Nothing But Trouble Music Video – Damn Yankees Bonestripper

3 thoughts on “Nothing But Trouble Music Video – Damn Yankees Bonestripper”

1. Who hasn’t seen this tired old 80s formula of:

   Rich guy, hot girl and Brazillian Millionaires get detained in small town and sentenced to death by aging judge and his retarded mutant nephews?

   It’s U-Turn meets Texas Chainsaw with just a dash of Spies Like Us.  Written and directed by Dan Aykroyd, it’s kind of like mixing every color of the rainbow together and getting a brown muck.

   According to what I’ve heard, Aykroyd is a sort-of demented genius.  He wrote the scripts for Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, etc.  But without folks like Ramis or Landis to curb his wild imagination and carve his 500-page screenplays down to the nitty gritty, he is an unchecked freak. 

   Behold then – the one Aykroyd project that went unchecked, much to my delight and the frustration of the Warner Bros studio. 

   The film Spike Lee spat venom over, when Aykroyd got more pay and budget than Spike did from the same studio simply cuz Aykroyd was fat and white.

   This is a music video for “Nothing But Trouble,” the movie whose title alone cursed every comic star who appeared in it.  This was pretty much the final nail in both Chevy Chase’s career, and sadly is one of the last films by John Candy. 

   Demi Moore wound up in here somehow, and Aykroyd himself plays multiple roles, each one more bizarre, disgusting and wrong-headed than the other.  I adored it.

   I saw it in Times Square on its release day because rumor was Aykroyd was gonna be there.  Probably until he realized that the only theatre willing to screen it was one step above a porn house.  (Remember that, Cybergosh?)

   It made about $5 million in domestic box office (Cost around $15 as I recall) before leaving theatres and is barely present on even the most basic of late-night cable channels. 

   Makes a great double-feature with “Bill & Ted” alum Alex Winter’s freak-show movie, “Freaked.”

   Here then is another of my college-era movie-music-montages, a tribue to this modern-era Ed Wood film—featuring the song from the movie’s soundtrack by Damn Yankees, called “Mr. Bonestripper.”

2. I do!  That theater actually DID go porn shortly after the release of Valkenvania – err, i mean, Nothing But Trouble.  Its doors were shut about a year after that when the wrath of gilluliani, or however the hell you spell that guys name, wiped the last remaining semen from times square.  Rotted and boarded up it still stands today.  And every time i pass it i actually think of this film, along with Robocop III, which was the only other film i saw there (remember that, Bake?!)

   I love Nothing But Trouble!

3. LOL I forgot – yes, the original title was “Valkenvania,” which is how it was listed in the Hollywood Reporter.  I’d actually made a scan of the poster from the CD box art and then had a T-shirt made on 6th Avenue and 3rd Street (same place that made our fake IDs and the Bob Moon Doll)—so I was wearing my Valkenvania T-shirt on release day. 

   Sigh, such an innocent time.

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