Against all good sense and judgment, the Unstreamable crew will screen The Garbage Pail Kids Movie on October 7th, 8th, and 9th @ Northwest Film Forum unless an act of god intervenes. 

The world pooh-poohed the movie when it debuted in 1987. “They should have kept a lid on The Garbage Pail Kids Movie,” complained the LA Times. “Where is Miss Manners when you need her?” asked the New York Times. But more recently, Slant described it as an “amusing spectacle.” Cinema Crazed admitted it “warrants at least one viewing.” And it does. The kids deserve to be let out of their can, at least once a decade. So, come on, take a whiff. Tickets are on sale now 🙂 

Unstreamable is a column that recommends movies and TV shows you can’t watch on major streaming services in the United States. We publish every Wednesday. 

Got a recommendation? Give us the scoop at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.

THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS MOVIE

USA, 1987, 100 min, Dir. Rod Amateau

What even are the Garbage Pail Kids? These grody Cabbage Patch Kids knock-offs introduced themselves to the world as parody trading cards in the mid-’80s. Kids allegedly loved them, even though they had halitosis and gas and came with names like Adam Bomb and Handy Randy. The cards were so popular and gross that teachers banned them from schools. Unfortunately, nobody banned them from the box office, so we ended up with this cult piece of trash, Garbage Pail Kids: The Movie.

This famous stinker is about a teenage nerd named Dodger and the grubby little things who fall in love with him. One day, while schoolyard bullies are beating him, Dodger knocks over a magic trash can and voila out comes the Garbage Pail Kids, a group of noxious monsters who won’t leave our young hero alone. They can’t stop farting, but we’re told they mean well. Dodger is in no position to turn away friends.

Some people have called this the worst movie ever made, and it would be exciting if they’re right. “Extreme bad and extreme good is very good,” Warhol said. “What’s no good is in between.” This movie proudly belongs at the very bottom of the trash can. JAS KEIMIG & CHASE BURNS.

Find it in the Kids Section under Children’s Live Action.

THEY ALL LAUGHED

USA, 1981 year, 115 minutes, Dir. Peter Bogdanovich

The plot of Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed is pretty silly. An NYC detective agency sends their three brightest after two beautiful women whose husbands suspect their infidelity. This motley crew of gumshoes ends up falling for the women, played by Dorothy Stratten and THEE Audrey Hepburn, and a game of secret affairs between the characters blasts off. There’s a certain freshness and hustle to the film, shot mostly on the streets of the Big Apple, though the chemistry can feel off between the characters. 

Tragedy also undergirds this romcom. Shortly after production wrapped, Dorothy Stratten, a former Playboy model and Bogdanovich’s girlfriend, was murdered by her estranged husband. Her violent death sent Bogdanovich and the film into a tailspin. He ended up self-distributing the movie, losing tons of money in the process. (He eventually wrote a much-derided book about the making of They All Laughed and Stratten’s murder called The Killing of the Unicorn.)

Frank Sinatra gave Bogdanovich permission to use five of his songs in the movie—“I think he felt sorry for me,” the director said in a later interview—but I suspect that Sinatra’s music, Bogdanovich’s self-distribution, and the movie’s production company folding are some of the reasons They All Laughed is not available to stream. It’s a shame because Audrey Hepburn is an absolute delight in it. JAS KEIMIG

Find this in the Directors section under Bogdanovich, Peter.

JEEVES & WOOSTER

UK, 1990-1993, one-hour comedy, directed by Ferdinand Fairfax, Simon Langton, and Robert Young

A rare example of absolutely every position being filled by precisely the right (and only) person who could fill it, Jeeves & Wooster overflows with Very Particular Style. Adapted from a collection of silly P.G. Wodehouse books, the British series presents Bertie Wooster (played by Hugh Laurie) and his manservant Jeeves (Stephen Fry), galavanting into and out of trouble in a fabulously wealthy milieu of the 1920s. Bertie is an idiot, and constantly finds himself wandering cluelessly into mayhem; Jeeves is a perfect gentleman, and would never go so far as to suggest that it is his intervention that saves the day on every occasion. (Think The Nanny but with the stiffest of upper lips.)

Writer Clive Exton is apparently some kind of wizard, so perfect is his apprehension of the Wodehouse style. And the comedy sings, thanks to the absolutely masterful casting of Laurie and Fry — who were already famous for A Bit of Fry & Laurie. Though the content is so light and airy as to leave barely any impression whatsoever, it has proven difficult to adapt in the past: A musical version was one of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s most calamitous flops.

A movie version with Fry and Laurie was discussed, and even strongly supported by John Cleese, but never materialized. But that’s probably for the best, since the television series is as faithful a literary adaptation as one could possibly achieve, wisely concluding after four seasons just as the comedy threatened to go stale. MATT BAUME

Find it in the British Comedy Television section. 

NOW STREAMABLE! Every week we feature on formerly unstreamable movie that’s now on streaming platforms. 

AYNEH (THE MIRROR)

Iran, 1997, 95 min, Dir. Jafar Panahi

At first glance, The Mirror seems like a girl version of Abbas Kiarostami’s Where’s the Friend’s House? Both take place in Iran (one in an urban city center, the other in a rural countryside), both feature determined little children running around their communities, both seem to take a neorealist slice-of-life approach to telling the story. But about halfway through The Mirror, things start to diverge. I won’t spoil it fully, but fourth walls are broken and stuff gets a little experimental. Director Jafar Panahi takes the simple story of a first-grade girl named Mina (Mina Mohammad Khani) wandering around the city after her mother is late picking her up from school and turns it into a meditation on how reality and imagination are bound up in each other. Panahi watches Mina from a distance, often filming her with a zoomed-in lens from yards away, traffic interrupting our view. My favorite parts are when she’s running down the busy sidewalks in the city in her scarf and sweater, just barely holding onto her backpack, her shoes pounding the pavement beneath her. There’s something stubborn and free about her that frees me. JAS KEIMIG

Find it in the Directors section under Panahi, Jafar. It’s available to stream on Criterion Channel.

Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.

The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. Yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.