Awfully Good: Buttcrack

July 20th 2011, 12:19pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

This movie led to me getting the best email of my entire life:

Buttcrack (1998)

Director: Jim Larsen
Stars: Doug Ciskowski, Mojo Nixon, Kathy Wittes

Is there a plot?

A man accidentally kills his annoying roommate, Buttcrack. Thinking his demise was in retaliation for her sibling’s inability to keep his pants up, Buttcrack’s witchy sister brings her brother back from the dead and curses his ass cleavage so that any unsuspecting soul who gazes upon it turns in to a zombie.

What’s the damage?

A movie about a guy with an intergluteal cleft that turns you in to the living dead sounds like Awfully Good heaven, but the whole “buttcrack zombie” part doesn’t happen until the last five minutes. Up until then, BUTTCRACK is a weird, wacky comedy (I think) about relationships, religion (I think) and, um, buttcracks.

Gesundheit!

Picked up and released by legendary taste connoisseurs Troma, BUTTCRACK is pretty much what you expect from the B-movie studio. It’s incredibly dumb, the acting is offensively bad, and the budget might actually be a negative number. The only thing it really has going for it is its name and whatever cheap giggles that might elicit from you. But though it only has a few bright spots, I don’t think anyone can say they were disappointed by BUTTCRACK. I mean, it’s called BUTTCRACK. What did you expect?

“Marion, don’t look at it. Shut your eyes, Marion. Don’t look at it, no matter what happens!”

Well, here’s what you get. Brian just wants to be alone with his girlfriend Annie so he can propose, but his obnoxious, overweight, Atari-playing roommate Wade, whose serious case of plumber’s ass has earned him the nickname Buttcrack, keeps ruining the mood. (His exposed buttocks literally make Annie vomit.) Frustrated, Brian runs in to the bathroom to talk with his bathing roommate when he accidentally knocks over a radio and electrocutes Wade, killing him. At the funeral, Wade’s inexplicably middle-aged sister confronts Brian, claiming she is a witch and knows what he’s done. She curses her brother’s body so that if anyone (presumably on Earth) says the word “buttcrack” more than 12 times in one breath, Wade will rise from the grave.

From the makers of “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” comes “The Not-So-Fresh Reanimated Corpse of the Lansdowne Trailer Park Community.”

And wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what Annie does in the next scene! Soon Wade is walking around, exactly the same as before, even down to his ass cleavage. This leads to some humorous scenes whereby Brian and Co. attempt to beat, maim or kill their friend Buttcrack (who doesn’t even realize he’s a zombie) so they can bury him again and again. Eventually (when it’s convenient to the plot) somebody makes eye contact with Buttcrack’s cursed buttcrack and everyone discovers that if you look directly at it, your face will melt and you will turn in to a bloodthirsty zombie. This is where the movie gets fun, but again, it’s really only the last ten minutes of what is admittedly only an hour-long film.

I guess there are worse first names you could have when your last is “Inthehole.” (Dick, Peter, Phil, etc.)

Probably the only other things worth mentioning about BUTTCRACK are a couple of its cast members. Doug Ciskowski who plays Brian is an actual rocket scientist with a Ph.D. in Experimental Nuclear Physics. Psychobilly rockstar Mojo Nixon (creator of such tunes as “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child” and “Tie My Pecker To My Leg”) pulls double duty as composer and actor, playing Preacher Man Bob, a holy man who yells a lot and helps the gang dispatch of their zombified friend. And that’s about it. Everyone else is entirely forgettable. (In his requisite introduction, Lloyd Kaufman admits that at least one of BUTTCRACK’s stars was paid solely in beer.)