In an obsession that’s just plain unhealthy no matter how you slice it, a Brian Bonsall-ian 5-year-old boy worships Gus, his friendly neighborhood garbageman. Said fixation burns at such a white-hot intensity, the tot sets his alarm early for garbage day, starred with serial-killer detail on his bedside calendar. With the pee-your-pants anticipation of Christmas morning, he rouses his father from sleep with “Dad! Dad! Wake up! It’s garbage day!”

I, for one, believe it’s safe to say this is why the straight-to-VHS children’s program bears the title of Garbage Day!, exclamation theirs — and, we can be certain, the misguided youth’s. Let’s call him “Kid” since he’s not given a name. In that spirit, for reasons you’ve already surmised, neither a writer nor a director is credited.

Dad (William Schreiner, who also produced) happily helps his son (Quinn Schreiner) tote their trash receptacles to the curb to await the arrival of their sure-to-stink pal in public service. Kid even has a Thermos of coffee tied around his neck for Gus’ consumption.

“I wish I could see everything on garbage day,” says a starry-eyed Kid, a budding li’l John Hinckley Jr.

“You do?” answers Gus (Steven Diebold), in an overtone decidedly hushed and sinister. “Well, maybe we can work something out.”

We’re spared the fevered negotiations and whatever exchange occurs. Instead, we leap right to Dad and Kid as they follow Gus on his route. Gus fills his truck with water balloons and lets his mentees watch them explode in the trash compactor. Do the taxpayers know Gus engages in such rascality on their dime?

Lest you risk injury, make sure you’re properly seated before the riotous bloopers involving the inability of the truck’s automated arm to lift cans correctly. Scoring this montage is a Yello-styled synth track that swaps hooks for the disturbing coos and giggles of an unseen baby. Sequence complete, the lid on an unsanitary garbage container lifts, revealing Kid. Way to supervise, Dad.

Informing his passengers that milk bottles are recycled to make Frisbees, Gus asks, “Why throw anything away when it can be made into something else?” I know Gus’ line is rhetorical, but does the oily man live in some fantasy land where used condoms, tampons and toilet tissue don’t exist?

To demonstrate how bulldozers crush refuse pancake-flat, Gus smashes a line of perfectly good watermelons instead of, oh, I dunno, actual trash.

As the poignant 20-minute video reaches its end, our trio stands atop a landfill at sunset, looking over the fetid pit of filth as if it were the goddamn Grand Canyon.

To pay Gus back for the field trip, Dad and Kid have a crazy surprise awaiting him the next week: a trash bin filled with colorful balloons! Not only that, but the guys have gone to the trouble of getting them custom-printed with the line, “Have a nice GARBAGE DAY!” While this gesture may have come from the heart, it’s pretty stupid if you ask me. My reasons number three:

1. Because the balloons are helium, they immediately float away. Some gift!
2. Think of all the birds soon to be killed by the string-tied rubber orbs of death. Suffice to say, those avians will not be having a nice garbage day.
3. Even if Gus grabs a couple of balloons, you know he’ll waste no time popping them with his vehicle of doom, grooming Kid for the day they inevitably move to heads. —Rod Lott

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What’s going on in Room 508 of a hotel in Palatine, Illinois? Gaudy decor aside, a lot and yet nothing: mistaken identity, sexual trysts, power flashes, disturbing visions, out-of-body experiences.

A business traveler, a cam girl, a cowboy in the lobby, an alcoholic, a nudie photographer using the pages of a Gideon Bible to play “she loves me, she loves me not” while seated for a bowel movement.

Plus subliminal imagery, television static, temporal leaps, gibberish dialogue (“I taste like blueberries”) and equal-opportunity full-frontal nudity.

Marking the first film for director Julio Maria Martino and screenwriter David Hauptschein, both heralding from the world of the stage, the genre-defying Country of Hotels owes a lot to David Lynch — both Lynch in general and his Hotel Room in particular. Like that 1993 pilot for HBO, this picture is an anthology of three stories, all taking place in the same room. While the guests differ from segment to segment, the staff members reoccur.

With the proceedings so intentionally cryptic, determining its level of success is tough. If appearing like programming from another planet was the intent, Country of Hotels passes. It’s just oddly engaging (or engagingly odd) enough to give it a look. Among the large cast, Siobhan Hewlett (2013’s Redemption) and Eugenia Caruso (Berberian Sound Studio) struck me as particularly brave. And for the ears, the score by newcomer Christos Fanaras is fantastic. —Rod Lott

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Video Bingo’s box promises “unlimited hours of fun.” For once, as people who shun the rules of grammar might say, the box don’t lie!

The premise is decidedly difficult, but thankfully, Best Film & Video hired an announcer to clear up any misunderstandings at the VHS tape’s beginning:
1. A combination of a letter and a number is called.
2. If you have such a square on your bingo card, you place a marker over that square.
3. Repeat until someone wins.

What’s not fun about that?

To make things even simpler, the two-hour video comes with the cards and markers — a smart move with you in mind, dear consumer.

