40 Million, whilst only grossing around $9 Million!) to make something of so little entertainment value! Did Aykroyd mistake himself for Terry Gilliam (“Brazil”, “Time Bandits”) or something? Mind you, Gilliam’s not known for restraint, either.

Chevy is coasting (and unlike usual, he can’t get away with it because he’s never given anything funny to say or do), the normally likeable Aykroyd is terribly self-indulgent (in two heavily made-up, freakish roles including his own mutant grandson), Moore is beautiful but out of her depth (no wonder she rarely does comedy- and “Ghost” doesn’t really count), while the loveable Candy tries hard but can’t even get laughs in drag (and he also plays the two least likeable characters of his entire career). Negron and Damas, meanwhile are just plain annoying (the latter is apparently a popular Spanish-language singer).

No idea how rap pioneers Digital Underground (featuring a young Tupac) got roped into this. Was Aykroyd trying to suggest he was down wit’ OPP? The only other thing I can say in its favour is perhaps that it’s not quite as unbearable as I remember. That is, I don’t remember the production design being as interesting as it is, second time around. But that’s not even faint praise, because it’s still one of the worst and most inexplicable films ever made. Folks, this is the kind of bad movie that the other bad movies laugh at, pick on, give ‘wedgies’ to, and don’t want to hang around with. The kind of bad movie that “Ishtar” and “North” say ‘Yo mamma!’ to. Anyway, you get the general idea. Chevy’s career, with the possible exception of “Memoirs of an Invisible Man”, has never recovered from this piece of overindulgent faecal matter, and should’ve sued Aykroyd for defamation of character. I mean, the guy used to make great (“National Lampoon’s Vacation”, “Spies Like Us”) or at least funny films (“Fletch”, “Three Amigos!”, “Foul Play”, “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”), but after this it’s been a bunch of flops or crummy family movies like “Cops and Robbersons” and “Snow Day”. He’s become the white Eddie Murphy, except Eddie earned an Oscar nomination somewhere in there, and still makes a lot more films than Chase these days. It’s so depressing to see genuinely funny people continually making bad career decisions and unfunny films.

The screenplay by Aykroyd (from a story by his brother Peter), isn’t a bad idea for a nightmarish black comedy in theory, but there isn’t a single laugh in it that I can recall. It’s all pretty wretched, though Aykroyd apparently based it on a real-life run-in with the backwoods law (for speeding) back in the late 70s. I assume he was on a lot of drugs either at the time of the incident, or when writing about it years later. Maybe both. But more importantly, what drugs were the people who green lit this film in the first place on? Orange Sunshine? (Thanks to the two of you who get that archaic Aykroyd “SNL” reference!)

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above