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."