The Nostril Picker (1988)

On one thing, it seems all of us reviewing this movie agree regardless of our ratings: it's bad. On all else, it seems we disagree: I find The Nostril Picker to be neither as hilariously awful as some are making it out to be, nor yet the *Worst* *Film* *Ever* that others are claiming. To be sure, everything in it was some level of bad, from the writing and the acting to the directing and producing; just not bad enough to inspire much reaction from me either way.In fact, The Nostril Picker mostly brings to mind an early Bloom County strip in which Opus gets a job as a film critic at the Bloom Picayune and proceeds to rip a certain movie up one side and down the other in an extremely negative review, only to pause for a moment of contemplation and then backtrack by saying "Well, maybe not that bad, but Lord, it wasn't good." To any critics saying this is the worst movie they've ever seen, I can honestly say you should be grateful if this is truly the worst movie you ever see in your lifetime: I have indeed seen worse. That said, I'll readily admit that I've only seen worse movies on very rare occasions; to paraphrase the penguin, it's not *that* bad, but "Lord, it wasn't good."When a movie's plot isn't very original, critics often use the term "by-the-numbers" to describe the story. While such a description might apply here as well, I prefer to call it "plug-and-play plotting" for this movie. The general setup at the beginning makes the movie seem as if its script had originally been written for another cookie-cutter "erotic" (i.e. pornographic) movie, with the neighborhood creep with a hankering for high school girls learning a magic trick from a bum on the street that allows him to infiltrate their school by looking like he's a high school girl himself. Certainly, in the montage that follows his realizing that the magic trick actually works, he presses his advantage at every opportunity by infiltrating the girls' social circle and one of their school's bathrooms (and presumably their locker rooms and showers as well, though only the bathroom is shown on-screen).Where a porno would subsequently have him either deceitfully seducing or forcibly raping these easily befuddled young girls, this movie swaps out sex for violence, turning this into a slasher flick in which he slaughters and violates them with his switchblade and cannibalizes them instead. With this sudden genre shift, it also turns into a kind of police procedural as the focus shifts to the police chief (who conveniently happens to be the father of one of the girls the villainous protagonist is targeting) in his efforts to apprehend him. Then, as with many horror flicks, it ends with the bad guy winning so that we can experience the final "shock" (which most of us could probably see coming a mile away) of watching him prey on his last victim just when she thought she was finally safe.When famous actors give a lackluster performance in a movie, one often hears critics speak of their "phoning it in" for that movie. In this case, since nobody in this movie was ever famous, I would tend to refer to these poor performances as "reading it out" instead: while everyone on camera was speaking his and her lines with more expression than—say—the children in a Charlie Brown cartoon, every spoken line sounds like nothing more than a direct reading of the script with whatever emotion the characters are supposed to be expressing also sounding completely scripted. Watching the actors and actresses reciting their emotions along with their lines, one can hardly help imagining that for the entire duration, somebody was prompting them "Now say it again, but try to sound angry/sad/shocked this time."Of course, in their defense, they weren't exactly working with the greatest material in the first place. The whole movie is rife with plot holes such as why, if the bum on the street knows a magic trick that he learned from his tour of duty in Vietnam that can make him look like anyone he wants, he didn't just use that trick to his own advantage. One also has to wonder why the writers felt compelled to have a lady psychiatrist about halfway through the movie dump a steaming load of exposition about the villainous protagonist's horrendously abusive childhood on us when no such background was really relevant or necessary; his personality is already established at the beginning, and he doesn't develop it any further in the rest of the movie.The sum of all these messily spliced-together plot points and barely-competent performances in this low-to-no-budget "video nasty" is a boring mess of blood and female flesh that neither titillates nor horrifies as intended. So why am I giving this hopelessly incompetent waste of celluloid three stars instead of just giving it one and expressing the lay-critic's common wish that a no-star rating were available? Three reasons:1) As mentioned, this is *not* the worst movie I've ever seen.2) Most of the people involved in the making of this film did at least seem to be making a credible effort to make it entertaining. Though they failed, one does owe them a certain measure of respect for trying.3) Somewhere in this misshapen mess, there's a good workable story people might actually want to see struggling to emerge. The underlying premise could be developed as a sexual psychodrama, or a black comedy, or even as a heart-warming tale of redemption (if the pervert protagonist could be reformed). Seeing this might inspire someone to write a better story.In other words, maybe it's not a complete waste of celluloid after all; though if you're a writer looking for inspiration, one viewing ought to suffice for you to get what little value you can out of it.

Joe Bukowski is a homicidal maniac freshly released from mental asylum.He learns a chant from a homeless man in return for a small proportion of his alcoholic beverage and this chant transforms Joe into a form of anybody he pleases.So he is transformed into the body of high school girl.His main target are other high school girls attending high school close to his dirty and squalid home.Joe murders them one by one with a pocket knife..."The Nostril Picker" by Mark Nowicki is easily one of the most puerile and amateurish slasher flicks I have ever seen.It's still watchable and pretty funny as it plays like demented Troma flick with plenty of gore but without nudity.The killing scenes are pretty bloody for example there is the scene of a girl,who gets all her fingers cut off with one swipe of a swich-blade.7 teenage girls out of 10.A cult flick.

This film never ceases to entertain, I must have seen it more than 20 times over the years and it never gets dull. The scene in the police station where the abused tranny tries to maintain his/her dignity while reporting the vibrator attack...Cop:'He attacked you with a what?'...tranny 'He attacked me with a thingy!...you know a thingy!' Cop: 'ma'am are you trying to tell me he attacked you with a dildo?'The acting may be sub-par, but this is really honest film making. Only the truly cynical could complain about the subject matter; It's called 'The Nostril Picker' people...what were you expecting?!?!They just don't make them like this anymore, laugh or cry you'll love it! Fantastic!

I bought this movie exciting a gloriously gratuitous, over the top, entertaining bloodbath. I got none of them. This film fails on practically every level, not in the least frightening, or funny, it is simply terrible film-making, and never provides the audience with anything worth seeing. What is so bad about it is that far from being as raw, violent and brutal as it had promised to be, there is very little violence at all. Virtually no blood shed, and no excitement whatsoever. Acting, direction and dialogue is absolutely unbearable. Honestly, it is truly laughable. I could hardly sit through this total garbage once; I certainly will never want to watch it again. Don't waste your time with a waste of celluloid like this; it is truly possibly the worst film ever made. If I could give it minus stars, I would.