The Willies

The Willies

United States - 1990

Director – Brian Peck

Prism Entertainment, 1990, VHS

It seems to me that The Willies came a little too late for just about everything it was trying to do. It dragged its sorely underfunded carcass across the finish line well after the race was over, and more importantly after the crowds were gone. Fortunately, due to the lasting virulence of the VHS format, we can deride this little gem in the comfort of our own homes.

A campout in the woods finds several young boys including Sean Astin (The Goonies, Lord of the Rings) who are diligently reciting their well practiced and clearly written by an adult spooky stories and trying to give each other “The Willies”. For apetizers, it’s mostly urban legend fare, including the “fried chicken” rat gag, and an amusing poodle in the microwave bit which is painfully suspenseful thanks to some exceedingly long static shots of granny bubbling with excitement as Pookums whimpers. Unfortunately as I was soon to discover, this part was the most fun.

Ahhh, but all that was all before the credits, now it’s really time to start skimming the scum off the long since curdled Creepshow. The first of the longer stories is a classic. 8 year-old nerdy kid gets picked on by mulleted Iron Maiden shirt wearing bully. When he goes to the bathroom during the math test, Nerd discovers what appears to be a giant fanged turd-monster coming out of the toilet. Returning to class to raise the alarm, he pees his pants. No one believes him of course, especially not the teacher, cruel Mrs. Titmarsh , whom the monster promptly snacks on. Strangely enough, the poop monster also likes to roam around the halls of the school disguised as James Karen who along with his fellow Return of the Living Dead star Clu Gulager are only two of the staple no-name cameos in this film. In any case, after eating all the bullies we get to see the monster put his rubber human outfit on and glare menacingly at someone knowing full well that the gleam in his eye is really just undigested corn.
It’s beginning to look a lot like a shit-themed movie when in the second story a fat kid named Gordy Belcher repeatedly breaks into a farm to steal manure. The farmer Mr. Spivey, who looks at first like Bruce Dern, but disappointingly isn’t, has a meth-lab set up in his barn where he pumps the shit full of amazing growth hormones which yield freakishly large vegetables. Gordy though uses the poop to lure flies which he de-wings and uses to populate tiny dioramas including a diner, a castle and a church replete with fly-Jesus on the cross, and fly-preacher.

When Gordy is suspended from school for giving fly laced cookies to the cheerleaders, his chesty mother destroys his fly laboratory and he has no choice but to return for a fresh batch of shit. Instead of chasing him off, Spivey hooks Gordy up with some super chronic shit, which is promptly fed to more flies. Predictably some giant flies make an appearance and not so predictably eat Gordy’s arms off, leaving the rest of him to wallow like a big turd in the swirling poorly planned low class bowl of this movie.

The only reason I'm labeling this Gorror is because of the poodle explosion and the armless kid, and comedy only because of the plethora of dumb cameo bit-parts and sheer laziness of the production which were just about all that I found enjoyable about this movie. I knew as soon as the Iron Maiden bully pissed his pants in close up that this was going to be simple. I was right.