YMMV / Nothing but Trouble

• Awesome Music:
  • Bonestripper's theme by Damn Yankees.
  • "Same Song" by Digital Underground.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The inexplicable appearance of Digital Underground halfway through the movie, who show up, charm the judge with their music, and exit without having any impact on the plot whatsoever.
• Cult Classic: The bizarre and chaotic nature of the movie has brought fans who deem it So Bad, It's Good. As put by Nathan Rabin (who after hating it the first time around states the film somehow grew on him):
  The flop has been a source of intense, morbid fascination because even people who love bad movies still can’t believe a movie as bizarre and utterly, intentionally repellent as Nothing But Trouble exists and was made and distributed by Warner Brothers, a major studio ostensibly run by sane human beings looking for a return on their forty million dollar investment and not, say, a wealthy madman who flipped a coin to determine whether he’d set tens of millions of dollars on fire as a dadaist stunt or invest that money in a movie so defiantly non-commercial that funding it is tantamount to setting cash ablaze.
• Evil Is Cool: Judge Valkenheiser is such an over the top combination of the Small-Town Tyrant and Hanging Judge that he's easily the most entertaining character in the movie, ruling Valkenvania like a king and executing people on a rock & roll rollercoaster that he built himself. Plus, while he's prone to levying disproportionately harsh sentences, some of his victims really did have it coming. Even the state troopers secretly love him!
• Nightmare Fuel: Some of it is of the unintentional variety (as it's supposed to be a wacky comedy), but the movie is so bizarre and unsettling, both conceptually and visually, that many viewers who watched it as kids admit to being surprised to later find that it was a real, Hollywood-produced film, and not some kind of weird fever dream they once had.
• One-Scene Wonder: Digital Underground's appearance is the most popular scene in the movie. "Same Song" reappears during the end credits, "Tied the Knot" was used during the wedding sequence, and Aykroyd directed the music video for this song, which featured clips from this film projected at a Drive-In Theater.
• Protection from Editors: Dan Aykroyd's previous projects had somebody to reign him in, such as John Landis, Harold Ramis, Ivan Reitman, etc. (His original script for The Blues Brothers was a monstrosity the size of a phonebook and his original concept for Ghostbusters (1984) was so outlandish it would have cost the 1984 equivalent of $300 million.) This film was the result of not giving him any kind of restraint.
• Retroactive Recognition: You might notice Tupac Shakur as one of the Digital Underground's back-up singers (Tupac actually worked with Digital Underground before going solo, so it's not that big of a surprise if you know anything about Digital Underground or early 90s rap).
• Rooting for the Empire: Who cares about the dull and snooty leads? The JP has an automated fortress, kills bankers, klansmen, and hare krishnas on a rock & roll rollercoaster, loves hip hop, fought for his country in the Great War, dotes on his granddaughter, is still nimble enough to fight Chris with a sword, and is a beloved friend of the state of New Jersey.
• So Bad, It's Good: There are quite a few negative adjectives to apply to the film: Nonsensical, absurd, or disturbing, sure, but one you can't really use to describe it is boring.

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