The Newlydeads (1987): Or, Crossdressing Ghosts Need Love Too

Ahh, Troma! Troma movies are like a rancid fart bubble that escapes a hobo’s anus and travels up his ass crack until it bursts at the top, causing instant foulness, but often hilarity. You might be passing by this hobo with your friends, after a night of partying. You are safely outside the blast radius, yet you push your friend past the event horizon and suddenly he’s choking and clawing at his throat. Everyone is having fun, laughing, and he’ll have a story to tell later when his brain repairs the damage, but most of all you were entertained. For Troma movies, that’s what it’s all about: showmanship.

Take for example “The Newlydeads”, an unpolished turd of a movie that nonetheless strikes the perfect balance between camp and just plain shitty. With a high boob-to-death ratio, it titillates as much as it triggers your vomit reflex. Oh, yes, the town fathers might sit in their gilded chairs, stroke their beards, cluck their tongues, and wonder aloud how anyone could derive entertainment from such pap, but I’m here to once again champion a movie that some might find repulsive, but that others, those select few, our faithful readers, who might, just might, find something to enjoy.

The Newlydeads (how can you NOT like that title? It’s perfect!) starts us off with a bang. We see a blonde chick driving a convertible whilst jamming to 70’s tunes on the radio. She arrives at an inn for the night, carrying only one small suitcase, and the hotel owner/manager/sexer takes her up to her room. Right off the bat he’s standing too close to her, but she isn’t repulsed by his pushbroom mustache or oily hair, nay, she’s receptive, and when the maid brings in a complementary bottle of wine and a fruit basket, the blonde asks him to crack open the bottle.

Welcome indeed!

They share a sip from the same glass, and then start to kiss, only the innkeeper makes a shocking discovery! The blonde is really a man in drag! Now, if you are the Vicar this wouldn’t be a problem, but for the innkeeper it is. Ain’t no plan with a man! They begin to fight (unconvincingly, I might add), and fearing that he might catch “the gay”, the innkeeper grabs a nearby ice pick, stabbing the crossdresser in the stomach with it. Not content with this grievous wound, he stabs again, this time ramming the pick through “her” skull. I’m guessing this movie is set in Wyoming.

"I seem to have gotten something in my hair.."

The scene fades and we jump 15 years into the future. We spend some time here being introduced to various couples, all coming to the inn. It seems the inn is a newlywed destination, known for its free bottle of wine and overall tranny unfriendliness. First off, we have the psychic and her douche of a husband. Seems she gets these “feelings” all the time, and they’re coming true with alarming regularity.

Next up we have a newly married country couple who attempt to speak with Southern accents and end up sounding like toolbags. The chick is a smoking hot blonde with giant funbags, so we’ll forgive them. She wastes no time getting naked when the dude pulls them over for a roadside quickie, unable to contain his need to treat his new wife as a sperm receptacle.

"Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand!"

Next we have a nerdy dude and his smoking hot blonde wife. We don’t get much info on them, and it turns out, as we’ll see, none was needed. We then have an old couple, looking to get remarried. I’m not sure why they were included, as they really serve no purpose and their scenes mostly fall flat or add nothing. Finally, we have a punk couple. The dude tries his best to look and act like Sid Vicious channeling Johnny Rotten channeling The Macc Ladds, but instead he comes across as a dillhole. His girlfriend is kinda hot but she doesn’t do anything but smoke weed, so we can forget about her.

All these people show up around the same time, but it’s the psychic we are primarily concerned with. Her hair resembles Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction, but her voice resembles that of a screeching harpy with a sandy vagina. She constantly screeches about how something bad is going to happen, and happen it does. Before she even gets to the inn, she’s yelling at her husband to not take a certain road or there’ll be an accident. Just to show her up, he takes it anyway.

We cut to a wedding. The innkeeper, now 15 years older and just as ugly, has taken a young bride. A small ceremony is taking place for them near the inn. Just before he can say “I do.”, he sees the crossdressor in full drag, only this time it’s his ghost, come to haunt and torment. Her face is like burnt paper caked with cake frosting. She runs off laughing and the innkeeper tries to follow. Meanwhile, the psychic and her husband are driving by at that moment, and the tranny’s ghost runs right out in front of them.

"Kids, don't let acne ruin your life like it did mine... try Clearasil."

Screeching to a halt, they investigate, only to find no body. The psychic declares that she’s not leaving until they get to the bottom of this, instantly suspecting the innkeeper because of his dago mustache and greasy hair. And now the stage is set. All the couples have arrived, the innkeeper has a new hot wife, and the psychic forgot to use conditioner.

We cut to nightfall, and the innkeeper is supposed to be sexing his new wife but is instead preoccupied by a certain ghost pre-op transsexual. He decides he better get liquored up so he goes to get some wine. The psychic, being the nosey bitch that she is, interrupts him in the kitchen to accuse him of murdering the ghost woman. She then goes on to prophesy that before morning two people will be dead.

