7/10
Sweet Screaming Jesus, Save Us!
24 July 2001
Warning: Spoilers
***SLIGHT SPOILERS*** Wow. I've seen a lot of crap in my life, but this, this may truly be the worst of it all. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, I wanted to hide under my chair, but I was paralyzed with fear and disbelief.

So, what happens? Well, let's see... John Stamos and his big poufy head of hair play Lance Stargrove, a high-school gymnast who wears either creepily tight jeans or scarily semi-transparent white Z. Cavaricci pants. His dad--played by George "I was James Bond once. Once." Lazenby--was some spy who got whacked for some computer disc that can contaminate! the city's entire! water supply! forever! (I guess it has some kind of water-soluble virus on it.) Vanity plays his dad's former partner or something, in a lot of spandex and bronze makeup and the two of them have to get dad's killer and find the disc.

And who was his dad's killer? None other than Gene Simmons. In drag. Yes, you read that right. Gene Simmons stole one of Cher's old wigs and a few of her cheesier outfits to play a transsexual or transvestite or hermaphrodite or something--the plot is vague on this, as it is with many things. Actually, this entire film feels as though it was generated by Mad Lib. And Gene Simmons has an army of Road Warrior-rejects to do his bidding, all done up in the best "punk" attire the crack-addled, clinically insane and underpaid wardrobe lady could come up with, including that ubiquitous spike/shag synthetic "punk" wig that appeared (usually with wraparound sunglasses) in every "punk" crowd scene during the 80's. (And I say underpaid because she had to measure Stamos for those pants. And Simmons for the gold lame corset. Let us shy away from Vanity's buckskin fringed bikini altogether.) As if all this weren't disturbing enough, Robert "Freddy Kreuger" Englund appears as Simmons' lackey. And sometimes they touch each other. In unsettling ways.

Other disturbing events? How about the seemingly endless and definitely pointless scene in which Vanity strips, hoses herself down, takes her top off and hoses herself down more while Stamos chomps down on a variety of apples and bananas like a 70-year-old redneck with a half-pound of tobacky stuck in his craw. How about the scene where Simmons unfurls the tongue that once rocked Detroit City and sticks it down the throat of Stamos? The array of really bad fake facial hair inexplicably sported by various characters throughout? No wonder Vanity left the entertainment industry and turned Christian: After just watching this movie, I felt like I should spend the next three years praying for forgiveness.
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