Years Of The Beast [1981]

While we love a good Christian movie, especially one with the promise of Revelations, this one we really can't recommend. It starts off kind of promising when a college professor, who's teaching Faust, sees one of his coworkers who is openly Christian disappear into thin air. From there, the world goes into a pretty minor amount of hooliganism (like The Purge but as imagined by Christians) as the professor travels to his father-in-law's house. A leader who's the Beast raises up to get power and wants everyone to receive his symbol, but our group of new Christians refuses and becomes outlaws. Most of the film is unfortunately just wandering around. There is a brief moments of some bad special effects but considering the insanity of Revelations, this was a giant letdown. We were hoping for some genuine Christian fearmongering and extremity but no dice. Skip it.

Spoon Rating: 2

Mega Man 8 Cutscenes [1996] & Revolution: A Demonstration of the Video Toaster [1992] & The Secret Rulers of the World: The Satanic Shadowy Elite? [2001]

We started the evening with a video of cutscenes from the Mega Man 8 video game, which was full of bad acting with strange accents. 

Next we had Revolution: A Demonstration of the Video Toaster, an instructional video about video editing computer software. What makes this video worth watching is that it's presented as a dialogue between two people: one who knows about the video toaster and is trying to seduce you by explaining its capabilities, and another who is there to ask questions and occasionally tell jokes with some light seduction. Even the music under the video has a softcore porn sound to it until the guitar solo credits and even then there's a definite music-video-beach-sex-scene sound. It's the strangest foreplay we've ever seen. After the credits there's just a series of scenes over music to show all the features without sexy commentary.

Spoon Rating: 8

Then we watched part 4 of a documentary series called The Secret Rulers of the World, which was called "The Satanic Shadowy Elite?" Yes, the question mark is part of the title. It ended up being about Bohemian Grove and starring a 26-year-old (but 40-looking) Alex Jones, who wants to discover the secret cult sacrifices the wealthy and influential are doing during the gathering. Burning rituals with pageantry are real but Alex Jones specifically wants to prove they are Satanists who are sacrificing children in the rituals. Turns out he was always an insane conspiracy theorist. He interviews a guy on how to infiltrate and is saddened to learn he just needs to dress preppy and walk in so he goes shopping and practices his preppy talk. And yet, they don't have a cover story until the drive over. 

Either way, he gets in and films the ceremony. Although no one is killed, Jones insists that they are symbolically killing someone so it's just as bad. The film maker is clearly trying to get Jones and his associate to realize they are making stuff up but doesn't succeed. He does interview a woman who lives nearby and has researched the Grove and is just concerned about how they're a detriment to the environment. He also interviews a guy who went who basically says it's nothing and that the only crime is taking it seriously instead of viewing it like a frat of rich men. The most interesting detail from the film maker was how he said that the more time he spent around Jones, the more he felt himself buying into conspiracies. Take note.

While seeing a young Alex Jones was a good, funny time, you would get the same effect from any Alex Jones clip.

Spoon Rating: 4

Have a video toaster.

Vulcan, Son Of Jupiter [1962]

Last week Adam pulled out a 50 pack of gladiator movies that he just had sitting around and started reading off titles. Most of them were unsurprisingly Hercules related, but because of that homogeneity we were all pretty drawn to one called "Vulcan, Son of Jupiter." It just seemed like such a strange idea to make a movie about Roman Hephaestus, the disabled god of fire and blacksmithing who was most known for getting cucked by Aphrodite. Kay, being a giant mythology nerd, was ready to dispel inaccuracies and we all hopped on board.

From the opening credits we could tell this was one of those cheap Italian films where they hire a bunch of foreign actors and dub it later, leading to built-in dialogue comedy throughout. The plot starts off with Venus messing with Adonis so Jupiter commands that she marry someone, either Vulcan or Mars. Both want her but she runs off with Mars to Milos, king of the Thracians, where the men hatch a plan to build a tower to overthrow Jupiter. Meanwhile, Vulcan (who isn't disabled but is a bodybuilder) ends up in Sicily and meet Aetna, a daughter of Oceanus. He gets captured by monsters, gets out, hangs out with Aetna in Neptune's lair, and then leaves to go find Venus again in spite of the vibes between him and Aetna. Vulcan meets up with his dwarf buddy Geo, and Aetna gets kidnapped by the Mars crew so Vulcan has to rescue her. Venus and Aetna act catty and then brawl while a giant fight scene happens among soldiers and Vulcan and Mars. The fighting ends with a Zeus Ex Machina when Jupiter comes in to stop it. Jupiter vows to punish Mars and Venus but "condemns" Vulcan to stay on Earth. It's implied to be a great thing since he gets to be with Aetna. Also in the background of the film Pluto acts like a jerk to Jupiter for some reason and then enlists Eris to cause conflict between Aetna and Venus. According to Sarah, Pluto was trying to get in on Mars' overthrowing plan but it was mentioned so briefly we missed it. Pluto is important mainly because in this cheesefest he is the actual hammiest.

Some fun facts about this movie include the fact that it was originally called "Vulcan, Son of Giove" which seems to be a town in Italy but doesn't have anything in particular to do with Vulcan and the only thing under "Reception" on Wikipedia says, "The film's romantic scenes have been dismissed as lacking chemistry."

Aside from the already mentioned bad dubbing and over-the-top acting, this movie has a lot of greatness. The whole movie has this sexless porno vibe, especially any and every moment Venus is on screen. The editing is weirdly abrupt every time, there are random dancing and fighting moments, matte painting backgrounds, and everyone is wearing the sluttiest clothes possible that only vaguely allude to Ancient Rome. Also, there's a lizard monster that is just a man in a suit and they don't even try to hide it. It's amazing. Give it a watch.

Spoon Rating: 6

REWATCH: Inhuman Resources [2012]

It has been a long time since we accidently watched "Inhuman Resources" (also known as "Redd Inc.") on bad movie night, a really solid horror comedy that we all loved. You'll be happy to know, it's still amazing. You can watch it for free with Tubi and we highly recommend that you do.

To give a little context, our main character is a cam girl who witnessed a violent murder conducted by a serial killer called The Headhunter, who kills CEOs. Later she is kidnapped by him and chained to a desk in an office where she and other people related to the Headhunter case are forced to research the case or die. I won't say much more because I don't want to spoil it. Just watch it.

Spoon Rating: N/A, 4/5 stars