Drugs Are Like That [1969], The Wave [1981], & Don't Copy That Floppy [1992]

It was a triple feature of shorts today, and although I tagged this with Occult Demon Cassette, none of these are actually from there, but they absolutely have those vibes. Back when I had a Facebook group, the person who runs that YouTube channel actually gave us a recommendation directly but alas, I don't think they ever found us again after Facebook banned my group for using the word "rape" when explaining the plot of a film. If you ever do find us again, we still love your work.

Tonight we started with a short called "Drugs Are Like That," which is basically a series of insane analogies for drug use that might lead you to think that anything fun or even just an element of existing is like drugs and therefore bad. It's such a poor explanation that we weren't even sure of the target audience. It featured kids talking, but kids would struggle to understand that the film is not telling them that drugs are equally as addictive as hopscotch and a baby's pacifier. Appropriately it is narrated by famed homophobe and orange enthusiast Anita Bryant who died last week. Rest in pieces.

Spoon Rating: 7

The next one was curiously called "The Wave" and was about a real high school classroom where a teacher basically formed a cult in order to show how someone could be drawn into Nazi ideology. The kid who gets picked on specifically gets wrapped up in the in-group mentally to the point where he volunteers to be the teacher's bodyguard and has a full crisis when the point of the lesson is revealed. It wasn't bad, but it definitely showed a kind of manipulative teaching that would absolutely get you fired in the modern day. There were a few laughs when the teacher held up an image of a wave and said, "The wave is coming" all dramatically, but the laughs were kind of on purpose.

Star Rating: 3/5

Our final one we knew would be a win from the title: "Don't Copy That Floppy." Completely incomprehensible to anyone under the age of 22, this PSA featured a rapper who looked like a mix of MC Hammer and Baron Samedi, giving us verse after sick verse about how it's not fair to gaming designers to copy their work. This one is one for the history books because there is no way we will ever stop singing the chorus.

Spoon Rating: 8

Pocket Ninjas [1997]

At only an hour and 17 minutes, you could think this movie would want to utilize its time well. Alas, this movie was at least 30% montage. We also hoped that the title would imply a kind of Toy Soldiers movie. No. They're not tiny; just kids. Losing already and the plot does not help at all.

Basically three kids at a dojo are given masks by their sensei and told to just go fight crime. This seems ridiculous until you realize it's even worse and the boss of the crime is also a kid (as possibly Robert Z'dar's kid in the film? Unclear). Most of the movie is about this with a little side plot with one of the kid's parents wanting to fuck the sensei and the day being saved by the one girl of the three wearing the sensei's mask instead and when she wins, she still doesn't get any respect from her male counterparts. Patriarchy, man. At that point the movie seems potentially over, but we randomly get this arcade fight sequence with the characters for reasons that are completely unclear.

We actually originally forgot to give this a spoon rating because we decided to instead watch some taiko drumming. 

Spoon Rating: 3

Deathstalker [1983]

This fantasy film is the most hilariously misogynistic film we have ever seen. What I mean by hilarious is that while this film has female characters who are damsels in distress and in one case, a warrior, they are so completely inconsequential and just there to be topless eye candy, that a main component of the plot is just gone from the film. Our main hero, Deathstalker, frequently called just "Stalker" by others, which is fine and good, is told he has to get a sword, chalice, and amulet (so like three of the four tarot suits) and use them to become more powerful than an evil sorcerer who has kidnapped a princess . . . and we never find out who the princess is or whether or not she is saved. The movie just forgets about that character. His incentive is just the power, we guess, and the second he defeats the sorcerer, the film ends. So what's most of the movie? Gratuitous topless women getting molested by men. No really. At one point our hero, yes, the hero, encounters a woman who tries to stab him so he tries to rape her only to discover that she has a penis because she's just a henchman transformed so he lets her go. That right there tells you everything.

All that being said, there are a few laughs in this movie from weird lines reads and dramatic music stings. There's a sequel, but we're probably not going to bother.

Spoon Rating: 3

REWATCH: I Believe In Santa [2022]

For our holiday movie, we decided to do a rewatch and we were pleasantly surprised that this movie was actually even better than we remembered it. We only gave it a 5 last time, but we all concluded that we should up the rating to a 7. 

If you want to read my original review: Click Here.

