Quigley [2003]

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

We started off our Christmas Eve Bad Movie Night by watching a lawyer talk about the failures and successes in the representation of a courtroom in "Miracle on 34th Street" and by rewatching "Rapsittie Kids Believe In Santa." This was a bad idea because both of these things were vastly more enjoyable than our main feature, a family movie with a sneaky Christian undertone called "Quigley." On paper this movie seems like a win. It stars Gary Busey's teeth as a Pomeranian. It was made in 2003 but looks like it was made in 1993. It has conflicting morals that ultimately have all roads leading to Jesus. But also, it went on forever in the name of being a full hour and a half. Whether or not it's worth your time is heavily dependent on how much joy you get from Gary Busey so the opinions of the movie varied slightly among the BMN members.

"Quigley" starts off by introducing Gary Busey's character who hates dogs and the feelings of others and basically everything except making money at his video game company, weird antiquity influenced art, and the "virtual reality CD ROM." He dies in a car crash when he swerves around a dog and a bunch of angels in cheap curtains tell him he has the option of going to heaven if he returns to Earth in the body of the dog and does some good deeds. He reluctantly agrees and is assigned a guardian angel who falls down a lot and changes his outfit to something new and eccentric every five minutes (most frequently he looks like a really out of touch youth pastor). First Garigley returns to his company to destory an incriminating disk and somehow causes the guy who has taken over the company to fall in love with his secretary. Then Garigley must go to the home of his estranged brother and fix his family's lives somehow. It turns out his brother also develops video games, of the kid friendly variety, but has never sold them anywhere so Garigley steals the disk of one and brings it to his former company where they offer the brother a half a million dollars to work for them. Everyone is happy! But the angels tell Gary Busey that his good deeds don't matter because he doesn't have faith. Then he wakes up in the hospital and it turns out the whole thing was a dream. His life changed, he sets out to make amends with his brother and sell his video game concept again.

The best parts of this movie were any time Gary Busey was on screen. Since only the guardian angel could see that he was really a human, it was only through his eyes that we saw Gary and not the dog but oh, every time he looked like he had just eaten the entire medicine cabinet and it was great. Otherwise, the film dragged a lot. There were a ton of kid hijinks like Garigley getting thrown in the pound, an odd German janitor ranting, and Garigley's niece disappearing and him having to find her, but you would get a good laugh interspersed between these moments. 

I can't say I'd recommend watching it, but it wouldn't be the worst night ever. Either way, you're better off with "Rapsittie Kids Believe in Santa," a genuine Christmas classic.

Spoon Rating: 4

Stalker's Prey [2017]

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

For our first Lifetime movie, we have a meeting of two worlds: a shark movie and a stalker movie. This film, "Stalker's Prey," came into our lives on the recommendation of a chorus of Kay's students who have all seen the film. Why has a whole room of high school seniors seen a specific Lifetime movie? It was filmed in their part of the woods, or I should say the sea. The police station is a local community college, a featured restaurant is a place she has actually heard of, and the school's distinct facade is shown with an obvious CGI name change. Although the town is supposed to be Hunter's Grove, they don't even try to change the sign on the back of one person's EMT jacket that says "Niantic."

Putting aside our connection to the film, let's get into the plot. The mumbliest teen in southeastern New England, Laura, gets rescued from a shark attack that left her boyfriend dead in the water. The guy who rescued her is none other than a politician's son who everyone in town immediately reveres. He checks up on Laura a lot and gives her gifts and while nothing seems amiss to Laura's family, the doom music warns the audience that his intentions are not the purest. Although the film seems to try to put forth this idea that he's a catch (fame, looks, volunteering with kids with cancer; also no pun intended), every action he takes seems a little off. He invites Laura to the marina (red flag) to be his date for a campaign fundraiser and suspiciously gives her a dress to wear (how did he know her size?). There's a blackout moment that may imply drunkenness or roofies. He lingers a bit too long with every interaction. 

After that Laura is weary of him but he keeps showing up everywhere: babysitting her sister, subbing at her school, and using the spare key her mom gave him to come inside and watch her sleep. He also starts attacking her friends who she fights with, beating one with a bat and hitting the other with his car. Laura finally decides to investigate his ex and discovers that although he said he talks to her all the time, she's been dead for years. Note: he wasn't lying but Norman Bates-ing it. Laura tries to get him to implicate himself for hitting her friend with his car and he responds by kidnapping her and taking her out on his boat to feed her to the shark he saved her from. They fight. She wins.

Aside from the amusing genre mixture and the ominous music, this movie has some great acting. The actress playing Laura is mostly unintelligible compared to everyone else while the guy playing the stalker is full of the drama. His freak-outs and crazed mutterings stand out as the highlight of the film. More unintentional comedy comes from the bad CGI shark, the car accident scene effect, and other miscellaneous odd choices.

