The Last Vampire On Earth [2010]

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

Some facts about this film:

• Yes, it's a "Twilight" ripoff and the font of the title really gives it away.
• There's no Wikipedia page for it but on IMDb the movie is categorized as horror, romance, and sci-fi. It is literally none of these things.
• At the same time this film came out, the screenwriter hastily published a novelized version of it so they could say the movie was based on the book. You can still buy it. All the Amazon reviews are sarcastic.
• If you buy the DVD you will end up getting a color corrected version of the original. We sought out the uncorrected version where everything is poorly lit and sickeningly colored and the edges have that 1910s tunnel vision effect for some reason.
• The director's name is Vitaliy Versace which is definitely a drag name. He has movies coming out in the future called "Taekwondo Kid" and "Homie Alone."
• Every actor who is supposed to be in college in the movie looks like they were randomly selected from a screamo concert in 2006 and forced into being in this movie. Like Michelle from "The Room," the main character's best friend seems to be the only one who's kind of trying.
• I have seen better movies made by high schoolers with smart phones.

The plot centers around Chloe, an anthropology student who frequently can't be bothered to get out of her pajamas before class, and Aurelius, an awkward hematology student who hisses at people and is just as white as everyone else in the class but we are supposed to believe this is weird. In their lit class where they are reading "Dracula" (yes, too on the nose), they are told they must perform it as a play and their professor randomly selects students for roles because he apparently likes humiliation more than theater. Chloe gets the role of Mina Harker and Aurelius is Dracula. HINT. The play forces them to be in each other's vicinity so they get to know each other and Chloe tells him about how she's really into church and invites him to go with her. She's a Jehovah Witness although unlike with "Dracula" where the 

writers seemed to at least read some CliffNotes, the only thing that was accurate about the Jehovah's Witnesses in the film was their aversion to blood transfusions, which leads to their inevitable disgust in Aurelius's major (side note: is there anywhere you can actually major in hematology specifically; that seems odd). Like "Twilight," there are seemingly endless montages but Chloe and Aurelius don't seem to be falling in love so much as they look like they are friends who get high together. Chloe finds some donation blood in Aurelius's house which he tells her is for a project for his major but she figures out he's a vampire. The scene where they discuss it is almost lifted verbatim from "Twilight." Then Chloe reveals to Aurelius that she has AIDS, a fact that is hinted at consistently throughout the film but really hard for us to comprehend because how does a religious twenty year old get AIDS? The answer is that she did missionary work in Africa and by holding a bleeding child with the disease she contracted HIV although the movie doesn't seem to know the difference between HIV and AIDS. She asks Aurelius if he could change her into a vampire so they can spread good vibes through the world forever and during the laziest production of "Dracula" ever the film ends with him looking like he's going in for the bite but who knows? No sequel exists to answer the question of whether he does it or not. The film ends with the slowest credit sequence you could imagine just to push the film to that 90 minute mark.

Aside from the monotonous acting, the bad cinematography, the bad editing, the boring plot, the unchecked facts, the pseudo-intellectual rambling, the fact that most of the budget went to eyeliner, and the implausible AIDS contraction, one of the weirdest things about this movie is actually how close it feels to being a religious film. We've watched a lot of religious films at BMN and this one so strongly has the vibe of one, made clearer by the fact that it is very innocent, there is no romance, and religion plays such a huge part. The point when we were sure it wasn't was in the semi-climax when Chloe stops a bunch of her church members from burning Aurelius at the stake and she actually says a swear and shoots a guy for playing with a lighter. By hey, maybe she redeems herself with eternal missionary work and he finds cures for diabetes and HIV and everything's fine.

Quote:

[You must imagine this said in the flattest monotone.] "I always wanted to play a sultry female vampire. Who knew that lit class would bring all my dreams to fruition?"

Spoon Rating: 6

REWATCH: Best Of The Best [1989]

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

"Best Of The Best" was a very early watch and it's kind of surprising that we haven't seemed to rewatch it since. I actually double checked this blog to make sure I didn't already write a post on it because I hadn't believed that we managed to go almost a full five years without watching it. This one is an old favorite that predates Bad Movie Night. Adam showed Kay this movie around 2009 just for fun. Adam acquired the movie in the first place because Keith bought it for whatever reason a long time ago (he suspects in a dollar bin) and it managed to survive a flood in their basement back when they lived together. This film is a survivor that could not afford to get Survivor to play the theme song, but they still managed to pay James Earl Jones to be there somehow.

