C.H.U.D [1984]

This one was pretty doomed from the title, honestly. Even hearing that it was an acronym wasn't quite a comfort. Apparently it stands for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, and in spite of that ridiculous premise, it's an extremely mediocre movie. Mid, as the kids say. It's not bad in a funny way. It's not even really bad in a bad way. It's just kind of boring, not funny, competently made and forgettable. The only real joy we got was from a very brief cameo of John Goodman as a cop in a diner who dies immediately. 

The movie feels a little like three different people wrote scripts set around the same villain but no one really consulted with each other. One story is about a photographer who way too controlling over his model girlfriend's body until she gets pregnant and suddenly he's totally chill with whatever she wants to do. He photographs people who live in the subway so he hears about things going on there. One story is about a cop whose wife has disappeared because she got eaten by the chuds in the opening scene and he's trying to find her. The last is about a crusty guy who runs a soup kitchen and is worried about people disappearing and about the EPA doing stuff that could impact people. None of these angles are well represented and it takes forever to get to fighting chuds. Aside from the model slicing one of them in their expanding neck with a sword she just had in the apartment, not much happens at all.

Again, this isn't a bad movie. It's just a bland one.

Spoon Rating: None

Star Rating: 1.5?

Julie And Jack [2003]

When the movie for tonight was announced we didn't think much of it until we saw "directed by James Nguyen" and we knew we were in for a treat. While mostly known for Birdemic, he actually made two films before that, and this romance was his first film.

With all the signature quality of a film you made for a high school foreign language class, we get the story of Jack, poor tech salesman. His sex-obsessed friend tells him to get on a dating website because all your issues can be improved with a relationship and there he meets Lady Renegade. Her actual name is Julie Romanov and she's a computer programmer. She likes to wax poetic about the ephemeral nature of things and Ada Lovelace and does not like to talk about her past. For the first half hour, nothing much happens aside from them getting closer as they go on dates. 

Then suddenly when they are dressed for a Gatsby party and walking through the Fines Arts Palace in San Fran, Jack starts saying things about how he wishes they could meet in real life and not a simulation. We all immediately started placing bets and correctly realized that they have been dating through VR. The next thing we started guessing was, "What's the actual deal with Julie?" None of us believed she was real at that point but was she just AI like in Her or was it more of a "she's dead but programmed herself before she died" deal. Jack spends the next half hour learning about her from a former professor, business partner, an old friend of hers, and an ex before finding her parents. Her mom, played by Tippi Hedrun, reveals that she died two years ago.

Jack breaks up with her because of the sex (no, really, he says that) then goes on a brief soul searching journey to a church that talks about "spiritual love." He decides that he can just date her as the AI reconstruction of a dead girl, and they reunite in virtual reality. Happy ending? I genuinely don't know.

While lacking the glorious CGI of Birdemic, this film has so much to love in its poor acting, silly script, shoddy camera and sound work, and a lot of locations and motifs that are clearly staples of the Nguyen canon. It wasn't really a laugh a minute, but the whole thing was captivating. Maybe Nguyen missed his calling writing for Black Mirror.

Spoon Rating: 7

Dangerous Men [2005]

This film was shot in 1984 but it wasn't released until 2005, making it immediate bad movie fodder. In spite of there being 20 years to edit these beast, it still doesn't make any sense and has some of the most hilariously jarring cuts. Trying to explain the plot is difficult because it is basically three disjointed movies in one with varying degrees of storytelling.

The first plot involves a young engaged couple who is attacked by two bikers on the beach. The man in the couple and one of the bikers die so the woman immediately pretends to be into the other biker so she can lure him to a hotel room and kill him. After, she hitchhikes and the man driving her tries to rape her at gunpoint so she threatens him, kicks him out of the car naked, and drives off. This leads to her going on a killing spree of men but unlike the first two guys, none of these seem to deserve it. She just lures men into thinking she'll have sex with them then kills them when they try to have sex with her. She even pays a prostitute for tips. In a side note, she is caught and arrested. 

The second plot involves a cop who stops a biker from raping the same woman twice, the second time being a bit of a set up orchestrated by the cop and the woman. There are some parallels to the first story but they don't seem to be connected.

The third plot is about some bad biker named Black Pepper. A police detective who does at least know the cop from the second plot mentions him briefly and then later BP has a fight with the cops and the film ends super abruptly when he is caught. Aside from the reoccurring bikers, these plots have nothing in common.

In addition to the nonsense, the sound quality is terrible, the editing is masterfully bad to the point where we couldn't tell the difference between commercials and the actual movie, and the acting is subpar, especially the gloriously bad hand-to-hand combat. It's not too long at about an hour and 17 so why not give it a shot.

Spoon Rating: 5

Supersonic Man [1979]

Continuing what feels like a string of superhero movies, we have Supersonic Man, starring frequent bad movie actor Cameron Mitchell. This one is pretty limited in plot: an alien is sent to Earth to save it and given powers to make him nearly unkillable. Cool. So the stakes are nonexistent for our hero. On the other end of the spectrum, we have out villain in Cameron Mitchell, a man who wants to take over the world (of course) and likes to philosophize about the nature of man. He's pretty fun. His main evil act is to kidnap a scientist and then his daughter becomes a target. Supersonic Man sets out to protect the daughter by dating her. As with a lot of bad movies, the pacing left us wondering where we were in the film for a while until it just ended. 

Overall, there's not much to say about it but it's pretty good. We got some laughs and weren't bored, but I wouldn't necessarily say to add it to your list.

Spoon Rating: 3