Fatty Drives the Bus (1999, Mick Napier)

 

So I had a few Troma cheapies laying around for a long while and just recently decided to spend a drunken Friday night seeing if I had been neglecting any potential "gems". The first foray of the evening was "Fatty Drives the Bus", which I think I had purchased amongst a rather large order of DVDs for just under a dollar. I regret every measly cent of what I spent on this shit-heap.

Satan isn't making his 'soul quota' for the month because Christ is in town, so he decides to disguise himself as a Chicago tour bus guide and trick a bunch of schmucks into signing over their souls before crashing the bus, killing them all...

I was expecting more of a horror-comedy with this one. I wasn't expecting anything great, but a dumb, Troma-released horror-comedy at the very least. It isn't. There isn't any evidence of the horror genre in this film. Not only that - but the comedy element is absolutely retarded. They were trying to go for that absurd, "no rules" type of humor that they knew Troma fans would eat right up. That type of satirical, dimwitted comedy is okay with me in some cases, but here... it's completely redundant and laid on WAY too thick. It's basically just random, go-nowhere scenes featuring a busload of "wacky" characters such as a couple of country brothers who are intimidated by the "big city", a guy dressed as a woman who thinks he's a "hot broad" (if Troma releases it, there MUST be cross-dressing), a suicidal scientist, a stereotypical married tourist couple and a snooty rich couple. None of them - not ONE - is amusing in the slightest! The only benefit you'd get from watching "Fatty Drives the Bus" is that it acts as more of a genuine tour-film of Chicago than anything else. They film a lot of it on location in front of various Chicago landmarks. Otherwise, it's totally pointless. The ending is a ridiculously intentional cop-out that, again, just goes to show that the idiots behind this were trying to be "outrageous" and "clever" and "anti-film" assholes, but failed miserably. Plus, why the fuck does the title of the movie put ANY emphasis on the bus driver? He's barely in the movie and plays NO significant part in any of it! Satan is the tour-guide, NOT the driver.

I don't care how much of a Troma fan you are, you'll hate this fucking movie. I promise.