Give it a try, chum.

Quote: "The TV movie writes itself!" [Thanks for the lampshading.]

Spoon Rating: 5.5

Cyberbully [2011]

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

For our first ABC Family movie, we decided on "Cyberbully." We have watched a Hallmark film and many Disney originals so it was about time for ABC Family to show us what they have to offer. Next week we are going to shoot for a Lifetime movie, of which Kay has actually seen a lot.

The title tells you most of what you need to know. A teen girl named Taylor gets an account on Cliquesters, which is totally not Facebook or Instagram or whatever was most popular with kids in 2011, and initially only has light bullying from the mean girls who bully her in school anyway. She starts flirting online with Scott, this guy in her classes who she likes, and soon gets a message from James, a guy from a nearby school who really liked a poem she had posted. It was shortly after this that Kay claimed that Taylor's best friend with the strong crush vibes towards Taylor, Samantha, is actually James. Taylor's brother hacks her account and writes some inappropriate stuff, which causes an uptick in Taylor's online bullying but everything really escalates after Scott asks her to the dance. Right after James claims online that he slept with Taylor and she gave him the clap, which prompts everyone in the school to turn on her including her friends, and she starts to be ostracized. Keith claimed she was going to try to kill herself and he was right too. The suicide attempt ended up being the funniest part of the movie because after some somber wallowing to Sia's "Breathe Me" Samantha finds Taylor in the bathroom complaining and struggling to open a pill bottle cap. The scene is super reminiscent of the scene in "Heathers" where Heather McNamara attempts suicide in the school bathroom while muttering, "Stupid child safety caps" or whatever the line is. We couldn't stop laughing. Note to screenwriters: if you ever want to write a serious moment, make sure you are not mimicking a scene from a comedy.

This was actually only the end of act two even though it felt like a climax. Taylor stays home for a week after going to the hospital and seeing a psychiatrist. She starts attending support meetings for other kids with internet-based depression. Then of course Samantha reveals that she's James while Taylor is home after the suicide thing, which is ridiculous timing. The rest of the movie just has Taylor's mom trying to get a law passed and eventually Taylor and Sam getting interviewed for the local paper about their story. The whole thing ends on a triumphant "telling off the mean girl" scene with Taylor and friends. Taylor and Samantha did not end up together in spite of the gay vibes; instead Scott kind of comes back to Taylor and eats lunch with them.

Aside from the hilarity of the pill scene, this movie did have a fair amount of laughs. The plot was predictable and had nice melodrama and a clear lack of understanding of teens and bullying both online and in person. It's definitely worth one watch.

Quotes: [random filler dialogue without context] ". . . the seedy underbelly of the Underworld."

Spoon Rating: 6

REWATCH: Battlefield Earth [2000]

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

Because Sarah had to work and it's been a while since we did a rewatch, we decided to watch "Battlefield Earth." As before we got to enjoy all the curtain wipes, hammy acting, Dutch angles that give you neck pain (this post is in italics to mimic that suffering), the absolute dumbest imperialists ever, and a second half of the film that was just way too boring to compete with the ridiculous first half. Just know that you are a crap-lousy man animal who likes raw rats and is constantly upsetting the gods.

I tried writing down some quotes below but it's impossible to convey John Travolta's specific inflection through the medium of text.

You can read my original review here.

Quotes:
"While you were learning how to SPELL YOUR NAME, I was being trained to conquer galaxies."
"DO YOU WANT LUNCH?!"
"YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD BARTENDER."
"I'm going to make you as happy as a baby psychlo on a straight diet of kerbango!"

Spoon Rating: 7

Face/Off [1997]

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

Approximately twice every year Adam has made a reference to "Face/Off." Obviously, it is always in the context of "Face/Off" being a bad movie but it is usually to reference something ridiculous about it. Weirdly enough, both Keith and Sarah had seen it before but neither of them could remember it so even if it wasn't a new viewing experience for everyone in the room, it felt like it was for most. And this movie is nuts. The very premise is weird enough as it is, and not necessarily the worst sci-fi concept ever but when you add in the combined efforts of Nicholas Cage and John Travolta, you get something special.

The movie is about an FBI agent (Travolta) who had an assassination attempt made on his life by sociopath terrorist (Cage) which ended in the death of his son. Travolta basically devotes his life to finding Cage and succeeds. The problem is, Cage planted a bomb and they need to find out where it is so they have been keeping Cage alive. Chance of resurrection is unlikely so another plan is made: Travolta is going to literally take Cage's face and go into prison as him. If this sounds ridiculous, trust me when I say the "science" behind it makes it even worse. Of course, Cage wakes up and makes the doctors give him Travolta's face before he kills them all and starts living his life. Cage kills the FBI director and Travolta's doctor wife finds out what is going on. There's a huge, half hour long fight scene at the funeral which ends in Cage's death. Travolta then adopts Cage's orphaned son because he reminds him of his own son who Cage killed, which is really messed up the more you think about it. 

