REWATCH: Deadly Prey [1986]

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

On Monday we decided to give a rewatch to a very old favorite, that blatant synthesis of "The Most Dangerous Game" and "First Blood" known as "Deadly Prey." As with the last time I wrote about this movie, there isn't much to say about it aside from the fact that it's gloriously crazy.

In a remote location near Los Angeles, there's a mercenary training camp where the potential mercenaries hunt guys they kidnapped off the street because realism. One day they make a mistake by kidnapping a mulleted guy off the street who . . . used to train with them? I don't know. He knows the guy running the joint, the non-corporate Big Bad. They strip him down to his booty shorts and do a loving slow pan up his oily body before letting him loose and find that he's too good at not being killed. The rest of the movie is mainly just everyone saying, "We've got to kill this guy" which was the entire goal from the beginning anyway. At one point his father-in-law shows up to take out some guys including the corporate guy behind it but he dies. The main character escapes to his own house but returns when he finds that they've kidnapped and raped his wife. Then he teams up with an old friend and they kill everyone except the Big Bad who gets put into the game himself. It ends on the main character's looped scream and the credits roll to an incongruously chill 80s slow jam called "Never Say Die."

This movie may not sound like much but it's in the execution where the weirdness comes. There are tons of lines that sound like all the mercenaries are crushing on the main character, strange reads, weirdly short range gernades, and a scene where instead of having an explosion, it sloppily cuts to an inserted explosion shot that was clearly shot at a different location and time. Oh, and the main characters cuts off a guy's arm and beats him with it. You really don't want to miss that.

Quotes:
"You're supposed to be the best at what you do. Do it better."

"Friend or enemy?
"I'm a friend!"
"You're a liar."

Gayest Lines:

"This guy looks like fun."

"Let's hope he lasts more than ten minutes."

"I'd give anything to have 20 men just like him."

"I want you . . . dead."

Saving Christmas [2014]

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

By no hyperbole, this movie is probably the most highly anticipated movie that we have ever watched. We have been looking for a way to watch it since last December after hearing such glowing facts like that it has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, that it's a crazy religious movie that a lot of religious people didn't like, and that it stars one of the leaders of the totally illogical Christianity nonsense squad, TV's Kirk Cameron. And it did not disappoint. In fact, it's a new Christmas tradition.

I know I can't cover every ounce of bonkers this movie has to offer but I'm going to try to hit up the major points. The film starts with Kirk chilling in the most Christmas room to ever Christmas and talking about everything in the room that he loves especially the hot chocolate which he talks about a lot throughout the film. We wonder with mild horror if the whole movie is going to be him talking at us from an armchair but we are soon treated to one of three intro screens that tells us the movie has been funded by Liberty University, of course, and then we find ourselves following a very slow Games of Thrones character while Cameron waxes poetic on the nature of stories.

 Needs more Christmas, honestly.

 What is this contraption?

 HOLY HOT CHOCOLATE.

Get me seven more of these.

Now we're at a Christmas party thrown by Cameron's sister (but not his real sister) and the so-called plot can really begin. See, Cameron's brother-in-law, hilariously named Christian, hates Christmas so much that he sees it through rave-vision, but not for the reasons godless heathens hate Christmas (rampant consumerism, bad music, etc.). He hates Christmas because it's full of pagan traditions and doesn't nearly have enough Jesus. So he hides in his car and Cameron joins him to tell him why he's all wrong and that actually all the pagan stuff is Christian stuff. It's a hoot.

"Where's the Jesus?"

"Oh, jeepers. He makes a lot of good points. What do I do?"

"Oh, I know! Lie!"

First he butchers the nativity story and talks a lot about the swaddling cloth. He mostly just says swaddling cloth a lot. Then he draws the Christmas tree back to Genesis because, you know, God made trees and also the solstice so you're totally honoring the Jesus with your pagan symbol, duh. He also literally draws a connection between the tree and the cross by saying that Jesus' crucifixion is just Adam symbolically returning the fruit he ate from the tree in the garden of Eden (we all had assumed when Cameron said that Adam needed to give back the fruit that Adam was supposed to return his poo to God). And what about Santa Claus? Santa Claus is not Jesus, Kirk! But you know who he is? A bar-fighting metalhead, GoT extra named Saint Nicholas who pummels heathens to dub-step and then gives toys to kids.