Sgt. Pepper's Only Hearts Club Band [1978]

With no other source to turn to while Adam's laptop is in the shop, we turned to The Bad Movie Bible and pulled out this film that a lot of people apparently didn't even realize existed. It is an absolute marvel in cinema in that it somehow manages to have no plot, no themes, no characterization, and no dialogue. I don't even know how to explain this movie for that reason. The best explanation I could get was from looking up how this movie came to be. Apparently the producer had acquired the rights to 29 Beatles songs, gave them to a guy who has never written a screenplay before and he tried to arrange them into an order that could produce a story. In theory. This movie's cast is also stacked with music stars who had really high hopes only to later heavily regret their choices. The titular band consists of Peter Frampton and the Bee Gees. There are cameos by Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. But still, but still, it is almost impossible to tell you what is happening. I will try, but I expect to fail.

In a town called Heartland that is good and pure, there was an original Sgt. Pepper band starting during WWI and continuing on to be the town's pride and joy. It ended in 1958 but has now been resurrected twenty years later with a totally new crew, and they're a rock band now. The original band leader's brother loves money and gets them a record contract in LA and while they're gone an evil man with dementia and sex robots named Mustard fills the town with sleaze and steals the original band's instruments, distributing them to various lowlifes. The band is alerted of this by their leader's girlfriend named Strawberry Fields, and they return to Heartland to get the instruments back. They do but Strawberry gets kidnapped and dies by falling off Aerosmith's set design. After her funeral Peter Frampton wants to end it all but it saved by a magical weather vane that also resurrects Strawberry. They sing "Sgt. Pepper's (Reprise)" and it's finally over. 

Now that managed to sound almost coherent, but remember that there's no dialogue, just music sequences and some voiceover from George Burns. The film's reviews use the word whimsy a lot and I barely even dug into that aspect: shiny clothes, a hot air balloon, parades, the whimsy list is endless. But is it bad in a fun way? It certainly is a little. While we bemoaned the nearly two whole runtime and lack of a real story, we did get a few loud laughs from exaggerated facial acting, absolutely absurdity, and a well-used dummy. I can't fully recommend it, but it's definitely an experience.

Spoon Rating: 4

Mitchell [1975]

 This "action" movie was somehow not that deep but still kind of confusing. I'm not sure if it was because of the subpar audio quality or the film was just written in a way where you didn't really know what was going on until the scene was almost over.

Mitchell is a cop who kind of just sucks. He's supposed to be an anti-hero but he isn't likeable in any way, and he isn't really amazing at his job either. He tries to find out about a heroin shipment, has something to do with a guy who shot a supposed intruder in his house, and sleeps with a prostitute who is being paid to have sex with him by someone else and he never bothered to ask who. The Wikipedia page is even damning in how he referred to the final freeze frame as "intended to be humorous." Damn.

Mostly this film is just a time capsule of terrible 70s fashion with a few occasions for a laugh. This film even flopped on having a theme song. Halfway through the movie there's a song about Mitchell and even that's pretty lame. It's certainly nothing compared to the auditory brilliance of the themes to Black Ninja, Singham, and Petey Wheatstraw. Go watch one of those instead.

Spoon Rating: 3

Infinite [2021]

Ever wanted to watch a movie that's The Matrix meets The Old Guard but really terrible? No? Well, it does exists if you want it and it's called Infinite. This movie was discovered by Adam and Sarah when they went to a live production of a bad movie podcast Sarah follows. In spite of it having all the vibes of a big budget movie, no one seems to have heard of it, and with good reason.

This film is about a crew of people living who remember all their past lives. Some would like to destroy the world because their weariness at living so long and some want to help the world with all their skills that they have acquired from remembering everything. In spite of both these philosophies, the film is just an action movie with the two sides fighting specifically through Mark Wahlburg on the good guy side and a pretty unrecognizable Chiwetal Ejiofor on the bad guy side. Ejiofor's character has invented a device to destroy the world and Wahlburg has to find and destroy it. That's pretty much it. It is hiding in a very predictable place. Also, the film has no real stakes since they're all kind of immortal.

This film is okay. The premise is presented in the silliest way possible and there are some great moments of hammy acting or insanity, specifically when a motorcycle is driven off a cliff and onto the wing of a plane. Overall, it's probably more worth it if you have professional bad movie podcasters roasting it.

Spoon Rating: 3