AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

RorschachKovacs 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.

ObscureCinema101 I've seen a lot of movies with weird titles in my day, but THE NOSTRIL PICKER takes the cake. Can you just imagine what this movie is about? If you haven't read the description of it, no, you can't, because this movie really isn't about nostril picking.Joe is a loser whose life is changed when he meets a homeless Vietnam vet who tells him he will teach Joe a magic spell if Joe lets him have some of his booze. Well, with this magic spell, Joe can change into anyone he wants to whenever he hums his favorite song. Well, Joe, being the creepy pervert that he is, changes into a high school girl so he can go into the girls showers and stuff like that without being detected. However, doing this will slowly drive him insane, and soon, he begins to kill off high school girls. Can the police chief, whose daughter is friends with Joe's alter ego, stop the killer before it's too late?No matter who you are, you haven't seen anything quite like this movie. I guess the only proper way to review it is to go into the basics. For the most part, the acting was more wooden than a pirate ship, but it looked like most everyone was having fun making the movie. However, when one girl got her fingers cut off, she didn't even have any sort of look of pain on her face; it almost looked like she was bored. It also feels like the director started filming without a script and was just making it up as he went, which adds to the hilarity. The gore effects are atrocious, because the blood they use has a pinkish tinge to it. There's also a really predictable and very stupid ending to go with it.Now, the sole enjoyment that one can get out of THE NOSTRIL PICKER is through all the hilarious scenes. There's the aforementioned terrible acting and gore, the sheer stupidity of the premise, some of the dialogue ("He attacked me with a thingy!"), and just how weird some of the scenes are (Joe chases a transvestite around his apartment with a squirting dildo).And, of course, I must mention the school montage. So Joe goes to high school and there's a montage of, basically, him slacking off, smoking, and spying on the girls, all set to this incredible song that just repeats, "Schooooooo-ooOOo-lin'…I've got to get me some schooooooooo-ooOOo-lin'…" over and over again. It's pants-wettingly hilarious. Given how much I laughed at it, I should probably give THE NOSTRIL PICKER a 6/10. But I just can't bring myself to do it. I don't think I could ever respect myself again.

cb94 This film is a good film, I don't mean blockbuster epic good, but beer and pizza night with a few mates good. It's trash, that's all it is, trash. But enjoyable trash, and at times, rather funny.Okay so there's no good acting, not even a good plot, but watch it and leave your brain at the door and you will found out what an enjoyable film this is.Pure 80's horror trash. A few people got together and said 'I want to make a film' so they made the most stupid, most puerile film they could think of.But they watched it back and laughed, so this is a film you can never take seriously, not 1%. And it deserves that, it is a movie to laugh at, not make sense of.

orcadiansmeghead Let me tell you this. This is THE video nasty you need to get. The acting is the worst I have ever seen! I saw kids in the remedial class at school put together better films than this in GSE! The special effects genuinely give you that real image.... - of someone, at the side of the set, throwing ketchup across the place!! It is the worst made 'horror' movie I have ever seen, but then don't all real movie buffs get off watching Plan 9 from outer Space, and Glen or Glenda? Edward D Wood jnr had his failures, all of which ended up as cult classics in the 21st century, and if you are into this kind of rubbish, The Nostril Picker is now on general release in the UK, in the 'His Masters Voice' stores, in the 'under a fiver' budget range. The basic storyline is that a layabout weirdo offers his stash to a local hobo living in a box behind a bus shelter, in exchange for the hobo's secret knowledge regarding a voodoo chant he heard in an underpass some time, that once recited, turns a man into a female of his choice. Whether he picks his nostril or not during the chant is unimportant. He can then go on using his female 'cloak' and murder whoever he wants without the authorities discovering him - unless he is photographed. If he is, his real identity will be discovered. Oh, and if he recites the chant too many times, he will go crazy. Sounds crazy? It is! Beyond belief. It is truly so poorly made, you can not watch it without the edges of your mouth curling upward. I have never seen the end of this film, but I have put it on so many times, I have lost count. You won't get to the end because you will fall asleep - laughing. And, you will have a DVD title, no-one else you know has! The Nostril Picker is truly a triumph amongst bad taste films. Did I mention that the sound is so poor you will swear you saw the kid recording it on set with his tape recorder? Or that the end credits have the usual - Gaffer, Best Boy, Make Up, AND - Weak Story Development.? Get this film. Most serious film-ers love to hate it - or hate to love it. I love it and it is the pride of my DVD collection!!!