41. Very Bad Things

Released and immediately panned in 1998, Peter Berg’s Very Bad Things was routinely described as “offensive,” “violent,” and “masochistic.” Though this vocabulary is exercised to disapprove, it would recommend an exploitation film released two decades prior. It is to its strength that this film is able to resurrect such livid reactions.

The film centers on a bachelor party in Las Vegas. Customarily inhibited men (some of whom are or will soon be married) couple drugs and sex and leave, with little haste, a prostitute and hotel security guard dead. They panic, hide the bodies, and things mushroom. The scenario should be familiar (the same concept is also used in A Simple Plan).

Very Bad Things is currently imprisoned in repeat airings on Comedy Central, where it exists in a severely truncated form (in another decade this film may have been banned in some countries). Such a context is misrepresentative. Its principle cast is comprised of comedy veterans and its marketing an assemblage of comedic highlights, the film’s distinguishing savagery is ignored in its most accessible iterations.

As an exploitation film, Very Bad Things is endorsed by the terms used angrily to describe it; the more violent and less tasteful the film the better. It is in this context that Very Bad Things is of merit. As an illustration, imagine Cameron Diaz stamping a desisting groomsman with a heavy coat rack (in the face, no less) immediately prior to her wedding in order to preserve it -- it is one of the past decade’s highlights of exploitation. (Rumsey Taylor)