"Shirley Pimple in the John Wayne Temple of Doom" is a colossal bore but not without some interest. Who is the audience for this? It's an example of an oft-maligned genre, the "manufactured cult film," reminiscent of John Waters' earliest films. SHIRLEY PIMPLE is long on bad taste but unlike Waters these filmmakers have no heart, trying very hard to be counterculture and trashy but ending with plain old trash. A plot less burlesque, it follows Shirley Pimple (Temple) as she goes on a rampage against the John Wayne Institute for the Preservation of American Ideals, slashing and burning and murdering all in her path and with the help of punk rocker child molesters who have outfitted live babies with explosives. As the babies blow up waves of armed soldiers, personnel of the Institute, and eventually John Wayne himself (now a rotting living dead soldier), the outlandish characters spew enormously convoluted litanies. These are endless dialogs of not-so-clever wordplay apparently intended to deconstruct the mythologies of both Temple and Wayne.
The best part of it all is in the occasional narration that reveals the true histories of Temple and Wayne, although several factual errors pop up (for example, the script claims actor Bruce Dern was blacklisted in Hollywood for being the guy who shoots Wayne in the back in 1972's THE COWBOYS. On the other hand, the recounting of author Graham Greene's exile for calling out Temple's audience as probably pedophiles is interesting). For his low-budget looking "underground" movie, the unlikely named director of SHIRLEY PIMPLE, Demetri Estdelacropolis had enough cash on hand to create elaborate scenes featuring military-style explosions and gross-out dismemberments, but blows it in areas such as pace, camera-work, and acting. He has intentionally cast a bunch of illiterates in major parts who can barely repeat the mock-campy lines, highlighted by a shrill, talentless Chelsea McIsaac as Shirley.
The nadir of self-conscious "cult movie" humor might be in the war scenes, in which real babies are tossed around in what clearly looks like child endangerment on the set, and idiotic revamps of popular songs, such as "Riders on the Storm" which here becomes "Riders on Methadone" and comes with a repeating chorus of "Scorcese on methadone!" It is no wonder this movie was never officially released.
The best part of it all is in the occasional narration that reveals the true histories of Temple and Wayne, although several factual errors pop up (for example, the script claims actor Bruce Dern was blacklisted in Hollywood for being the guy who shoots Wayne in the back in 1972's THE COWBOYS. On the other hand, the recounting of author Graham Greene's exile for calling out Temple's audience as probably pedophiles is interesting). For his low-budget looking "underground" movie, the unlikely named director of SHIRLEY PIMPLE, Demetri Estdelacropolis had enough cash on hand to create elaborate scenes featuring military-style explosions and gross-out dismemberments, but blows it in areas such as pace, camera-work, and acting. He has intentionally cast a bunch of illiterates in major parts who can barely repeat the mock-campy lines, highlighted by a shrill, talentless Chelsea McIsaac as Shirley.
The nadir of self-conscious "cult movie" humor might be in the war scenes, in which real babies are tossed around in what clearly looks like child endangerment on the set, and idiotic revamps of popular songs, such as "Riders on the Storm" which here becomes "Riders on Methadone" and comes with a repeating chorus of "Scorcese on methadone!" It is no wonder this movie was never officially released.
