IMDB Score: 2.5 out of 10

During the last month and a half I’ve spent watching bad movies, I’ve learned to appreciate one thing: truly terrible films.

While I will quickly grow bored and become restless during a movie that is mostly predictable and overtly trite, the really bad ones — the movies that reek with Don Quixote-esque misplaced madness and are weighed down with an impossibly large number of ill-conceived ideals — these are the movies that are infinitely watchable.

“Girlfriends,” a 1993 comedy (?)/thriller by Mark Steven Bosko and Wayne A. Harold, is such a film.

Never ask a lesbian to wipe your butt or you'll be staring down the barrel of a gun.

The duo, also responsible for the 1991 film “Killer Nerd” that stared comic book author Harvey Pekar’s friend Toby Radloff, proudly brings audiences a tale of crime and passion among lesbian rednecks and the sadomasochistic racists they like to kill.

Stars Nina Angeloff and Lori Scarlett have perfected the art of delivering terrible lines in the worst possible way. As Wanda and Pearle, two dim-witted lesbian criminals, the actresses spend the entirety of the 70-minute movie saying and doing terrible things. When they’re not turning tricks by the side of the road in order to buy fudgesicles, killing men and stealing their wallets or disrupting community theater, the two troublemakers are using despicable grammar, following terrible leaps of logic and dressing like waitresses from the Waffle House of Hell.

If you can’t root for the film’s main characters, surely you’ll root for their unfortunate victims, right?

Wrong.

The men that the two kill-happy lesbians whack are obnoxious, racist and so lazy they can’t even wipe their own asses — literally.

“Girlfriends” is a movie completely devoid of likable characters. While a talented filmmaker might have still managed to connect audiences with these denizens of the damned (see Todd Solondz’ “Happiness”) and create genuine pathos, Bosko and Harold only offer audiences an experience akin to watching a baby kitten walk into an alligator’s mouth.

You can’t help but watch — even though every fiber of your being tells you to look away.

With a film quality that looks like something that was submitted to “America’s Funniest Home Videos” circa-Bob Saget, “Girlfriends” makes no attempt to be a good movie. In fact, I’m convinced that the filmmakers intended to make a film as terrible as the one they did. Or at least I hope that was the case. Otherwise, any enjoyment I had while watching the film and laughing at the plot’s more outlandish turns will be replaced with sincere sadness.

I did learn a few things while watching “Girlfriends,” though.

For one, I learned never to trust a hillbilly lesbian who wants to harvest my seed for her and her girlfriend’s love child. I’ll probably end up dead in a ditch somewhere — being filmed with zany early ‘90s music video camera filters.

On the other hand, I also learned that turning tricks and killing johns actually could make you a pretty decent living. Or at least enough money to by fudgesicles.

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 8 out of 100

Metacritic Score: 32 out of 100

IMDB Score 5.9 out of 100

“Whiteout” is not a terrible film — it’s just not a terribly good one.

Kate! Watch out for that snow leopard hiding behind you!

The Antarctic murder mystery’s biggest crime is that its just too dang boring — something that a movie about murder set in one of the Earth’s most interesting places has no right to be.

Essentially “Law and Order: South Pole Unit,” “Whiteout” stars Kate Beckinsale as a U.S. Marshall attempting to unravel the mysterious murder of a research scientist on an Antarctic base days before she is finally set to leave the frozen hell-hole for good.

Unfortunately, the mystery isn’t too mysterious and the murderer is not unlike anything you would see on any one of television’s numerous crime procedurals.

The worst part is, it really is a terrible shame that I didn’t enjoy “Whiteout” since the film combines two of my childhood dreams into one cinematic fantasy smoothie.

As a child I harbored dreams of going into law enforcement. Raised on the teat of high-octane action films, I dreamt of shooting guns in the air as I leaped across rooftops, pursuing criminals and other assorted ne’er-do-wells.

At one point, I even donned a costume and patrolled my neighborhood as a masked vigilante, practicing for my eventual debut as a Supercop.

As I grew up and became increasingly out-of-shape and increasingly afraid-of-bullets, my dreams of law enforcement vanished as childhood dreams often do. I still watch “The Shield” with the heavy-heart that comes from a life half lived, but that ship has sailed.

