A Witch's Spiritual Confession [1990s]

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

Back in June when we watched “Reefer Madness” we also watched a very curious video on Occult Demon Cassette called “A Witch’s Spiritual Hoedown,” a video of a singing session at a church service that felt like an eternity. We couldn’t understand why it had such an intriguing title without any kind of pay off to its supposed witchiness. Then a few weeks ago, we were wandering around Occult Demon Cassette again in search of things to watch and to our joy we found “A Witch’s Confession,” the next part of the sermon and the part we were clearly actually hoping for. Last night, we finally watched it.

The whole hour and forty minutes consists of a woman talking about the dangers of alternative religions and telling her story about how she got involved in all sorts of things before finding Jesus. She describes her fall as starting with reading the horoscopes in the newspaper, leading to calling psychic hotline, and then buying her own tarot cards (which with her southern(?) accent has too much emphasis on the “o”). Apparently this led her into Wicca, which she describes initially accurately but then insists that Wicca practitioners are all secretly doing black magic even though they claim to only do good magic. She spends a lot of time humblebragging about what a successful witch she was and talks about how she had to move onto voodoo because she had mastered all of what Wicca had to teach her.

The moment we were truly ascended was when she mentioned getting into the Necronomicon. She insisted that the book was not actually a fictional book by HP Lovecraft but that Lovecraft’s father was involved in the occult and after he died he left instructions to his son on how to find the book, which is a real magical resource. Adam commented that this justification sounded like an HP Lovecraft story itself. She apparently moved to California and joined a cult based around it, but left when she decided she didn’t want to be used as a sacrifice. 

From there she got into Satanism. She mentioned meeting Anton LaVey on two separate occasions that didn’t fully match up, but she did have pictures of what she claimed was her Satanic altar. She also mentioned all the money she made from her magic shops and while listing a bunch of the types of magic she did like tea leaves and palmistry, she included Dungeons & Dragons. Not sure what magic she was doing with an RPG, but considering the imagination this woman has, it probably was dangerous.

Aside from all the weird bragging, this woman didn’t come off as someone you would want in your church. While she clearly believes in fantastical things, when she “masters” Christianity, won’t she just move onto something else? Adam theorized that she’s probably a Mormon by now because she would clearly be excited by there being another testament to explore.

Overall, it was an enjoyable watch, vastly more enjoyable than the spiritual hoedown. During the last twenty minutes she gets pretty repetitive and we both kind of tuned out but there was some real gold before that.

Of course Adam, the philosopher who has studied religion a lot, pulled out his study Bible to verify some of her claims and from this he came up with a review for the video. From Job 42.3, “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”

Spoon Rating: 5

REWATCH: Street Fighter [1994]

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

So we watched "Street Fighter" once in 2013 on Kay's birthday, and we never rated it so we were long overdue for a rewatch. Adam has compiled every movie we've watched into a spreadsheet with ratings with the somewhat ultimate goal of creating a list of 52 movies that all rank in the "rewatchable" score range to provide as a year of solid bad movies. 

Unfortunately, "Street Fighter" just missed the cut. We decided to give it a Spoon Rating of 6 because while there are a lot of funny moments, some of them feel intentional. There are a few moments we specifically know were intentional ("change the channel" and "you get paid?" being the two that come to mind) but a lot of the comedy comes specifically from the over-the-top performance of Raul Julia as M. Bison. Was this meant to be more menacing than scary? Who's to say? But it's hilarious. Otherwise there is a bit of comedy to be had from Jean-Claude Van Damme as Colonel Guile and some comedy to be had just from the strange nature of the script and how each of the one hundred characters is shoved into the movie with some kind of two sentence backstory and a plot device to get them into their video game costume.

So you should definitely watch it, but you don't really need to see it again. Just watch one of the many compilation videos of M. Bison's best lines.

Cats [2019]

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

Well, we did it. We finally watched "Cats." And we're here to tell you that it's probably not worth it to watch it yourself. The actual experience of watching "Cats" is fairly unpleasant, and I say this on both a musical level and a movie level. While none of us has actually see the musical on stage, I have enough of a musical theater background to know what it's about and that seeing it has been a regret of many friends of mine. So take what is already an utterly bizarre and silly musical without a plot and add uncanny valley CGI, less dancing, and worse singing, and you have something no reasonable person will want to sit through.

The plot of "Cats" can basically be summed up as: a bunch of cats sing songs about their lives for the opportunity to die and be reborn. The movie tried to give a little more plot to the story but only barely. They made Victoria, a dancing cat, the lost protagonist so the other cats can explain things to her. She gets a song and the actress playing her was clearly selected for her dancing. Macavity, the kinda-antagonist, kidnaps a bunch of the cats throughout instead of just Old Deuteronomy at the end. Otherwise, the story is kept kind of weirdly formless. Basically, the main crew of cats keeps wandering around the streets of London, encountering cats who need to sing their feelings and then they will often disappear from the scene right after. Mostly you are meant to be mesmerized by the singing, dancing, and visuals. At least they were right on with that last one but not for the right reasons.

I could go into detailing every painful moment from Rebel Wilson unzipping her cat skin to show more cat skin underneath to the fat jokes to the mouses with children's faces, but I won't bother. Go watch a YouTube review (I recommend Lindsay Ellis') and trust me on this.

Spoon Rating: 2

We wore cat ears for the occasion.

Now for some of the moods inflected by "Cats":




Amusement

Shock.

And numb horror.

Dolemite [1975]

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

It was only a matter of time until we got here. We've been waiting for weeks to finally watch the Rudy Ray Moore classic, "Dolemite." As big fans of "Disco Godfather" and "Petey Wheatstraw" we were so ready. We figured out how to work Kast and made it happen.

In the beginning, Rudy is released from prison (in for theft of furs and drugs) and basically immediately murders three guys, although we as the audience are supposed to forget that for later when they are trying to arrest him for other things that he didn't do. It look a full fifteen minutes or so before we got our first rhyme, but he did two full routines in the movie anyway so it's all good. After one of them a woman actually said, "Let's have it for Rudy Ray!" which either means she forgot she was in a Dolemite movie or the scene was filmed independent of the film.

Although we are told early on that drugs and guns are being sold to kids, this ended up not being the plot. The first half is a lot of weirdness with the Hamburger Pimp and a preacher who's ready for 'the fourth war' and has plenty of guns in his congregation. The real plot is we have a conflict because Willie Green, Dolemite's rival, has gotten control of Dolemite's club, The Total Experience, while he was in jail. The actual process of getting it back isn't as complicated as you would think and mostly takes up only the second half of the film. All Dolemite's dancing girls have gotten martial arts training to fight for their club back but it's mostly Dolemite and his kicks that don't make contact saving the day. It actually ends with him pulling out Willie Green's guts. There's also a subplot with a corrupt politician in addition to the other two subplots based around fun characters and a fair amount of brothel moments.

While it's clear that Rudy Ray's movies get better over time, "Dolemite" is a classic for a reason. The budget for the clothes was clearly where most of the money went (well spent). The boom mic basically had it's own subplot too with how often it appeared, sometimes not physically but in shadow. There was also some solidly strange editing, the jewel probably being when the entire middle of a sex scene got cut out.

All in all, a great watch. I would recommend starting here and saving "Petey Wheastraw" and "Disco Godfather" for after because the weirdness only increases with time.

Spoon Rating: 7.5