Ishtar [1987]

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

If you do any amount of research into the history of bad movies, "Ishtar" is a title that will come up over and over again. It's often seen as the definition of the "big budget flop" as it stars Oscar winners Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman and was written and directed by Oscar nominee Elaine May. The Benjamins flowed while making it with a budget of $55 million and in return, the Benjamins did not flow at the theaters. Because it sucks. Sucks like an early Adam Sandler movie, to be honest: the characters are bumbling morons, the plot is ridiculous, and while you may get a chuckle or two most humor is derived from laughable attempts at sentiment.

The movie tells the story of two really terrible songwriters who are probably in love but claim to just be heterosexual life partners. The first half hour or so is just about them writing and performing their songs in hopes of attracting a record label's attention to no avail. Warren Beatty wears a lot of eccentric hats (fur-covered trilby anyone?), can't pronounce "schmuck",  and gushes about how he loves Hoffman's everything. Then they have a long flashback to how they met, when they where dumped by their respective ladies, and when Beatty talked Hoffman down from a ledge in a scene where we 100% thought they we going to kiss. After aggressive flashbacking they decide to accept an offer to be lounge singers in Morocco and the real hijinks ensue when they are redirected to a small fictional country of Ishtar which is on the brink of a war of monarchy vs. communist rebels. I'm not even sure how to explain the rest of the movie as they somehow end up working for the CIA and the rebels and in particular a girl whose archaeologist brother died trying to protect an ancient map that told of two prophets. I wonder who they are. Eventually all the groups want to kill them. And then they don't. And they get to make an album. I don't know. There's also a really insincere sounding king ("I am shocked and saddened."), a lot of spies dressed like other spies, and a blind camel, the acquisition and behavior of which provided some of the only jokes we found funny.

In truth, we've definitely sat through both more boring and less funny movies than this but it is infamous not so much for being encumbered by bad but for being devoid of good. It lacks things that make movies good. And I think this was surprising at the time because of the clout and cash associated with it. It was the "Gigli" of the 80s and for that it will live on in fame.

Quotes:
"My life is fine. it's just full of a lot of pain."

"I can't walk out on him, Carol. He cries every ten minutes."

"You want a blind camel? I have a blind camel. I also have one with a broken leg. How would you like a dead camel?"

"Move the camel. . . move the camel . . . move the camel. . . MOVE THE CAMEL."

And the CIA Agent giving his best Tommy Wiseau: "We did NOT fire on two Americans in the desert. We did NOT."

The Roller Blade Seven [1991]

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

"This movie is meant to be watched with drugs." - Keith

Let me introduce you to a man with the post-apocalyptic vision of a samurai film obsessed George Miller but the directorial skills of "Spring Breaker"'s Harmony Korine on LSD: Donald G. Johnson, the director of this week's movie "The Roller Blade Seven." This is a man that I have gathered is more concerned with atmosphere than a coherent plot, a man who loves skating and swords, and a man who has no idea what he's doing when it comes to editing (triple cuts! No, wait, quadruple cuts! octuple cuts!), lighting (why is everything orange? VHS quality is fine, right?), sound (maybe 50 lines of dialogue; half are totally unintelligible), or character (weird costumes are how you show, don't tell). He also made the bold decision to show the credits throughout the entire movie whenever a new actor showed up. The man has vision.

So now that you're intrigued, I bet you're wondering what the plot of this "Mad Max" rip-off is, huh? We're wondering too. Sarah, Plot Following Expert, was able to keep us posted for the first 15 minutes but after that we were all lost in a haze of badly choreographed fights in the Los Angeles River at sunrise and clanging music that sounds like a bunch of genres through a prog rock filter. According to her, Biker Guy is sent on a mission to save Biker Nun who belongs to the Institute of Light from some Evil Dude working for the Big Bad. Biker Guy takes a pit stop to do shrooms with a girl whose sign outside her house reads, "Psychic or Not" and then mostly fights gangs and circus escapees for an hour. Said quirky characters include: Wiffle Bat-Wielding Clown Girl, Bag Face Banjo Man, The Black Knight, Pink Thong Leotard Girl, Metaltaur (metal Minotaur), Cow Camouflage Guy, and a bunch of extras from a Quiet Riot video. In the end Biker Dude gets married to someone. By this point we were in a zen-like state of "what?" and couldn't remember a world outside of this movie. Never have we encountered a movie that is simultaneously so very fascinating and so very boring.

The internet tells me that there was no script which is not surprising but what is surprising is that this movie has both an Estevez (Joe) and a Stallone (Frank) and there are two sequels. I guess some people really do appreciate art.

