For good reason, The Fisher King is one of the most heralded works of filmmaker Terry Gilliam, but one I had never watched before. Originally, I thought it was about some modern-day knights and the late Robin Williams cast as a chief Central Park bum. To be fair, I did own a previously viewed copy of it on VHS. Does that count?

I had embarked on a long-forgotten quest to find the time to watch it, which I finally did with the Criterion Collection edition last week. I realized the movie was so much more than another Gilliam visual feast for the mind, because of it has a soiled, ramshackle heart.

Jack (Jeff Bridges) is a stereotypical ’90s shock jock, putting callers through the metaphorical meat grinder. This all goes bad for him when a crazed fan shoots up a party of full of people (back when things like that weren’t everyday occurrences). Three years later, he’s a clerk at a rundown video shop. When a young boy gives him a Pinocchio puppet, it sends Jack into suicide mode. And when a duo of New York toughs try to immolate him, thank God for Parry (Williams) and his homeless cadre rush out of the storm to slay this murderous party.

From there, Parry charges Jack to find the Holy Grail, with comedy, drama and, most of all, the rusted heart. The film does this without being too cloying and superficial — something much of Williams’ work came to be in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

Sure, the artistic angles, the grating noise and the sheer claustrophobia are all there, but Williams’ performance stands out most as remarkable. Perry acts like a man out of time — the “janitor of God,” he puts it — with this quest helping to work out demons of his own. We learn the source of his mental anguish when all goes south.

Gilliam is masterful at nightmarish scenarios. Here, one with a bold-but-dirty face gets a happy ending, but it’s one this movie truly deserves. Also, out-of-the-norm actors like Amanda Plummer, Tom Waits and Michael Jeter are excellent in their supporting roles.

Fear of the unknown is one of Gilliam’s mainstays, but The Fisher King is about embracing it. —Louis Fowler

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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,” a Blowfly collab 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

Get it at Amazon.