Another of my fantasies as a kid involved moving to an inhospitable environment for a couple of years in order to prove myself to the world. While I wasn’t the best athlete, scholar or playground lothario, I felt I had something special in me that was just waiting for the moment that would provide a catalyst for my metamorphosis.

Batman’s parents were shot. Superman’s planet blew up. I figured I would find my hero-maker by surviving a harsh environment on my own.

I was drawn to stories about children who found themselves castaways on desert islands, isolated mountaintops or after-hour shopping malls. I would eat up any nature documentary that dealt with such extreme locations as the Australian outback, the South American rainforest or, yes, Antarctica.

So its no surprise that being a movie about a crime fighter in Antarctica would have blown my childhood mind.

Maybe that’s the lesson I learned from “Whiteout.”

Childhood dreams aren’t all they are cracked up to be. I’m sure that if I were to actually be an Antarctic cop, I’d find life to be just as dull and mundane as “Whiteout” turned out to be.

I wonder what other childhood fantasies wouldn’t prove to be as lustrous a lifestyle if they were an actual reality.

If I were to have a pet dinosaur, would that one day become passé. I can’t imagine myself ever growing bored of playing fetch with a T-Rex, but last week I never thought I would have yawned during a movie about a gunslinger in Antarctica.

Crime may get you a movie deal, but it will also come back to bite you in the end.

I slowly stalked my prey through the music section. I didn’t hide the fact that I was following him. I wanted the kid to know. And know he did.

He watched me from the corner of his eyes as he absent-mindedly browsed through the rap CDs. Coming up right up to him, I asked if he enjoyed the magazine.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said without much conviction.

“The pornographic magazine. Did you enjoy it?”

On retrospect, I realize that my little Dirty Harry impression was probably taking it a bit far. In fact, it was my attempt to intimidate the perp into a confession that attracted the attention of another customer.

“Oh no, you didn’t,” I heard a woman scream into my ear. “I didn’t just hear you accusing that young man of stealing a magazine. Where’s your evidence? What have you got?”

Startled by the conversation’s intruder, I turned to look at the woman who was making the scene.

“I’m just trying to talk to this gentlemen about a magazine he was about to pay for,” I attempted to explain.

It was no use. The woman had officially made the problem her business and launched into a fiery sermon, unrelenting in it’s busting of my chops. Looking away from her, I noticed that the kid had slipped away from my grasp and was high tailing it out the store.

“Look, he got away,” I told the woman.

“Good for him. Even if he did steal that magazine, it’s not like he hurt nobody.”

I hate that excuse. “I wasn’t hurting anybody when I tried to steal the candy bar.” “Nobody’s gonna get hurt if I read the book in the store instead of buying it.”

Sure. You’re right. By pocketing a CD from a store, you’re not causing genocide, spreading plague or giving anybody a Charlie horse. What you are doing, though, is ensuring that the cost of merchandise will steadily rise in order for the store to recover the loss of revenue from stolen products. Employees will be paid less, leading to more counter jockeys attempting to steal themselves. It’s a never-ending circle of crime.

In the end, I never directly brought a perp to justice. I was able to hand over video surveillance of two kids stealing a DVD boxset that led to their eventual arrest but I wasn’t there to enjoy my victory.

I saw with my own eyes a kid stuff a video game down his pants pocket but, when I confronted him about it, the kid pulled a Criss Angel and made it disappear. His parents even volunteered to frisk him. The game had vanished.

Now, several years out of the retail game, I still fantasize about catching a shoplifter and bringing down the swift hammer of justice. As I walk through Wal-Mart, I can spot the likely signs of criminal activities — empty packages lying on the floor, kids walking around with huge puffy jackets even though it’s 90 degrees outside, and customers carrying single DVD cases into the depths of the clothing department where they will most-likely rip open the packaging and stuff the disk down their pants.

I’m not a moral lighthouse of derring-do or anything. I have my vices just like everybody else on the planet. I just ask myself everyday, What Would Batman Do? Batman wouldn’t steal; he’d drop shoplifters off of rooftops and break their legs.

Read more stories of my college days

… and mocked years later on a blog.