The film is about five guys selected to compete against Korea in a full contact martial arts competition. There's Sonny, played by Eric Roberts, who thinks that martial arts in the most important thing in his life (dude has a son) and always has 40% of his chest showing. There's Tommy who's older brother died in a martial arts competition against a Korean guy with an eyepatch and now he must fight the same guy in this competition. He has PTSD flashbacks about his brother's death that distinctly involve dropping his ice cream cone. There's Chris Penn who is mostly just a jerk who doesn't follow rules so we're not sure why they even want him there. Finally there's a dude named Virgil who is a Buddhist and former Italian (?) and some other guy who's from Detroit and won't let you forget it. They are being coached by James Earl Jones who is doing his serious James Earl Jones thing in a movie where it is hilariously out of place. Most of the movie is about these guys training and all the times they (specifically Sonny and Tommy) contemplated quitting because it was too much. In the end, they fight Team Korea and in the final match of Tommy versus his brother's killer, Tommy can't deliver the final blow and Team USA loses. In the end, the Korean team gives them their medals and everyone has a heartfelt moment.

While this film seems like a generic martial arts movie, every two minutes or so you get a melodramatic line read, a confusing direction choice, or a montage and you can't help but laugh. We made so many ice cream related jokes, you guys. Also, there's a scene of James Earl Jones saying a very firm "No." It's the best scene in the movie. 

Spoon Rating: 8

Descendants [2015]

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

If you're thinking that this movie selection came from the fact that "Descendants" is currently the new Disney channel movie trend and we figured it was worth investigating because we mostly enjoyed the "High School Musical" movies (especially the second), you'd be wrong. The idea of watching this was actually planted in Kay's head by her friend, another Sara, who said that she loves the movie but also knows that it's awful and terrible and that she should be ashamed for liking it. This is probably the best way to sell a movie to us. It helped too that on top of all her shame, she admitted that the movie actually has some really interesting themes that could have been explored to make a better movie that kids might actually learn something from . . . but they didn't. Being all about wasted potential, this film immediately went on the watch list.

The universe of the movie is explained to us in the beginning with a sequence done on a tablet because gosh darn it Disney is hip and keeps up with what the youths like. All the Disney royals and villains exist in the same world but all the good guys live in the United States of Auradon and the villains have all been exiled to an Australia-situation on the Isle of the Lost. The Isle is a ghetto without candy, magic, wifi or other luxuries and Auradon is preppy wonderland, ruled by "the beast" a.k.a. Adam. Adam and Belle's son, Ben, is going to be crowned king soon (at 16? while his dad lives??) and he makes a request for a student exchange program where four kids from the Isle of the Lost are allowed to go to Auradon Prep to prove they are not like their parents. Those kids are Mal, Maleficent's daughter who wants to make her mom proud and brains of this gang, Evie, the evil queen from "Snow White"'s daughter who wants to lock down a prince, Jay, Jafar's son who likes sports and leather, and Carlos, Cruella DeVille's son who is possibly too gay to function and in love with Jay (unconfirmed but come on). They are introduced with a terrible song that has a dub-step breakdown. Adam wished for death.

Before leaving for Auradon, Maleficent tells Mal and crew to steal the Fairy Godmother's wand and bring it to her so she can take over the world. On their first day, they try to steal it from a museum devoted to all their stories, but the security is too high. Luckily, the wand factors into the upcoming coronation so they decide to steal it then. Mal decides that the way to ensure success is to slip Ben a love potion cookie so that she will become his girlfriend and will therefore be right next to him during the coronation. This is an odd plan since Ben seems to kind of already have the hots for her in spite of the fact that he is dating Audrey, Aurora's daughter. Ben has a terrible music number where he confesses his love for Mal. Audrey breaks up with him for Chad, Prince Charming and Cinderella's son and total Chad, who Evie had been after although he was just manipulating her into doing his homework for him. Perhaps lineage has nothing to do with not being a douchenozzle??? Meanwhile Jay plays sports and Carlos gets over a fear of dogs. And the four of them are in a class called Goodness, which is basically Remedial Decency. You realize the public education system on the Isle is probably under-funded and think of all the ways this classicist angle could have been an actual theme.

