Mommie Dearest [1981]

After seeing a bunch of clips of "Mommie Dearest" in "You Don't Nomi" we decided we had to watch it. This movie is famous for its level of melodrama and this did provide a fair amount of laughs. The downside of this movie is that in between the wild moments, the movie is a little flat. There's pretty consistent strange acting that is probably best described as "soap opera acting", but it doesn't always keep you engaged and laughing.

The movie is about Joan Crawford, specifically through the lens of her adopted daughter Christina, and their tumultuous relationship. When the cameras are rolling Joan is a loving mother and Christina is as alarmingly obedient as a child in a horror movie. Outside of that Joan routinely flies off the handle and often takes it out on her daughter. She loses her contract with MGM and hacks up the garden in a way that made us wonder if she was going to hack her kids next. She goes into Christina's closet and flips out when she finds a wire hanger that she then uses as a switch it whip her with. Her son Christopher is mostly shown tied to a bed without further explanation during the childhood years and then disappears from the film until the very end. Even when Christina gets older, she gets shipped off to boarding school (seemingly for interrupting her mother flirting with a guy), then taken out of boarding school by her mother for making out with a guy and sent to a convent school. As an adult, Joan chokes her out at one point for not doing an interview perfectly, and when Christina is in the hospital with cancer, Joan decides to replace her on the soap opera she's on in a wild move. The film ends with Joan dying and her children getting nothing in the will but the last word, implying the biography that Christina will write. Overall, the relationship is really hard to draw conclusions about other than it's really really unhealthy.

With this movie it's tempting to say just to watch a highlight reel, but the problem with a highlight reel is that it would likely take away from how absolutely random the really insane parts are. Even parts that aren't about Joan flipping out sometimes get elevated in a comical way just because of her tendency to bellow things rather than say them. It's worth it to watch the movie once, but you have to be prepared for parts of it to feel a bit drawn out.

Spoon Rating: 5

Wabuu: The Cheeky Raccoon [1996] & The Secret Of The Hunchback [1996] & A Recipe For Seduction [2020]

In a surely desired sequel to the Dingo Pictures Pocahontas, we started the evening with Wabuu: The Cheeky Raccoon, about Pocahontas' raccoon friend who hops and laughs by shaking alarmingly. The German-singing raccoon wants to capture the sun to save it for a rainy day but then instead goes on some puckish Tom Sawyer hijinks. In the end, he makes a nice picnic for all the animals but put sneezing powder or something on it. We've decided he's a primordial chaos god. The movie has all the Dingo Pictures staples like bad animation, bad acting with strange pronunciations*, poorly timed voiceover, thin plot, and an eerie twanging circus background music that repeats throughout the entire thing. The bonuses from this one are that it's shorter at 30 minutes and has such inclusions as Wabuu getting accused of child murder and a character saying, "Shit."
*Someone said they had to get their shuffle (shovel) from their gay rahge (garage).
Spoon Rating:  7

The Secret of the Hunchback, our latest entry in the ongoing Hunchbackening (Hunchback's back, all right), has a similar formula to one we saw before: a clear Beauty And The Beast design retrofitted into a Hunchback movie. Esmerelda looks like Belle and sings a song about "wanting something more than this." Frollo is a high sheriff Gaston ripoff with a Jafar voice and a LaFou-esque sidekick. Instead of Frollo, Quasi has two gay priest dads. Uncomfortably buff gargoyles come to life and sing him an inspiration jazz song about how what counts is on the inside. Instead of Phoebus, we have Pierre, which honestly feels like less of a stretch for a romantic lead and I don't know why we don't see more Hunchback adaptions making this choice instead. Pierre saves her from her captivity under the gypsies who gave her to Frollo and they sing a lame love song in the forest that was a ripoff of "Once Upon A Dream" from Sleeping Beauty. Frollo kidnaps Quasi's archdeacon dad to make him marry Frollo to Esmerelda. Frollo also fights with a belt in addition to a sword. He dies by knocking over a gargoyle with it that crushes him to death. Quasi falls to his death but wings sprout out of his hump and he flies away. It was insane but Sarah predicted it. For some fun inaccuracies, we have a joke about Protestantism, a pronunciation of Notre Dame like the college, and cowboys hats. Remember: this is meant to be the 15th century.
It has higher production values than a couples of the ones we've seen but where it really shines is in how wildly odd the story is and how much it borrows from Disney movies.
Quote: I've got a HUNCH we won't be seeing him anymore.
Spoon Rating: 7

We made Hunchback Bingo for our next one:

Lastly, we watched the already well known A Recipe For Seduction, a short Lifetime movie funded by Kentucky Fried Chicken with a sexy Colonel Sanders. It's only 15 minutes, which is kind of the ideal length since you get all the exciting parts without any of the drag. A rich girl falls for her family chef who wants to change the world with his special chicken recipe. Her jilted fiancé and her mom who's banging him decide to take out the chicken man, but he's rescued by the rich girl's gay best friend. Mom and fiancé go to a mental institution while rich girl and Sexy Sanders get married.
Spoon Rating: No spoons. Too corporate. Eat with your hands.

SPECIAL: Doombox Commercial

 This commercial for a better mousetrap ominously but appropriately called Doombox is one of the most unselfaware, morbid, and fascinating we've ever seen. This kind of tonal strangeness is often the essence of a truly enjoyable bad movie and this commercial viewed 33 times as of this post (three of those being Adam) is an experience you must have.

Pocahontas (Dingo Pictures) [1995]

Because Dingo Pictures has been an absolute joy the last two times we watched movies from them. This time they ripped off "Pocahontas." It is both the 1600s and the 1800s as they reference Queen Victoria and have cowboys and old west towns. It's also Virginia but also the plains since the Native Americans have teepees but also the southwest as Monument Valley and cacti are there. 

The plot is basically the same as the Disney movie but replace Grandmother Willow with a disturbing bush and fill the imperialist ship with an Italian chef, his very racist caricature Asian sous chef, Aladdin, and a cat who has an alarmingly sensual voice. As usually, the animation is ugly and bad, the voice acting is sometimes unintelligible and always weird, and the editing is slap dash.