Words cannot convey how weird this movie is. The acting is the hammiest ham you will ever see, mostly reserved for whoever is playing Cage's character, but so overwhelming throughout that you kind of forget that everyone else is acting mostly normal. The movie is directed by John Woo, which means a lot of incongruous slow-mo, never ending fight scenes that get stranger and stranger, and doves. The movie also had music playing in the background throughout almost the entire thing and it was constantly undermining how you were supposed to feel. Script wise, the movie was just so full of references to faces and saving faces and identity that it kind of felt like someone just learned what a theme was and needed to ensure that everyone else will know that they know.

Watch it once for the madness, but not again because it's almost two and a half hours.

Quote: "It's like looking into a mirror but . . NOT."

Spoon Rating: 5

Love At The Thanksgiving Day Parade [2012]

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

Although Adam mentions it approximately three times a year and has been doing so since 2006, we had to postpone "Face Off" for this week because we have a major holiday coming up. There's definitely a shortage of Thanksgiving movies but we did manage to find a Hallmark movie called "Love At The Thanksgiving Day Parade." Although we have never watched a Hallmark movie before, this movie had almost the exact same vibe as "Christian Mingle" and was just about the same in terms of bad movie quality.

The film is about a woman named Emily who dresses like Jackie O and is part of the planning committee for Chicago's Thanksgiving parade. It's basically her life. She's also super upbeat all the time and is dating a marine biologist who she hasn't seen in months even though she is afraid of boats. We all immediately started predicting what way he was going to screw her over. She meets Henry, an operations management guy brought in to analyze the spending and profitability of the parade, and he's attractive but a rich jerk. They clash but spend ridiculous amounts of time together, basically going on dates that are supposed to be about him learning about the parade. It's one of those enemies-to-lovers stories, and their pettiness is painful to watch. 

Then the boyfriend shows up with a big question which Emily thinks is marriage but is actually a proposal that she travel with him on his next mission. She gets drunk (off ONE glass of champagne) with Henry and sings "Heart Of Glass" at a swanky karaoke bar. Later they get kiss-camed at a high school basketball game and it makes things awkward. At this point they are literally both single and it makes no sense why they are fighting this. The idea that they are somehow opposed because of their jobs is a flimsy excuse at best and as time goes on it gets more and more unreasonable. There's a brief misunderstanding where Emily thinks Henry has a girlfriend already and then her ex proposes to make up for the mistake before and she says yes. At the parade, she realizes she made a mistake when she finds out that Henry is an orphan and runs a charity and oh my god he's an even better guy than I thought! And he dresses up as Santa in the parade after the previous Santa bailed. And they make out. While he's dressed like Santa. It's creepy.

Like "Christian Mingle" there are a lot of odd moments and some strange acting. The boyfriend in particular is like a caricature of a selfish nerd guy and it's delightful to watch. We got a decent amount of laughs and more than a few groans at the plot contrivances, which were pretty fun to predict in advance. The biggest complaint here really is that it has basically nothing to do with Thanksgiving. "Thankskilling", while horrible, at least featured the holiday.

Quote: "I have known you for five years and I have loved you for . . . a lot of that time."

Spoon Rating: 6

Teen Witch [1989]

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

Usually we have a tendency to dip into Sarah's past for bad movies since she apparently had horrible taste as a child. This week, Kay had a vague memory of an 80s fever dream to share, only recalling fully that she had watched it a few times on the Disney channel in the last 90s and that it was full of plot holes and rapping white kids. Oh, it proved to be so much more than that.

"Teen Witch" was probably made in the wake of "Teen Wolf" but with roughly half the effort put into it. The story follows Louise Miller, a high school girl with seemingly substantial wealth but sub-par popularity because of her tendency to dress like a sister wife and her unsubtle crush on the school's dreamboat named Brad. After the worst day ever, she gets stuck in the rain with a flat bike tire and ends up at the home of Serena, a tiny witch lady who tells Louise that she in one of them and will receive her witch powers on her sixteenth birthday. It's a rough start at first with things happening basically because she wishes for them including for her creepy dance date to go away and an instant where wordplay turns her really unnerving brother into a dog. She gets a necklace from her drama teacher that is apparently the source of her powers and uses it to give her drama teacher a sweet life. She also gives her best friend rapping abilities so she can rap battle the weird boy she likes in probably the most bizarre scene in the whole movie which Adam watched in a state of sheer amazement (see below).

