NASTY HERO (1990)

Rarely do I ever find myself utterly intimidated by the prospect of attempting to capture the greatness of a movie in words. But sometimes I just have to accept my limitations as mere mortal, suck it up, and do my best. For it would truly require the jewel encrusted tongue of some planet crushing deity to accurately expound on the equinox of holy fucking shit that is "Nasty Hero." But for now this is the closest you’re going to come to justice. We both need to accept that.

If the video store my den masquerades as had an “employee pick” section, it would have thirty copies of this movie, and they would all be rented out all the time on the basis of charity, because you people out there need help. If you consider yourself to be male and you haven’t seen this movie yet, then you might as well donate the fleshy sack between your legs that you call testicles to the burn victim ward, because up until you see Nasty Hero your sorry excuse for balls are just wasting skin that could be giving little Timmy a second chance following that gnarly Fourth of July accident that blew half his face and hand off. That's right, until you HAVE SEEN "NASTY HERO" your balls are turgid with worthlessness.

Not unlike the ancient astronauts who flew back to the stars after blessing us with the pyramids, or the attractive one-night stand who slinks out of your apartment in shame after she sobers up, I know very little about the people who are responsible for this masterpiece. They could be otherworldly; they could be coked-up assholes. I have a feeling this is a mystery for the ages. When I think of how this film was created though I just kind of picture a hand stirring out of the Dead Sea with this tape in it, like Excalibur.

While largely unknown at this point, "Nasty Hero" deserves to become a major best-of-the-worst contender in the realm of “so-bad-it’s-good” cinema. Whenever I introduce this film to someone we always end up replaying scenes as if analyzing the Zapruder footage while in utter hysterics. I’m sure by now you can find books on the “best of the worst” phenomenon at your average Barnes & Noble, but the simple science of it all boils down to the inherent joy in sadism. Everyone loves a good failure.

I wrote about "TerrorVision" earlier this month, which I referred to as an exceptional piece of intentional camp. "TerrorVision" is the two-headed donkey of bad movies because TRUE CAMP usually can't be forced. It's totally accidental and usually epitomized by the courage of the film maker’s ignorance. "Nasty Hero" is perhaps the paramount of REAL camp value. There is nothing intentionally bad about this movie. I honestly feel that these guys thought they had the zeitgeist by the tail, and they were making something that just screamed "cool." Instead, they somehow wound up with a cheese ball action flick so rife with a homoerotic tension so thick you could make a fondue out of it.

Here’s some plot for you: six months after getting thrown in the slammer for delivering a hot car, Chase returns to Miami to take down the dudes who set him up. He’s back, and feeling NASTY! The rest of the movie revolves around really ugly cars and Scott Feraco, who plays Chase, being menaced by villains out of a John Hughs movie. But the real story here is the bond between Chase and his friend Carlos, played by former welterweight champion and boxing hall of famer Carlos Palomino. Seriously, anytime these two share a scene there is a sense of foreboding that Palomino is going to randomly drop to his knees and French kiss Feraco’s anus at any moment. The fact that Feraco rides bitch on Carlos’ bike doesn’t do much to assuage that fear, either.

Kyra Sedgwick’s brother Robert also turns in an amazing performance as the least menacing screen villain of all time. Thankfully, he has a lumbering, out-of-shape fatass like Mike Starr to back him up.

The greatest tragedy of this film is that they never made another "Nasty Hero." Hell, even"Snake Eater" had two sequels, and that movie is total bullshit. Anyhow, for fans of “so-bad-it’s good,” I cannot recommend this film enough, and you can usually find it on Amazon for like 89 cents. This film deserves its own viewing party circuit as much as "Troll 2."

For an extensive and hilarious review, check out Scott Foy's site here. Don't know the guy personally, but his site is one of the best on the topic of bullshit movies.