At the coronation Mal breaks the love spell only to find that it wore off a while ago and Ben actually likes her and is weirdly chill with the fact that she drugged him. Jane, Fairy Godmother's daughter, steals the wand during the ceremony to make herself prettier and ends up accidentally breaking a barrier in the wall around the Isle. Maleficent comes in, Mal and friends chose the side of good, and they fight her and win. Then there's a "We're All In This Together" music number and an obvious implication of a sequel.

The most painful thing about this movie was by far the music numbers. We dreaded every one of them. The worst was probably an acapella/rap cover of "Be Our Guest" but all of them sucked. And it was especially sad that they had Kristin Chenoweth playing a very campy Maleficent because she really should have better things to do with her time. Otherwise, the movie was silly in a lot of the right ways and very easy for us to make fun of. Also, as stated in the beginning of this post, there are a lot of interesting themes that could have been explored here like punishing/rewarding children for their parents, rigid class structure, queer coding of villains, the fact that the villain kids were all raised by single parents but the good kids all have heteronormative, married parents, and whatever is going on in the second quote below.

Will we watch the sequel? You didn't think this was the end of the story, did you?

Quotes:

"She bibadee bobadee booed the living dicklights out of her." 

[Note: The line was clearly meant to be "daylights" but we watched the clip over and over. She says "dicklights."]

"We don't really date much on the island. It's more like gang activity."

[Note: Mal is basically admitting to poly relationships and possibly group sex. That's what this sounds like semantically. Disney probably didn't mean this but. . . yeah.]

Also, at one point a girl walks in and basically says, "Hi. I'm Mulan's daughter." and it's so odd.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

Have the awful villain kid intro song:

Welcome [2007]

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

It's been three weeks since a Bad Movie Night post and with good reason. One of those weeks Adam and Sarah were on vacation in Boston. The other two weeks were spent watching this Bollywood comedy "Welcome." Usually we try to avoid comedies because deliberately trying to make the audience laugh usually ends up more painful than actually funny and there are fewer opportunities for unintentional comedy, but after covering the "Singham" films we needed a different Bollywood genre. Critically, this movie got mixed reviews but it came unironically recommended by one of Sarah's coworkers who thinks it's really funny. It also has a sequel called "Welcome Back" which we will not be watching because this one was not enjoyable enough to warrant us wanting more.

The plot of this movie is actually surprisingly simple considering it's three hours long. Rajiv, boy from a decent, normal family, falls for Sanjana, a girl from a crime family. The normal relatives do not want to the marriage to happen so the boy and girl try to get her brother and his fellow gangster to pursue decent careers with the influence of Ishika, a girl they hired to make them fall in love with her. That's it really. There are a lot of hijinks. The courting of Sanjana by Rajiv takes over a half hour in itself. Towards the end there's a lot of nonsense when Sanjana accidentally shoots the boss's son, ironically named Lucky, and there's a whole "I'm Not Dead Yet" series of body swapping with a funeral pyre (Adam: "This guy's gonna pull a Denethor"). This also eats up about a half hour of the film. The climax of the film culminates in all the characters together in the boss's unstable house playing a murder version of hot potato while government brokers try to push the house off a cliff and solve their crime problem and their housing violation problem at once. The twenty minutes of them trying to escape the house that's suspended over a cliff are mindless.

The film had some redeeming qualities. Music numbers never fail to amuse us for instance. We are always able to amuse each other when we have ridiculous content to base jokes off of. There are a lot of misplaced sound effects that feature Adam's least favorite instrument in existence: the slide whistle. Our subtitles kept saying "rascal" when the actors were literally saying "bastard." We weren't bored. But we've seen better.

And if you're wondering if there's an awful ear-wormy theme song, you're in luck.

Spoon Rating: 4.5

Note: Grandma is currently in a nursing home. It is unclear whether she will be able to return to Bad Movie Night for her poignant reviews.

On a side note, the bad movie shelf has been updated. Feast your eyes on this glory (you can click on the picture to get a better look at what's on it):