Hey-o, palorinos! It has been a hot minute, how are y’all doing? I’m feeling fine for the first time in a long time, so I wanted to share a little bliss with y’all – five wacky/colourful/bizarre/chaotic/occasionally cursed flicks to watch this summer! Some of ’em are hard to swallow, others not so much. Hoping you find something that tickles your fancy!

EARTH GIRLS ARE EASY (1988) – Chaotic Good

Okay, I arrived way late to the Earth Girls Are Easy party, but man… this has simply got to be one of the greatest flicks ever made. Keep them eyes from rollin’ and hear me out on this one, would ya? We all love a good Geena-Davis-and-Jeff-Goldblum-in-love movie, right? If ya dug The Fly (1986), imagine just that but instead of Goldblum morphing into a human fly (buzz buzz buzz!), he is a fuzzy little alien dude that crashed his spaceship in Davis’ swimming pool. There is a hero arc to boot! You see, Valerie (Davis) has a shitty husband who is very clearly cheating on her. She handles it the best way possible (by destroying all of his shit, fuck him!) and as fate would have it, the cute little aliens land in the pool shortly thereafter. After teaching ’em how to act like functioning humans and giving them a beachy makeover, the boys become total chick magnets. Jim Carrey is one o’ the aliens, and I’m happy to report that this is the second hottest Carrey we’ve seen on screen (see: The Dead Pool (1988) for hot Carrey no. 1). If all of this wasn’t enough to warm a cold, dead heart, the alien trio end up in a vehicular collision with none other than Hollywood icon, Angelyne. This movie is literally everything I wanted Alien From LA (1988) to be and I feel like I robbed myself of 26 years of joy due to not having seen this sooner.

---

LIQUID SKY (1982) – Chaotic Neutral? Evil?

Have you noticed that 90% of the New York movies of the ’70s and ’80s are predominantly fixated on heroin use? I nearly followed this up by stating that Liquid Sky is the funnest – it is by no means a fun movie at all, it is just really fucking weird and visually stimulating beyond comprehension. This is an art film all about heroin addicted aliens that kill punks when they cum. It sounds weird as fuck, and it is. There are some really difficult scenes to watch, and the sound design is intended to be extremely jarring and disruptive. Somehow it works, however, and it serves as a fantastic time capsule of the New York New Wave scene of the early ’80s. If you love visual artists like Andy Warhol and David Bowie, you’ll likely dig it. Or maybe you won’t, but you should probably watch it anyways because it is truly a unique experience – whether that be interpretted as good or bad will vary greatly depending on the viewer. Might be perceived as pretentious for those of y’all that don’t have… unique? (damaged) brains like mine.

---

TAPEHEADS (1988) – Chaotic Good

I am still unsure if I actually like this movie or not, but it has one very important segment that I’ll get to later. Tapeheads is about a couple of dudes (John Cusack and Tim Robbins, if you’ve heard of them) that get into the music video business. This is extremely fun if you love musicals, though Tapeheads isn’t a fullbore one. The soundtrack is great, it is chock-full of cameos and really creative music videos throughout. The most important thing about this movie is the fact that it features Stiv Bators fronting a fictitious band called Blender Children. Their specific music video portion feels like a W.A.S.P. video, and it is a fucking trip to see Stiv belting out lyrics involving suicide and atomic bombs over heavy metal riffs. Straight up, this is the closest Stiv ever got to sleaze metal and it is solely for some random music video movie that seemingly nobody has seen. Unreal!

---

POLYESTER (1981) – Chaotic Good? Neutral? Evil? I don’t know, it is John Waters

I am a huge fan of Divine and John Waters, and despite Female Trouble (1974) being my personal favourite, I think Polyester is a substantially more concrete film. Divine plays a suburban housewife plagued by family affairs that have poisoned her life. Her husband, a pornographer, is cheating on her; Her daughter, pregnant; and her son is a foot fetishist that is suspected of breaking local women’s feet. Oozing with satirical drama, I cannot help but wish I lived in this very specific universe. As if the whole notion of a drag queen playing a distraught, middle aged woman in the throes of lust and rage weren’t enough of a novelty, Stiv Bators is in this flick, too. A greaser, to boot! Perfection all around, and don’t even get me started on those odorama cards! They totally work. We need more scratch and sniff movies, if ya ask me!

---

THE BOYS NEXT DOOR (1985) – Chaotic Evil

You know who is a fantastic filmmaker albeit criminally underrated? Penelope Spheeris. Though I’ve seen a surge in love and adoration for Suburbia (1984) in more recent years, I feel like folks may be sleeping on the rest of her filmography. The Boys Next Door stands out for me personally because at a glance it looks like any other road-trip-with-your-buddy-feel-good-fare that was so common in the 1980s. It doesn’t take long to realize that what is in store is something much more dark and disturbing. Following the lead of his friend Roy (Maxwell Caulfield), Bo (Charlie Sheen) goes to Hollywood for a little post-graduation party. Things quickly spiral into violence and hatred, and the young duo find themselves with a trail of bodies in their wake. This movie will make you feel like shit, but I know some of y’all are into that sorta thing – I apparently am. To say anything more would spoil it, so please watch this movie. It deserves far more attention than it has received.