[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
There is a grand tradition in the bad movie world of Italian rip-offs of Hollywood movies. While seemingly not as common now as it was in the 80s, you still get parodies of the concept like "Italian Spiderman." These knock-offs often have the same basic idea as the original but a lower budget and very strange acting choices. Italian rip-offs aren't always bad, though. "A Fistful of Dollars" was pretty much an unauthorized remake of Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" and both are really great, iconic films. This movie is not one of those exceptions.
If you want the plot, combine "Mad Max" with "Escape From New York" with "The Warriors." In the super futuristic world of 1990, the Bronx has become a gang controlled wasteland that the law can't touch. A girl who is supposed to be 17 but looks about 30, runs away from Manhattan to the Bronx to hide from her inheritance of a sketchy company that controls everything. She meets up with a motorcycle gang and starts dating the head of the gang, Trash, a guy who is only capable of wearing the tightest pants and 70% of a shirt and looks like an Italian Hayden Christensen in face and acting ability. Trash and his collection of hair metal band rejects become involved in a gang war staged to try to get that supposedly teenage girl back to her family. Motorcycle gang teams up with a Rolls Royce gang and they fight other, more evil gangs like the Zombies and a "Mortal Kombat" boss. Eventually, the cops, or a cop gang, shows up and tries to off everyone while the leader of the cops cackles like the villain he is. The ending is unclear.
While this movie had some comically over-the-top moments, a lot of the time we were spacing out and trying to gather the plot afterwards. The dialogue is odd and fixated on butts for some reason, the editing leads to illogical cuts, the aesthetic of the movie is more "Return to Oz" than "Mad Max," and, as can be expected of Iow-budget Italian films, it's strangely dubbed.
Quotes:
"It could be a pile of shit out of someone's asshole!"
Adam's Grandma's Review: "I agree with everyone else."
Spoon Rating: 3
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
We are continuing to fail in our efforts to acquire "The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah" but we haven't given up hope entirely. Today we had to default to this film after an attempt to watch a different film about Christian time travelers fell through, but this was a solid back up. "The Masked Saint" is based on a true story of a wrestler who's also a preacher and how he tried to turn around a failing church in the Midwest while also beating up dudes on the side. This movie really wants you to know that Jesus and going around punching people are not mutually exclusive and that somehow they can come together for the greater good . . . or something. The message isn't totally clear.
Our main character, whose name I don't remember so I'm just going to call him The Masked Saint, even though that makes him sound both conceited and dead, is a wrestler who gets very injured during a fight with his nemesis who doesn't play by the rules, The Reaper. He takes this as a sign to retire and moves to a nowhere town to try to save the church there. After going door to door and having everyone very reasonably shut him out and a failure of a speech where he said 'faith' twenty times, things start to turn around when he starts sticking up for people like the town battered housewife and the town prostitute. With the help of a black lady lifted from the Stephen King "Magical Black Person" handbook, he remembers his former glory as The Masked Saint and uses this as inspiration for both his church and a side career of vigilante justice. This alienates him from his family and congregation, I guess because fighting bad guys leaves little time for writing sermons. He redeems himself with a cage match against The Reaper where the fighting is planned and televised and therefore more appropriate than stopping criminals. Everyone suddenly likes him again. I'm not totally sure this movie had an arc of any sort; people just feels things and then they don't.
Overall this movie is pretty amusing. It's got a decent production value and the acting is mostly earnest and not comically exaggerated or poor but the weak writing and the odd premise make for so many strange moments that you will definitely laugh.
Quotes:
Robber: "Who are you?"
Saint: "The good guy!" *punches him in the face*
Spoon Rating: 5
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Blame Kay for this one. The original goal of the evening had been to watch a wildly anti-Semetic Christian movie Sarah heard about on a podcast but, in the absense of the internet, Kay had another suggestion. The possibility of watching "Beowulf" had been a vague threat for years but with the fact that Kay is currently teaching the poem to a bunch of high school seniors it made perfect sense to suck it up and finally watch this beast. Before getting into the plot, it should be noted that one of the absolute worst things about this movie is apparent immediately and actually caused Sarah to stop watching this movie after five minutes when she tried to watch it a few years ago: this movie is animated and it looks terrible. All the characters are made to look like the actors but with dead eyes and a lack of expression. This movie lives in the uncanny valley. It was also clearly made to be 3D so random things are thrown at the screen constantly.
If you've read the poem before, think that times 100 Hollywoods. Hrothgar, king of the Danes, has a slight problem with an unholy demon named Grendel, played by a burnt Crispin Glover, who breaks into his mead hall and eats a bunch of his warriors. Thankfully, Beowulf, the awesomest guy ever oh my god, lives just across the way in Geatland and comes to his aid. He decides to fight Grendel barehanded (and naked for some reason) because GLORY. Unfreth, a hater played by the ultimate hater John Malkovich, is unconvinced. After offing Grendel and proving he's the real deal, Baewulf ventures into Grendel's lair to fight Grendel's mother who for some reason has been reimagined from a hag into a naked, gold-covered Angelina Jolie. They bang so he can make up for killing her son by giving her a new son and she promises a kingdom in return. The terms of the deal are a bit sketchy but he doesn't really think about it until Hrothgar falls comically to his death and he becomes the new king. A few decades later when Beowulf is older but still banging a teenager in addition to Hrothgar's former wife, a dragon attacks who was the result of him banging Grendel's mom. He kills it and dies in the process. Wiglaf, the loyalest bro in history, weeps.
This movie was very obviously made in a post-"300" world. Beowulf says, "I am Beowulf" at least five times which lead all of us to an "I'm Spartacus!"-like frenzy. It's very silly and will make you cringe if you know the original but it's not without some enjoyable moments once you get past the early Playstation Two graphics and obvious 3D pandering moments.
BMN Quotes:
Unferth: "I don't like the smell of this, my lord."
Keith: "Something's rotten in Denmark."
Quotes:
*Hrothgar blatantly falls off the railing*
"He must have fallen!"
Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was okay."
Spoon Rating: 4
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
There should have been a movie night on Halloween. There should have been a good movie night actually. Unfortunately, Sarah ended up in the hospital after an allergic reaction and Kay had the flu so no one was ready to party. At least we managed to pick up Bad Movie Night again the week after with "Chopping Mall," a clear winner from the title. In the same way that "The Skateboard Kid" epitomized the 90s aesthetic, this movie WAS the 80s. It was also a ripoff of "Dawn Of The Dead" and "Repo Cop" in the form of waist-high robot mall cops that are about as intimidating as a dalek wearing a flower crown.
A new mall, 80s church, has a great solution to the problem of shoplifters: a crew of robots that will stun anyone who doesn't flash a valid employee ID. There's no way this could go wrong, right? After hours, a quadruple date goes on that involves the three of the four established couples having sex in display beds while the two people on a blind date watched "Attack of the Crab Monsters." Since we have fairly recently watched "Attack of the Crab Monsters," we immediately predicted the rest of the movie to follow a similar pattern to that one. Somehow a thunder storm causes the robots to become killing machines and they go after the fornicators. The least likable couple dies first: dude gets his throat destroyed, girl gets her head blown up. Then comes the stupid couple. The survivors confuse the robots with mannequins but it doesn't solve everything. The married couple dies heroically since they weren't sinning as much. The final girl sets the last robot on fire and the bad movie watchers come out alive. As well they should.
Overall this movie is very silly and adheres very strictly to the three act formula but the actual worst thing about it: no chopping. None whatsoever. These robots shoot lasers and pinch but they don't ever chop.
Spoon Rating: 3