Santa needs his weekly protection money.

"I heard you had some of that sweet Ghanaese hot chocolate."

Finally, Kirk Cameron's brother-in-law realizes Christmas IS THE BOMB and literally penguin belly slides into the presents while his wife watches dubiously. Then, in what can only be the logical conclusion after being subjected to so many sanitized hip-hop versions of Christmas music (or as Adam calls it, "Santa-tized"), we have a bunch of white people try to dance to a hip-hop "Angels We Have Heard On High" which has the line, "put your wings in the air" in it.

 Kirk Cameron is the devil on our shoulder.

 "I feel something coming on!"

 "Perhaps it's time for some white guy dancing?"

 I think Kirk is controling him with his damn magic.

 "OMG PRESENTS!"

X-TREME CHRISTMAS

In the epilogue of slow motion eating, Cameron justifies materialism and again brings up the nature of stories but now it makes more sense when he really insists that we need to create our own meanings for things. Kirk Cameron wants you to lie because history is not Christian enough.

"Buy things!"

For this viewing party we were joined by Adam's sister and Keith's daughter, Leah, and her fiance, Matt. They assimilated quite well into our crew for the night and I think we all learned a lot about the value of bullshitting. So happy birthday to Adam and Grandma who were both born on December 21st which also happens to be Yule, that pagan holiday that Cameron has stolen all the traditions from. Happy Yule to all (except Kirk Cameron) and to all a good night!

Quotes:
"You're wrong."
"About what?"
"Everything you just said."
". . . I said a lot."

"I saw it on Fox News so I know it's true."

"This Christmas I'm gonna give you something you've been wanting for a long time."
"What is it, Big Papa?"

"Sure, don't max out your credit cards or use presents to buy friends, but remember this is a celebration of the eternal god taking on a MATERIAL body so it is right that our holiday is marked with material things."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was good."

Adam's Review: "This is the whitest Christmas ever."

Kirk Cameron: He's basically God himself.

Santa's Slay [2005]

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

After wondering for a bit which movie we should inflict upon everyone tonight and encountering some pretty tempting offers including some kind of crazy religious movie about going to hell, former Bad Movie Nighter Randy chimed in via text with a more seasonably appropriate option that makes us wonder about the important things in life. Like: why are there so many Christmas movies with wrestlers playing Santa?

Set in a town called Hell (an actual place in Arizona but this is obviously Canada even with the American flags everywhere), Santa comes down the chimney of a rich person's house and massacres a bunch of pretty recognizable actors who have nothing better to do including Fran Drescher and Chris Kattan. Then we cut to our protoganist: romantically inept teenager Nicholas who just wants his kooky grandfather to stop messing with inventions and celebrate Christmas like everyone else. When he finally asks his grandfather why he's so reluctant to celebrate, Grandpa pulls out an ancient Norse tome that reveals that Santa is actually Satan's son and literal counterpart to Jesus and that he has only been nice for the past 1000 years because he lost a curling match to a mysterious old man. Now Santa's out to make up for lost time, killing strip club patrons and setting the place on fire, stabbing the deli owner with his own menorah, killing a bunch of cops at the police station, and then running over Nicholas' grandfather with his sleigh, pulled by an angry buffalo. Santa has a showdown with Nicholas and his girlfriend at the high school's ice rank where Grandpa comes back from the dead to reveal he was an angel who turned human for love and was the mysterious old man who beat Santa at curling 1000 years prior. They compete, Santa loses, and his sleigh is shot down by Nicholas' girlfriend's redneck father. Santa lives and goes home to return eventually in 3005.

This movie was silly but, as with many things we watch, not really in the right ways. There were a lot of puns, a lot of obvious sound stages, a lot of comical deaths that make you feel totally numb, and a lot of really unfunny, obvious jokes (one of the cops is named "Cock" for instance). If you want a murdering Santa you are better off just watching that episode of "Futurama".

Quotes:
[while in a town called Hell] "What in Hell do we have here?"

[while in a kosher deli] "Something here just isn't kosher."

"He's scary yet educational."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was good. I liked it."