We'll be watching more next week.

Spoon Rating: 7.5

Stayin' Alive [1983]

So we're never watching another John Travolta movie at Bad Movie Night. After "Urban Cowboy," it was unlikely anyway, but now we know to avoid. The only reason we watched this today anyway was because we didn't realize "Mommie Dearest" was almost three hours long. The regret is strong but at least now every time we see this on a bad movie list, we can check it off and tell you it's not worth it.

Did this movie have a plot? Hard to say since most of the time we couldn't tell where we were in a narrative arc. John Travolta is not a good person, sleeps with some lead dancer chick in spite of his girlfriend, gets the lead in a ballet/play/thing called Satan's Alley and the last fourth of the movie or so is just the performance. There are a LOT of montages and terrible 80s costumes and a whole lot of nothing for nearly two hours. You don't need to see "Saturday Night Fever" for this to make sense. Just don't watch it. Problem solved.

Spoon Rating: 2

SPECIAL: You Don't Nomi [2020]

Last Monday we watched the documentary "You Don't Nomi," about one of our favorites "Showgirls." The documentary highlights the legacy of the movie, gives a lot of background on the players and creators, and also features the variety of critical opinions on the film both from the time and in the years since it has attained even greater cult status. In a way, the film shows how people get completely different things from a piece of media, while also giving us different lenses through which to see the film. 

If you're also a fan, we're recommend it.

Guns [1990]

It's been a minute since we've had a good bad movie so we decided to gamble on a sure thing: Andy Sidaris.  We were amused by the simplicity of the title of "Guns." While this was a distinctly Andy Sedaris film in every way from the awkward dialogue to the scantily clad government agent women, we played Andy Sidaris bingo but we didn't win. We did get a lot of the board covered overall but it was slightly less over the top than usual. The movie even had some names in it: Erik Estrada and Danny Trejo (who seems to have been the same age for about 30 years). The plot isn't especially important but it's mostly about getting the government agents out of Hawaii so that Erik Estrada can transport guns from China. There's some 80s typical insensitivity to transgender women, ninjas in a gym, a scantily clad singer who's apparently also a government agent and sings the theme song, sex on a motorcycle, and some A+ bad fashion (one outfit was literally fringe booty shorts, a bejeweled bra top and vest, a leopard print fanny pack, and pastel pink lipstick; and this was a look you wear to blow up a boat). It also had frequent Sidaris star Dona Spier whose mother is a Carson City DA who gets kidnaps and she has to rescue her. That's about it. Things happen and it's fun and stupid. It was a nice palette cleanser after a string of unnotable films.

Spoon Rating: 6

Kickboxer: Retaliation [2018]

A long time ago we watched "Kickboxer," the movie where Van Damme learns to kickbox to get revenge for his brother being paralyzed in Thailand. In his own time Adam has been watching through the entire "Kickboxer" series, which stops featuring Van Damme and eventually got rebooted. The seventh movie, called "Kickboxer: Retaliation," was the one he deemed most worthy of a rewatch.

The movie starts with a perfume commercial of an opening where a man and woman dance in a fancy train car before the woman is kidnapped and the man has to fight a bunch of NPCs. This may have been a dream, it's unclear, but in reality he is a famous fighter who is kidnapped and thrown into a Thai prison that's basically a fight club. Why? Apparently he killed someone in a previous film and now they want him to fight his huge bear (as Erik dubbed him). When he refuses, he goes to prison where he meets Mike Tyson and Van Damme, now playing a different character who's blind and here to train him. Main character decides to do the fight after they kidnap his wife, the dancing lady from the intro. At one point the wife gets punched and sent to the hospital, but she's okay. Then the main guy fights the bear since he already agreed to do it. He wins. The end.

There's a lot of what including:

• A newspaper called "Nation International"
• A "Bad to the Bone" rip off blues song during a long fight sequence
• Words in subtitles being different colors and in bold for no reason
• Rapid fire cuts
• The crowd shouting "white warrior" to the main even though the bear is white too.
• The wife injecting the main with a mysterious syringe to wake up during the right.

So how was it? It was okay. It had some laughs, but it was definitely too long at over an hour and a half. I would recommend the first few minutes and a YouTube video of the dance they do before a Muay Thai match that was completely left out of this so-accurate film.

Spoon Rating: 4

REWATCH: Teen Witch [1989]

Today we rewatched "Teen Witch," that super relatable teen movie about how all your time spent as a conservatively dressed Latin club president geek will eventually pay off when you get godlike powers and make everyone is high school so obsessed with you that they choregraph dances in your honor and hold up signs outside your window. And you get to make out with the popular boy in various body-burying locals around town. One day.

Read my original review here and never be the same again.

The Witches [1990]

 Ew.

This movie, per Sarah's request, was mostly just a tool to traumatize Erik by showing him an example of what kid movies were like when the rest of us were kids. The plot is dreadfully simple. In a coastal English town, an American boy and his English grandmother stumble upon a convention of witches (not the hot kind) who turn him and another kid into mice. Wacky hijinks occur in which "hilarity" ensues as they try to solve the problem. It's all very gross and nightmare-inducing in the way that Roald Dahl books are. Angelica Huston eats all the scenery, and the overall acting is somewhere on the spectrum of bad stage acting meant to play to cheap seats. The time period is slightly ambiguous but feels older than the time it was made and the tone is not quite comical enough or not quite serious enough. At least we all learned that a stamp collector is also called a philatelist, which doesn't sound inappropriate at all. 

Spoon Rating: 3

An Anti-Halloween Special!

So instead of a movie, we watched a series of anti-Halloween videos: basically every one that Adam could find on YouTube. Below I will list all the videos with a few thoughts on each rather than a full review since the longest one is only 45 minutes and the shortest one is just over two minutes.

