Every week, I scour Netflix for a movie rated at one star and put it in my queue, suffering through it for your entertainment so that you don’t have to. In the past, I’ve taken on anime cancer demons, softcore Iraq War porn and racist ventriloquism, and now it’s time to do it again.
TUESDAY NEVER COMES (1993)
Starring: Academy award nominee Karen Black as a crackwhore, a career arc that has only slightly less dignity than if she had become an actual crackwhore.
I’ve been watching movies for 27 years, and never in my life have I seen one as incomprehensibly terrible as Tuesday Never Comes.
Coming from the same vague, desperate, post-CHiPs, pre-SeaLab 2021 period that also saw him cropping up in Twisted Justice, this week’s cinematic atrocity is ostensibly built around Erik Estrada, who not only has character’s name misspelled in the movie itself, but also has his own name spelled wrong on the DVD cover. In reality, though, it’s a vehicle for writer/director/star Jason Holt, who really wanted to see what would happen if you tried to remake Scarface without any talent, pulling off the rarely-seen Reverse Pacino by casting Estrada as an Italian gangster called Micelli. And just to give you an idea of the kind of movie we’re dealing with here, they don’t just say the title in the film, they say it twice.
And one of those times is in an original song.
I’ll be honest, folks: I have no idea what happened in this movie, and I was being paid to watch it. Not that the movie does you any favors in terms of understanding it: Despite the fact that it was made in 1993, it looks like it was shot on Super 8 in the ’70s and recorded over ham radio. There are scenes that are literally lit by candles and cigars, and vast sections of the movie where you can’t make out a word that’s being said. I did, however, manage to make out the following exchange:
“It’s a shame we have to take them down together.”
“They’re all scum, sir.”
“I know. But look at that scum’s knockers.”
And my personal favorite line, from Estrada:
“I would like it if you bunch of assholes would go find this guy and kill the living s*** out of him.”
Near as I can figure, Micelli is a drug dealer specializing in crack, while Zack (played by Holt himself), is an Irish terrorist whose lackeys, judging by their accents, prepared for their roles by sitting through ten or fifteen minutes of Darby O’Gill and the Little People and then pretty much calling it a day. Seriously, there’s nothing quite like the sound of an actor trying to do an Irish accent who hasn’t really bothered to lose his Southern twang first.
Anyway, Micelli owes Zack some money and has promised to pay him on Tuesday, but Zack has grown upset because – wait for it – Tuesday Never Comes, and part of my problem with understanding the movie might be because I spent the fifteen minutes after he said that in a red haze. Zack demands his money, and Micelli responds by having his goons throw him down a flight of stairs, beat him up, and then bury him alive.
Meanwhile, all of this is being watched by a team of federal agents whose surveillance footage appears to be an actual copy of the movie itself, as it just cuts back to their reactions, regardless of in what location the action’s meant to be taking place. And complicating matters even further, I’m pretty sure that one of the feds is the producer from Borat:
Eventually, Zack’s fellow terrorists dig him up, and to get revenge on Micelli, he attempts to rape Micelli’s girlfriend (Academy Award nominee Karen Black), who distracts him with a generous dose of crack. Now, I haven’t done any crack myself – I was informed by reliable sources back in middle school that it is “wack” – but if there’s anything the producers of Tuesday Never Comes knew about, it was getting jacked up on drugs and making poor decisions, so I assume that their portrayal of the drug is completely based on fact.
As such, this movie taught me that after a few moments where it gives you the standard-issue After School Special “I’M ON DRUGS!” giggle fit, crack is a miracle drug that instantly heals any injury and makes you tough enough to take on eight fully armed police officers by yourself, jump off a building and crash through a roof without any harm, and gives you the fighting ability to shout racial epithets at a bunch of black guys and not get your ass kicked. In short, if Jason Holt’s performance is to be believed, it basically turns you into Racist Superman, and then transports you to the Shire.
And when you think about it like that, it’s no wonder we needed the War On Drugs.
Check out the Worst of Netflix archive.
 Chris Sims is a freelance comedy writer from South Carolina. He briefly attended USC before he dropped out to spend more time with Grand Theft Auto, and his career subsequently took the path that you might expect from someone who makes that sort of decision. He blogs at http://www.the-isb.com and creates comics at http://www.actionagecomics.com. |
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Worst Of Netflix: Tuesday Never Comes