Les Patterson Saves the World (1987)

As a major MST3K fan any film known for being one of the worst movies ever made interests me for laughs.Take it from an MST3K fan, 'Les Patterson Saves The World' is far too horrible to even laugh at. Every last second is nails on a chalkboard!The mere fact that it stars Dane Edna as the title character should be enough to scare you off from this film altogether.The plot: (if you really want to know) revolves around a fat middle aged 24/7 drunkard who represents Australia at the UN where his fart literally incinerates an Arab ambassador.American President Joan Rivers (that's the name of her character as well, there's another reason to avoid this film, or maybe Rivers counts as several reasons) orders Australia to assign Patterson to the country he's just insulted so they can torture him to death.Patterson's arrival in the Middle East provides the perfect distraction for a coup and he is spared.While at a bar Patterson meets a bio weapons scientist who's developed a horrific dieses for the KGB whom plan to distribute it to the Pentagon via toilet seats. Patterson of course is far too drunk to understand anything happening, (the audience must envy him) and ends up teaming up with Dane Edna. Do not see 'Les Patterson Saves The World!' Do not see 'Les Patterson Saves The World!' Do not see 'Les Patterson Saves The World!' No matter how bored you are or even if it's part of a drinking game. No amount of alcoholic can dull the pain of 'Les Patterson Saves The World!'

The scene in the revolving restaurant of the Sydney Tower comes a full ten years after The Goodies did it in the "Alternative Roots" episode (1977). Graeme Tim and Bill (in their ancestral guises of Celtic Kilty, County Cutie and Kinda Kinky) have been kidnapped by an unscrupulous tour leader who is taking them on a whirlwind tourist tour of London. He forces them up to the revolving restaurant of the Post Office tower (the same one that Twinkle the giant kitten famously toppled). The restaurant spins faster and faster until all the diners are stuck to the windows via centrifugal force. This scene is of course considerably shorter and less expensive than the one set in the Sydney Tower in Les Patterson Saves the World, but no doubt both sequences derive from a universal and visceral mistrust of revolving restaurants.

I don't know what the problem is with some of IMDb's viewers. Maybe their sense of humor is atrophied, or maybe they're just a bunch of prisses. "Les Patterson" is one of my all-time favorite comedies, and the title character, played by the comic genius Barry Humphries, is earthy, lusty, memorable, and larger than life -- laughing-out-loud funny and raunchy but also endearing and in a certain way almost inspiring, with elements of Rabelais, Falstaff, and R. Crumb. (I'm told, unaccountably, that Humphries himself is none too proud of this film today; if that's the case, I'm mystified. Maybe he hasn't seen it in a while.) Try this movie for around 15 minutes; if that doesn't convince you, well, switch it off and go watch a sitcom.

The brilliant Australian comic genius Barry Humphries had a rare failure with this uneven, and occasionally distasteful comedy, which was snatched back from release after only a few days. Drunken, lecherous Australian diplomat Sir Les Patterson accidentally sets an Arab potentate on fire at the UN and is posted to his tiny country as punishment, arriving just as a palace coup puts a new leader (American soap star Thaao Penghlis) on the throne. Sir Les, with the reluctant help of Dame Edna Everage (Both played by Humphries) almost accidentally foils a scheme by the new leader to release a deadly, disgusting, AIDS-like virus on the Western World. Joan Rivers has a cameo as the female President of the United States, her desk plate reading "President Rivers"! Extreme bad taste mingles with slapstick and Humphries' usual scathing satire in a film which is more enjoyable in it's many funny parts, than taken together as a whole. Dame Edna's TV fans may be puzzled by the presence of a different Madge Allsop, sadly, one who lacks Emily Perry's wonderful drab comedy magic in the role. The film was written By Humphries & his third wife, Diane Millstead, and directed by the Mad Max man himself, George Miller. For die-hard Humphries fans like myself, essential. All others, beware.