Pagan Invasion, Vol. 1 Halloween Trick Or Treat: This was the longest video. It had some fantastic bad graphics that made it seem like the hosts were presenting from a medieval castle, which was one of the most distinct qualities. The video had a really nice segment about druids with real information and interviews that made it hard for us to understand why we were supposed to view them as evil. There were also some other interviews with "former Satanists" who were clearly Christian actors by the bizarre details that don't resemble reality and the lack of actual trauma. Overall, there was some accurate historical information, but delivered in a fear-mongering way. It's pretty skippable.

Samhain Crazy Anti-Halloween Preacher: This very short video was hilarious and worth your time. Some guy is dressed as the devil and insisting that we need to liberate Chicago from him.

Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?: A man stands around recounting historical information about Halloween as an explanation for why you shouldn't celebrate it. The surprise at the end seems to be that he's a Jehovah's witness and he makes sure to drag a bunch of other sects of Christians on his way through his explanation. It's not really worth your time, but it sparked some fun stories from Sarah about weird rituals she had to do for religious holidays in middle school.

Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?: This is the very rare balanced Christian view on Halloween. In spite of the name being the same as the one above, this guy insists that celebrating Halloween is a personal decision for any Christian but that while celebrating you should avoid demonic things (although he doesn't give too many specifics since again, he's kind of leaving it up to the viewer). Too reasonable; no need to watch.

Former Satanist Warns Christians About Celebrating Halloween: This guy was a delight. Definitely watch this one. This man doesn't know the definition of "legally" so we all got the impression that Satan is going to steal our real estate and maybe be granted power of authority over us if we celebrate Halloween.

Halloween or HELLoween: This one was kind of funny because the oratory style and the video editing make it look like a school project. It even cites sources and two of the books referenced are ones Sarah owns and that she and Kay have read. Not sure if it would be your jam, but we enjoyed it.

ANTI HALLOWEEN: This video is in Spanish so we didn't watch the whole thing but the low budget editing and the overpowering and enjoyable soundtrack at least made us watch for a little out of amusement. Skip it, unless you speak Spanish well enough to make it worth it.

10 Reasons Why You Should NEVER Celebrate Halloween: This girl's video was actually inspired by the "Former Satanist" one. It's not as funny, but it has the same kind of strong I-know-what's-best energy. It's not really worth your time.

Next week we will return to our regular movie watching.

The Good Witch [2008]

We've had a hankering for some Hallmark, and it is spooky season so we were on the quest to find something that would allow us to scratch both itches at once. Ignoring all of those Hallmark movies that seemed to be more fall romance based, we ended up with "The Good Witch", the first film of what would ultimately become a huge film franchise and a television show. It really might be the season of the witch this year as we have plans to also watch "The Witches" on request of Sarah and do a rewatch of Kay's favorite nonsense 80s film "Teen Witch" before Samhain falls on us. We even may watch more "Good Witch" films, but it should be noted that this one was both not painful and also not especially funny. Mainly, we think this might be the best one and we would hope that the films would decrease in quality over time leading us to a funny place. We'll see.

This first film is about a widowed cop who encounters Cassie Nightingale (not a stripper), who has just moved into the spooky mansion in town. She is relentlessly positive, intuitive, and occasionally says things that are supposed to be whimsical but come off kind of creepy. She opens a shop in town called Bell, Book, and Candle even though she doesn't seem to sell bells and has very few books. Mostly she sells candles, herbs, oils, and crystals with the intent of bringing about good things. While she is referred to as a witch by others, any sign of actual witchiness is pretty muted. Think a combination of a few classic harmless stereotypes (black cat, old broom she never actually touches, old house, cauldron on the stove, dark clothes + large jewelry) and the kind of things New Age moms are into and add a dash of simply understanding how people work and you have Cassie's witchness. The film never strays into divination and especially not anything religious. Arguably, Kay is just as witchy as her if not more. But this doesn't stop the town Uber-Karen from trying to get her shop closed and run her out of town. On the side, Cassie and cop-dad have a very sanitized romance starting and since Cassie literally has the police on her side, she keeps her shop and place in town no problem. That's about it. She has a little backstory about how the spooky mansion is a family house, and both of the cop's kids have subplots about nightmares and bullying but overall there's very little to this film outside of aesthetic.

We got some laughs from the film, mostly from Cassie saying weird and occasionally ominous things or making strangely manipulative faces (mostly after cop-dad leaves), but otherwise it was just fine. As I said in the beginning, not painful but not a laugh riot. 

Best Quote: *after calming an angry dog* "I've always had a way with the fur people."

Spoon Rating: 3.5

REWATCH: Things [1989]

 We have just experienced "Things" again. Read my original review here.

Mystics In Bali [1981]

So after the decent adventure we had with "Lady Terminator," we decided we should look into more Indonesian films and quickly fell on "Mystics In Bali." We watched the frenetic preview and knew we would need to get to it eventually. 

An American woman named Cathy goes to Indonesia to study black magic so she can write a book on it, which is definitely not going to lead to anything bad. She and her Indonesian guide and later boyfriend go to a witch queen who says she'll be happy to help. She tells Cathy to take off her skirt and carves a spell onto her leg. She also does not stop cackling throughout the entire movie. Later Cathy meets her, and they laugh together and turn into animals. The queen decides to borrow her head by detaching it from her body, flying it into the room of a pregnant woman, and having her suck out the baby until the woman dies. It was absolutely wild. Apparently this floating head with entrails is a known witch figure in Southeast Asian folklore. After that exciting night of baby drinking, Cathy vomits mice and her guide-boyfriend is weirdly unconcerned. Later, however, more witchy stuff happens and we find out the witch queen is trying to eat two more babies in order to be forever young. Guide-boyfriend and his uncle decide to bury Cathy's body while her head is away so she can't survive and later the witch queen and Cathy are killed in the sunlight like vampires (a specifically Malaysian variant of the myth). The movie ends abruptly. There was also a completely side thing with guide-boyfriend's ex, who gets killed, but she was in the background the whole time and just confessed she loved him while dying, making us all think that we had missed something.