Serena starts lowkey using Louise since her powers are drained or something and gives her a magic book to learn spells from. This movie has absolutely no consistency with how magic works. At one point water makes it disappear. Sometimes you need to say something, sometimes you need to wish for something, sometimes you just need to think it - there's no logic. Either way, Louise considers using magic to make Brad love her but decides not to. She does however, decide to do a massive spell to make her the most popular girl in school. Brad starts to like her anyway and takes her to his creepy murder shack to . . . apparently just kiss. Weird that it wasn't more than that but hey, it wasn't murder. There isn't really a climax so much as Serena gives Louise words of advice ranging from "no one's happy" to the more positive "be yourself" and Louise decides to ditch her magic necklace at the dance, presumably ending the popularity spell as she and Brad dance, although it isn't clear that the spell is broken at all. Maybe she just decides she has all she needs. There's no answer.

This movie is a ride. In a way it can be summed up by a moment in the beginning of the movie where the cheerleaders in the locker room all start dancing around in a choreographed number called "I! Like! Boys!" and Adam turned to Kay and said, "So this is a musical?" and Kay answered, "No." This movie has no idea what it is or what it wants to be. The magic concept, as I said above, is completely unfleshed out. The plot has holes all over the place especially as it relates to character (Why didn't the teacher get fired for stripping? Why didn't Louise ever make up with her best friend? Why is Louise's brother acting like he's the harbinger in a horror movie at all times?). And in addition to the one musical number and the inexplicable rapping trio moments, the entire intro of the movie is basically an 80s music video that goes on way too long until you realize it was just Louise's dream. This movie also reeks of 80s from the clothes to the music to the utter nonsense.

When the film was over we actually had a discussion about it to try to make sense of every dropped element.

This is art. Top that!

Spoon Rating: 8

REWATCH: Gymkata [1985]

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

This movie is an old one for us: old enough that it's on the original picture of the first few movies we watched when we had just started Bad Movie Night in 2012, old enough that Sarah hasn't seen it. Because it had been long before the Facebook group or the spoon rating system, and since we often just shout out, "gymkata" as an explanation of a specific kind of movement, we figured we should watch it again and properly review and rate it.

"Gymkata" tells the story of "Enter The Dragon" but with gymnastics. We have some opening shots of the lead, actual gymnast Kurt Thomas, doing his thing while somewhere else a man is running from some guys on horseback who kill him. We are given the plot at breakneck speeds: Thomas has to enter some vague competition called The Game in the country of Parmistan and win so he can request that a US satellite be built there. Weirdly enough, the odds of dying in The Game are high and yet, Thomas agrees anyway. For a satellite. Also, his father died in The Game. This is a great plan.

Thomas trains for The Game with some experts and the Parmistan princess and they have a thing even though (or perhaps because) she doesn't talk. In Parmistan, the princess is taken and brought back to her father where she is expected to marry his right hand man who also runs The Game and is planning a coup against the king. Thomas enters The Game where the right hand man is basically doing whatever he can to kill him and bumps into his father along the way who is quickly killed. Thomas defeats the right hand man and saves the entire government of Parmistan so quickly that when we got a final freeze frame we kept looking at each other and saying, "Wait, is that it? Is it over?"

So let's get the obvious out of the way: gymkata, the fighting style of Thomas' character, is very silly. It's fighting gymnastics. Also Thomas runs like he's going to vault and without a pole in his hand, he looks bizarre. Other than that, the premise is derivative, the plotting is expected, the acting is bad, and the flag-holding ninjas look bored -hang in there, guys- but I list all of these as examples of why it's worth a watch and we got a few solid laughs.

Spoon Rating: 6.5

Black Roses [1988]

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

It feels like we have been suffering for weeks without a delightfully bad reprieve but when I look back, it has only been three weeks since the charming "Die Hard Dracula." I guess the last two weeks have been especially rough. Either way, this one may not be a classic of bad movies but it was a nice way to spend an evening if you like horrifying 80s aesthetic, heavy metal, and fakey Satanism. Which of course we do.

In a backwoods suburban town, the teens are a-buzz with news that Black Roses, a popular heavy metal band that never plays lives shows, will be during a five(?) concert series at the high school, curiously paid for by the school board. Some parents are aghast because of the band's antisocial, anti-religious content but a few minutes into the first performance, nothing seems amiss so they leave, prompting the band to strip down to their leather harnesses and praise Satan. As the nights of concerts go on, the students seem to develop the ability to turn into demons but it's unclear how or why and they become increasingly more disobedient. One kills the principal after killing her mother, one seduces her friend's dad with strip poker and kills him, and one who's already obsessed with the mustachioed English teacher, kills the teacher's ex-girlfriend and tries to seduce him in his house before turning into a demon that he kills. She's somehow okay later in human form at the last Black Roses concert. The teacher goes to the concert to stop the demonic activity and seems to, but later Black Roses is playing Madison Square Garden so I guess nothing is fixed. Also, all those people are still dead. And we never find out if the kids were saved from their possession. And there's basically no closure. 

