Wonderful character development!

From my favorite movies..

Best movie ever!

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

On one thing, it seems all of us reviewing this movie agree regardless of our ratings: it's bad. On all else, it seems we disagree: I find The Nostril Picker to be neither as hilariously awful as some are making it out to be, nor yet the *Worst* *Film* *Ever* that others are claiming. To be sure, everything in it was some level of bad, from the writing and the acting to the directing and producing; just not bad enough to inspire much reaction from me either way.In fact, The Nostril Picker mostly brings to mind an early Bloom County strip in which Opus gets a job as a film critic at the Bloom Picayune and proceeds to rip a certain movie up one side and down the other in an extremely negative review, only to pause for a moment of contemplation and then backtrack by saying "Well, maybe not that bad, but Lord, it wasn't good." To any critics saying this is the worst movie they've ever seen, I can honestly say you should be grateful if this is truly the worst movie you ever see in your lifetime: I have indeed seen worse. That said, I'll readily admit that I've only seen worse movies on very rare occasions; to paraphrase the penguin, it's not *that* bad, but "Lord, it wasn't good."When a movie's plot isn't very original, critics often use the term "by-the-numbers" to describe the story. While such a description might apply here as well, I prefer to call it "plug-and-play plotting" for this movie. The general setup at the beginning makes the movie seem as if its script had originally been written for another cookie-cutter "erotic" (i.e. pornographic) movie, with the neighborhood creep with a hankering for high school girls learning a magic trick from a bum on the street that allows him to infiltrate their school by looking like he's a high school girl himself. Certainly, in the montage that follows his realizing that the magic trick actually works, he presses his advantage at every opportunity by infiltrating the girls' social circle and one of their school's bathrooms (and presumably their locker rooms and showers as well, though only the bathroom is shown on-screen).Where a porno would subsequently have him either deceitfully seducing or forcibly raping these easily befuddled young girls, this movie swaps out sex for violence, turning this into a slasher flick in which he slaughters and violates them with his switchblade and cannibalizes them instead. With this sudden genre shift, it also turns into a kind of police procedural as the focus shifts to the police chief (who conveniently happens to be the father of one of the girls the villainous protagonist is targeting) in his efforts to apprehend him. Then, as with many horror flicks, it ends with the bad guy winning so that we can experience the final "shock" (which most of us could probably see coming a mile away) of watching him prey on his last victim just when she thought she was finally safe.When famous actors give a lackluster performance in a movie, one often hears critics speak of their "phoning it in" for that movie. In this case, since nobody in this movie was ever famous, I would tend to refer to these poor performances as "reading it out" instead: while everyone on camera was speaking his and her lines with more expression than—say—the children in a Charlie Brown cartoon, every spoken line sounds like nothing more than a direct reading of the script with whatever emotion the characters are supposed to be expressing also sounding completely scripted. Watching the actors and actresses reciting their emotions along with their lines, one can hardly help imagining that for the entire duration, somebody was prompting them "Now say it again, but try to sound angry/sad/shocked this time."Of course, in their defense, they weren't exactly working with the greatest material in the first place. The whole movie is rife with plot holes such as why, if the bum on the street knows a magic trick that he learned from his tour of duty in Vietnam that can make him look like anyone he wants, he didn't just use that trick to his own advantage. One also has to wonder why the writers felt compelled to have a lady psychiatrist about halfway through the movie dump a steaming load of exposition about the villainous protagonist's horrendously abusive childhood on us when no such background was really relevant or necessary; his personality is already established at the beginning, and he doesn't develop it any further in the rest of the movie.The sum of all these messily spliced-together plot points and barely-competent performances in this low-to-no-budget "video nasty" is a boring mess of blood and female flesh that neither titillates nor horrifies as intended. So why am I giving this hopelessly incompetent waste of celluloid three stars instead of just giving it one and expressing the lay-critic's common wish that a no-star rating were available? Three reasons:1) As mentioned, this is *not* the worst movie I've ever seen.2) Most of the people involved in the making of this film did at least seem to be making a credible effort to make it entertaining. Though they failed, one does owe them a certain measure of respect for trying.3) Somewhere in this misshapen mess, there's a good workable story people might actually want to see struggling to emerge. The underlying premise could be developed as a sexual psychodrama, or a black comedy, or even as a heart-warming tale of redemption (if the pervert protagonist could be reformed). Seeing this might inspire someone to write a better story.In other words, maybe it's not a complete waste of celluloid after all; though if you're a writer looking for inspiration, one viewing ought to suffice for you to get what little value you can out of it.