Santa With Muscles [1996]

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

The movie for Monday was going to be "Barbarella" but as Kay had seen it and couldn't decide if it was sufficently funny enough and because we are now into December where we can really take advantage of all the bad Christmas movies in existance, we switched to this film. Aside from the irresistable title, the film stars a pre-hair loss Hulk Hogan and a pre-fame Mila Kunis. Adam compared the tone of the film to "Undercover Blues" which is honestly really indicative of what kind of kid's movies were made in the 90s: the good guys beat people up happily and the bad guys are bumbling idiots who can be easily taken down by children.

Hogan plays Blake Thorne, a gajillionaire who likes to fight his staff for fun (with their consent), stage city-wide paintball games, market his health food products, and generally act like a man child with little regard for anything. While escaping the cops, he runs into a mall and puts on a Santa costume to disguise himself but he gets knocked unconscious and an elf who stole his wallet tells him he is Santa. He fumbles through his mall Santa duties but ends up earning fame as "Santa with muscles" when he beats up two sanatized-for-kids, 90s-era thugs (one was wearing a DARE shirt) who tried to steal donations to the town orphanage. Santa!Thorne visits the orphanage and finds out that evil germaphobic gajillionaire Mr. Frost wants to shut it down for some reason. Mila Kunis, one of the three kids still there, pimps out the Santa costume and they try to stop Mr. Frost and his evil henchmen. It turns out that in a vault in the catacombs of the orphanage, also the kid's clubhouse, there's a room full of electric crystals that are also bombs and Frost wants them. Thorne lightsaber fights Mr. Frost with them in the final battle. It's awful. Also, Thorne was an orphan there once and after the place gets blown up and the bad guys are defeated, they turn Frost's mansion into a new orphanage.

Aside from one scene about angels in a church and the obvious presence of a Santa costume, this movie really lacks Christmas. It also lacks any realistic characters, clever jokes, or good writing. But what it does have is a slow motion scene of Hulk Hogan drinking milk while "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" plays and it makes the whole thing worth it.

Here Adam has painstakingly captured the whole thing for you to save your time:

Quotes:
"I'm not gonna let this guy get away with Santa fraud."

"Santa, you sleigh me!"

"You're not really Santa Claus, are you?"
"No. I just thought I was for a while."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Not bad."

The Giant Spider Invasion [1975]

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

It has been a little while since we have watched a movie so universally disliked by everyone at Bad Movie Night. This movie wasn't like all the movies we had watched that were just painful; its only crime really was being dull. And the great boredom it instilled in all of us was not helped by the fact that Sarah had to leave in the middle for an emergency, meaning we had to struggle to fill her in on the plot when she got back.

There isn't really a plot so much as a bunch of subplots surrounding this one town. There's the Skipper from "Gilligan's Island" being the ditzy sheriff, two sisters: one drunk and married to an unfaithful redneck, some fire and brimstone preacher who everyone wants to shut up, and an astrophysicist and sexist guy from NASA who basically run around doing nothing while trying to figure out the source of the spider invasion and how to end it. From what little Sarah seemed to gather, the spiders came from a black hole (?!) and they need to overfeed and then blow up the head spider in order to end the invasion. Truthfully, the title is false advertising. We were expecting tons of giant spiders but really we got a bunch of regular-sized tarantulas, one medium-sized Halloween decoration, and one giant spider that seemed to be attached to the top of a car. The giant spider ate the redneck. It was the only satisfying part of the movie.

With a half hour left in the movie, we paused it for a wake-up intermission that consisted of Adam playing us disturbing commercials from the 1950s since this movie seemed like it should be from the 50s. They included a sexist Folgers one and a cereal commercial with a clown that Grandma liked but keep in mind this woman literally has a room in her house that is full of clowns. We decided this was way more fun than the movie so we watched the last half hour on 1.5 speed and then watched a bunch of offensive instructional videos from the 1950s including ones on women in the workplace (they're inherently detail-oriented, don't you know?), "How to Undress For Your Husband" (make it artful for both your husband and the guy peeking through your keyhole), and "Boys Beware! Homosexuals Are On The Prowl!" (the gay is a contagious mental disorder like smallpox and all men who talk to young boys want to rape and murder them). We learned a lot today.

Quotes:
"The only way I know you're still alive is when you flush the toilet."

"What did the preacher talk about?"
"Sin."
"What'd he say about it?"
"He was against it."

BMN Quote:
Video: "He told many off-color jokes."
Kay: "But they weren't considered racist because it was the 50s and racism was okay."
Adam: "So they were colored jokes?"
[insert everyone groaning and chastizing Adam]

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It's boring."