Have some images:

The pantless director gives advice (we think).

Wiffle Clown beats Metaltaur.

Biker Dude is tenderly fed 'shrooms.

Quotes:

"May the light shine bright on your bloodstained blade." *gives peace sign*

"On the dark side you can see nothing."

"Mask me!"

"Go forth and skate the path of righteousness."

"Bless the United Skates of America!"

Adam: "Who is that guy?"

*Screen displays the words "Utility Ninja."*

And the line that explains the entire movie: "Time is an illusion."

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

Shoutout to Kay's friend Alex for randomly giving her a build your own donut kit in the mail so that we could have a delicious intermission.

 Adam and Sarah split a vanilla one. Kay's is the one bleeding chocolate.

Keith's is caramel and AMERICA flavored. Grandma just had caramel, hold the America.

It wasn't drugs but it definitely helped.

The Neighbors: Episode Six [2015]

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

In the most recent, and what we can only pray will be the last, episode of "The Neighbors" we were introduced to the idea of "triple vanilla sex." The phrase came up multiple times and even seemed to be the title of the episode and yet, it appears to be a nebulous concept that may even fluctuate in meaning. Troy, the stoner, claims ownership of the idea and yet he defines it two different ways during the episode and neither way involves the idea of "triple." First he says that it's just a large tube of vanilla ice cream with a lot of weed in it which I guess for some could be the equivalent of good sex. Then he says it means eating vanilla ice cream off of one another during sex. These things are fundamentally different but equally poorly named. Why is "triple vanilla sex" not eating vanilla wafers topped with vanilla ice cream while having vanilla sex (i.e. conventional sex)? Why does Tommy Wiseau think this is amusing? Why have I devoted an entire paragraph to this?

Well, the rest of the episode was really boring. The Asian dude from the first episode rents a penis pump from Ed, the handyman, and discusses the terms of boning Mariana who never appears. Monica is still pregnant and her boybandhusfriend is still torn between her and Patrick but now makes a clunking noise when he talks for some reason. Cici and Princess Penelope yell at each other in some kind of propriety vs. 'Murrica battle ('Murrica wins, I guess). Ricky Rick is still the worst. And in what may be the most realistic plot twist so far, Lula, the witch, wants to become a pimp to the girls who live in the apartment thereby finally turning this practically-a-brothel into a bona fide brothel. I say, Good luck, Lula, and thank you for bringing this apartment complex to its only logical conclusion.

Quotes:

[repeated line]

"My head is not on!"

"Excuse me?"

"Excuse yourself."

Cliffhanger [1993]

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

Keith was pretty familiar with the director of last week's movie, Renny Harlin, so we ran him through IMDb to see what else he had done and we found this one. Since it is by the director of "The Covenent", stars Sylvester Stallone, and has to do with rock climbing (putting us in the mindset of another movie we've watched at Bad Movie Night, "Vertical Limit") we decided to give it a watch.

Like all rock climbing movies, it starts with someone significant to the main character falling off the rope with nothing the main character can do to save them. In this case it's Stallone's rock climbing BBF's girlfriend who he casually flirts with. After becoming rock marooned, Stallone and his rescue team come to save the two of them, her harness gets untied, and he has to shimmy out on the rope to try to save her from plumeting to her death. He fails, she dies, he laments until he must go back into the mountains with his friend who blames him for her death to save same climbers. Surprise! No one's in trouble. Some evil dudes lead by John Lithgow have tried to steal suitcases of money off a plane and landed it among the mountains with the suitcases scattering around. They take Stallone and friend as hostages who could also find the suitcases and lead them to safety. What ensues is an hour of mountain climbing, deception, Stallone having fewer and fewer clothes in spite of the fact that they are on a freezing cold mountain, a few explosions, and death by icicle. I fell asleep.

The biggest crime this movie commits ultimately is being boring and stale. The bad guys other than Lithgow are caricitures, the use of sound stages is obvious, and the plot is so predictable you could easily guess the end without me telling you. The best thing about it is easily the real shots of the mountains which are supposed to be the Rockies in Colorado but are actually the Dolomites in Cortina, Italy. Maybe Stallone co-wrote and starred in this movie because he wanted a vacation.

Quotes:
"No bullets bitch!"

"I must admit you're a real piece of work."
"I must admit you're a real piece of shit."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I liked it. I liked the part where Stallone was there."

The Neighbors: Episode Five [2015]

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

After finding five bucks in the bottom of his night lurking cloak Tommy Wiseau decided to bless the world with two more episodes of his sexless porno, "The Neighbors", and luckily for him we hate ourselves enough to continue to watch this nonsensical shouting match of a program.

