Horror in the 90s: 'Nothing But Trouble'

Nothing But Trouble (1991)

Directed by Dan Akroyd

Written by Dan Akroyd

Starring Chevy Chase, Demi Moore, Dan Akroyd, John Candy

Release Date February 15th, 1991

Box Office $8.4 million dollars

Why does Dan Akroyd's elderly villain in Nothing But Trouble have the top of a penis for a nose? Why would this be funny? Is it intended to funny? Is it intended to be disturbing? It's certainly confusing. It achieves a high level of confusing. For the life of me, no matter how often I turn this idea over in my mind, I cannot understand the choice of having Akroyd's elderly villain creep have the tip of a penis for a nose. I imagine you reading this and kind of laughing to yourself as the absurdity of the idea of a penis tip for a nose. You're not wrong to laugh, it is absurd, but it's not funny.

And that is the deeply unfunny heart of 1991's Nothing But Trouble, it's often something you may laugh at but not for the reasons that director Dan Akroyd assumes you will laugh. For Akroyd, the presentation of something is enough to call it a joke. For instance, his penis tip nose or the sight of John Candy in a dress playing his own sister. These visuals are presented to us as if we are supposed to laugh at them, but they aren't actually doing anything funny, either visually or otherwise, and thus we are left only confused at the choice to show us these things.

Another thing that writer-director Dan Akroyd thinks is funny but most assuredly is not, is Akroyd's pal, Chevy Chase at his most smug and exhausting. Akroyd has bought into Chase's delusion that just being smug engenders being charming and funny. Chase never says a single funny line in Nothing But Trouble but he's presented by Akroyd as the height of charming. Chase however, is merely arrogant and dismissive of others in a way that might be funny if Chase weren't so dead behind the eyes. Chase is all surface, no substance and his minor barbs lobbed at the villainous characters in Nothing But Trouble, never land.

Nothing But Trouble stars Chevy Chase as Chris, a stock expert who has made millions giving stock advice. He lives a fabulous life in a fabulous New York City apartment with fabulous friends that he can barely tolerate. One day, on the way home to a party in his own apartment, Chris meets his new neighbor, Diane (Demi Moore). It's not a meet cute in the traditional sense, it's more of two people sharing the same space that the script requires to be together. To say that Moore and Chase don't share a particular chemistry is an understatement. It appears to take a lot of effort from Moore to be in a scene with Chase, struggling to find a place amid the odor of his massive ego.

Diane has just lost a big client in Atlantic City and she desperately needs a ride. She asks Chris, who she just met, if she can borrow his car and he insists on driving her himself because she looks great in a dress. A pair of Chris' most obnoxious party guests, played in broad South American caricatures by comedian Taylor Negron and Berlita Demas, overhear Chris and Diane's plan to drive to Atlantic City and insist on going with them. So, on top of the anti-chemistry of Moore and Chase we have a pair of obnoxious stereotypes to overcome. It's as if Akroyd actively wanted us to hate Nothing But Trouble. His dedication to not having actual jokes continues to plague the movie throughout its 93 minute run time.

The plot finally kicks in, far too long into the movie. The annoying party guests who invited themselves on this trip, convince Chris to pull off at an unknown exit where they hope to find a place for a picnic. Sensing a chance to romance Diane, Chris agrees only to find himself in a swampy, sad, and mostly on fire part of New Jersey that's not on any map. The town of Valkenvania, New Jersey is built on top of a raging gas fire that could blow sky high at a moments notice. Unbeknownst to Chris, when he drove around a smoke stack in the ground, pumping fire and black smoke into the sky, he missed the stop sign.

This leads to a cop, played by John Candy, attempting to pull Chris over only to find Chris, with the encouragement of his obnoxious friends, running from Police until they've flown even further off of any known map. Finally stopped, and taken into custody, the foursome is taken to see the township Judge, Judge Alvin J.P Valkenheiser (Akroyd). J.P is vulgar, sweaty, gross, and inappropriate in zero funny ways. Akroyd leans into the character as if he believes the character is being funny but I assure Mr. Akroyd, his efforts at hilarity are funnier in a sad way, than they are in any action the character takes.

Nothing But Trouble engenders a second hand embarrassment that makes the entire enterprise deeply uncomfortable. You can sense the sweat equity in Nothing But Trouble. You can see that Akroyd threw himself into the role of Judge Valkenheiser, spending hours in make up chair on top of hours spent directing himself and his fellow actors. It's a huge amount of labor from Akroyd and thus, it can be no wonder why it all came up so short. It's clear that Akroyd spread himself too thin. Nothing in Nothing But Trouble has been given enough attention to be successful.

Akroyd as writer and director, hatches funny plans but fails to make any one of them funny. The script needed more time and several more rewrites based on what we see in Nothing But Trouble. The film also needs different lead actors. Chase is on auto-pilot and seemingly could not care less about being in Nothing But Trouble. You can sense the sense of obligation to his pal Akroyd that led him to be part of this project. You can also sense how checked out he is in his lazy delivery of what should be snappy patter. Akroyd hired Chase to be Chase, acerbic, sarcastic, and above it all. What he got was all of those things minus the energy to make any of it funny.

Demi Moore is barely a functional character in this plot. She's the hot chick. She's great looking and that's all that she has been cast for. Moore is given little to do in terms of the plot while also being burdened with trying to find Chase appealing. It's an acting challenge few actors could live up to and it's clear that Moore puts in a shift, trying to force herself to find Chase funny and attractive. Sadly, despite her best effort, Chase is such an anchor on the movie that she too is dragged to the unfunny depths in Nothing But Trouble.

