Far From Home (1989)

A meek writer and his fourteen year old daughter (Drew Barrymore) are heading back to L.A. from their summer camping vacation when they get stuck without gas in East Inbred, Nevada. It looks bleak, but they are in luck. The town, although not on the interstate, not possessing one single drop of gasoline, and not sporting a population over 150 people, does have a tourist trailer court and a vacancy sign! I suppose if we can accept the presence of the overnight accommodations, we shouldn't be surprised by the vacancy! They probably haven't rented the trailers out since the Harding administration, but they are eternally optimistic and have several Coke machines.

The city slickers find that their stay in the town turns into Deliverance Two, with the desert playing the part of the river. In fact, it's just their luck that the town is proud to be the smallest town in America with its own serial killer. They even have it listed on the welcome sign: "Welcome to East Inbred, home of the largest grain silo in a town without grain, and home to the serial murderer who has killed the highest percentage of his town's population. Support our veterans." Except the "s" is crossed out of "veterans."

You'd think a dedicated serial killer would move to a bigger population center just to increase his options. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe the guy has been murdering for decades and East Inbred used to be a really big city. Well, however the math works out, the fact of the matter is that Drew and her dad are getting a little panicky being in a small town with a known serial killer because the killer has pretty much exhausted all his other murderin' options. And murder isn't the half of their problems! During Drew Barrymore's short stay in East Inbred, the traumatized city girl faces the three worst things that can happen to a human being: rape, murder, and a long conversation with Jennifer Tilly.

Although Drew Barrymore was only 14 at the time, this was more or less her introduction into acting in the world of grown-up roles. She showed off her already mammoth mammaries in a wet t-shirt, walked around in a bikini, and flirted with creepy rapin', murderin', inbred country boys.

... pretty much like Drew's real life at the time.

... except without the booze and pills.

The film is approximately average straight-to-vid quality. It's completely predictable and trite, but the storyline is coherent, and the whole project is kinda barely watchable.

One of the film's more important roles is played by one of our old favorites, Dick Miller. This guy would have to own some kind of record if we could figure out how to define it properly. I don't know whether he has been in more bad movies than anyone else in history, but he certainly was in bad movies over a longer period than almost anyone else. In 1956 Miller appeared in Gunslinger, rated 3.5 at IMDb. Forty five years later, he appeared in Route 666, a film rated 4.1 at IMDb. Here's his amazing filmography ordered by IMDb rating. You'll notice that he has also managed to appear in some major films from time to time. He was in The Terminator, and just missed appearing in Pulp Fiction. The famous Tarantino film is listed on Miller's filmography, but his appearance ended up on the cutting room floor.

To be honest, John Carradine would probably own this uncoveted longevity record if his career were fully documented. I suppose that Carradine was in really bad films for about sixty years, but very few of his films from the 1930s and 1940s have an IMDb score.

• Drew Barrymore (1, 2)
• Susan Tyrrell (1, 2), who must be the least attractive woman to appear naked frequently
• Teri Weigel. The bad girl rogue Playmate appeared only as a disembodied chest in a darkened trailer.

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Other Crap archives. May also include newer material than the links above, since it's sorta in real time.

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MOVIE REVIEWS:

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.

A Dirty Shame (2004) is the latest John Waters masterpiece. The premise is that a town is being overrun by sexual deviants. They don't start out that way, but when something strikes them in the head giving them a concussion, they become perverts, each with their own unique fetish, and all under the leadership of Ray Ray (Johnny Knoxville). Tracey Ullman is the most recent convert to deviance, and she discovers that her daughter (Selma Blair, with enormous prosthetic breasts) has been in the group for years. There is, of course, a moral outcry from the moral majority portion of the citizenry, who hold rallies and call themselves the neuters.

This is a very raunchy film, with more slang terms for sex acts than I even knew existed. Even the trees and bushes are shaped like sex organs. Absent in this film is the gross imagery Waters is known for, which I found a big plus. IMDb readers say 5.9. I found myself enjoying most of this. Sure, it is silly, but is that always bad? C.
 

• Thumbnails
• Susan Allenbach does a lengthy full frontal in good light.  ( 1, 2, 3, 4)
• Selma Blair shows off her immense prosthetic hooters at a dance club. ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Randi Brooks in "The Man With Two Brains."

• Collages (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
• Film clips - zipped .wmvs (1, 2)

Shelley Duvall in "Thieves Like Us."

• Collages (1, 2)
• Film clip (zipped .wmv)

Halina Reijn
 

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