This movie has all the 80s cheese you would want including silly acting (especially a man who is definitely in his 30s playing a teenager by just having too much energy), bad sound effects, and a plot that doesn't really make sense or go anywhere. Hail Satan?

Spoon Rating: 5

Science Crazed [1989]

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

"Science Crazed" is a Frankenstein movie that would have been a decent 30 minute bad movie but has been mutated and cruelly malformed to fit a feature run time. It was apparently salvaged from two different recordings but they didn't seem to cut anything so we see the same victim-stalking shots over and over, seemingly to build anticipation for the "fiend's" kill, but mostly to bore us into fast forwarding through most of the film. The plot is just about a mad scientist who never takes off his sunglasses making a woman go through a 21 hour pregnancy to give birth to "Frank Jr" who promptly kills his father and mother and then goes around a . . . gym . . . hotel . . . something, killing people. He is stopped by the scientist's assistants and a detective they hired who dresses like a detective in a 1940s noir. Aside from the long, repeating shots, there's some looping bad 80s background music but in between we get gloriously badly dubbed dialogue that kind of make the whole thing worth it. Watch it, but fast forward until you get to dialogue.

"Science Crazed" is a Frankenstein movie that would have been a decent 30 minute bad movie but has been mutated and cruelly malformed to fit a feature run time. It was apparently salvaged from two different recordings but they didn't seem to cut anything so we see the same victim-stalking shots over and over, seemingly to build anticipation for the "fiend's" kill, but mostly to bore us into fast forwarding through most of the film. The plot is just about a mad scientist who never takes off his sunglasses making a woman go through a 21 hour pregnancy to give birth to "Frank Jr" who promptly kills his father and mother and then goes around a . . . gym . . . hotel . . . something, killing people. He is stopped by the scientist's assistants and a detective they hired who dresses like a detective in a 1940s noir. Aside from the long, repeating shots, there's some looping bad 80s background music but in between we get gloriously badly dubbed dialogue that kind of make the whole thing worth it. Watch it, but fast forward until you get to dialogue.

"Science Crazed" is a Frankenstein movie that would have been a decent 30 minute bad movie but has been mutated and cruelly malformed to fit a feature run time. It was apparently salvaged from two different recordings but they didn't seem to cut anything so we see the same victim-stalking shots over and over, seemingly to build anticipation for the "fiend's" kill, but mostly to bore us into fast forwarding through most of the film. The plot is just about a mad scientist who never takes off his sunglasses making a woman go through a 21 hour pregnancy to give birth to "Frank Jr" who promptly kills his father and mother and then goes around a . . . gym . . . hotel . . . something, killing people. He is stopped by the scientist's assistants and a detective they hired who dresses like a detective in a 1940s noir. Aside from the long, repeating shots, there's some looping bad 80s background music but in between we get gloriously badly dubbed dialogue that kind of make the whole thing worth it. Watch it, but fast forward until you get to dialogue.

Like this film, this post would have been a decent, if short, post but in the interest of making it the same length as my other posts, I decided to just repeat it over and over.

Spoon Rating: 5

Black Devil Doll From Hell [1984]

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

It has been a long time since we suffered like this. I hesitate to compare anything to "Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star" but for a solid 20 minute period of this film, we were all trying so hard to disassociate that I am almost uncomfortable writing this blog post as it forces me to relive the experience. We were expecting a blaxplotation version of Chucky and all the cheese that would imply, but oh, we did not expect this.

The beginning of the movie is pretty inoffensively bad. We follow Miss Helen Black, a good church going woman who is proud of how she's waiting for marriage. It was hard to tell how old she was supposed to be as she was wearing those ridiculously large glasses that were fashionable in the 80s that make everyone look like a grandmother and her couch was covered in plastic. We get a lot of lingering shots of her apartment full of religious articles while she talks to her friend on the phone about much she needs Jesus. One day Miss Black goes into a thrift store and finds a really frightening puppet, which the store owner promises will grant her her deepest desire. She also mentions that the puppet always finds its way back to the shop, which seems like a bad thing to mention because it assures the buyer that ownership is temporary. Regardless, Miss Black buys the thing and props it up on her toilet while she showers. 

And here's where the film takes a turn. In between shots Miss Black enthusiastically soaping up her breasts, we are treated to horrifying images of the puppet licking her and having sex with her. It was unclear at this moment if she was imagining it or if the doll was. Even more unfortunately, this was foreshadowing as the puppet ends up tying her to the bed and raping her. This doll sex scene (because yes, it eventually became consensual) went on for what felt like days. We hadn't seen anything of the sort since the furry sex in "Wolfcop." If I could "Eternal Sunshine" those images away, I would in a heartbeat.

After the puppet sex, the doll disappears and Miss Black is now a nympho but no man can satisfy her. She goes back to the shop to buy the doll again but when she brings it home and begs it to have sex with her, it kills her. The film ends with someone else buying the puppet.

