It’s Unstreamable! Where Jas Keimig and Chase Burns recommend movies and TV shows you can't watch on major streaming services in the United States. We post on Wednesdays unless we’re tired or busy 😊
This week, we’re highlighting The Linguini Incident, which we’re screening at Northwest Film Forum next week from June 5th to 9th. Come hang! RESERVE A SEAT!
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USA, 1991, 108 min, Dir. Richard Shepard
Has anyone ever heard of this movie? David Bowie is the lead! And he’s pretty good in it!
Forever, The Linguini Incident has only been available on a few rare VHS tapes. We watched it years ago thanks to a copy at Scarecrow Video, though the tape’s quality was booty. But now we’re in luck – The Linguini Incident is getting re-released as a director’s cut, and we’re excited to premiere it with all of you at the Forum this June.
It’s a comedy about a strange man from the UK who needs to get a Green Card ASAP (played by Bowie) and an eccentric woman who is trying – unsuccessfully – to be a professional escape artist (Rosanna Arquette). The cast is a bunch of proto-hipsters who live in New York City in the early ’90s. They all work at a surreal restaurant that displays a giant Salvador Dalí clock and makes its waitstaff wear uniforms made of silver lamé. It’s got A Fish Called Wanda vibes, but without the British slapstick comedy. It’s funny, odd, and deserving to be re-seen.
Find it in the Comedy section. In-store rental only. VHS.
USA, 1989, 98 min, Dir. Joan Micklin Silver
OK, I didn’t expect to be charmed by this young Patrick Dempsey-vehicle yet here I am: charmed as fuck. Joan Micklin Silver’s Loverboy is a young adult comedy in the way of Better Off Dead and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off with some American Gigolo thrown in for good measure. Meaning that our main guy, Randy (DempThe pizza place is (offensively) Mexican-themed, btw.
sey), is a slacker nearly failing out of college who finds himself back in his hometown slinging pizzas and—on the low—becoming an escort to the older, dissatisfied, wealthy women in the area. (Carrie Fisher! Kirstie Alley!) With the help of his conniving friends, they use their place of work as cover/money laundry; all the clients have to do is ask for pizza with “extra anchovies” and Randy will be on his way to serve them a hot pie and some dick. Of course, there are tons of misunderstandings along the way: his parents thins he’s gay, he has to elude the scary husbands of his clients, and deal with trying to get back together with his ex. Randy learns about what it really means to keep a woman happy, in a way that feels sweet. Loverboy also has several farcical and clever storylines that resolve themselves quite neatly. Where was this movie when I was a teen? I imagine that because of its softcore plot and teen comedy-feel, the film had some issues finding the right audience at the box office. It only grossed around $3.9 million against its $8.5 million budget. Who cares? It’s a gem! JAS KEIMIG
Find it in the Comedy section or rent it by mail.
Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.
*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. We don’t consider films on sites that interrupt with commercial breaks, like Tubi, to be streamable. Tubi is like Neu Cable. And yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.
