Cine-Trash

Nothing But Trouble (Dan Aykroyd, 1991)
The Dark Backward (Alan Rifkin, 1991)

by William Ham

These two films belong together because of several striking similarities:

1) both are as meticulously designed as any big-budget major-studio effort;

2) both are the products of an impressively sustained vision;

3) each features a cast member of St. Elmo’s Fire (Demi Moore and Judd Nelson respectively) passing each other on the way to two opposite levels of notoriety;

4) both have intriguing premises (Nothing But Trouble concerns a pair of New York yuppies [Chevy Chase and Moore] getting ensnared in a Pennsylvania speed trap and ending up trapped in a burg where pre-Magna Carta laws still apply and traffic violations often result in the death penalty; The Dark Backward is the rags-to-rags story of a stand-up comic who grows a third arm — okay, so maybe intriguing isn’t quite the right word);

5) both have subplots involving, ah, extremely big-boned women;

6) both include jokes involving really repulsive foodstuffs;

7) both are so filled with rotting garbage, sadistic circumstances and overall ugliness that they seem to exist solely to utterly repulse the average viewer;

8) both succeed. Both of these pictures are so compellingly, overwhelmingly rancid that you can almost smell them, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. No wonder that freakish noses feature prominently in both; I’m not sure which is scarier, the hideous prosthetic schnozz on Aykroyd’s 120-year-old shire reeve (one of Aykroyd’s two roles in NBT — I won’t even try to describe the other one) or the nostrils Nature gave Nelson. I often wonder why both of these unique motion pictures were neglected at Oscar time.