BETTER OFF DEAD (1985)

Where Your Nightmares End... And True Love Begins

On the second Lynchian day of Christmas, we present "Savage" Steve Holland's pre-winter break High School film Better Off Dead (1985). If David Lynch ever made a romantic teen comedy, we like to think it would have turned out like this bizarre and entertaining cult classic. Holland's absurd style of humor feels kindred to Lynch's, even featuring a less sinister version of Eraserhead's claymation dream sequences, this time centering on a memorable guitar-jamming hamburger also in search of true love.

Better Off Dead is one of the greatest weird movies to enter mainstream cinema in the 80's. It is quirky and bizarre in the best ways possible, and at times would probably even make Napoleon Dynamite (2004) scratch his head in wonder. Better Off Dead is an experience as impossible to explain as it is to forget and it features John Cusack in a brilliant early comedic performance that surpasses most—though not all—his later film roles. South Park even paid homage to Better Off Dead by patterning part of their third episode in the sixth season after it.

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