Do not watch this. Just don't. It is an exercise in misery. It is an endurance test that is not worth the suffering. If I ever were to encounter the director/writer/producer I would run away because I definitely know too much about him and none of it is good.

Oh, and the quality is VHS level with tracking issues and the acting and sound quality are very bad. But who cares? Puppet sex.

Quote: "I've slept with men . . . several to be exact."

Spoon Rating: 2

Die Hard Dracula [1998]

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

'Tis the season for vampires. According to the vampire tag, our previous vampire movies have featured a vampire dog, vampires in space, vampires based on a video game, and a "Twilight" ripoff. By that reckoning, this is the most normal vampire movie we have watched at Bad Movie Night and is also unquestionably one of the best.

This is a movie that seems to not understand transitions but we eventually managed to follow the plot. Dracula took a bride for himself 300 years ago named Sonia, which we need to be shown for some reason, and then we flash forward to modern California where our protagonist's girlfriend dies in a tragic water-skiing accident. Following the funeral, protag goes on vacation to Prague and ends up wandering the countryside. He walks into a small town bar and is baffled to see that the owner's daughter, Carla, looks identical to his dead girlfriend. This plot point goes nowhere. Also, the town has a Dracula problem. In this folklore, he can go in the sun but not direct sunlight and it weakens him, and he can be killed with silver. Dr. Van Helsing comes in and he is the weakest Van Helsing in media. Even with Dracula eating in the town bar, he neglects to do anything about it. The plot ramps up when Dracula kidnaps Carla after a weird sex scene with the protag and turns her into a vampire. Protag and Helsing go to save her but they both end up falling victim to Dracula. Uniquely, it's a happy ending because now they are all one big vampire coven and they dance around their tower while Dracula plays classical tunes.

There are a lot of reasons this movie is a delight. There's bad CGI, public domain music that often casts a comical light on something presumably not meant to be funny, bad acting, a low budget, and just all around madness. We're borderline on whether this movie deserves a rewatch but it most definitely deserves to be seen once.

Weird Credits:
Mr. Sachen's Girlfriend - Squishy
Mr. Sachen's Other Girlfriend - Vanda
Catering - Sometimes

Spoon Rating: 7

Elves [1989]

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

I actually don't know where to start with this one. On Wikipedia it only lists one writer but I could swear in the credits there were three and oh boy, does it feel like three different movies haphazardly smashed into one. I don't even want to try to explain the plot honestly so I'll keep this one short and sweet. 

It has Dan Haggerty of "Repo Jake" fame (oh and some television show in the 70s that wasn't well known or anything) playing the down on his luck good guy who may just be him in real life. There's a Christmas motif to this movie but it doesn't play much of a role outside of being set during Christmas, mall Santas, and some sort of "anti-Christmas" ritual in the beginning. There's an evil elf but they don't really seem to have anything to do with Christmas. More so the film is about Nazis and inbreeding in order to create a master race. Really. The main character is a result of her father and her grandfather being the same person and now she is expected to have sex with the elf to create powerful hybrids. Although we don't see elf sex and we mostly just get a lot of murdering and Nazis, they do set up for a sequel by implying that she got pregnant offscreen somehow.

Honestly, this movie isn't especially funny but it has its moments and it's kind of worth a watch because it's so bizarre.

Quote:
"What's wrong? Are we going to be alright?"
"No, Willy. Grandpa's a Nazi."

Spoon Rating: 4

Urban Cowboy [1980]

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

Sometimes one must ask the question: is this movie unpleasantly bad or just not for me? In the case of "Urban Cowboy" the answer is both. In the beginning we thought this might be promising as a bad movie. It initially reminded us of "Road House" a bit and we basically decided to watch it because the DVD case screams "homoeroticism that lacks self awareness" like "Top Gun." The movie didn't deliver on either end. 

The plot of "Urban Cowboy" is simple and horrible. A guy from a remote part of Texas moves to the big city of Houston where he spends all his time in the same large bar. He meets a girl there, treats her horribly and beats her, but she marries him anyway in a strange smash cut 30 minutes in. It was at that point we realized the movie was two hours and fifteen minutes long and it had only just finished its introduction. We watched the rest of the movie on 1.5 speed with subtitles and it didn't make it any worse or better. Cowboy wants to mechanical bull ride but doesn't want his wife to because misogyny. They fight a lot. He hits her more. He gets jealous of her bull riding skills when he forbid her to do it. He sleeps with an oil tycoon's daughter to show her. She sleeps with and starts shaking up with an ex-con who also beats her but more often. Eventually this all boils down to a riding competition between the cowboy and the ex-con. The cowboy wins. The ex-con tries to steal the prize money and the cowboy saves the day while also getting his wife back for some reason. No one has learned anything. The cowboy is still a jerk but now has $5000, presumably enough to upgrade their trailer. The wife really likes abusive men and takes back the cowboy with literally no evidence that he has grown or changed. If this is anyone's fantasy, you have to analyze your life. At least the devil went down to Georgia guy was there.

