Bizarre film about a repellent creep who meets a bum on the street who teaches him "morphosynthesis", the ability to transform yourself into whoever you so desire. This psychotic louse uses the identity of a pretty missing girl whose picture was on the back of a milk carton, assuming the role of a female teenage student. He was already unstable to begin with(we are introduced to him as he's ogling at a girl walking down a sidewalk)due to his abuse at the hands of his mother, and so the eventual misogyny(and sadism) which erupts as he remains in the disguise of Josephine(Ann Flood), attacking a girl pack he befriends while attending high school, one at a time, at night when they are not expecting Joe(Carl Zschering), is due to his childhood trauma(as is his cannibalism which derives from feeding from his dead mother's remains while living at home by himself, which explains his devouring flesh from the female victims).
THE NOSTRIL PICKER resembles something Troma might distribute/produce, because it's crude, badly dubbed, poorly acted(it sounds like the actors are having trouble with their lines), in bad taste, with a dimestore budget that features schlocky special effects(particularly fingers lopped off a hand and how Joe stabs a victim multiple times, up and down, only after about number fifteen does any blood appear on the blade which means it's obvious he's bludgeoning a pillow). The plot, however, is rather unsettling and disturbing, the idea that out of all the people to have the ability to camouflage himself with another identity, it had to be Zschering's Joe Bukowski, an unhinged recently released mental patient who hates women and has cannibalistic tendencies. The film wants to actually be a comedy and even has a musical interlude where Joe is shown in school and the girls' restroom, having integrated himself into the new role, enjoying the new found freedom and power provided him. Actually, the violence comes out of nowhere, shifting the tone somewhat, only to return to comedy when Joe attempts to sodomize a transvestite he picks up(in the form of the teenage girl)outside his junky apartment. Zschering is effectively cast because he fits the profile of a neighborhood stalker who you could envision as a pedophile predator, dangerous with a knife, particularly lethal with a supernatural ability to fool victims into thinking he's a chick. The title refers to how Joe picks his nose all the time. Joe not only lacerates the jugulars of his female victims and eats pieces of their flesh, he also rapes them with the knife he uses as a weapon! Sickening enough(story-wise) to become a cult classic.
THE NOSTRIL PICKER resembles something Troma might distribute/produce, because it's crude, badly dubbed, poorly acted(it sounds like the actors are having trouble with their lines), in bad taste, with a dimestore budget that features schlocky special effects(particularly fingers lopped off a hand and how Joe stabs a victim multiple times, up and down, only after about number fifteen does any blood appear on the blade which means it's obvious he's bludgeoning a pillow). The plot, however, is rather unsettling and disturbing, the idea that out of all the people to have the ability to camouflage himself with another identity, it had to be Zschering's Joe Bukowski, an unhinged recently released mental patient who hates women and has cannibalistic tendencies. The film wants to actually be a comedy and even has a musical interlude where Joe is shown in school and the girls' restroom, having integrated himself into the new role, enjoying the new found freedom and power provided him. Actually, the violence comes out of nowhere, shifting the tone somewhat, only to return to comedy when Joe attempts to sodomize a transvestite he picks up(in the form of the teenage girl)outside his junky apartment. Zschering is effectively cast because he fits the profile of a neighborhood stalker who you could envision as a pedophile predator, dangerous with a knife, particularly lethal with a supernatural ability to fool victims into thinking he's a chick. The title refers to how Joe picks his nose all the time. Joe not only lacerates the jugulars of his female victims and eats pieces of their flesh, he also rapes them with the knife he uses as a weapon! Sickening enough(story-wise) to become a cult classic.