In this episode Ricky Rick, Wiseau's rich jock persona, is still running the building in place of new wave hair Wiseau and Bebe, the other landlord, appears to have been replaced with a different actress with similar hair (or is that her sister? Wait, who cares?). He gets knight armor for some reason, makes a lot of swishing noises with his arm in some kind of weird new reoccurring "joke", and at one point lifts up his shirt to show his poorly green-screened on abs that you can see in the GIF at the top of the page.

As for the tenants, the Monica/Don/Patrick love triangle from the first episode came up again as Don wants his boyfriend on the side, Patrick, to move in with them. Shouting but no solution ensues. Patricia is still crushing on Philadelphia but now they kind of hate each other: Patricia hates Philly for leading her on and Philly hates Patricia for having feelings for her. Shouting but no solution ensues. Philly also fights with Princess Penelope about who's trashier while random tenants walk by. At this point I'm 90% sure most of these actresses are retired porn stars. Cici shouts a lot about something, Ed and "the Denny" make a random appearances, and there are exactly five unsubtle plugs for Tommy Wiseau underwear. The show actually ends with a bunch of the characters dancing around and treating the underwear like confetti.

The only marginally interesting thing to happen in this episode is Lula, who is supposed to be dating Ricky Rick, hypnotizes Troy the stoner guy into confessing that he has feelings for her and then into having sex with her because, again, she is magic. Afterwards she snaps him out of her spell and leaves and we get another insanely memorable crazy line from him as he says over and over with increasing intensity, "I'M SUCH A HAPPY CAMPER. I'M SUCH A HAPPY CAMPER!!!"

Quotes:

"Have a nice day. Enjoy your child."

"Tell her you're strictly dickly, baby."

[in the credits]

"Based on a novel by Tommy Wiseau."

The Covenant [2006]

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

Here's a movie the younger members of the Bad Movie Night crew saw in the theater nine years ago when it came out. Sarah said she wasn't with Adam and Kay when she saw it but they were definitely with a bunch of people from the group they were in in high school. Adam and Kay weren't sure who had picked the movie (back in the day there were a lot of group events that were planned by unknown forces) but whoever decided to go that day is responsible for Kay digging up this movie again for the bad movie treatment.

 

The movie takes place in Ipswich, Massachusetts, a nice historic town strategically picked for this film because it's a movie about witches and Ipswich is a 20 minute train ride north of Salem. It's both a historical reference and a semi-pun. At a fancy pants private school the popular boys are a crew of four known as the Sons of Ipswich. Descended from the settlers of the town, they are rich, powerful, blandly attractive, and imbued with the powers of ma-ma-magic which will take full effect on their 18th birthdays when they "Ascend". Main Guy's birthday is coming up and he is scared because after you Ascend every bit of magic you use ages you rapidly. His friends we have labeled Country Bro Hair (possibly the guy on the right), Draco Malfoy (who you think might be evil but is actually just a perv), and Other Guy (who is practically indistinguishable from Main Guy except that he only has four lines in the whole movie). In the beginning they meet New Girl from Boston public who Main Guy promptly dates and New Guy who is just blandly good-looking enough to join their crew. Turns out New Guy is the fifth Son of Ipswich who no one realized exists, he killed his parents to steal their power, and now he's out for Main Guy. After the longest lead up and showdown ever, Main Guy defeats New Guy when his father, who magicked himself into decrepitude at 44 years old, wills him his power. Too bad they don't find New Guy's body. Sequel possibility?!

This movie is full of cheesy dialogue, long unnecessary scenes, and the worst lighting we have seen in a movie since that Taylor Lautner movie where no one is actually abducted. The whole movie is in shades of black and blue and it's probably because of the lighting that for a while four of the five main guys looked exactly the same to all of us. The plot is kind of convoluted too but thankfully Sarah still managed to remember the details since she last saw it ("You disgust me" - Adam). In spite of all the things that make this movie bad, it's easy to see why teenagers liked this movie so much and why we all ended up getting suckered into seeing it back in 2006. It's got magic, quasi-historical Americana backstory, guys who are frequently shirtless, girls who are frequently pantsless, teen romance, teen conflict, New England foliage (although it was shot in Quebec), a private school that looks like a castle, and a guy-on-guy kiss. Who needs writing and lighting?

Quotes:
"Harry Potter can kiss my ass!"

'How about I make you my wiotch?"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I thought the same thing as all of you."
We didn't really know what she meant by this so Adam, Keith, and Sarah offered up these potential reviews:
"It was magical."
"Witch crap."
"Brotastic!"
"Lots of witch, not a lot of craft."