After watching Cruel World, I noticed the blurb on the cover where Luke Y. Thompson called it “a Cult Classic.”  Curious what his criteria could possibly have been, I tried to track down the review.  It was not linked at IMDb, but Rotten Tomatoes still had his headline.

Classic out-of-context blurb!  Frankly, the producers should have been thrilled with “watchable.”

20 movies for $5; what could possible go wrong.  Part X: Cruel World.

It gets off to a decent start as a group of 20-somethings explain why they want to be on a reality show.  It gets better as Jamie Pressly shows up wearing a man’s shirt and panties.  At this trajectory, this thing could be Citizen Kane before the 2nd act.

She and her husband met on a reality show called Lover’s Lane filmed in the house where they now live.  While they vacation in Tahiti, they plan to rent the house out to another reality show.  Edward Furlong shows up unexpectedly, as he would have to, because who would invite him?

Jamie had rejected him on the show where she met her husband.  On tape we see her use the excuse, “I don’t think I could make you happy.”  Also acceptable would have been, “You are unbelievably bloated and creepy.”

She attempts to get away, and even inflicts some very satisfying damage on him.  They end up in the pool, further elevating the picture.  Sadly Jamie is killed, thus largely ending the entertainment portion of our program.  If you can overlook Furlong’s performance, it really is a decent low-budget movie for the first 15 minutes.

The contestants show up in a stretch Humvee, and thankfully are less hateable than any cast of Big Brother I’ve ever seen; although, to be fair, I have never made it past episode 3.  Furlong starts them off easy with drinks and a pool party as he watches from a control room.

The challenges begin with disgusting, then progress to dangerous.  The first person is voted out and is killed off-site by Furlong’s slow brother Claude.  And when you are in a family with E. Furlong, and you are known as the slow one, that’s making a statement.

Claude’s attempt to kill a second contestant does not go so well as she is Asian, and thus is a black belt.  Claude take several kicks to the noggin before throwing her to the ground.  She tries to escape by climbing a tree.  As Claude grabs her leg, she brilliantly starts peeing so he releases her in disgust.  Asians is smart!

Finally, still being smarter than Big Brother contestants, the survivors realize that Furlong intends to kill them.  Eventually the field is whittled down to one.

It is understandable why Furlong wants to kill the lovely Jamie Pressly — he feels that she humilated him on national TV.  Although, I assume she similarly humiliated at least 8 other guys in this reality show — she only married one.  But his motivation for killing this new bunch of yahoos is a mystery to me.  Not sure motivation was a big issue for Furlong as an actor either.  He is not a method actor, but more likely is a meth actor.

My big question, what happened to the Asian girl?  Claude chased her into a storage pod  Is she still there?

As Luke Y. Thompson said, “watchable.”  But not much more than that.

Post-Post:

• Cast includes Angel’s sister from Dexter.
• Halfway through the collection, but I can’t even claim to have finished 2 of the 4 discs since the box listing does not match the discs.
• Just for the record, a furlong is 1/8 of a mile or 220 yards.