Overall, this movie got us some good chucks. The plot was basic enough that even Adam could follow it, and the first scene of Cathy's floating head was so insane that we could not stop laughing throughout. Maybe that's why the witch queen was laughing the whole movie? 

Spoon Rating: 6

REWATCH: Robot Monster [1953]

Since it has been quite a few years (and Kay missed the rewatch anyway), we decided to rewatch "Robot Monster". Read the original review of "Robot Monster" here. It is a treasure.

Spoon Rating: 10

The Shed [2019]

"The Shed" came as a recommendation from Erik who knows the production assistant for the film. The entire movie is built around the idea of a kid getting a vampire stuck in his shed. If that sounds like kind of a flimsy premise for a film, you'd be right. The vampire gets stuck in the beginning, and he doesn't ever leave at night? In spite of the fact that he was apparently the neighbor and could have just gone to his own house? Most of the film consists of people going into the shed and getting torn apart. One guy even gets juiced. The rest of the film is talking about the shed, trying to get people to go in the shed, trying to get people to not go in the shed, poorly securing the shed, etc. The movie is rightfully named. And an hour and forty minutes long.

The film had a few moments of real hilarity but was mostly just amusing for its strange acting and writing choices and its off vision of the 90s.

Spoon Rating: 6

Deadly Lessons [2006]

"Deadly Lessons" is also known as "The Legend of Simon Conjurer" and was released in 2006 but also 2014. Like its title and release date, this movie is incredibly confusing in a way that isn't easily summed up. I can tell you that our lead role is played by the director, so I can guarantee that this has passion project written all over it. 

The movie starts in an elementary school classroom where a man named Simon Conjurer is making a bunch of children fly. He does some more magic while teaching them about how the Earth is dying but it's unclear if it's an illusion or if he's a wizard or something. Mesmerized at how this man has cured a student of their fear of flying, a visiting skeptic asks him to knock some sense into her suicidal, unintelligible son, Rebel. Rebel dresses like the rebel from "The Breakfast Club" for simplicity. The man chains him to the passenger side of his hummer with 20 screens in it that all have his face talking at him. Not sure how the hummer plays into his lesson on the earth but okay. We get a random villain scene with a bloated Jon Voight as an evil psychologist and a cigar-smoking lady (who's secretly on the man's side) who are trying to stop this guy but we still don't know what our main character does.

We are then in a classroom with a bunch of adults who all have different issues from alcoholism to anorexia to sexual confusion. We have some kind of inspiring teacher sort of scene where Simon presents the adults with a book that happens to know all about them. The book warns them that Voight is coming to get him so they leave and hide in a truck where many of them have revelations on how to get over their issues by remembering their childhoods. We find out that Voight is trying to frame the man for murder after the death of a child who he had contact with (and that the truck is full of C4 and driven by terrorists but this is a minor point).

The class breaks into Voight's apartment to find evidence that he killed the child and more of them have childhood revelations that cure their issues. This movie's approach to mental issues is appalling. At one point Simon has a bracelet of the dead child in his pocket as evidence but he insists that found it in the apartment and then planted it on himself. Voight comes into the apartment and he and Simon have a confrontation (where Simon accuses him of killing his wife?) before Simon and the class escape.

They drive to Simon's (?) house where we discover that cigar lady is his estranged wife and they make out in their rainforest-themed shower until Voight interrupts with a gun. He kidnaps her but we don't really see a scene of this. Back in the classroom, everyone is cured and Simon reveals that the books were blank and they all managed their revelations on their own. Voight gets arrested and the movie makes you question everything that happened although apparently the girl did die but the wife wasn't arrested? I don't know. Simon is a prophet without a god and the guy who's behind this point is definitely patting himself on the back for how clever he thinks this film is.

This film is utterly baffling. From the unclear target demographic to the intricacies of the plot to the genre, it's something of a mystery. It has the music score of a made-for-television Disney movie and an overall hijinks-vibe of a movie for children, but it's full of swears and sexual references. It clearly had a budget, but it wasn't utilized in any way that makes sense. Most of the money seemed to go into Jon Voight's apartment of artifacts and a few mediocre effects.

I'm stumped frankly. Should you watch it? Maybe. It's fascinating in the way that "After Last Season" was fascinating. But it's not enjoyable, and we won't be watching it again. And after nearly two and a half hours of movie, you might also find that the pages were blank.

 Quote: "Ain't no book gonna rid me of the rage."

Spoon Rating: 5*

*You won't like it, but it might be a mystery worth looking into?

Blood Debts [1985]

"Blood Debts" is the tale of a man who sees his daughter die, kills the killers, then just keeps on killing because revenge wasn't really enough I guess. His wife also gets taken so he kills some more, now with some assassin lady that he is supposed to watch over. It turns out he has been killing mob guys, so the police are cool with it but that explains why he can't seem to get a break from being pursued. The film is perhaps most famous for ending on a freeze frame of an explosion with text over it, explaining some kind of epilogue like they ran out of money to make a real ending.

There was a lot of good stuff in this film overall, but it had moments of being pretty slow. The dialogue felt strange and unnatural at all times with lines that were just slightly off and reads that were often monotone and had the vibe of someone who just learned English even though they were all native speakers. The ending is a particularly strange experience, and overall, it's worth your time to watch.

Spoon Rating: 7

REWATCH: The Phantom [1996]

Ever since we first watched "The Phantom," it has lingered in the backs of our minds (or at least the minds of Kay and Sarah for some reason). Now finally getting back on the rewatch vibe, we decided to give it another go and it was just as delightful as we remembered. A lot of that can be attributed to the fact that the villain is the campiest villain since M. Bison in "Street Fighter." It's a joy. You can read my original review of this movie here.

Spoon Rating: 8

24 Hours To Midnight [1985]

After our enjoyment of "Low Blow," Adam discovered that Leo Fong, the star, is also a film maker and was specifically responsible for an early Cynthia Rothrock film called "24 Hours To Midnight." Or at least it's technically a Rothrock film. Her character spends most of the movie in a full ninja costume and it's definitely not her. A big giveaway is the fact that she doesn't actually fight, but she still is here to kill. Apparently, she pulled out of the film, so a "Plan 9" Bela Lugosi tactic was used instead.