Thankskilling [2009]

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

"I'm sure we could make a better movie than this." - Kay

I don't think I even need to justify this movie with an introduction when I have the picture of the DVD cover to the left. Yes, the film literally opens on a boob. Yes, the phrase "gobble, gobble, motherfucker" is said by a turkey hand puppet. Yes, this movie is dreadfully self-aware about it being a joke, a fact we were not aware of because we only chose the movie based off the title. Here's the problem with movies like this: they bill them as so stupid they're funny but they are rarely actually funny. Movies that are actually so stupid they're funny usually aren't trying hard to be funny and lack self-awareness. Or they just are funny like "Inhuman Resources". Can we as a culture stop trying to make intentionally bad movies happen? They are polluting a world that already has organically bad movies that are so much more enjoyable.

After some boobs and an opening theme peppered with gobbling sounds, we are introduced to our "Cabin In The Woods"-textbook-perfect cast of stereotypes on their way home for Thanksgiving break: The Whore, The Athlete, The Scholar, The Fool (in this case a redneck), and The Virgin. One night they decide to camp in the woods and The Scholar warns them about an evil turkey that arises every 505 years to kill and they kind of laugh it off until a hermit validates their story. The Turkey, foul-mouthed, offering sex for rides, and killing people with shotguns, then goes around murdering their parents and screwing and killing The Whore. He also disguises himself as The Virgin's father by fashioning a skin mask. Remember that this is a regular-sized turkey hand puppet. Death to the suspension of disbelief. The turkey kills The Fool which prompts The Scholar who is only in the "cool group" by way of their friendship to have a long flashback montage of their good times with a stupid friendship song playing. Then The Fool and The Athlete get offed by a radioactive Turkey after they fail to kill him properly. The Virgin triumphs in the end with the help of the hermit and eats a radioactive, 505-year-old turkey leg in celebration. We all wonder how this movie was only an hour.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Kill as many turkeys as possible for the good of us all.

Quotes:
"I'm gonna drink your blood like cranberry sauce, bitch!"

[After a guy's parents are killed]
"Why? WHY? No pumpkin pie! No cranberry sauce! Just turkey!"

[End screen]
"To be continued . . . IN SPACE!"

There was also a song actually titled "Bad 80s Ballad."

Adam's Grandma's Review: She didn't really have one. She just let Adam apologize profusely to her.

Undefeatable [1994]

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

May I present to you our first Cynthia Rothrock movie, the female Van Damme but a better actor for those of you not in the know. This movie had been a chosen last week but the timing of our choice was paired up with a particularly big moment in sports as Ronda Rousey, formerly undefeatable, was finally beaten by Holly Holm in a UFC fight last weekend. So our pre-show for "Undefeatable" was watching the YouTube clip of someone who was formerly undefeatable, being defeated. Gotta love irony. Unfortunately, Keith and Grandma were not present to indulge with us but after this movie we can guarentee more Cynthia Rothrock films in the future.

Cynthia is part of a street fighting gang who challenges other gangs and makes money from it, something she does in order to pay for her sister's college tuition after the death of their parents. In the other plot, a women who is being raped and beaten by her underground street fighter husband leaves him and he has a complete mental breakdown. While Cynthia is trying not to get arrested by a kung fu fighting cop who wishes she would get on the straight and narrow, street fighter guy, called Stingray, is going around torturing and murdering girls who look like his wife and keeping their eyes in his fish tank. Eventually Stingray murders Rothrock's sister and revenge must be had. While the cop interviews Stingray's wife's psychiatrist (who was also a professor of Rothrock's sister), Cynthia goes out to beat up guys she knows who beat up women. When the psychiatrist also gets kidnapped by Stingray, they are finally able to track him down and have two separate fights at a warehouse after they save the psychiatrist once and she gets kidnapped again while in the hospital. At one point Stingray and the cop pause while fighting to rip their shirts off and flex. Also Cynthia's unnecessary split count is four in cause you wanted to know. The movie ends with Cynthia and her gang forcibly enrolled in college that they probably can't pay for so they all high five in a fake freeze frame where they all just stand really still for a few seconds.

