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Being a Carolina girl, my family and I went on a lot of trip to Myrtle Beach, aka the Redneck Riviera. I have blurry but mostly fond memories of the Dirty Myrtle—so many glass bottles of coloured sand! But there was one blurry and not fond memory from one of these trips, when I got incredibly sick. I had the worst nightmare that I’d remember in fragments for the next decade-plus—a rollercoaster that ate the riders and spat out their bones; adult-sized mutant babies covered in dirt; people forced to eat wiggling boiled bratwursts. I hated this nightmare, and I hated remembering it.

Until. In college, I discovered Nathan Rabin’s AV Club column “My Year of Flops,” and started going through the whole catalogue. When I got a few paragraphs into entry #29, I started shaking. Because this man I’d never met was describing my Myrtle Beach fever dream. Turns out, it was no dream. It was Nothing But Trouble.

I honestly don’t think there’s a way to convey with words how hideous this movie is, but let me try: Chevy Chase (ugh) plays some kind of Manhattan finance guy who wants to fuck Demi Moore, so offers to give her a ride to Atlantic City. He unwillingly also brings his two “Brazillionaire” clients along with them, and those two encourage him to speed away from John Candy’s police car while they’re passing through “Valkenvania,” New Jersey. Doing so lands him in front of Judge Alvin ‘J.P’ Valkenheiser (Dan Aykroyd), sporting some genuinely incredible old man prosthetics1 and a false nose that looks like a dick. In a western, this judge would be known as a hangin’ judge. In an Aykroyd movie, he’s a bone-strippin’ judge. By this I mean, he has a rollercoaster called Mr. Bonestripper, and it does what it says on the label—strips the flesh off its riders’ bones and spits them out against a bullseye. You know, for kids!

John Candy is also pulling double duty here, playing the judge’s sister Eldona. Eldona gets a crush on Chevy Chase, which is HILARIOUS because she is FAT and therefore HIDEOUS. (Although, for the record? John Candy: smash. As long as he’s not wearing his Planes Trains and Automobiles mustache.)

But yes, my experience goes to show that this movie is literal nightmare fuel. Even before we get to Valkenvania, we’re stuck with Chevy Chase at the height of not giving a shit. I get that being an asshole who thinks he’s better than everyone was, like, his whole schtick. But I hate that schtick. I swear, Three Amigos is the only performance of his that makes me really laugh2. Otherwise, he is a trial and a tribulation whose toxicity is only sometimes part of the joke.

Once we do get to Valkenvania, everything becomes a grotesque misadventure. The movie looks like it smells bad, and like every surface is an unpleasant texture—not sticky necessarily, but goopy, or floppy. Every shot is crammed with off-putting details. By the time those wiggling boiled bratwursts show up, it’s not just my childhood nausea. It’s our nausea.

This is the definition of a blank check movie. Dan Aykroyd was on an unbelievable decade-long hot streak in 1990—highlights include The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, Ghostbusters, and an Oscar-nominated turn in Driving Miss Daisy. As far as Hollywood was concerned, Aykroyd was a living comedy legend who deserved a blank check to make whatever crazy passion project he wanted. But one thing about them blank checks? Sometimes they clear, and sometimes they bounce, baybee. And this horror show bounced the check hard enough that he’s never directed since.

Demi Moore is so many things. She’s an incredible on-screen crier, for instance. And she’s a committed actress, even when the material isn’t giving her much. But she is just not at home in a comedy, especially not one as catshit as this one. I don’t know who could have made this role feel grounded, let alone lively—Phoebe Cates, maybe?—but Demi makes it feel nonexistent.

Honestly, John Candy. His police chief Dennis is the only character with any real depth and interiority, and Candy is doing a lot more of that work than the script is. Similarly, despite the movie’s best efforts to make his Eldona a one-note joke, candy turns her into the only character you care about.

So, back to Dan Aykroyd. You know…film is a collaborative medium. Collaboration requires negotiating, editing, and revising. Which is to say, it requires someone saying “no” to something at some point. In this film’s case, though, nobody said “no” to Dan Aykroyd. I feel very sure that this is the exact movie he wanted to make, which is certainly an achievement. All of my complaints about the movie being hideous and generally nauseating—that’s the effect he wanted. But the exact movie he wanted to make is just fucking gross, dude. I know too much about what the inside of his mind looks like now, and it’s full of flesh-stripping gears and prosthetic dick noses. This kind of weirdness is like cilantro. It’s not for everybody, and even if it is for you—I love cilantro! I love Dan Aykroyd in Grosse Point Blank!—a whole cilantro salad will make you sick and probably give you nightmares.

I’ve only seen the whole thing once, and that’s when I was sick and a child. Now that I’m grown, I periodically remember that this movie exists and will watch 2-4 clips from it, aghast and agape the whole time. I can’t explain it, but there’s something alluring about the rot.

It almost goes without saying, but I’m gonna say it anyway: Digital Underground is in this movie, and it is very cool to see a 1991 Tupac reacting to the unhinged Dan Aykroyd of it all.

I wonder what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t accidentally watched this when I was young and very sick, and therefore very impressionable. Maybe I wouldn’t hate Chevy Chase the way I do. Maybe I wouldn’t have this fascination with the grotesque. Maybe I’d be totally unrecognizable. So, honestly, no. I don’t regret it. It was an accidentally formative viewing experience.

On the next Terrible Tuesday: Celebrating turkey time with Jennifer Lopez.

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