Turf War [2017]

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

When you watch a movie by a bad director, sometimes you can tell who their inspiration is. Tommy Wiseau famously wanted the screenplay of "The Room" to be like a Tennessee Williams play (and relatedly, might have been looking up to Elia Kazan in his direction). Neil Breen seems like he wants to be an early David Lynch. Alex Maisonette, the director of this Monday's film, really, really wants to make elaborate three hour crime dramas like Martin Scorsese. Too bad he can't write dialogue or direct. Also rather than a three hour epic, we got an hour and 45 minute film that didn't actually have an ending, and it's nearly impossible to find information about this movie to explain why. It looks a little like Maisonette actually made one film, possibly called "Lady Rider," but had to divide it into two: "Turf War" and "Checkmate." We'll probably watch "Checkmate" next week. We aren't exactly invested in the plot, hell we could barely follow the plot, but this movie was a good time nonetheless.

The turf war from the title is a war between bikers, drug dealers, and the cops (both crooked and not crooked). There are too many characters to follow but the primary ones include a good cop duo (one who is trying to act and one who is having his lines fed through an earpiece or something), an undercover "FBA" agent, a crooked sergeant played by the director, a drug dealer named Flash played by Fat Joe, two raping and murdering bikers, their boss, a woman who wants revenge on them for raping her when she was 17 ("lady rider"), and that woman's mom who was thought to be dead. A good portion of the movie consists of various combinations of these characters having flat conversations. Occasionally a murder will happen and we get a glimpse of the best character: Lenny G, the news correspondent for "News News Today." There isn't really a plot outside of Lady Rider's quest to get revenge, but somehow this movie is still captivating. There are so many bizarre lines. The budget was used primarily to put up cheap posters in an apartment building and pretend it's a police office, to give the guns really fake explosion graphics, and to pay Fat Joe for his presence. Pausing the movie is a real delight as you can take in all the little cheap details.
For example:

Aside from the amazing program name, look at that angle. Look even harder at the guy wearing a shirt with "crime scene" on it. It is clearly made of duct tape and was probably originally meant to say "crime scene investigations" before they couldn't figure out how to do that.

This is supposed to be a murder scene where someone was stabbed through a white sheet. Instead, they took a pillow case or something with a totally different texture from the sheet and covered it in fake blood and two sausage links.

Watch this movie and use the pause liberally. I would say to fast forward through the really dry dialogue bits, but you might miss gems like the ones below. 

Quotes:
"The body was murdered."

"You can't trust anyone in your department. I mean no one. You can't trust anybody. This is between us. This stays between me and you. Is that clear?"
"The only one that I can trust is my partner."
"If you say it's okay, it's okay with me."

Spoon Rating: 7

Without Reservation [1989] & The Party [1988]

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

You know those nights where you stay up really late, maybe because you've been drinking or you had too much caffeine too late in the day, and you slip into a state of overtiredness where everything starts to feel like a slightly altered version of reality? This is approximately the feeling provoked by yesterday's bad movie night except that it was only 10PM and no one had consumed anything particularly mood altering. It was a double feature of 80s, starting with a brief 20 minute movie called "Without Reservation," one of three short unrelated films in "The Evangelism Trilogy," and ending with "The Party," a truly baffling movie we watched on Occult Demon Cassette that was recommended to us through our Facebook page by the owner of the channel.

"Without Reservation" started with some home video camera malfunctions (a motif of the evening really) before we were treated to a long sequence of really bad rapping that ultimately had nothing to do with anything about the plot. I guess a bunch of friends were at a party and the guys decided it was time to show their flow skills, which was very well explained by Adam with a deadpan, "Just ten guys and we're having a good time, having a good time." Then six friends got into a car to head out for food and ended up in a car accident, killing four of them. The four who died somehow developed the ability to see what was happening on earth in their absense and see a memorial for them at their high school. Then they end up in a long line at the pearly gates, which looked more like the void, where an old man in a suit would look them up on his 80s computer. If your name came with the label "No confirmation" they had to step to the left where they were caged and sent to hell. Why? Their place in heaven is unconfirmed because they didn't accept Jesus. Back on earth, one of the survivors recounts how all her friends are dead with an alarming smile on her face while the guy she's talking to mentions Jesus, thus confirming her on the spot. Who knew that you could avoid all the classes and ceremony of Catholic Confirmation just by having some classmate talk to you?

The main feature of the night was a film called "The Party." This movie is simulentously uncomplicated in plot but very difficult to explain in a way that will fully convey what exactly is happening. First of all, it doesn't really look like a movie so much as it looks like a home video that someone wanted to pass off as a film. This doesn't just come purely from the look of the film, which is straight up late 80s video cassette. The film doesn't even list a director or a producer, just the actors, which initially made us wonder if it wasn't directed at all and the camera person was just whoever wasn't in the frame at the time.The whole movie is basically about a bachelorette party organized by the groom, and it invokes the same feeling of being at a really terrible bachelorette party.

The "movie" starts with the groom proposing to his bride with a silly set up that ends with him on a pool raft in a cowboy hat. We get strange voiceovers before the proposal and the bachelorette party between the groom and his strangely-accented personal assistant (presumably) in which he orders a bunch of stuff for the two events. At the bachelorette party, a "news reporter" shows up to interview the bride about how it feels to be the bride of the year for getting such a rich, eligible bachelor. We weren't sure if this was a joke or not. I mean, the couple clearly lives in an unimpressive suburban home, but then, this is probably someone's home movies. The bachelorette party continues with booze, sex toy gifts, and the main event: a scavenger hunt. As the bride moves around her house, she finds hiding strippers and is weirdly unconcerned about there being strangers in her house. She has to complete a bunch of silly tasks, like removing rings from an inflatable clown penis while blindfolded, as the girls get drunker. Then a pizza guy shows up and has a whole stripping sequence complete with epilepsy lights and bad music. Then they go for a ten-mile-an-hour limo ride through their suburban neighborhood with the most unappealing of the strippers, and he does magic tricks. At one point the scene cuts to a man dancing covered in glow-in-the-dark paint and we all panicked that we were having strokes. They are pulled over by a cop who turns out to be the groom in a fake moustache, and the film ends with the couple watching all this footage two weeks later, now happily married.

Aside from the acid trip moments, this movie could be best summed up as someone's very sad fantasy. It is someone's fantasy to get engaged to a rich guy who will throw a "fun" bachelorette party for them that ends with the two of them making out in a limo. Or maybe it was someone's fantasy to be in a bachelorette party so they made the movie as an excuse. Either way, this late-night-hallucination of a movie comes with a layer of sadness but is worth the watch. 

Spoon Rating: 6

REWATCH: Singham [2011]

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

We have spent the last two weeks rewatching "Singham" in addition to rounding out our evenings with some short selections from Occult Demon Cassette about Satanism and its apparent rampant influence on the youths.

Nothing new to say here except that "Singham" is still the best, and Satanism is corrupting the youths through rock music. Read the original review here. Get corrupted by Satan here.