This is a delightfully dumb martial arts movie with a nonsensical title, practice sequences for no particular reason (sometimes with hook swords!), and so many bad actors. When I said in the beginning that Cynthia Rothrock is a better actor than Van Damme, I'm really not exaggerating and she is also by far the best actor in this movie. There's plenty of bad dialogue but more than that, it's the inexplicable way that people say things. Every actor in this movie needs a pot of coffee and some ability at faking human emotions. All in all, would Rothrock again.

Quotes:
"Can I help you?"
"Sure. Your money."

"They were a bunch of punks."
"Now they're a bunch of crackheads and theydoanythingtheywant!!!"

"Where were you?"
[holds up sword] "I've been busy."

[After Stingray has both his eyes gouged out]
"We'll keep an eye out for you, Stingray."
"Yeah. See ya."

Eye Of The Tiger [1986]

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

Scenario: You've just made a movie. You're kind of proud of this movie in a "this will make me back the money I spent" kind of way. It's a classic revenge tale, the plot of which is mostly a ripoff of "Mad Max" (who doesn't love "Mad Max", you wonder), and it stars Gary Busey's giant teeth. It's violent enough to appeal to anyone's id and it's got the required family element since you smartly decided to skip the romance element because you want it to be somewhat believable with your choice of lead. You're pretty satisfied. But then you watch the finished product and realize, oh crap, this movie is awful. Well, it's too late to have less wooden side actors or a better, more original script, or even crazier effects but you do have a little money left in the budget. So what do you do? Capitalize on a musical phenomenon. Buy the rights to Survivor's "Eye Of The Tiger", use it at least three times, and name your movie after it. Done. Pay me.

That's all just speculation, of course, agreed upon by a room full of movie fans who have been studying bad movies for three years. Here's what I can tell you for sure. The movie is about our Vietnam War vet main character, played by sketchy guy at the bus station Gary Busey, getting out of jail with a drug lord friend he made there and returning to his hometown to find it overrun with a motorcycle gang. His parole officer, the consistently Hawaiian-shirted and bolo-tied sheriff, does not give a damn about him or the gang (as long as they pay him) and his one friend in town tells him about how messed up everything has gotten since he left. After Busey saves a nurse from getting raped by the gang, in particular a man in a chainmail tank-top, they decide to get disproportionate revenge on him by wrecking his entire house and killing his wife, an experience that leaves his daughter kind of catatonic. Busey calls up drug lord friend who hooks him up with a pick-up pimped out with guns and then he goes on his revenge. And it is silly. He pulls a wire across the street, decapitating a dummy! He gives a rousing speech in a bingo parlor full of old people to try to get back up! He literally shoves a stick of dynamite up chainmail tank-top's butt and lights it! And then in a bonkers finale Busey's friend dresses like a 1940s era pilot and bombs the gang from his plane and Busey shoots them up with his gun truck. Cue "Eye Of The Tiger". Roll credits. Cha-ching.

If I can say one undeniably good thing about this movie it's that among the Bad Movie crew we had some of our funniest commentary in a while while watching it. We're hilarious.

Quotes:
"If you so much as fart and I get wind of it . . ."

"What are you looking at, black man?"
"I'm looking at a white man."
"That's right. A real white man. Take a good look."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "That was a five out of ten. Last week was a ten."

Road House [1989]

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

So this is kind of a weird one. Yes, okay, a lot of the movies we watch at Bad Movie Night are weird but what makes this movie weird is the fact that defining it really and truly as bad is kind of difficult. It's not really a big budget flop so much as it's a cult classic with a lot of people who really enjoy it. It's got a 40% on Rotten Tomatoes which is way higher than what we usually deal in and the entire Bad Movie Night crew had already seen it under non-Bad Movie premises except for Kay who over the years would hear Adam mention it and then after asking if they should watch it he would respond with, "No, let's watch a good movie." In all technical respects this movie is good. So what makes it bad? The absolutely bonkers writing and acting that, while maybe typical of 80s action, is really no excuse to a critical eye. This movie is the holy grail of enjoyably bad.