I’ve always been a stickler for the rules. A firm believer in fair and balanced justice (and the real fair and balanced, not that depressingly ironic Fox News variety), I have always gone a bit overboard in enforcing the rules.

While working at Hastings, a store that specializes in movies, music, books and video games, I found my goat constantly being got by the ever-present shoplifter. From the obvious stuffing of merchandise under a coat to more subtle tricks such as switching price tags or returning books that had obviously been read, I considered every theft a personal affront onto me. I made it my goal to catch at least one perp during each shift. I wasn’t always effective.

I apprehended my first crook as he tried to open a DVD case and shove the disk up his shirt. As I snuck up behind the kid, catching him red-handed, I found his attempts to lie amusing. Without an inch of sympathy, I walked him to the front counter where I planned to call the police. Unfortunately, we were short staffed that night and, in the excitement of having caught my first criminal, I didn’t think that the perp would try to escape as soon as I turned my back to make the phone call. Sure enough, the kid was out the door and down the street the first chance he got. He didn’t take the merchandise with him, though. It was a draw.

The second encounter with a shoplifter came when I went to use the restroom during my shift. The restrooms are always a hotbed for merchandise shrinkage. Specifically of porn. Hastings, unlike most other bookstores, has no problem selling pornographic magazines. During my time at the store, I found every kind of porno (straight, gay, fetish, redneck) shoved in the bathroom trashcan.

Men (and sometimes women) looking to pass the time on a Sunday afternoon, would pick out a pornographic magazine from the rack, sneak it into the bathroom where they would enjoy it before shoving it into a trashcan, the toilet’s tank or, worst of all, gently putting it back into its wrapper and place it back on the rack.

Entering the restroom, the first thing I noticed was the sound of a plastic wrapper being taken off of a magazine. This sound was one I had become familiar with from living in a dorm room and remaining awake after the lights had gone out and my roommate thought I was asleep.

Sure enough, I saw a hand reach down to shove a wrapper behind the toilet.

“I hope you’re planning to buy that,” I said with my best impression of authority.

The kid stammered that he did not know what I was talking about. Not willing to argue with a man on the toilet, I told him that I would be waiting outside to make sure that he paid for the porno after his bathroom break.

Unfortunately, after leaving the bathroom, my attention was pulled to a problem at the front register. When I finally got a chance to look back at the restroom, I saw a kid sneaking towards the music section. He wasn’t going to get away that easily.

To be continued…

Read more stories from my time in college

Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop sending me Mafia Wars requests.

By the amount of requests I receive every day on Facebook to join my friends’ virtual “Mafia Wars” campaigns, I’m acquainted with quite a few budding criminals. To my pals waging online block wars with their pixilated tommy guns, I offer a suggestion: between virtual missions, don’t forget to take a break from video gaming.

Before anybody accuses me of promoting outside excursions, I want to define my definition of “taking a break.” I’m not calling for a walk through the park or any interaction with “real girls”; I’m just advising you to put down your controller before you develop finger calluses so thick your hands look like a hobbit’s foot. How do I recommend you take your non-bathroom related breaks?

Pop in a movie and bone up on your criminal knowledge.

Besides actually robbing a local liquor store or listening to a 50 Cent album, how else are you supposed to improve your thug skillz? There are no 12-sided dice that will increase your criminal mastery like it developed your usage of arcane magic.

If there’s one thing I’ve gleamed from life, it’s that anything worth learning can be learned from movies — and that includes petty crime. For example, you can rate the trustworthiness of your heist partners by their level of attractiveness. If you’re working with criminals that look like Brad Pitt or George Clooney, you’re bound to be part of a caper that will be as daring as it is delightful.

If your fellow thief looks like Steve Buscemi, he’s going to take the diamonds and shoot you in the gut.

Another helpful tip is to treat the hostage selection process like you’re picking your future wife — because chances are that during the getaway to Mexico, you and your hostage will fall in love. Wouldn’t you rather have a romance blossom with a hostage that looks like Kim Basinger then one that looks like Kathy Bates?

So in between sending me all those undesired Mafia Wars requests, don’t forget to pick up a few crime movies that can help you become a better virtual delinquent. But don’t take too long picking your movies; those digital cars aren’t going to steal themselves.

Read more movie related posts