So apparently people in the 80s liked this movie because while many reviews talk about how it hasn't aged well, it still has a weirdly high rotten tomatoes rating. Ignoring the fact that nothing about this story appeals to anyone in the Bad Movie Night crew, the movie has a very real flaw as a regular film: the writing. This movie seems to have a basic understanding of plot points but not things like "dynamic character" or "payoff" or the fact that things should happen to move the plot forward and connect plot points.

Even if you are a cowboy or cowboy lover, I don't understand why you would like this misogynistic, boring dribble. You'd be better off reading a Harlequin romance.

Spoon Rating: 1 Lone Star.

Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat [1999]

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

Back in the late nineties when most of us Bad Movie Nighters were in our late elementary school years, I remembered seeing television advertisements for this film on Nickelodeon or some other channel that primarily catered to kids. Even at ten I was skeptical of any movie or album you could order directly off the television and I found myself wondering, "who even does that?' The answer is Sarah's mom and Sarah used to watch this movie constantly as a kid and fall asleep to the soundtrack. After she discovered that Tim Rice wrote the music for "Lion King" and this, she remembered that it was a bizarre, trippy nightmare and decided we should all experience it. It's only an hour and fifteen minutes but it felt so much longer. Also, here we go with another entry thanks to Andrew "tory-voting" Lloyd "frog-face" Webber.

So the plot follows the Bible but if you're a heathen like me, you don't know what that is so I'll explain. Joseph is the favorite son of Jacob much to the chagrin of his eleven brothers who were not born of Jacob's favorite dead wife. Jacob gives Joseph a really tacky coat that drives the brothers to attempt fratricide and when that doesn't work they sell him into slavery. Joseph attains pretty high rank as a slave in Egypt but then gets sexually assaulted by his master's wife and thrown in jail. He managed to get out because he's really good at dream interpretation and uses it to win the Pharaoh's favor and become his right hand man. Joseph's brothers, now destitute without him, go to Egypt to beg for food and Joseph makes them grovel. He then plans to punish one for stealing a cup but forgives him and reveals his identity. Happily ever after.

This movie is an acid trip. First of all, it has a useless framing device about it being set as a school play in an elementary school with all the actors in the play also doubling as admin. The only purpose this seems to serve is to justify the existence of an ear splitting children's choir in some songs. The aesthetic of this film is basically a low budget kid's show during the scenes with Joseph's brothers and then Dr. Caligari's Tim Burton-esque gay nightmare while in Egypt. The original stage musical came out during the era of popular tribal musicals for adults like "Hair" and "Godspell" but that only explains so much. The music is all over the place involving songs in styles of western, cabaret, tango, Jamaican steel drum, Elvis rock, and more standard Broadway. Oh, and it's supposed to be FUNNY. It's sometimes funny but not in the right way.

Should you watch it is a bit of a debate. Sarah says yes. Adam says no. Kay says it's a fair candidate for watching. Keith was mostly ranting about the liberties taken with the original story. Decide on your own.

Adam's Review: "Proverbs, Chapter 4, Verse 15: Avoid it. Do not go to it. Turn away from it and pass on."

Spoon Rating: 4.5

Road To Revenge (GetEven) [1993]

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

This movie failed to deliver in a big way. The title(s) tells you to expect a revenge film but there is only even getting for the last 15 minutes of the film. So what does the other hour and fifteen minutes consist of? Utter nonsense and clear evidence of a vanity project.

John De Hart wrote, produced, and starred in this meandering adventure through the life of an ex-cop. Without Sarah around, the first twenty minutes or so were pretty hard to follow until we realized that we were overthinking it. Right in the beginning the main character and his eccentric friend, Huck Finney, (and yes the name is deliberate) are framed by their evil boss and fired. De Hart wrote in a bunch of self-indulgent moments including singing with a band at a really white trash bar, reciting a bit of Hamlet's most famous monologue (he really wants you to know he did the reading in 11th grade English class), and having many overly long sex scenes with the stripper he hired to play his girlfriend, one of which directly rips off "9 1/2 Weeks" and all of which are uncomfortably scored with jangly, overly sentimental folk love songs by De Hart. De Hart finds out his girlfriend was involved with a guy in a Satanic cult that sacrified a child, and this is put on the back burner while other stuff happens involving Huck Finney being high or something. His character was erratic without explanation. The girlfriend realizes that De Hart's boss who got him fired is the leader of the Satanic cult and then dies in a motorcycle accident perpetuated by the cult, I guess. It wasn't clear. De Hart gets revenge. In the last minute we find out the girlfriend is alive and technically there was no need to get even at all. We felt cheated.