The plot is your standard "Kill Bill" concept. Her husband is killed within the first few minutes of the film and she spends the rest of the movie killing off the frugal mob gang responsible for his death with a new weapon each time. Fairly frequently we get flashbacks that are often just the scene of Rothrock crying in her car unconvincingly and we get some voice over from her to try to conceal her lack of presence in the film. In the b-plot meant to pad out the film, we have two cops, a guy who looks about 17 and a woman with fried hair and face, and they are investigating gang activity in the area and trying to find the source of these deaths. They are really incompetent and not convincing as cops and were maybe added into the film to pad it out when they couldn't have Rothrock kicking butt.

Overall, this movie was pretty dry. There was a little comedy, bad acting, and a boom mic in a shot, but ultimately it didn't really pay off. You can do better and you can especially do better if you want Cynthia Rothrock.

Quote: He whipped on them people like they was his stepchildren.

Spoon Rating: 3

Night Of The Kickfighters [1988]

We got another with a title that doesn't match. Apparently this film is also called "Night Raiders", which isn't much better but as Adam pointed out, there's a lot of kicking in this movie for a movie that shouldn't really have any. This movie is ultimately a rescue mission movie with a team of characters but that premise doesn't even get established until at least halfway through. And aside from our main character (somewhat) none specialize in kicking.

We get an opening that doesn't really tell us anything aside from establishing our main villain lady who is campy and dresses like a D&D villain and our hero who looks way too much like other white men in the movie. We get some set up about a government developed laser that doesn't come up again and a girl who is about to get married when she gets kidnapped. Our main guy gathers together a ragtag group including a stoner witch a lot of gadgets he developed and a magician with a grandiose voice and style. They interrupt our villain's lazing around wearing a snake and being fed grapes by her tall lackey when they break in but she uses microwaves to melt some brains. In they end, they blow up her boat with a very bad effect and the kidnapped girl is able to get married with our ragtag group in attendance.

Overall, this movie is really borderline. We got some solid laughs from the characters and bad effects, but the film was also poorly constructed in a way that occasionally left us a bit confused. Watch at your discretion.

Spoon Rating: 5

Alien Beasts [1991]

Occasionally we watch a movie that seems like someone's weird fetish. Sometimes we watch a movie that clearly has no budget. By that slim metric, "Alien Beasts" is technically nothing new for us, but somehow it is more utterly incomprehensible than anything else we've seen (and therefore more likely to be fetish based somehow) and seems to have had a budget that amounts to the cost of a gas mask. The Spanish language videos we made for high school in 2005 are better films than this movie. Our childhood videos filmed by our parents on the same camcorders in 1991 are better films than this one.

Trying to explain the plot of "Alien Beasts" is not really possible. There's no dialogue; only a voiceover who stumbles over his lines and repeats most of them twice and nothing he says makes sense. Even in scenes with people, they don't speak and the few times noises happen, it seems that they don't speak because the sound quality is so bad that the voiceover is meant to explain everything after the fact. The show opens on a man with a gas mask badly fighting a bunch of people in front of a house. By trying to decode the voiceover, it seems that there has been an extra-dimensional portal opened and there are some government agents trying to stop aliens or something. Mostly we get a lot of scenes of unskilled fighting, a guy under a bridge leaking fluid, and an incredibly long scene of an "alien" woman wearing a mask who breaks into a house and gets undressed really really slowly (hence, the fetish thing). Occasionally, the movie cuts away to the mask thing you see on the film cover. In the last few minutes there's a montage of weird art clips that look like an old Nickelodeon advertisement and that maybe suggest some sort of artistry that we never really got to experience, but that's it for the potential of quality. The film ends abruptly but the voiceover assures us everything is fine now.

This movie is really really bad. We got a laugh or two in the beginning because the quality of the film is so bad, but it quickly became tedious. We tried to make it more fun by imagining if Andy Sidaris made it or by imagining that the director is trying and failing to emulate David Lynch, but ultimately it didn't improve the experience. If you want to watch any of it to understand how bad it is, skip around and fast forward.

Spoon Rating: 1.5

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter [2001]

Adam gave us a few options for tonight and Erik and Kay immediately insisted on "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter" on the basis of an amazing name. It asks the question we've all had of, "What if Jesus had his second coming during an epidemic of vampire lesbian murders in Ottowa?" And the answer is of course, kick ass in the name of love.

We get an introduction with some metaphor about a home from a bearded man emerging  from the bushes, the source of all the best advice. After a techno laced intro credit sequence, we get a vampire lady draining a victim and then lamenting, "Where have all our lesbians gone?" The scene cuts to a punk priest reading about the missing lesbians and discussing this with a priest in robes who is concerned about these missing children of god. He goes with another priest to find Jesus on the beach, baptizing and then dunking a woman in the sea. A trio of vampire women show up to fight and both priests get killed. Jesus takes their bike into town while a weird song plays listing the books of the Bible. Jesus gets a haircut and performs a music number with some people. He meets up with the priest from the beginning who tells him that lesbians are dying around the city but the church isn't really willing to step in because homophobia. It's good to know Jesus is an ally. The "atheists" show up to fight Jesus in a veritable clown car and he fights them all off with more techno playing. When Jesus gets back to his place there's a woman named Mary Magnum who discusses her work hunting the vampires while they hang in a sauna. They go clothes shopping at a thrift store with a white owner who speaks in Rudy Rae Moore quotes and it's awkward. The duo trail a vampire lady to the hospital where a crazy surgeon is doing work  to make vampires immune to sun. They go to a Lesbian Drop-In Centre ('cause those exist), which has already been infested with vampires. Mary and Jesus fight a vampire duo and Mary gets feasted on while Jesus wanders the streets alone. He is rescued by a person who seemed to be an offensive caricature of a trans woman. God then talks to Jesus in his ice cream and he meets up with a luchador named Santos. They go to a club where a man scats about "Star Wars" and fight vampires there. After a brief chat with his mom, vampires break into Jesus' apartment and he has a showdown with them in a lot. Mary is saved and Jesus resurrects her vampire girlfriend, Maxine. Everyone is happy.

