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