Patrick Swayze plays a bouncer who is famously good at his job. How one becomes a famous bouncer is never explained. Either way, a guy who owns a bar in Nowheresville, Midwest comes to his swanky club and offers him way too much money to come to his bar and clean it up. The bar is the kind of place where you are way overdressed if you are wearing a shirt and/or have all your extremities and the band plays behind a wire fence to protect them from smashing bottles. After assuming control, in no time at all he has the place cleaned up and stylish and has met a doctor he's into and things are pretty swell. It turns out, the plot wasn't really about the bar so much as it was about this evil rich guy who controls the town through violence and destroys businesses, occasionally with monster trucks, that won't pay him a percentage of their earnings. Sam Elliot comes in as Swayze's cool bouncer friend to try to help and becomes the best part of the movie until he is killed by the rich guy's thugs. What we get then are a long pond-adjacent fight between Swayze and the top henchmen in which he rips out his Adam's apple and a showdown at the rich guy's house in which the guy is killed because all the major business owners in town show up with shotguns (it's the Midwest, remember). 

This movie is the pinnacle of 80s cheese. The only way to watch it is to assume it is happening in a parallel universe that mostly resembles our own because it is just madness from start to finish. I couldn't write down every crazy line or odd read because this post would never end but I gathered a few below. And although I said the technical aspects of the movie were good, there were still some real WTF directing moments including a scene where the knife on someone's boot was zoomed in on and had an artifical sparkle, a scene where Doc is screaming at Swayze and an explosion happens behind her in time with her shouting, and a scene where Sam Elliot is riding in Swayze's car with his face perfectly framed by a hole in the windshield. There are reasons this movie is well known but honestly, there are plenty of good reasons this movie deserves to be called "bad."

Quotes:

[repeated line]

"I thought you'd be . . . bigger."

"Why don't you and I get nipple to nipple?"

"It's a good night. Nobody died!"

"Do you like pain?"

"Pain don't hurt."

"Wanna know why you disgust me?"

[punches him in the nose]

"You're a bleeder."

"You found my trophy room. The only thing that's missing is your ass."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I liked it."

Hercules In New York [1969]

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

Inspired by last week's "dubbed body builder in a low budget film", we decided to watch another one! Although we've seen plenty of movies featuring, say, Van Damme, we had yet to see a Schwarzenegger film (well, other than "Batman & Robin" but he wasn't the star of that one) and it was about time for that to be rectified. He was only a 22-year-old unknown when this movie was made and because of his accent, he was dubbed over by some other guy. Apparently there is a version where you can hear his real voice (Adam kept insisting there was and the internet confirmed it) but we ended up with the original dubbed one.

In "Antique Greece", Hercules is a whiny and arrogant demi-God who wants to chill with the lesser beings so Zeus sends him down to earth which somehow means New York in the late 60s. After terrifying (and possibly arousing) an old lady on a plane by flying outside it and then getting picked up by some sailors and refusing to do any work on the ship, he meets a New York stereotype who sells pretzels named, wait for it, Pretzey. Herc and Pretzey stumble on some college guys doing athletic stuff so Herc decides to show off and this somehow earns them an invite to some rich people's house. The daughter of the house ignores her puny boyfriend in favor of going out with Hercules and we get to see him wrestle a man in a bear suit of Ed Wood level quality. Meanwhile, Pretzey signs over Hercules' soul to some guys who will break his thumbs if he doesn't comply and Hercules ends up becoming a famous wrestler or something. He picks up heavy things and puts them down, progressively trying to pick up heavier things than his opponent. All is pretty swell for Hercules until Zeus decides he's an embarassment and sends Mercury to try to get Herc to stop partying and go home. When he says no, Juno, suddenly remembering that she hates him, decides to rid him of his strength with the help of Nemesis and Pluto (Greek and Roman names are interchangable in this movie). Zeus finds out and fixes everything and after Herc comes home, Zeus decides to peace for the mortal world himself with no lessons learned.

This movie is pretty spectacular. There's pretty much always something weird happening with the only explanation being Arnold's character shouting out "I AM HERCULES" in a flat but loud voice. There's also plenty of cheese to go with that ham with scenes like Hercules stealing a horse drawn carriage, Pluto entering New York via the depths of the subway, and the scene where he fights a bear which is worth seeking out if you want a laugh. All in all, yes, Arnold is right to be ashamed.

Quotes:

"When myth and history combine into mystery . . ."

"That's just for college guys. You're not allowed."
"I AM HERCULES."

"Watch your talk."
"I can hear my talk. I can't watch it."

[On seeing a poster for a Hercules movie]
"He doesn't even look like me. Look!" *rips off shirt*

Adam's Grandma's Review: [enthusiastically and without being asked] "It was good!"

