[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
A question we always find ourselves asking when we encounter bad movies is, "How much money was sunk into this disaster?" Sometimes the question arises because of a clearly high special effects budget or high price tag actors. Often the question comes up because a film looks cheap. The answer can often be surprising. "The Room" had a reported budget of six million dollars, which seems unlikely at first until you find out more about the places where that money seemed to have been put and that Tommy Wiseau is a madman. That being said, this film is by far the cheapest thing we have ever seen. We all made videos for high school foreign language classes in the mid-2000s that had higher production value than this film. And yet, the reported budget is five million dollars. This is immediately suspicious but it gets even stranger when you do a little research and find out that there is relatively little known about it, some sources question whether or not the director is a real person, and that after the film had a paltry premiere in four cities, the distributor called each theater individually and asked that they burn the film rather than sending it back because it would be cheaper. If that doesn't sound like a potential money laundering scene, I don't know what does. Someone didn't want this movie to get out. And yet, it did.
An accurate summary of the film, as far as we (well, Sarah) can surmise, is that it is about two med students who use some kind of mind reading technology to discover that one of them sees visions of future murders. They use this tech to catch a guy who has been offing people in her apartment building. In those words, it sounds kind of like an episode of Black Mirror but trust me when I say it isn't. I prefer this explanation from the IMDb user, GreatMovieCritic, "In a post apocalyptic world, two individuals meet in a large apartment complex, with rooms having been converted by a secret society to things ranging from hospitals to classrooms to apartments. Eventually, murder strikes in the sanctuary, as the two, Patricia and Matthew, come together to find the killer, putting together pieces of the puzzle in beautifully animated sequences. Eventually, the killer is found, and life in the institution continues as normal, as the residents worship Xenu for the rest of their lives." Let me break this down.
The film seems to have been entirely filmed in a decrepit warehouse and two rooms of a single house. What little furniture there is looks like it was picked up from the side of the road or it is made entirely out of paper. Also, the camera will frequently cut to furniture for a random moment for no reason. Because of the spareness of the "sets" it took us forever to figure out that these rooms were supposed to be separate places that represented a doctor's office, an apartment building, and some other rooms we couldn't really figure out. The film focuses on two main characters, but there are a lot of characters who are in random parts of the warehouse, having conversations about trivial things that don't apply to the plot. The actors from this movie mostly feel like people who were asked to come in off the street. They clearly only had one lamp for lighting and the sound frequently has that underwater interference like someone upstairs is flushing a toilet. As for those, "beautifully animated sequences," they look like early Playstation One graphics at best and 80s screensavers at worst. They are also supposedly where most of the money went. If you're wondering if there are special effects aside from the animation, well, there's a ghost who moves stuff. Riveting.
The most confusing thing about this movie is really the why. Not so much, "why was this made?" We know it was made to cover up a drug ring or something. The question is, "why was THIS movie made?" If you wanted to make a cheap film to hide money in, set it somewhere real that you don't have to do much to to make it look nice. Employ two actors who will wear their own clothes. Write a really decent script. Make a watchable movie and claim all the money went into salaries and rental fees or something. Basically, make "Rope" or "Venus In Fur" or "Rabbits" or anything else. If people think it's decent, they probably won't even question the money. While this, this we question.
Spoon Rating: 5*
It's not an abundant amount of laughs but it must be seen to be believed.
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
After the great success we had with "Every Young Man's Battle" we were excited to fire up the YouTube device and browse our favorite Occult Demon Cassette to find "Every Young Woman's Battle." Since we are all about equality at Bad Movie Night, we knew it was a must watch.