Although released in 1993, The Nostril Picker is undoubtedly a product of the '80s (my Aurum Encyclopedia of Horror, published in '93, has it down as being made in 1988): the fashion, the schlocky approach, the nonsensical plot, the lousy music—they all smack of the decade that taste forgot.The ridiculous storyline sees loner Joe Bukowski (Carl Zschering) being taught by a wino how to change his outward appearance by chanting a magical incantation and whistling his favourite song (which happens to be 'London Bridge is Burning Down'). Joe opts to look like an attractive, blonde, female teenager, thereby enabling himself to hang out with other girls of the same age, and then attack them when the opportunity arises, raping them with his knife and devouring their flesh.With a cast whose acting skills are virtually non-existent, direction that can only be generously described as rudimentary, and a script that isn't afraid to give the bottom of the barrel a damn good scraping, The Nostril Picker is about as unsophisticated as a movie can get, which actually makes it more fun than it has any right to be. The cringe-worthy montage that is accompanied by a truly awful rock song is unforgettable, as is the hilarious sight of a transvestite hooker being assaulted with a pair of dildo water-pistols.Also serving to make this mess more enjoyable is the occasional spot of juicy splatter, which is better than one might reasonably expect: one of the early victims has her fingers sliced off (which, judging by her reaction, or lack of one, isn't all that painful), there's a brief spot of cannibalism, and the irritating transvestite gets his throat slashed in suitably gory fashion. The slaughtered girls also appear to Joe in hallucinations, dressed in lingerie and drenched in blood.Rounding off proceedings with a silly and totally predictable twist ending, The Nostril Picker is far from great movie-making, but will prove a guilty pleasure for those who actively seek out cinematic turds.

Haven't watched it yet, but I give it 10 stars. As if you don't know by the title that it's going to be excellent cinema.It's about a guy who pick boogers. And kills. Also, he kills. And picks boogers. He finds these boogers up his nose. In the nostril. He also wears girl's clothes. Not clear if he finds those in his nostril as well. But anyway, he dresses in girl's clothes, picks boogers, and kills. Oh, and there's a transvestite.There may be more to the story, but it is probably useless filler that adds nothing to the story. He may meet a rival nostril picker. And they might have a pick off. Wouldn't that be neat ? Anyway, have plenty of tissue handy. I expect a tear-jerker twist at the end.

Bizarre film about a repellent creep who meets a bum on the street who teaches him "morphosynthesis", the ability to transform yourself into whoever you so desire. This psychotic louse uses the identity of a pretty missing girl whose picture was on the back of a milk carton, assuming the role of a female teenage student. He was already unstable to begin with(we are introduced to him as he's ogling at a girl walking down a sidewalk)due to his abuse at the hands of his mother, and so the eventual misogyny(and sadism) which erupts as he remains in the disguise of Josephine(Ann Flood), attacking a girl pack he befriends while attending high school, one at a time, at night when they are not expecting Joe(Carl Zschering), is due to his childhood trauma(as is his cannibalism which derives from feeding from his dead mother's remains while living at home by himself, which explains his devouring flesh from the female victims).THE NOSTRIL PICKER resembles something Troma might distribute/produce, because it's crude, badly dubbed, poorly acted(it sounds like the actors are having trouble with their lines), in bad taste, with a dimestore budget that features schlocky special effects(particularly fingers lopped off a hand and how Joe stabs a victim multiple times, up and down, only after about number fifteen does any blood appear on the blade which means it's obvious he's bludgeoning a pillow). The plot, however, is rather unsettling and disturbing, the idea that out of all the people to have the ability to camouflage himself with another identity, it had to be Zschering's Joe Bukowski, an unhinged recently released mental patient who hates women and has cannibalistic tendencies. The film wants to actually be a comedy and even has a musical interlude where Joe is shown in school and the girls' restroom, having integrated himself into the new role, enjoying the new found freedom and power provided him. Actually, the violence comes out of nowhere, shifting the tone somewhat, only to return to comedy when Joe attempts to sodomize a transvestite he picks up(in the form of the teenage girl)outside his junky apartment. Zschering is effectively cast because he fits the profile of a neighborhood stalker who you could envision as a pedophile predator, dangerous with a knife, particularly lethal with a supernatural ability to fool victims into thinking he's a chick. The title refers to how Joe picks his nose all the time. Joe not only lacerates the jugulars of his female victims and eats pieces of their flesh, he also rapes them with the knife he uses as a weapon! Sickening enough(story-wise) to become a cult classic.