Product Details

• Actors: Nick Sutton, Jacob Sewell, Lara Tosh, Jacob Reynolds, Darby Dougherty
• Directors: Harmony Korine
• Writers: Harmony Korine
• Producers: Cary Woods, Robin O'Hara, Ruth Vitale, Scott Macaulay, Stephen Chin
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• DVD Release Date: March 20, 2001
• Run Time: 89 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (365 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000059HA8
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #62,159 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Gummo" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

From Harmony Korine, screenwriter of Kids, comes a haunting portrait of life in small-town America. Through a collection of dreamlike and devastating images, Korine offers a glimpse of Xenia, Ohio, a world existing in the aftermath of a tornado.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

131 of 146 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Like nothing you've ever seen on TV May 27, 2003

By John Flora VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

Director Harmony Korine may or may not be the latest "enfant terrible," but he's certainly given us something to think about with "Gummo." He's given us about 90 minutes of in-your-face immersion into a culture that most of us only glimpse in "Cops" and other "reality" programs that deal with the hopeless, hapless people who make up the bottom strata of White America.
We suddenly find ourselves immersed in a culture where single moms huff glue with their teenage sons and their buddies and where boys hunt neighborhood cats with BB guns and sell the carcasses to a guy who supplies meat to Chinese restaurants. As the story develops, we learn the boys spend their cat money on glue and the services of a young prostitute who looks like Anna Nicole Smith with a lobotomy.
This movie is like a train wreck - at once horrifying and mesmerizing.
I disagree with an earlier reviewer who saw "Gummo" as an outrageous piece of elitism.
I think that charge misses the point. This is not some arrogant exposé of the quaint ways of the poor, it's a 90-minute tour of the self-perpetuating Culture of Stupidity that can be found on the fringes of every city and town in America. These are people who turn bad choices into a way of life because that's what their parents did and their parents before them. Yes, Korine packs the screen with enough geeks and freaks to populate a dozen circus sideshows, but his point is well taken. This is a strata of society that Hollywood ignores, except for the occasional cameo role in films like "Deliverance." It's a vision of a reality that we recognize instantly from our day-to-day experience, but which is carefully filtered out of the mass media.
Whether Korine has talent or promise in any convential sense of the words remains to be seen, but he's created a unique film that is destined to become a cult classic.
But, as an earlier reviewer noted, this is not a suitable date night substitute for "Casablanca" or "The Sound of Music."

42 of 52 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars There's something about Gummo... June 14, 2006

By Grigory's Girl

Format:DVD

If you describe this film to people, and tell them you like it, they'll think you're insane and disturbed. It's a documentary/collage like film about white trash. Some advertisements for the film have tried to portray it as a comedy, but it isn't. It's mostly vignettes from the town of Xenia, Ohio, where white trash and their values reign supreme. Cat killers (no cats were actually harmed), paying for sex with mentally handicapped people, white trash beating up chairs, and paint huffing are some of the attractions you'll see here. But Korine edits and films it in, dare I say, an artistic and interesting way. There is something going on here. This was an independent movie, but most indie movies are just quirky films that aren't that different than what mainstream Hollywood gives us. This is a real independent film. Korine films in 8mm, video, 16mm, and 35mm. He doesn't seem interested in crossover appeal with his work. He captures the despair and nihilism of these white trash denziens. And some of the images stick in your mind, like the kid taking a bath at the end eating spaghetti in a filthy tub. Korine has made only 2 features, but they are both certainly worth watching, and quite beautiful, in their own, strange way. This is a very good film....

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars It claws your senses, twists your logic, and murders your soul; and yet I can't look away. May 22, 2007

By Joel Munyon

Format:DVD

Another reviewer said Gummo was "unlike anything else of TV." My Holy Goodness, how right they were. If a lunatic was voted mayor of a town, Gummo would be the film depicting the townsfolk who call such a place "home-sweet-home."

We are introduced to the following: two awkward, gangly teens who kill cats and sell the rotting corpses to a local grocery store for a dollar per pound; three sisters who are about as backwards as anything this side of Appalachian poverty; a seedy brother who pimps his retarded sister out to teenaged boys; a sinister-looking young lady who, obviously being on the slow side, enjoys walking around the town singing "Jesus loves me this I know" as well as the always depraved "A-B-C-D-EFG-" song. Along the way, we also meet a young man wearing nothing but some swim trunks and a pink bunny hat who has the habit of urinating on cars driving beneath a local underpass. Oh, and for fits and giggles, we meet a group of rowdy mullet-styled rednecks who get their kicks from wrestling kitchen chairs to the point of exhaustion.

Sound like fun? This is a messed-up movie about twisted people living in the aftermath of a tornado that has swepth through their little slice of heaven. Nothing runs together smoothly as scenes and storylines come and go without rhyme or reason. Even the David Lynch and Terrence Malick crowds out there will feel disoriented in about 90% of this film.

A word of caution: if you begin to watch Gummo, you will have trouble turning away. I would liken it to a drug addiction that you know will harm you in some if you keep using it, but you end up alleviating such a warning by telling yourself, "Hey, just a little more. Just a little bit mo...."