The innkeeper couldn’t care less, he has a smoking hot wife to roger, so off he goes. As soon as the sexing begins, however, the ghost tricks him into believing he’s kissing the tranny, not his wife, so he begins to choke him, only it’s not really the tranny, it’s his new wife! Not being into erotic asphyxia, she gets upset and leaves.

Meanwhile, the nerdy guy and his bombshell of a new wife are getting busy in the hot tub of their room. After getting fellated underwater, he suggests they retire to the bedroom, whereupon they are interrupted rather rudely by the ghost tranny. Employing the use of a curtain rod, the ghost rams it through the nerd’s skull, the end coming out his mouth, where he is propped up above his lady. Her screaming is quickly silenced when the ghost magics a knife out of nothing and stabs her repeatedly.

"This is not what I meant when I said we needed new window treatments!"

This is quickly discovered the next day, as the psychic wakes the innkeep up early to go check the rooms for murder, and conditioner. Meanwhile, the priest who earlier married the innkeeper is revealed to be a pot smoking drunk. He remarries the old couple, and then proceeds to smoke weed with the punk couple. The innkeeper’s lady ends up returning back to the lodge after picking up a hitchhiker that turned out to be the ghost tranny in disguise. She’s so distraught that she does what anyone would do in that situation: take an unnecessary shower! The innkeeper, having botched his last attempt at fornication, joins his wife. Unfortunately for him, the ghost tranny pulls the same trick!

"You missed a spot... right... here."

Unfortunately for his new wife, he falls for it, again! This time, though, the tranny isn’t taking any chances and magics another knife from thin air, which the innkeep grabs and uses it to stab the ghost, only it’s really his wife obviously. Horror stricken, he flees after looking at her breasts one more time. He goes and grabs a 9mm pistol and puts it in his mouth, so distraught with grief he is. Instead, the ghost shows up to taunt him and he empties the whole clip at it, doing nothing of course.

Meanwhile, the psychic’s husband is angry at her for spending so much time looking for dead people, so he takes off to a nearby shopping center and calls the police, letting them know something odd is going on. Ghost tranny has followed him, though, and runs a pair of scissors into his throat. His wife sees that it’s going to happen, and gets the innkeeper to drive her over to stop it, but they are too late.

"Do you think she has any conditioner in here I could use?"

The psychic and innkeeper formulate a plan. She asks if he has anything personal belonging to the ghost, and he admits he kept her/his suitcase. Having the means to destroy her/him, they set a trap. The innkeeper cuts his palm and bleeds on a picture of the tranny (that came from the suitcase, natch), and then the psychic burns the pic. The ghost shows up instantly and starts choking the psychic, but the innkeep rescues her by cutting the ghost’s arm off. She/he is now corporeal and prone to injury it seems!

What follows this is a series of unlikely events set up in elaborate ways that make little to no sense: In other words, a Troma calvalcade of awesome! The maid, busy delivering wine and fruit to the guests, runs into a cross-cut saw that just happened to be placed at the right height on a tree to decapitate her. The hick shows up with a shotgun, that he got who knows where, and shoots at the ghost, who suddenly can’t be hurt again, and instead shoots one of the cops that showed up to investigate.

The other cop shows up, draws his automatic, shoots three times at the ghost, then throws his gun at her! (wtf?) Meanwhile, the hick chick is impaled on a couple of sharp tree limbs, we don’t see how exactly. Finally, the psychic shouts at the innkeeper,
“There’s something you aren’t telling me!”
Innkeeper: “She’s a man!”
Psychic “Oh, I see. He wants to go to bed with you!”

"Excuse me Mister, is this the way to the sauna?"

So, with that stunning dialogue, the psychic kisses the innkeeper (eeewww!) and boom, she’s possessed by the tranny. She’s ready for this, though, and quickly stabs herself in the stomach with a wooden crucifix! The ghost, and the psychic, are dead for good!

The final shot of the movie is of the punk couple, who had absolutely nothing bad happen to them, nay they witnessed nothing untoward.
Punk dude: “It’s so peaceful here, we should come back sometime…”

The end.

"If the gift basket doesn't include any 'ludes, we don't want it."

See, like I said, Troma movies are crap. But, they are my kind of crap. I laughed quite a bit throughout this festival of awful. The acting, the script, the sets, everything was beyond hokey and amateur. However, it works. It works on a lot of levels, and I pity the fool who can’t derive entertainment from such as this. These fine folks gave up one of their weekends to film this movie, and from the looks of it they had a blast. We get lots of 80’s hair styles, lots of naked chicks that are admittedly hawt, and one shrill psychic lady.

I give this movie 1 Thumb Up if you aren’t a Troma fan, and 3 Thumbs Up if you are. Put this one in your movie player of choice, pour yourself a cognac, order one of your servants to massage your inner thigh, and relax back in a overstuffed chair. Until next time, friends, I bid thee happy viewing!