Overall, the movie was strange in a mostly fun way. On the awkward side there were some random bits that didn't fit. We get a random bi character named Maggie who is Santos' love interest but none of us remember her introduction at all. There's also a random lady whose butt gets groped everywhere she goes and this seems like it's supposed to be a joke. And then there's the suspected transphobic vibe and the weird shop owner. Aside from those things, there's a lot of good silly moments throughout and it's worth a watch.

Quotes: 
"We're running low on skin. I suggest we harvest another lesbian."

"There's nothing deviant about love."

Spoon Rating: 7

Aladin [1993] & The 420 Awards [2020]

We started our evening with "Aladin," a Dingo Pictures production. We previously watched their version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" so we figured this would be a pretty good time, and we were right. 

It seemed to follow the "Arabian Nights" plot more than the Disney movie. It starts with a wizard claiming to be Aladin's uncle. It turns out he was lying to use Aladin to go find some gold for him (or magic fruit or diamonds or something). Aladin finds a genie in a ring and a magic lamp genie too. We get some random subplot about a snake owner and a monkey owner who are mad at each other throughout. Next we are introduced to the princess whose dad, the Sultan, will kill anyone who sees her. Aladin sneaks in to see her and offers his treasure, but she's going to marry some other guy. The Sultan sets the dowry at an absurdly high price but before Aladin can pay it, the wizard steals the palace with the princess in it and moves it to his place in Africa using the magic lamp that he managed to get back. Aladin asks the genie in his ring for help and gets a magic carpet to get rescue her. Aladin poisons the wizard and they return safely.

Overall, we had a lot of laughs. The voice acting was especially bad, worse than "Hunchback," and we could even hear mic bumps and the pages of scripts in the background. There were a few songs too that were mostly if not all in German because they didn't bother to translate them. The animation, as expected, was really terrible, so terrible that sometimes it was hard to follow because of how rarely the dialogue matched the scenes. We really needed Sarah, plot follower, to help us get through this. We definitely recommend it but it may be a little too frustrating to watch a second time.

Spoon Rating: 7

After "Aladin," we watched the second annual "420 Awards," Derek Savage's celebration of his own personal triumphs while he mangles people's names and acts like he's famous. With the pandemic, he was unable to invite a bunch of untalented comedians and rejected birthday party entertainers to pad out the run time. Instead the awards were intercut with a dude in PPE dancing, that same dude dancing dressed as a large joint, Savage shooting coronavirus with "Birdemic" level graphics, and a joke about him having coronavirus from drinking Corona beers. All the awards not given to Savage himself (get gave himself two this year) were accepted by PPE man while Savage claimed he was famous people. This joke never seemed to stop amusing him. In terms of notable mistakes, he mixed up Zendaya and Haliee Steinfield during the "Favorite Hottest Actress" category and most notably called "The Big Lebowski" "The Big Lewinsky" and later announced it as "The Big Lebwisky." Here's hoping there's more to the third annual awards, which will surely happen so Savage can give himself three awards this time.

Spoon Rating: 6

Gary Coleman: For Safety's Sake [1986], An Idea Whose Time Has Come [1990], Hot Talk Starters: Episode 1 [1995], & Hotel Torgo [2004]

We decided to spend the evening with a bunch of short videos that we found online; the final three coming from our favorite Occult Demon Cassette.

The first one was from the genre of 80s videos you'd watch in health class. The premise of "Gary Coleman: For Safety's Sake" is that Gary Coleman is a god who sits in a control center as he tortures a young boy calling himself Jack Example with all kinds of nightmare scenarios in order to teach basic safety and first aid for children. At one point he even causes him to choke so they can demonstrate the Heimlich maneuver. We definitely got a few laughs from Jack's pain.

Spoon Rating: 5

The next thing we watched was an utterly baffling twenty minute video called "An Idea Whose Time Has Come". The whole video explained in detail a discovery made by an Austrian scientist that supposedly revolutionized the world. They then show people in the modern era drinking this darkly colored substance called KM and talking about how amazing it is and how you want to get it and be a part of it. At no point do they actually explain what the product does or why you should get it. It's pretty obviously a pyramid scheme but when we looked it up, we could barely find anything about it except that it's some kind of potassium based mineral supplement.

Spoon Rating: 7

The last comedic thing was episode one of something called "Hot Talk Starters". The show was divided into segments that were apparently meant to provoke a conversation. The first was about suicide (that called suicide the selfish choice), then questioning the existence of god, then dating with a touch of discussion about interfaith dating (we all took bets and Sarah won but Kay and Erik both knew sex would be coming next), and finally a bunch of interviews with teens in the KKK. It was interesting but not really funny. We probably won't watch more.

Spoon Rating: 3

The last thing we watched was a short documentary about "Manos: Hands of Fate"  called "Hotel Torgo." There wasn't much of note in it and we obviously didn't rate it because it wasn't mean to be bad. Either way though, we didn't learn much more about the film.

The She-Creature [1956]

It's been a while since we watched a film this old but the title was pretty hard to resist. The film is about a hypnotist who controls a woman who hates him. He makes the woman enter into the lives of people in the past in the least impression parlor trick ever (she lies down and talks about who she is now; often with a very fake British accent). There are also a bunch of murders going on and people suspect that the hypnotist has something to do with it, but can't prove it. We have a whole side cast of characters including a scientist who's bad at sciencing, a detective, and a rich guy who lets the hypnotist live in his house because his wife is really into his show. The hypnotist makes a ton of money on the story but still refuses to leave the rich guy's house. It turns out that the hypnotist is using the woman to summon a primitive sea creature to carry out murders. The scientist falls for the woman and hypnotist tries to sick the creature on him but she manages to get control of the creature and kill the hypnotist with it.

Overall, there were a few funny moments with the unimpressive hypnotism shows, bad science, and the creature's costume but it wasn't really funny enough to recommend.

