The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987) on Netflix
PG19871h 40mAdventureComedyFamily
Dodger works in Captain Manzini's antique shop, where a garbage can holds seven crude, pint-sized kids. Juice and his gang of older bullies torment him, and he is drawn to Tangerine.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb2.7/109,385 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes0%
Trailer
Plot summary
Seven crude kids live inside a garbage can in the antique shop where Dodger works, and Captain Manzini warns him to keep away from it. Four older teenagers, Juice and his gang, take Dodger's money in the park and dump him in a puddle. Dodger is drawn to Tangerine, Juice's girlfriend. When the bullies corner him in the shop, the can tips over and green ooze spills out. The gang handcuffs Dodger to a rail in a sewer and pours sewage on him, and the Garbage Pail Kids come to his rescue. Manzini is unhappy that they are loose, and he names them for Dodger: Greaser Greg, Messy Tessie, Windy Winston, Valerie Vomit, Foul Phil, Nat Nerd and Ali Gator. They must stay out of public sight, he says, because the normies would attack them.
Cast
- Ron MacLachlanas Juice
- J.P. Amateauas Wally
- Marjory Graueas Blythe
- Bobby Bellas Foul Phil (voice) (as Robert Bell)
- Larry Greenas Nat Nerd (voice)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Metacritic gives the film a score of 1 out of 100, the lowest on the website, tied with nine other movies, based on reviews from seven critics and indicating "overwhelming dislike".
- The film was originally conceived as a horror movie, pitched by the final film's design supervisor, John Carl Buechler, and it is not known how far that version went in development.
- Shooting began in April 1987 and was finished by June, a quick turnaround credited to the Ediflex electronic editing system, more commonly used on television shows, which let the production work with a smaller crew and almost no film-lab services.
- In a 2012 video Doug Walker, best known for Nostalgia Critic, called it not only the worst film he had ever reviewed for the series but the worst movie he had ever seen, and in 2025 his updated worst-films list put it top again.
- John Astin tried to convince his son, Mackenzie, not to star in the film, as he felt it would be a bad idea.
- Atlantic Releasing Corporation's head of marketing, Martin Rabinovich, attributed the negative reviews and poor box-office performance to marketing difficulties, saying that while the film was targeted toward children, it was not necessarily a family film.
- In 2012 it was reported that Michael Eisner's The Tornante Company planned to finance and produce a feature film based on Garbage Pail Kids, Eisner having purchased the Topps trading-card company in 2007.