The Seven Magnificant Gladiators [1984]

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

I'm pretty sure it's a written law of the universe somewhere that if something becomes popular and iconic enough there must be a crappy foreign remake of it. A few years ago we watched "Russian Terminator" which had absolutely nothing to do with the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie so perhaps it was just a marketing thing to name it that. But this movie? Not at all. This movie is a rip-off in the truest sense. They changed the setting to ancient Italy, got cheaper actors including Lou Ferrigno with someone else dubbing his voice and a girl who was in "Malibu Express", and just lifted the entire plot of "Magnificent Seven" which is already a remake of "Seven Samurai." This is the kind of commitment we look for in our movies.

What can I say about the plot really? Go watch "Seven Samurai" or "Magnificent Seven" and then imagine it with way less technique or writing skill and you've got the plot. Okay fine: A guy in a high-collared spandex unitard claiming to be a demi-God terrorizes a town. Some of the women of the town bring a magic sword into nearby towns trying to find someone manly enough to wield it and discover chariot racer (and also gladiator?) Lou Ferrigno. Together with a group of bar fighters and random dudes they find hanging around, they go to save the town. One guy is only in it for the potential of chicks. One guy joins because he seems to have nothing better to do. The one girl in the group is hoping there will be gold. Really there's just a lot of fighting, at one point a character who looks like a grown up Bam Bam from "The Flintstones" fights Joey Ramone and Slash and it's very special, and the town is saved even though three of the so-called gladiators died. 

Overall this movie is exactly what you except from a low budget ripoff. The costumes are hilarious (one ruler is wearing an outfit that looks like a second grader's class project to design a "pharaoh Pope"), the music is from the Renaissance era, the sets are just the actual ruins in Italy which, you know, wouldn't have been ruins at this time, and at one point we get the privilege of seeing someone's safety wire appear in a shot that makes it look like he was suddenly stabbed. Also, even though this was the time when Italy dubbed over all of their actors to save money, this didn't help the acting one bit and more than once it looked like someone was reading their lines over someone else's shoulder.

Quotes:
"I've been thinking about those women we're gonna fight for. I hope they're pretty enough to be worth saving."

"I've got a funny feeling."
"Really? Where?"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Pretty good."

Also when Adam said "Pharaoh Pope" at one point it sounded like "Feral Pope" and we decided this is a bad movie that must be made so we can watch it.

The Giant Claw [1957]

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

After the great reception we got from last week's movie, "Robot Monster", we decided to push our luck and try out another 1950s sci-fi horror fim: "The Giant Claw" apparently also known as "The Mark Of The Claw" which is slightly more menacing. While it wasn't quite the laugh fest that "Robot Monster" was there was still some comedy to be had as well as some really terrible conventions.

In a voice over that never fully stops a bunch of characters who work in engineering are introduced but the only two you need to know are the main character Mitch MacAfee, an aeronatical engineer, and the female mathmatician who he sexually assaults on a plane. Mitch sees an unidentified flying object and when people go out to investigate, including himself and the mathmatician, they are struck down by something. The two crash land in Canada and meet a French dude who thinks it's a monster in the sky. Then they go back to New York and, later, DC, convincing the military to go out to investigate and discover the truth: it's a giant chicken made of alien material that they think is antimatter. Why this thing didn't explode immediately when coming in contact with, oh say, air, is not explained. Considering the protagonists are an engineer and a mathmatician, they are clearly ill-equipted to solve this issue of extra-terrestrial biology and yet somehow they manage to make some staggering observations of the creature (that is gets energy from food and might reproduce) and then decide to kill it an antimatter destroyer which they are somehow able to make. The world is safe and Thanksgiving dinner has come early this year.

This movie has a couple really strange lines, a very bad puppet, blatant "King Kong" ripoff scenes, and some really hammy acting so it was a pretty enjoyable watch. However, we did start off the night with the best music video ever and ended it by introducing Keith and Grandma to the "Trololo" guy (and "Trolling Sauruman") so, it had some tough acts to compete with in terms of the best thing we watched that night.

Quotes:

"Get me the Pentagon . . . very fast."

"It has no element recognizable by man. Finding out was expensive."

". . . God foresaken antimatter galaxy."

"A nest? Eggs. More birds!"

"In a fantastic orgy of the destruction that the world has never seen!"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "No."