Spoon Rating: 3

DOUBLE FEATURE: The Human Tornado [1976] & Dolemite Is My Name [2019]

A few weeks back we enjoyed Rudy Ray Moore's first film, "Dolemite", and here we are at the sequel, "The Human Tornado." The title makes him sound like a superhero but unfortunately this isn't a superhero movie. Moore plays Dolemite again and the title seems to just be a reference to his sexual prowess rather than a new title or anything (but the movie does come with a sweet new theme song, of course). 

We open on some Dolemite standup intercut with a woman dancing and then we are at a house party at Dolemite's mansion where a party is going on to raise money for children (this plot point is never explained and doesn't appear again). In spite of the party, he's busy because he's apparently so great at sex than one of the police officier's wives offers him money for it. The party is broken up when some very racist police break in and shoot the wife, pinning the blame on him. Dolemite and some friends escape the party and hijack a car to get to Los Angeles and the flamboyantly gay owner of the car is happy to go along for the ride. Once in LA, they go to visit Queen Bee (she was a figure in the first film too as a brothel owner I believe) and find that her club and her girls are under the control of a local mob boss. Two girls in particular were kidnapped and brought to the torture chamber basement of some witchy old woman's house. Dolemite makes it his mission to find the girls, get the mob boss to give up his control over Queen Bee and her workers, and also to evade the racist cops who have come all the way from Alabama to find him. This involves, as expected, a lot of weirdness but it is overall more coherent than "Dolemite." There's an absolutely Lynchian sequence where Dolemite seduces the mod boss's nymphomanic mistress and, of course, the girls all get trained in martial arts to fight the mafia guys during an all out brawl at the end.

Overall, "The Human Tornado" is neck and neck with "Petey Wheatstraw" for best Rudy Ray Moore film that we've seen (although "Petey" still has the best theme song). There is never a dull moment in the film and we got a ton of laughs throughout. At some point we will have to watch them closer together to decide which one is actually superior, but we can guarantee that they are both wonderful so if you want to explore all of Moore's films, save them for last.

Spoon Rating: 9

Afterwards we decided to watch the latest addition to the world of good movies about bad films, "Dolemite Is My Name" (in keeping with the fact that we also did double features of "Plan 9"/"Ed Wood" and "The Room"/"The Disaster Artist"). As we were hoping, it was a great watch. Eddie Murphy plays Rudy so well and it was fascinating to see how they chose to portray Rudy's emergence in standup, his friendship with Lady Reed (who plays Queen Bee), and the process of actually making "Dolemite." Amusingly, because this was so fresh on our mind, we all observed immediately that they used footage from "Human Tornado" in their clips of "Dolemite" but we can forgive the transgression in the name of art.

We recommend the film for sure, but you should at least see "Dolemite" before you do if not a few of Rudy Ray's films.

REWATCH: Manos: The Hands Of Fate [1966]

The first and only time we've watched "Manos: Hands of Fate" was in 2013, fairly early in the nearly eight year life of Bad Movie Night. Because it was so long ago, we never gave it a proper spoon rating so we decided to give it a rewatch.

The plot is basic for horror. A family gets lost on a desert vacation and ends up staying at an inn with a fawn-like porter named Torgo who keeps talking about "the master." The mother and father of the family spend a lot time staring at an ominous painting of the master and his dog who Torgo seems to imply is both dead and alive. Turns out there's a secret closet-cave-thing for a cult consisting of The Master and his many brides who mostly just stay in some kind of catatonic state but arise to worship their god, Manos. The family's dog dies, possibly by the Master's dog. Torgo ties up the father outside seemingly in part because he wants the mother to be his. The wives wake up and debate whether to kill the daughter or perserve her because she's female and have a brawl over it. Torgo gets punished by the Master by being massaged to death by the wives, but then he arises and the Master lights his hand on fire. The father escapes after one of the brides untied him and pulls a gun on the Master, but it seemed to be for nothing. We get a hard cut to a couple arriving at the inn with the father replacing Torgo and the mother and daughter in the garb of the wives, now under the Master's control.

This movie is bad but what makes it notorious is really how strange the aura of this movie is. None of us could quite put our finger on it. Erik mentioned that it feels kind of like a hazy dream. Adam said that it feels something like a silent movie that happens to have dialogue. This aura is created through really long sequences that move very slowly, repetitive and simplistic dialogue, background music that resembles improvisational jazz (with the exception of Torgo's theme), and a lot of moments that contribute to a sort of unreality: the fact that the daughter's few lines of dialogue are barely audible when everyone else is, the occasional cuts to this couple making out in a car who literally never move over what is at least 24 hours, the Master's lair being a room in the inn that seems to not exist all the time, the reoccuring hand motifs, and even the lack of a real climax as if that moment was cut from the film. It's fascinating enough to watch once, but maybe not engaging enough for a second time, I mean, unless maybe you wait seven years like we did.

Spoon Rating: 6

Lady Terminator [1988]

After watching and being very disappointed by "Lady Exterminator," we had to seek out the actual genderbent namesake of the classic science fiction movie and see for ourselves what kind of a narrative would be constructed. And, unlike with "Lady Exterminator" we were not disappointed with what we found. "Lady Terminator" is part explotation-y remake and part shot-for-shot ripoff (so basically the lady plus the terminator) with a delightful overlay of Indonisian folklore as a contrast to the cyberpunk aspects of the original. Apparently there's a whole rich history of Indonisian horror and exploitation films that a bunch of the DVD extras wanted to tell us about so this seems like another bad movie subgenre we will be looking further into on future Mondays.

