CINE File first saw“Bad Boy Bubby” at the Rotterdam Film Festival way back in 1994.
He sang the film’s praises, then waited for it to get a run in New York.
And he waited and waited.
Eleven years later it has yet to open here, the victim of red tape, although it did get a limited release elsewhere in the United States.
Now, happily, it is receiving a release on DVD.
Dig this story, courtesy of Dutch-born Rolf de Heer, who makes low-budget films in Australia:
Bubby (a splendid Nicholas Hope) has spent the first 35 years of life living alone with Mom in a windowless apartment from which he has never strayed.
She has convinced him that the outside world is poisonous. To make her point, she dons a gas mask each time she ventures out.
She also forces the clueless man-child to have sex with her.
One day, from out of nowhere, Dad shows up. He’s a cleric of some sort who has not been home since before Bubby was born.
Bubby and Daddy squabble, and Bubby is cast into the mean streets.
He immediately meets a pretty young Salvation Army worker, who takes him home to bed.
And that’s only the first 30 or so minutes of this strange and wonderful movie, which has developed a cult reputation over the years.
You can find “Bad Boy Bubby” at Kim’s and other with-it video stores, via a company called Blue Underground.
Speaking of Kim’s, it has just opened a store on Christopher Street, off Bleecker Street, in the West Village, around the corner from the shop it closed several years ago due to a rent hike.
V.A. Musetto is film editor of The Post. He can be e-mailed at vam@nypost.com