It definitely gave us as many laughs at its predecessor but it was a very different format from the original anti-sex, Christian propaganda. "Every Young Man's Battle" had some production quality involving various methods of delivery like skits and testimonials. "Every Young Woman's Battle" is really a filmed seminar given by the author of the book, Shannon Ethridge, to a huge crowd of fives of listeners. She goes over her backstory of slutitude (fabricated or factual, who knows?) and her redemption through her husband making her find Jesus. Then we are treated to an interactive portion where we had to answer 20 questions about our behavior to see how many battles we had to fight (Adam: 9, Kay: 7, Keith: 7, Sarah: 6; most of them involved consuming sexy media). Then Ethridge talked more about not giving it up, explicit instructions on how to dress to not invite unwanted attention, and then a whole lot about ancient gender roles that I think we were supposed to relate to. At one point she said men give love to get sex while women give sex to get love and that in a marriage this is the good, natural order of things. She also mentioned a lot of stuff from the Bible without citation that is definitely not in the Bible.
This one is definitely double feature worthy with "Every Young Man's Battle" if you want to have a Chastity Night. And we really need to spend more time on Occult Demon Cassette because it is a gold mine. Stay tuned for at least three more Satanism videos in the future.
Quotes:
"Many people wonder why I devote myself to sexual purity and I say because I have aids . . . visual aids."
Spoon Rating: 6
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
Admittedly, from the title a few of us were skeptical about the quality of this bad movie. The last time we watched informational films we got a mix in quality from a mostly boring Y2K scare video to a genuinely funny video about the threat of Satanic cults. "Surviving Edged Weapons" definitely falls on the Satanic cult side.
Peppered with only moments of seriousness, usually in the form of interviews with people who may or may not be actual cops (some were in uniform but none of them had titles), the film is heavily based around scenarios in which cops try to execute proper procedure regarding edged weapons. For the first half of the movie they mostly fail, at one point with a cleaver to the head, but then they start to learn the acronyms and their methods improve. One of the acronyms for surviving edged weapons is GUN, by the way, which is even better when they prove that a cop would actually have to be really far away in order to have time to shoot someone with a weapons before being attacked. Since there isn't a plot, it's not super easy to explain without going through each scenario. Just imagine a lot of bad 80s hair, big sweatpants, and upper Midwest accents. It's a masterpiece. Did it save any police officers from death by edged weapons? Who knows? But it makes for a fun night.
Quotes:
*the camera freezes on a barking dog's open mouth*
"How many edged weapons do you see now?"
Spoon Rating: 6
[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]
The "be careful what you wish for" plot is a classic that has been done to death. The only way to really use that premise at this point is to have a new spin on it and maybe something to say. And in a way this movie does have a new spin. It plays with a couple new concepts including what if the main character were horrible and stupid? What if the consequences were totally arbitrary and didn't have some significant connection to the wishes? And what if the ending was totally unexpectedly hilarious? Sure, maybe they aren't good concepts, but they sure are new.
You remember when you were a teenager and had to suffer the embarrassment of your dumpster driving father looking for stuff to hoard outside your high school? Remember having the popular kids almost hit you with a car and then throw a soda all over your art? No? Yeah, me neither. Nothing about the main character's life resembles real teenage life and the dialogue was clearly written by middle aged men. The main's father gives her an interesting Chinese box he found in a trash can, which she conveniently wishes upon. Every wish she makes is superficial and foolish and leads to someone in her limited circle dying randomly with no correlation between wish and consequence. She wishes for money and popularity and even when she starts to notice how everyone around her is dying, she keeps wishing. She finds out through a classmate's cousin who can read ancient Chinese that after seven wishes, the blood price will be hers and that many people have died from using the box. Still she cracks under pressure and on wish six she wishes that her mother who commited suicide when she was young was still alive. Of course, this kills her dad. She makes one final wish to go back to the day she got the box and just as she was giving it to her classmate who's crushing on her and telling him to bury it, she gets hit by a car. It is hilarious.
Overall, this movie is worth a watch. There are a lot of laughs to be had with the bad dialogue, poor plotting, and "Final Destination"-style deaths.
Quotes:
"You're a selfish bowl of bitch sauce."
"She's a slut for wontons."
Spoon Rating: 6
Last Monday we did a rewatch of the M. Night Shyamalan classic "The Happening." You can read the original review here.
Spoon Rating: 9