I like the soothing calm of the voice of the unseen gent who calls out the bingo numbers. It’s as if he is whispering in my ear, “You’re going to win; I just know it!” or maybe, “Chin up, young man. It’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.”

In case you don’t know how to play, the handy photocopied dot-matrix instruction page in the box will help. One rule reads: “Carefully separate bingo cards.” I assume this is to here to avoid wrongful deaths that otherwise naturally occur during the card-distribution portion of the game.

You may notice the family on the box is having so much fun, they’re cheering. And why shouldn’t they? I’m here to tell you cheering is just one action you’ll experience when you get your mitts on a copy and gather the children. This is perhaps the best thing about Video Bingo, aside from enjoying this exciting game without having to leave your home and smell the old people. (Speaking of your own home, put the kids to bed and play Strip Bingo — your choice!)

Video Bingo is a winner, just like B-14 was for me! Order yours today before the next pandemic renders it as tough to track down as rolls of toilet paper.

O-64! N-37! I-24! G-52! Are you catching the fever yet? B-13! N-45! —Rod Lott

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Take a historical trip through the blaxploitation films of the ’70s with Afros, Macks & Zodiacs, Something Weird Video’s 90-minute collection of these flicks’ coming attractions, all laden with shooting, loving and waka-waka guitar strumming. With the VHS tape’s release at the dawn of blaxploitation’s Tarantino-fueled resurgence in the late 1990s, Something Weird was well ahead of the curve. Dolemite’s own dirty ol’ man Rudy Ray Moore hosts the affair, with three ladies resembling Pam Grier’s Coffy huddled by his side.

In addition to the aforementioned Dolemite, Moore is represented by two other trailers of his unique action-raunch vehicles: Disco Godfather and The Human Tornado. In the latter, he boasts, “I’ve gotta dong as big as King Kong!” He gets off a better, more clever line in Dolemite: “I want him outta here in 24 hours, and 23 of ’em are already up!”

Other highlights include:
• In Monkey Hustle, the boys lift Quasars, while the girls wear T-shirts reading “Sweet Potatoes.”
• Tamara Dobson’s Cleopatra Jones character is pushed as “the sweet soul sister’s answer to James Bond.”
• Ebony, Ivory & Jade are touted as “.45-caliber kittens.” The titular first third (Rosanne Katon) karate-chops a few guys as she busts out of a tight “Big & Tall” T-shirt.
• The concert film Wattstax features Ike and Tina Turner, a heavy-haired Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rufus Thomas, who performs onstage in white tube socks.
• Robert Hooks’ Mr. T, the hero of Trouble Man, warns a caller asking for someone named Chalky, “This is T. Chalky’s dead. Now I’m comin’ to get your honky ass.”
• Trick Baby treats its source novel as if it were as hallowed and highbrow as Charles Dickens: “The way Iceberg Slim wrote it!”

Occasionally, director Domonic Paris (Film House Fever) lets Moore break into the proceedings to tell a dirty joke, none of which are all that funny. As the nonetheless amusing master of ceremonies, he tends to rhyme his lines like so many of the narrators of the trailers featured within. (Adolph Caesar, you were the teaser.) The program ends with a dirt-cheap music video, “Fonky Party,” that sees Moore squaring off against Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones), then looking remarkably well for his age.

I especially enjoyed the monster-knockoff trailers for both Blacula movies and Dr. Black and Mr. Hyde. Sad to say, Blackenstein is a no-show. All in all, Afros, Macks & Zodiacs is a fine compilation, even if suspiciously Shaft-less. —Rod Lott

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As of November 2022, the magician Max Maven is no longer of this earth. Anyone watching TV in the 1980s will likely remember him; he was the guy who wasn’t David Copperfield, Doug Henning or Harry Anderson. With ink-black slicked hair, a single earring and pencil-thin mustache and goatee, he’s the one who looked like a satanist, albeit a satanist who could produce a rabbit from a hat.

Pioneering at the time, Max Maven’s Mindgames was an hourlong special made exclusively for home video. Marketed as “the video that reads your mind,” it’s plant-the-camera directed by Bruce Seth Green, the guy behind such VHS rental gold as Nudes in Limbo and Massage … the Touch of Love.

Maven “communicates” with viewers through a series of magic tricks. Most are considerably lame, like the opening stunner of “making” your two index fingers touch one another. Oooooh! On a set reminiscent of Match Game PM (if Gene Rayburn had tolerated strobe lights and dry ice), Maven uses his brain powers to force you choose a preselected flag (the true neat bit) before moving on to the requisite card tricks. In between, he acts like a moron in some horrid “comedy” bits; as the writer, Maven only has himself to blame.

Many tricks have themed backdrops — the jungle, a surgical ward, a Vegas casino — but no matter the locale, they reek of cheap thrills. The guy had talent, but the limitations of videotape don’t exactly make for mesmerizing feats of mentalism. With support from a talking computer, a rotund ratings rep and a pair of sequined sweeties, Mindgames includes a musical number to “Yankee Doodle,” a clip from Battlestar Galactica and a man in a duck suit. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.