The Awful Movie Database

Awful Articles

Camp Juggs

Thursday, May 11, 2006 Update by Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons

User Rating:

• Critic Roger Ebert famously wrote "the only redeeming aspect of the entire production [of Camp Juggs] is that someone in some way responsible for the movie died on set."
• Dave Mustaine claims to this day to have no involvement in the writing of this movie and at one point threatened to sue his brother when it seemed Dave's name might be re-added to the credits on the DVD release.
• Camp Juggs enjoyed a rare box office success in Taiwan where its extreme anti-Chinese racism appealed to audiences.
• Director Rick Mustaine required most actors on the film to provide birth certificates to prove their real names matched their character's names. Mustaine later financed his psychedelic sci-fi erotica epic "Orianna Madalanna and the Organ of Orion" with fraudulent credit cards using the identities of cast members from Camp Juggs.
• Working conditions were so bad on the set that several stage hands had to be treated for canine heartworms.
• Many Megadeth fans believe that the song "Psychotron" is actually about Dave Mustaine's relationship with Rick Mustaine.
• Director trademark: A woman laying an egg directly into a skillet.
• Thanks to some clever contractual fine print, director Rick Mustaine was able to pay all cast and crew members their equivalent wages in refined salt.
• The infamous horse blowjob scene nearly landed actress Lucille Curry and Rick Mustaine in jail for bestiality, despite Mustaine's claims that a smaller than real rubber horse penis was used. The charges were eventually dropped when Curry was able to demonstrate for police that she could not fit a horse's penis all the way down her throat without gagging.
• All of the panties used in the panty raid sequence were stolen from a nearby graveyard.
• On the DVD commentary track for the 1998 release of the film director Rick Mustaine explains how a tight shooting budget caused several unusual compromises. For example, when John Thompson was making out with actress Lucille Curry in the darkened barn the sound of raccoons fighting in the rafters was so loud that Rick Mustaine was forced to kiss raw bacon next to a microphone in time with the action on screen.
• Director Trademark: Dialogue overdubbed with honking horns.
• Two of the five montages in Camp Juggs - the lodge repair montage and the fundraising montage - are repeated frame for frame in Rick Mustaine's straight-to-video sequel "Camp Juggs 2: Euro Road Trip."
• All of the used footage of Terry "Hulk" Hogan consists of Hogan entering and exiting his vehicle in a parking lot and was recorded surreptitiously by Rick Mustaine when the director spotted Hogan shopping near the editing studio.
• Actress Helen White had to endure over three hours of makeup each day simply to turn her vagina sideways. Sadly, all of the footage featuring her sideways vagina was cut to keep the movie to an "R" rating and the unused footage was later destroyed by a grease fire in Rick Mustaine's apartment.
• Morale reached a low point after four grueling days of shooting and to inspire the cast and crew Rick Mustaine purchased and strangled a rabbit. He was sentenced to community service for this act and was forced to clean up trash on the set while shooting was still underway.
• Jennifer Grant has admitted to having an IQ that qualifies her for public assistance as a borderline retarded person. During filming, infamously sadistic cinematographer Pierre Doitot convinced Grant that she was enclosed inside a glass box. She fell to her knees crying and spent the night sitting on the ground moaning for help. Grant only left when Doitot pantomimed opening the box the following morning.
• Paul Matthews and John Thompson were frequently at odds over the creative direction for their shared scenes. Matthews wanted to deliver his lines in a weepy drawl while quaking with despair and Thompson wanted to pace and fling his arms around violently. Rick Mustaine solved their differences by replacing their shared scenes with unexplained cuts to stock footage of topless African tribal women.
• Actor Liu Hwang did not speak English and later confided that he believed he was rehearsing for a wedding during the entire production.
• Near the end of the shoot, staff and children for a real camp began to arrive at the campgrounds being used as the filming location. Rick Mustaine insisted on continuing without permission and actually filmed the orgy scene inside the dining hall while children were eating.
• Rick Mustaine was so repulsed by his Chinese cast members that he forced them to wear burlap sacks over their heads when not shooting a scene.
• More than half of the film's budget was allocated to the construction of a giant animatronic breast that was completed, yet never turned up on the set.
• Director trademark: A cast member being killed by a helicopter.
• All of the music used in Camp Juggs is public domain, explaining why nearly every song is a Christian hymn and the closing theme is "The First Noel."
• The massacre scene at the end was cut from theatrical and early VHS video releases, but reappeared in the 1998 DVD. Rick Mustaine makes no apologies and explains on the commentary that "exterminating the Chinese is an important part of a boy's journey to sexual maturity."

- Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons