Okay, here's the deal. When I was a teenager, we used to make Sunday visits to my grandma's house. Now, one time I made the mistake of saying, "What IS that SMELL?!?" when we entered the place, as my nose encountered that strange mix of mildewed books, furniture polish, and Icy-Hot ointment. Once I made that mistake, my dad would always warn me before we went in, saying, "Now, V. B., don't say anything about the smell. She doesn't know it's there."

It started me wondering how you could have a functional nose, but not be aware of a smell. Later, in med school we studied the olfactory system, and I came to believe that scents just sorta creep up on us sometimes, invading our lives so slowly that we just don't realize how bad it is until someone else points it out.

I just saw 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, the new film from screenwriter-turned- director Tom Schulman. Schulman is the Oscar®-winning scribe of Dead Poets Society, and a clever contributor to the screenplays of What About Bob? and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. I've got to believe that Schulman is like my grandma. He was working in his office one day, and landed on this nifty idea for a mobster story about these eight heads in a duffel bag. He fell in love with the idea and decided to write a script. He worked on the plotline on and off for a few months, nibbled away at a first draft, put it down to do a rewrite of another script for a friend, then worked on 8 Heads some more, took a week off to vacation in the islands, had to send his PC into the shop for repair, wrote a few script notes in pen while the PC was gone, got it back from the shop, wrote a second draft, attended the graduation of a friend's niece in Montana, plowed his vegetable garden, rewired his favorite writing lamp, edited his second draft, wrote a bit more on the second draft, and before he knew it, Tom Schulman had written a big funky piece of dreck, that smelled just fine to him.

There is not one single thing in this story that would even suggest that it could have been a good movie. I can only imagine what it must have felt like to work on this movie day in and day out. At least sewer workers know what they are stepping in as they walk to work. The cast and crew of this loser must've looked around a lot, muttering to themselves, "What IS that SMELL?!?"

The plot, such as it is, has Joe Pesci playing a Mafia bag man. He's delivering the title item to his bosses in that hotbed of organized crime, San Diego, as proof that a contract was carried out on some rival hoods. (No Polaroid cameras in Brando-land?) Making the same trip is a young med-school student, who happens to have a duffel bag just like the one with the heads in it. Wanna make a wild stab at the impending plot twist?

You got it. In a madcrap turn of events, the bags get mixed up. The heads go to some Mexican resort with the young doctor-to-be, who's spending spring break with his girlfriend and her parents. And, of course, Little Mister Mafia has to find his heads before the mixup gets him in hot water.

Stop, stop, my sides are splitting.

To make things worse, the actors also don't seem to smell their own B.O. (B.O. is meant here as "boring odor.") Pesci, himself an Oscar winner for Goodfellas, plays this mobster like a parody of himself. That goat-guy on "Saturday Night Live" does a better Pesci than the guy who showed up to collect this paycheck. It makes me wonder if Goodfellas was just a fluke and only Scorsese can get a decent performance out of him.

Newcomer Andy Comeau, who's only qualification seems to be that he kinda looks like John Cusack, plays the med student. He runs the emotional gamut from A to B here, and all that in the first five minutes of the so-called film. From then on, a JC Penney manniquin could have done this part. The one-dimensional wonder Kristy Swanson is given nothing to work with, and this girl is the one who found a way to make a Wes Craven movie boring. (Rent Deadly Friend and enjoy a 90-minute nap.) Imagine what she does for this one. Comeau's college roommates, who get to be the victims of Pesci's growling and flailing, are played by Todd Louiso and, God forbid, the walking dishrag, David Spade. Oh, to be in Hollywood when his dark star finally burns out. Marshmallows for all!

And, while we're on the subject of career slippage, who dug up George Hamilton and Dyan Cannon for this thing? Talk about wading in the shallow end of the talent pool. These two couldn't act out a fart at a bean-eating contest, yet they pop up in a so-called "major" release? Dyan, waving your arms is not the same as acting. Your chest was your talent once, and now, only the civil engineers are keeping you afloat. And for George, ol' buddy, your talent consists of being browner than an IHOP sausage link.

Someday, in the whole scheme of things, film historians may find reason to use this film as a shining example of how not to make a good film. For now, this piece of Hollywood waste product should be flushed away as soon as possible, before the stink carries over to summer.