Nothing But Trouble is not a horror movie. It's considered to be a horror comedy but the film is neither scary or funny in any way. There are a lot of bones, there is a machine that chews up the bodies of people who offend Judge Valkenheiser, but it's a strangely bloodless movie. That appears to be a weird compromise to try and make sure the film didn't get an R-Rating. Thus, the killer machine that strips flesh from the bones of 'criminals' somehow disposes of the blood of these criminals without spraying it like geyser as it spits the bones into a giant pile.

The killing machine crafted by Akroyd's judge is called Mr. Bonestripper and it gets its very own theme song, a thrash metal tune that plays in place of us hearing the machine crush bodies. The song is an amusing idea but it is so random that, like every supposed joke in Nothing But Trouble, it engenders more of that confused reaction I mentioned earlier. The Mr. Bonestripper song leaves you wondering who this song is for. It doesn't appear to be diegetic, sound that people in the movie can hear, so it's just there for us, the audience. It's supposed to be funny but it just isn't.

I loathe and despise Nothing But Trouble. Dan Akroyd has made a supposed horror comedy that replaces the gore and frights of a horror movie with the grossness of a gross out comedy and a great deal is lost in the exchange. In an effort to turn the stomach of audiences, instead of the presentation of gory viscera, Akroyd dresses up a pair of actors in slimy fat suits and diapers and has them do poop and fart joke while sexually threatening Demi Moore. Why? I have no idea, it's such a bad idea that I can't fathom what anyone involved in creating this was possibly thinking when they enacted these scenes.

In the end, we return to the penis on Dan Akroyd's nose. This choice is emblematic of everything wrong with Nothing But Trouble. It's such a strange and confounding choice. It's not funny in execution though describing it comes off as absurd in a way that might be funny. It's such a terrible idea that you can't help but suffer a cognitive dissonance between something that is intended to be funny but is merely presented to you. Stare at the nose and laugh the movie seems to say while forgetting that a joke is more than just the presentation of something that doesn't fit into the environment it exists within. Fish out of water is a kind of comedy, it's not funny to actually see a fish be out of the water.

I did not laugh once during Nothing But Trouble, aside from a derisive snort when the movie stopped dead for a performance by rap legends, Digital Underground. The movie pauses for more than 4 minutes to allow Digital Underground to perform their soundtrack hit, Same Song and it's only funny because Shock G aka Humpty Hump is a very funny guy. The song is funny, Digital Underground are funny but Nothing But Trouble is not funny for the mere presentation of Digital Underground. Shock G and Digital Underground are funny in spite of Nothing But Trouble.

I thought for a long time that I might not include Nothing But Trouble in my book, Horror in the 90s. It's just not even remotely a horror movie. But, it's classified in other major publications as a horror comedy and there is a need to examine horror comedy if we are going to do a book on the variety of styles of horror that define the genre. Thus, Nothing But Trouble makes the cut as a way of talking about horror comedy. Sadly, it's a remarkably poor example of the genre. It's not funny. And, it's not scary.

Nothing But Trouble is dimwitted, charmless, and gross but never funny. Gross can be scary but, here again, Akroyd is pulling his punches on the horror and gore. Despite having a machine called Mr. Bonestripper, which we see in action eating up a group of drunks, there is no blood in the scene. We see the stripped bones, we will eventually see some desiccated corpses but they are all bloodless, lifeless props, more at home in a Halloween store than in a big budget horror comedy.

Oh, and this was a big budget movie. Chase and Moore received hefty paychecks for Nothing But Trouble as did John Candy and Dan Akroyd. Those salaries are part of why the budget for this nothing of a movie ballooned to $45 million dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that would nearly surpass $100 million dollars today. The film was a spectacular bomb at the box office, earning just $8.4 million dollars and bringing Dan Akroyd's career as a writer-director to an end, after just one feature film. The failure also brought to an end Chase's career as a comic leading man. After Nothing But Trouble, Chase moved into the comedians retirement home known as family comedies where he's collected paychecks ever since.

The only career to survive Nothing But Trouble was Demi Moore's career which makes sense, she can't be blamed for this failure. Moore is clearly working hard to make something of this nothing that she's given to work with. She has to try and make up a clearly deficient Chase, making him a believable love interest and pretending that he's in any way appealing. She does her best in that but it's a task few if any actor could have achieved. Moore survives but she's not coming back to the horror genre after this. We won't see Moore in this kind of genre movie again until 2007's Mr. Brooks and by then she's already wrecked her own career with bloated ego trip blockbusters barely worth the film they are etched upon.

Nothing But Trouble is a debacle, a bloated, smelly corpse of a movie. And yet, it has lingered for the past 30 plus years. There have been attempts to retcon the film as an underrated gem or a lost classic. I don't see it. What about this movie is appealing? That said, if you are someone who has managed to come around on this movie, circling back to try and position it as some kind of under the radar gem of the horror comedy genre, you can have it. It's all yours. Just keep Nothing But Trouble away from me. I've spent too much time on this trash movie and I need it retconned from my memory bank.

This piece on Nothing But Trouble is part of my ongoing book project called Horror in the 90s. In the book, which I am serializing here on Horror.Media. I am watching and writing about more than 200 movies released between January of 1990 and December of 1999. The goal is to track the horror genre through the 1990s and come to some conclusions about where the genre was at the time and what is the lasting legacy of 90s horror. I am hard at work on the book but I won't be able to complete it without your help. Please consider donating to support Horror in the 90s. You can donate by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one-time tip here on Vocal. You can also support the book with a donation to my Ko-Fi account if you prefer. Thanks!