Stuck on You!

Troma movies are universally derided as the cinematic equivalent of a rancid, slop-heavy meat sandwich and a bottle of Night Train. It's the kind of stuff a vagrant might scrape together enough change to buy at the Quick-E-Mart to keep him going until the soup kitchen opens back up for lunch. Their audience, we assume, are pimply overweight Simpsons characters come to life, who collect semen-splattered back issues of Hustler and spend an inordinate amount of time with one hand jammed up their nose, the other buried in a bag of Cheetos.

Socially inept; hell, socially ostracized. Unloved, unwashed, and most definitely NOT lacking in cellulose or prescriptions for type-two diabetes.

Be that as it may, Troma, and, by extension, all other forms of garbage cinema still has its use--if for no other reason than to compare the dregs of the film industry to superior quality offerings. Or to see women with really big tits run away from rubber monsters and stalkers in ski masks. And blood. We all like lots of blood.

Stuck on You! (1983) directed by Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz (who did what to whom for how much, we don't know), is NOT a horror film at all, unless you consider the unfortunate conundrums of the headed to family court Bill and Carol Griffiths, a couple of young lovely (especially Carol, portrayed by Virginia Penta, who seemingly never acted again) early 1980s yuppies who have a disastrously comic time of just making their way through the ins and outs of being in love. In an era before social media, that is.

So we get a Mel Brooks-inspired madcap, Mad Magazine film that proceeds through history, from the ancient era to the Renaissance, from Columbus driving across the Atlantic ocean with three slaves and a huge, horrible wife, to Leonardo painting a druggie Mona Lisa who tries to roll and smoke an entire pizza. Nothing here is to be taken seriously, including seeing the handsome male lead ride an electronic sheep, get his head flushed down a human toilet, and the Rappin' Rabbis.

Here's A Delightful Little Clip From Troma's "Stuck On You!"

Bob, by the way, is a chicken man, whose metier involves getting chickens to breed massive amounts of eggs. To this end, he creates Chicken Porn, and later a strange chicken contraption that spits out buckets full of KFC. (Which is convenient if this sort of thing makes you hungry.)

Bill's boss gets steamed (in the literal sense) with smoke blowing out of his red ears. We repeat: NOTHING in this film is to be taken seriously.

The most memorable scene is the mix-up between body paint and superglue. Bill and Carol emerge from their suburban house, stuck together, nude, with objects having become permanently attached to them, in full view of the neighbors. They proceed down the street like some monstrous, weird mutant creature, and it's this one scene I've always remembered since first seeing this film on USA Up All Night back in the late 1980s. (The late Gilbert Gottfried was still the host).

The film is a constant barrage of gross-out gags and crude, silly humor, an extended sketch comedy show with a wraparound. "Professor" Irwin Corey, the legendary stand-up comic from the era of Sid Ceaser and Lenny Bruce, stars as the presiding judge of the divorce court, but the secret is: he's a harp-strumming, heavenly angel who has come down to Earth to do good deeds so he can get his wings. In between, he plays with Barbie and Ken dolls with which he simulates acts of domestic unrest. And I think we can leave our examination of this little forgotten gem from 1982 right there. Because, well, we're feeling a bit stuck.

Stuck on You! (1983) ORIGINAL TRAILER

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