REWATCH: Zaat [1971]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Because Keith and Adam's Grandma are in South Carolina this week, we decided to do a rewatch of what actually turned out to be the last movie we watched before I started keeping a Facebook group of the movies we watch: "Zaat." 

The movie is about a mad scientist living in Florida (as all the craziest crazies do) who is obsessed with marine life and trying to facilitate its take over of the world. The first ten minutes or so of the movie is just the scientist in voice-over narration lovingly describing some of the creatures of the deep in a documentary style. Then we watch him go back to his lab and play around with fish and a formula called "ZaAt" that would expedite growth in fish. He uses the formula on himself transforming him into a creature that he describes as, "Nothing at all like the catfish , , , but it's beautiful!" This allows him to check "Self transformation" off his to-do list and he also prematurely checks off "Transform Florida" before he goes out into the water with a spray bottle of Zaat. He gets revenge on the two sane scientists who stalled his research and then tries to kidnap women to made a Lady Zaat and the movie ends on a strangely ambiguous note.

While this may sound like fairly typical horror fair, there's a character to this movie that makes it very unique. Absolutely every shot seems to be in real time and zooms-in seem to be the only camera technique employed. Apparently the studio who facilitated it mostly makes training films. The Zaat costume, with its permanently frozen expression, clearly makes it hard to see as the actor moves slowly and trips a lot. The movie also takes a break to have an acoustic guitar playing hippie sing a song. There's even an attempted chase scene in an amphibious vehicle that goes no where when it hits the water.

It's especially strange how much you want Zaat to succeed. He's almost so pathetic that you want to throw him a bone somehow because he will obviously fail. He may be nothing like the catfish, but he's everything like that loner in high school who didn't have any friends. 

Quote: "You must be tired. So am I. It's been a long 20 years."
[Someone tell Zaat he should sleep at some point.]

Potential Name for a "Bride of Frankenstein"-esque sequel: She's All Zaat

Undercover Blues [1993]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Let's talk about coping mechanisms. It would be fairly safe to say that the ultimate hope with every movie we watch is for it to be so bad that it's funny. That's what we strive for mostly and a lot of the time we succeed. The funniest movies end up on our rewatch list (as you have probably noticed that we do the occasional rewatch; often when someone can't make it that night). However, there are times when movies are so bad they're annoying or, even worse, so bad they're boring. This movie was annoying a lot of the time with some horrified laughter mixed in so it didn't really require a coping mechanism but Randy gave us a great one anyway: Imagine that the main characters are The Joker and Harley Quinn on vacation. This is definitely the best way to watch this movie and I highly recommend it.

The plot of "Undercover Blues" is as simple as a grossly affectionate married couple who are government spies that recently had a baby are on maternity/paternity leave in New Orleans where they are asked to take a mission involving the theft of some plastic explosives. In between this main plot, well really for most of the movie, they are fighting this thug, calling himself "Muerte" (although Dennis Quaid's character calls him "Mortie"), who mostly just gets the crap beat out of him over and over by the Blues. Oh, did I mention Blue is their last name? Yeah, they don't necessarily have the blues (in fact they literally never stop being deliriously happy and it's terrifying); the name is a pun. As Adam pointed out, "The original script probably had their name as something like Johnson until they realized they could make a joke title out of it" and as Keith noted, "'Undercover Johnsons' would be a very different movie."

This is a family fun comedy with so little comedy that it requires comic relief characters. In fact, every character on their own is essentially a comic relief character stereotype and they are all culminating together into this clusterfuck of weird non-humans interacting. It's an Island of Misfit Comic Relief Characters who fall over, have silly voices, or in the case of Jeff Blue NEVER STOP SMILING no matter what happens. His relentless optimism really creates an environment of no risk that makes you as the viewer bored pretty quickly. And what the Blues lack in actual attentive and safe child rearing, they make up for in super cheesy fade-to-black PG sex scenes. Whoopie.

Because I love you, have some Dennis Quaid face to give you nightmares. I don't think him randomly making chopping motions at Muerte made any more sense in context.

