Unstreamable is a weekly column that recommends films and TV shows you can't find on major streaming services in the United States. This week: the very bottom of taste in The Garbage Pail Kids; 16th century Mesoamerican violence in Apocalypto; endless atrocities in Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom; and tons of bush in 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy. Read our other recommendations here.

This week's Unstreamable is going to be very triggering for many of you, so please take care of yourselves.

We begin with the Garbage Pail Kids, a group of grody Cabbage Patch Kids knock-offs who were introduced to the world in 1985 as parody trading cards. Kids were obsessed with these weirdos, who were named things like Adam Bomb and Blasted Billy and Handy Randy. They were so popular and fugly that teachers banned the cards from schools.

Thanks to a recommendation from Unstreamable reader Zach Adam, I finally got around to watching The Garbage Pail Kids Movie this week, which is known, for good reason, as the worst movie ever made. It has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 1% on Metacritic. These ratings are right, but as Andy Warhol once said: "Good or bad doesn't matter. Extreme bad and extreme good is very good. What's no good is in between." The Garbage Pail Kids Movie proudly belongs at the very bottom of the trash can.

It is about a teen boy who's in love with a baaaad girl named Tangerine, an aspiring fashion designer who sells gaudy shit out of her car. One day, the teen boy knocks over a trash can at a dark mage's antique shop (this isn't really explained) and—Voila! Out come the Garbage Pail Kids. These freaks are nasty. One of them is a gator. They're all tiny and grubby and they're so endearing. They happen to be very talented clothing designers! They hand-sew jackets reminiscent of Michael Jackson! Tangerine yearns for these jackets. I won't spoil this highly evolved plot, but it ends with the gayest, ugliest, fartiest fashion sequence ever created. I saw myself so clearly in this mess. CHASE BURNS

Apocalypto is sadistic. Set in the early 16th century Mesoamerica, our hero is a hunter Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), who lives in a small, peaceful village in the jungle. That is until Maya soldiers from the neighboring city-state come to steal the men and women in his community, dragging them back to either sell off as slaves or sacrifice to their gods in front of jeering crowds. Jaguar Paw tries to make it back with his head intact. It's excessively violent and exhausting to watch. The Guardian excellently reads the storytelling for its "good news/bad news" format, saying that the film "might be the nearest that Mel Gibson will ever get to directing a Three Stooges film." They're not wrong.

There are debates about its historical accuracy, but Apocalypto should be noted in its all indigenous cast, dialogue solely in Yúcatec Maya language, and beautiful set design. However. This Will Durant quote at the beginning of the film—"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within"—irked me. It makes the whole film feel like "ultra-conservative" director Mel Gibson is somewhat justifying Spanish colonization by showing us the Maya's callousness toward Good Men like Jaguar Paw. Yeesh! It makes all of the violence and pain portrayed onscreen feel extra exploitative of indigenous people, history, and fact. JASMYNE KEIMIG

I have no idea how to talk about Salò so I'm going to keep this brief. Loosely based on The 120 Days of Sodom by Marquis de Sade, this horror art film is infamously disgusting, terrible, awful, no good, poopy, and shitty. It is still banned in a handful of countries for featuring "relentless sadism." John Waters loves it, which makes sense, and he once said of it: "It has my favourite end of any movie I’ve ever seen. It’s incredibly beautiful and simple. And I pray to Pasolini. If I ever have to pray to a Catholic saint it will always be him." Okay, John. That "favourite end of any movie I've ever seen" is a horrific torture scene that involves scalping and tongue-cutting and, I think, castration. I was closing my eyes so it's all a bit blurry. I never want to see this movie again but it's required viewing. Also, I checked this out over Christmas and Krishanu at Scarecrow told me that someone else had rented their other copy of Salò during Christmas, too. I never want to meet that doppelganger. CHASE BURNS

***

After all this violence and sodomy, here's something sexy. Well, not sexy, porn-y. I stumbled across this one after doing a deep dive into the filmography of Abel Ferrara, director of films like Bad Lieutenant and Ms. 45. I chose it purely because of the name. Credited as Jimmy Boy L., 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy is technically Ferrara's debut feature film, despite The Driller Killer being his widely acknowledged official first film. The film's anthology style format is centered around an opium smoking tarot reader (Dominique Santos) who reads aloud letters from her bored, wealthy friend Pauline (Pauline LaMonde). Pauline is desperate to sleep with anyone after her husband leaves her feeling cold, sleeping with men (and one Nigerian princess) in gas station bathrooms and barns. Ferrara himself even makes an appearance in one scene as an old farmer who is seduced/assaulted by his two daughters. Yuk.

I ended up watching an edited version of the porno, with the title softened to 9 Lives of a Wet Pussycat, which came out during the Meese Commission scare. Apparently during this time, porn distributors were eager to cut sequences from films, especially scenes that might involve rape, BDSM, etc., even if it was depicted as consensual, in order to avoid a crackdown. The original version of the film was recently restored by Vinegar Syndrome, with better audio, a 2K scan from the original 35mm negative, and SUBTITLES. Now you can watch the very early work of a gritty director and nut with absolute clarity. JASMYNE KEIMIG