8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997)

High jinks ensue when a mobster (Joe Pesci — what a surprise!) mistakenly swaps his severed-nogin-filled bag with an identical one belonging to a medical student (Matthew Perry wannabe Andy Comeau). Improbably, Pesci kidnaps Comeau's roomates (David Spade and Todd Louiso, Jerry Maguire's babysitter) and tracks Comeau to Mexico, where he's vacationing with his girlfriend (Kristy Swanson) and her parents (Dyan Cannon and George Hamilton). Pesci phones in his performance, Spade remains typecast as a wiseass, and Cannon resorts to shrieking and hyperventilating. Writer-director Tom Schulman — a long way from his Oscar-winning Dead Poets Society screenplay — mixes gratuitously phony-looking gore, ''comic'' torture scenes, and racial stereotypes. (''They have no laws down here,'' Comeau says of Mexico. ''They'll turn us into tacos!'') In the film's low point, Pesci dreams the severed heads are serenading him in eight-part harmony. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag aims for dark farce but ends up playing more like Weekend at Bernie's Part VIII. F

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