Quote: "Someone find out who this man is . . . and then kill him!"

Adam's Grandma's Review : "Bad, bad, bad movie."

REWATCH: Samurai Cop [1991]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Last Monday we decided to relive another one of our favorite cinematic masterpieces: "Samurai Cop." After the release of a YouTube video from the actor who played the samurai cop, Matt Hannon, insisting that the rumor that he was dead was actually unfounded and expressing the vaguest, most apathetic interest in making a sequel to his most well known film, it seemed like the perfect time to take this movie down from the bad movie shelf (this is an actual thing in Adam and Sarah's house) and give it another watch.

What is there to love about this movie? Try a frantic 80s action movie synth score, the flattest and most redundant of line reads you could imagine, the weird choice to have the lead actor alternate at random between his real hair and wearing a wig that looks like his real hair, a lack of understanding of Japanese things, weird scene cuts and sound dubbing/editing, and so much more!

The plot is pretty standard: a cop who supposedly knows some Japanese and his perpetually smiling (even when someone is threatening to castrate him) partner are trying to take down some Asian gang members. But that's not all: The chief of police who's always flipping out! Chase scenes were two people aren't shot in the same car but are supposed to look like they are! "Sex" scenes where no one takes off their underwear! A flamboyant Costa Rican maitre d' who acts like Tattoo from "Fantasy Island"! Creeping on a girl when she's leaving church! No actual sword fighting until the end! Reaction shots! SO. MANY. REACTION. SHOTS.

I have barely brushed the surface. If you really want to make friends or get someone to date you, show them this movie. It's that special.

Quotes:
"Are you sure this is a good bust?"
"Yeah. Cocaine."

"I want him dead! I want his head cut off and brought here! I want his head on this piano so that every man in my organization understands once more that no Katana gets captured alive  or talks! Got that?!"
"I will bring you his head and I will place it on your piano!"

"It's like someone stuck a big club up my ass . . . and it hurts."

"I'll see you in court!"
"YOU MOTHERFUCKER I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL!"

Virus [1999]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Two weeks ago we watched "Virus" with Jamie Lee Curtis and William Baldwin. Everyone fell asleep except for Keith and he doesn't write this blog.

The Wicker Man [2006]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

[Also, sorry for a very belated entry (well, soon to be three). Being out of the country got in the way of writing.]

Back in 1973 the movie "Wicker Man" was released and it was called the "Citizen Kane of horror movies." It was about a devout policeman going to investigate the disappearance of a little girl from an isolated community in Nowhere, Britain. It was creepy and engaging and had a very pretty song in it. This is the remake. Starring Nicolas Cage. 

After being written a letter by an ex saying that her daughter has gone missing (one guess who the father is), Nic Cage ventures to a mysterious isolated community that is almost solely women with the exception of a few men who are silent and used for labor and breeding (Pro tip: this is not the feminist agenda but anti-feminists will tell you that it is). No one will give him any information about the girl including her own mother who acts like she is constantly on some high doses of sleep inducing medicine. In spite of physical evidence to the contrary, every one in the community denies that the girl ever existed in the first place. There's also a squirming thing in a bag that you never actually see inside of, a bunch of schoolgirls shouting out "phallic symbol, phallic symbol, phallic symbol" in cult-like monotones, and vague talk of an upcoming festival. 

The acting is every thing you want it to be when it comes from Nic Cage and the plot is held together by the thinnest threads but gosh, are Cage freakouts always fun to watch.

Summarizing Line: "I'm trying to trust you here but every time I turn my head there's something that doesn't make any sense!"

Interesting Credit: (at the very end) "FOR JOHNNY RAMONE."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Eh, it was okay." (a few minutes later) "What a waste."

Keith and Adam's grandma were really on the ball and decided to contribute to the experience by providing wicker:

Also, here is a collection of scenes from the film. You probably don't want to watch the whole thing since it's full of spoilers but you should definitely skip to the 4 minute mark and watch the proceeding ten seconds. Nic Cage dressed as a bear punches a woman in the face and then tells the girl next to her, "Don't be frightened!." It's glorious.