Overall, this movie had some funny parts, usually because of the music, but a lot of it was boring.
Spoon Rating: 3

Redeemer [2014]

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

What is there to say about "Redeemer" expect that there were a lot of things that were unexpected about this film. We didn't expect it to be dubbed; it's actually a Chilaen film. We kind of expected it to be a religious film but it definitely wasn't. We kind of expected it to have a coherent backstory conveyed to the audience at a reasonable and clear time, but it didn't. We also were hoping that it would be fun, but it wasn't.

The film is about a guy who is a former hitman for cartels, now attempting to redeem himself after accidentally killing the son of a gang boss by . . . killing gangsters. He is very religious but in the fandom kind of way; he's very obsessed with his own concept of Christianity, which apparently allows him to kill. Before every killing spree he plays a game of Russian roulette and considers the fact that God did not let him die to be a sign that his murdering is okay. He also wears a scapula at all times to get into heaven and has a portable altar he brings with him. It is acknowledged by other characters that he is crazy. Most of the movie involves him going around killing with occasional flashbacks that allow you to piece together the backstory I explained in the first sentence. Towards the end he encounters the man whose son he killed and they have a showdown. It is basically the most stakesless fight because they are both horrible people, so how are we as the audience supposed to care who wins? There's also a side story with another crime boss who is obsessed with getting a cool nickname (in the film he is dubbed into something like Portuguese or maybe just Chilaen Spanish which sounds little like Spanish elsewhere but apparently he was originally American), and this goes no where.

I have nothing else. I don't think we laughed once during this film. It's too earnest.

Spoon Rating : 1

Cool Cat Kids Superhero [2018]

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

Let me make this one really easy for you: "Cool Cat Kids Superhero" (yes, that's the title; ignore what the DVD cover says) is basically just "Cool Cat Saves The Kids" with some additional self indulgent footage from Derek Savage, a few weird lines removed, a few worse lines added in, and Mama Cat's lines redubbed by Cynthia Rothrock. It's not actually worth it to watch this movie if you can get your hands on "Cool Cat Saves The Kids" but apparently that's a collector's item at this point.

Instead I'm going to talk about Derek Savage, the creator of Cool Cat. I think when we watched "Cool Cat Saves The Cats" we considered it to be a very, very flawed but earnest attempt at making a product for kids with a good message. Now that we have basically watched this movie three times, I think I'm getting cynical. Adam said that the new title for this movie was a result of Derek Savage hearing that kids only care about superheroes and he was trying to capitalize on that. This seems likely because it doesn't seem like Derek Savage cares that much about Cool Cat. On his website, three screenplays he wrote which all sound like movies we would watch at bad movie night (one revenge story, one Christian love story, and one male stripper story) are at the top with Cool Cat underneath next to "Gun Self-Defense For Ladies" and then a bunch of Cool Cat and Trolly The Trout books under that. Considering that Cool Cat is the only thing anyone seems to have consumed of his, you would think this would get a bigger highlight. 

But here's what I think. Cool Cat serves two functions for Derek Savage: 
1. It seemed like an easy money maker. Savage doesn't really want to make kids movies; it's not a specific passion for him. What he does want is to work in film, and because kid movies are easy to make and don't have to be particularly "good," he thought this might be a way to make some money and hopefully get some recognition for his other works, which he may have a stronger attachment to.
2. He's trying to justify owning a fursuit. Throughout the Cool Cat movies, there are scenes that are clearly designed to highlight things Derek Savage owns that he's proud of in the materialistic middle-aged man child way. There is discussion of his guitar signed by the members of Van Halen, a band no kid has heard of. We get to see his car a lot during a parade. And in "Cool Cat Kids Superhero" we get even more of this with an opening scene devoted to his motorcycles and a frankly uncomfortable series of shots of Derek Savage working out. Similarly, he displays clout with who is in the movie. He managed to get a Hollywood actress whose largest roles were a decade ago and a washed up television actor to appear and in this one he is able to cite Cynthia Rothrock on the cover of the DVD even though she just did a voice over. This movie is just a way for Derek Savage to toot his own horn and you cannot convince me that he didn't have that fursuit already before deciding to make these movies. It's just another thing he owns and happens to be a little less proud of so he found a way to use it that wasn't creepy.

If you want me to cite my speculations, I can't. There's very little about Derek Savage on the internet. The only thing IMDb adds to the conversation is the fact that he apparently used to be a Playgirl model. I literally have no idea if this is verifiable or added by Savage himself (although if you find picture evidence of this I DON'T WANT IT). It almost sounds like it was added by him because being a Playgirl model is exactly the kind of thing an out-of-touch guy would think is cool and implies that he was hot stuff to women at one point without realizing that the primary reader base of Playgirl has basically always been gay men.

So anyway, watch "Cool Cat Saves The Kids" instead if you can find it, and avoid Derek Savage if you ever encounter him in California.