We start with a goddess-like queen in some past time screwing men to death. She meets her match in a man who extracts an eel from between her legs and turns it into a dagger, an act which pisses her off enough to say that she will get revenge on his great granddaughter. Highly specific threat but okay. We fast forward to modern times where a lady, who fiercely corrects anyone who calls her a lady with "I'm an anthropologist", goes to research the Queen of the South Seas in Indonisia after an old man in a library tells her not to. After her diving adventure goes array with some light S&M and an eel getting all up in her, she is possessed by the Queen and ready for murder. She uses the same technique of death sex at first with some drunk by the shore, but her real goal is to get that granddaughter, identifiable because of her necklace (so her great granddad gave her an ID for the Queen to get her eventually). She ends up offing some girls wearing immitations of the necklace or just being witnesses and then suddenly the movie just becomes "The Terminator." We have a club (not called Tech Noir), we have a chase, we have an eye gouging scene, and we have the granddaughter taking refuge under a bridge with some rando cop because the time travel element isn't in this movie. It all ends how you would expect, and then we went off to do more research on the Queen of the South Seas, an important figure in Indonisian myth.

This movie was pretty solid. There were a lot of super strange reads and the whole premise itself is ripe for riticule. Add it to your list!

Spoon Rating: 7

Titanic: The Legend Goes On [2000] & Creating Rem Lezar [1988]

For years we were apparently under the incorrect assumption that we had seen both of the animated Titanic movies, but last week we discovered that we were wrong (and this probably wasn't the first time we noticed this error). So we decided to remedy this by finally watching Titanic: The Legend Goes On. While the ending certainly isn't as wild as the ending to The Legend of the Titanic (why all these claims that it's a legend when it's a verifiable historical event), this movie had plenty of weirdness in the fact that it had no real plot and instead sustains its barely hour long run time with a ton of subplots, many that feature talking animals. A list of those plots includes:
1. An orphan girl named Angelica has an evil foster mother and two evil stepsisters (don't question it) and she's looking for her mother who gave her a locket when she was little. No idea why she's totally gonna be on this ship but oh well.
2. The mice who Angelica was nice to are trying to get her locket back.
3. Angelica, a poor, falls in love with William, a rich.
4. Some racially insensitive Mexican mice are trying to get home after a tour.

5. The other animals are doing stuff too that most involves partying and punishing the evil cat.

6. There's a butler and singer subplot with the singer's slightly too human-seeming Dalmatians.

7. A detective in disguise is trying to find some jewel thieves who are kind of the villains in 101 Dalmatians and are also incompetent.

8. A lady has fake jewelry and tries to marry an old guy for his money but he's actually in debt and was trying to get her money.

Every character with a plot survives except the singer who choses to go down singing. The mice even give us an epilogue about what happened to all of them.

In addition to the lack of plot, the film has three songs: a party time song sung by a rapping dog, a racially insensitive song by the Mexican mice, and the main theme, which is not horribly offensive but plays over and over until you've lost your mind. The animation is also mostly ugly, weirdly slow, and designwise seems cribbed from various Disney movies (including but not limited to Cinderella, 101 Dalmatians, An American Tail, and Lady And The Tramp).

It was pretty fun.

Spoon Rating: 6

Unfortunately, Titanic: The Legend Goes On was fiercely overshadowed by our second short feature, Creating Rem Lezar, an absolutely bizarre musical film that seems to have been made for children but only under the influence of a copious amount of drugs.

The film starts with a little boy getting yelled at by his teacher for talking about his imaginary friend Rem Lezar so on his walk to the principal's office he sings about dreaming dreams. Rem shows up to sing a bit with him and talks about how much the boy has touched him. A little girl, who is also yelled at by her mother for her imagination and is being punished by having to sleep in the dark, does a duet with Rem that is also at least somewhat dream related. At school, the kids both realize that they have the same god and decide to go into a shed and build him in effigy so they can worship him better. As they sleep (presumably) Rem Lezar takes them on an advantage to defeat a low pixel face in the sky by getting as high as possible. This requires them to go to New York City, a place where there are a lot of high things, and they come across a wild doowop group, a rapper with only a few bars, and a hype violinist because Central Park is just that kind of place. They end up at the Twin Towers and learn that there's nothing higher than love or something and manage to find Rem Lezar's Quixotic Medallion, a gaudy piece of bling with an infinity symbol on it. The kids wake up when a cop finds their Rem Lezar church and they both end up with their own Medallions as a devotional relic so they can continue to worship The Most Holy Rem Lezar.

This was an amazing piece of cinema and I can't recommend it enough.

Spoon Rating: 9

Lady Exterminator [1983]

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

Life in the quar is a little easier when we watch things that are available on YouTube and with a video title like "Lady Exterminator - Full Movie - The Most Misogynist POS I've Ever Seen-Indonesian Rape/Revenge Trash", we thought we knew what we were in for. Unfortunately in spite of that glowing endorsement right in the title, it was not a fun time. The strangest thing was that once we were over halfway through the movie we started to wonder if we were misinterpertating the title. We all expected a film where a lady got raped and then became a badass who gets revenge. Instead we had gotten plenty of rape but no revenge and we were thinking maybe instead of a lady exterminator we'd be getting an exterminator of ladies, which we really didn't want. It turns out we were right the first time but not until the literal last five minutes of the movie. That movie cover just barely not a lie.

The plot was so convulted that even Sarah could barely follow it. The problem was really a lack of transitions and the fact that everyone was dubbed with the same voice and had similar names (the two main men are named Roni and Rudi for instance). There are some drug lords with a gang of fighting ladies who don't ever really fight and they rape the pregnant wife of a rival who can only have sex with his wife if he's beating her up. Then the rival rapes the drug lord's sister as revenge. There's also some rape of random girls off the street. This movie is a lot of rape is what I'm saying and it is a horrifying chore to watch. Adam at one point bemoaned, "Can't these guys just be civiled and try to kill each other instead?" Then we get our final few minutes where the wife, who had a miscarriage from the rape and not from her husband beating her, appears to get some revenge but it was far too late by that point for us to care. The film ends strangely on a quote from revelations as if he was trying to have a moral.

In trying to look up the plot summary for this film because we were so confused it was actually really hard to find. Part of the reason is that it has a ton of different names. On IMDb it's "I Want To Get Even" and on this Wikipedia article its "Forbidden Items." Perhaps this movie should be more elusive. Perhaps it shouldn't be found.

Spoon Rating: 1.5