The 420 Awards [2021] & The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo [1996]

We started the evening with the third annual "420 Awards," Derek Savage's increasingly sad attempt to have an award show. Since the first one was really the best because of the terrible performers he got to attend, every subsequent one has been a real waste because of the pandemic. This year he had two comedians who were both just horrendous and offensive, some tall man he called Ms. Pres, a twenty-something kid with a genuinely good announcer voice, and a guy in a blunt costume. The nominees were seemingly the same as last year because Derek Savage has no idea what's popular or when things are released, but what made this one unusual was that he didn't give himself an award for once. We all released that we should have gotten high for the event, and Sarah lamented being pregnant and therefore unable to get high right now.

It would be easy to claim this was a complete waste of time, but it actually wasn't for one very specific reason. In the middle of the show Derek Savage's latest fursona, Dirty Dog, interrupts the show because he's the bad guy counterpart to Cool Cat. He does some gymnastics to an amazingly terrible song about himself and then drops that you can see more of him in Savage's latest film Cool Cat Fights Coronavirus. Adam stopped the video, googled the film, and immediately added it to cart while solemnly murmuring, "oh no. oh no." So look for a post on that in the future.

Spoon Rating: 2.5

After, we decided to continue our Hunchbackening with a free animated series on Amazon called The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo. This show is inexplicable. The whole time we found ourselves just questioning why this thing was ever made. It obviously doesn't follow the book or even the Disney movie because it's a series. 

In the first episode Quasi meets Esmerelda and her brother (?!), Francois, who is maybe a stand-in for Pierre Gringoire. They end up going to a costume party to try to stop Frollo (who straight up looks like Nosferatu) from KILLING THE KING. What even is the goal here?! To quote Adam, "Unless he's got some Cromwell plan here, I don't think he knows how monarchies work." Frollo even dressed like an executioner. There's also a guy at Notre Dame who isn't the Bishop but is just some guy named Denis who is nice to Quasi. And Frollo has a dog he abuses. And Esmerelda's grandma makes some comment about being a gypsy that implies it's a choice and not a marginalized ethic group. And the animation is terrible, obviously, to the point where we were thinking maybe the reason Quasi is ostracized has more to do with the fact that he's got a pretty normal face compared to most of the characters. And the acting is bad, although admittedly the guy voicing Frollo does sound like the guy from the Disney film. 

All in all, it was a weird experiment but we decided it wasn't worth continuing.

Spoon Rating: 3

Fight To Win [1987]

When Adam found out there's a Leo Fong directed movie staring Cynthia Rothrock, we knew we would have to add it to our list. Fight To Win is honestly a really curious film for a couple reasons. The fact that Rothrock is given such a prominent place in the advertising is weird from the perspective that she doesn't come into the film until something like 30 minutes into an hour and twenty minute movie was definitely the most disappointing part. Interestingly, there's also a cameo from Bill "Superfoot" Wallace, a legendary martial artist who only has one good foot and who once kicked Adam during a seminar (apparently he kicked everyone as part of the seminar and yes, it hurt).

The film starts with some background on a martial arts competition for three statues of Chinese deities. Twenty years later, this really cocky young martial artist is approached by an Australian guy in a parking lot who challenges him to a fighting competition and he accepts for some reason. Minutes later, his instructor has a heart attack and is unable to train him. For a while, our main character just sits by his bedside, not training at all, and he loses the competition. A rematch is planned and his instructor tells him he's going to send him a new instructor to help: Cynthia Rothrock. Cue all the sexist jokes until she kicks him in the face (and even then they don't really stop throughout the whole movie). She trains him. At one point they go out to dinner and we see his deplorable table manners and that he has absolutely no game. They have to fight random guys in parking lots just so there's a reason to see them fight. Finally it's time for the competition but they realize that the Australian (who's also Rothrock's ex) had no interest in playing fair. He just wanted to collect all the statues, so he pulls out guns on them. In the last twenty minutes of the movie, it becomes something of a break-in film with a lot of pretending-to-be-gay to distract, a deus ex machina guy on a motorcycle, and the instructor who had a heart attack showing up out of nowhere. The main character learns nothing, but they win.

This movie is very borderline. There were some great bad line reads, sloppy edits, a guy hired solely to impersonate Eddie Murphy, and more boom mic than you could ever dream of. However, the plot was pretty boring until it gets weird more than halfway through. Overall, we decided that if Leo Fong's direction or Cynthia Rothrock's presence or just bad martial arts movies in general are amusing to you, this is a good one to add. Otherwise, maybe don't bother.

Spoon Rating: 4.5

REWATCH: The Room [2003]

In honor of the nine year anniversary of Bad Movie Night, we decided to rewatch The Room for the first time in about four years. It took us about three hours to watch just because we kept pausing it to have deviating conversations or to explore the artistry. Some highlights include: stopping to tell the story about how Kay's mom called her a homewrecker when she wasn't doing anything, an in depth analysis of each character's utility to the story, Erik and Kay randomly talking about D&D, Sarah making more quesadillas, a passionate defense of Mark's cluelessness when Lisa is hitting on him since we are actually all exactly that stupid ourselves, Adam pointing out which lines specifically have become a fundamental part of his lexicon and his waxing poetic about how much he enjoys the character of Claudette, and many more.

We ended the evening by watching a serious of bad porno openers on YouTube because, honestly, they aren't too dissimilar to The Room.

Spoon Rating: 10

Pagan Invasion Volume 2: Invasion of the Godmen [1991] & Pagan Invasion Volume 3: Meditation, Pathway to Deception [1991]

 We decided to do a double feature of 45 minute episodes of "Pagan Invasion." We had done the first episode as part of an anti-Halloween special and thought that it wasn't especially great, but the comments on these two seemed promising enough for us to give them a chance as well.

Volume 2, in spite of the incredible title, is not about some race of Godmen, but just about various yogis, many of whom started cults or got in trouble with the law for something. Because this is Christian propaganda, they are trying to convince the audience that these few men are 1.) all equally evil and 2.) proof that Hinduism itself is evil. Volume 3 was almost a continuation of the previous idea but with a specific focus on how meditation is actually evil and should be avoided if you want to live a good Christian life. It was an interesting sort of time capsule when you consider that meditation is completely nonreligious and promoted by just about every mental health care professional in the West. Being that Adam has a minor in religion, Sarah is a yoga practitioner, and Kay has at least seen "Wild, Wild Country," we were unconvinced by either of these narratives. 

Both episodes were genuinely interesting, but we didn't really laugh much. The only thing that really got us was when one of the interviews said, "the evils of meditation and stress management" as if either of those things is bad.

Spoon Rating: 2; 2.5