Desert Warriors [1988]

Well, they can't all be winners, especially when they are yet another Mad Max ripoff. Anyone with some craft form, a spare hubcap, and a deserted landscape thinks they can make one of these and Desert Warriors is no exception. Trying to explain the plot is pretty difficult since the film adapted the same Mad Max tactic of dropping you into a setting where you have to piece together the situation. Unfortunately, this movie lacks useful dialogue to provide the audience with this information, has such poor cinematography/lighting/editing that you frequently can't tell what's going on, and somehow neglects to tell us the names of characters or places so much that reading the plot description of this movie made us more confused. 

The plot is basically that in a post-apocalypic land there are three primary classes: the metal-clad fighting men with a vague S&M aesthetic, the barbarians who look like cave people, and the "drones" who live in a technologically advanced bunker and wear all white. One day a woman and man leave the bunker and the man is promptly killed while the woman is kidnapped by the S&M party since all their women can't have babies because of some disease. She is saved by Lou Ferrigno with an eyepatch, they have a very forced romance, and around the same time her father goes outside to find her. At some point Lou and the girl go to the bunker together and he learns about how the other side lives. This all culminates in a showdown between the drones and the kinksters which is literally stopped by Ferrigno when he decides to explain to his former boss that the drones have medicine to fix the disease. They hug. Then Ferrigno and the girl hug and walk off into the sunset for an alarmingly long time. The best scene is when Ferrigno goes to the bunker with the girl and a doctor inspects him saying, "Your eye is useless." The man has been wearing an eyepatch the whole film! I think he knows!

Overall, this film was pretty boring. Don't waste your time.

Spoon Rating: 2

The Fighting Preacher [2019]

It's been a bit since we had a bad Christian movie and honestly, it's been a very long time since we dabbled in something specifically Mormon. This particular film dealt with the true story of Willard Bean, the former 1905 middleweight boxing champion of the world, who moves to Palmyra, New York to take care of Joseph Smith's old farm and to try to get the Hill Cumorah property for the church (the location Smith supposedly found the golden plates if you're familiar with the myth). Strangely enough, that short summary really does cover the majority of the film. He and his wife move there, they are refused services for being Mormons, their kids are treated badly, and they endure. After six years, Willard decides to try to curry favor with the town by . . . beating them up in a boxing ring? Yeah, it doesn't work. Then after another stretch of time, they try being actively nice to everyone. This works and they convert a whole bunch of people. The end. 

This movie had some funny moments. There's a scene that was actually meant to be funny and succeeded when Willard's wife mentions something happening in seven months and then we get a "1/2 mile later" title card before Willard turns to her in shock and says, "You're pregnant?!" There are a lot of moments of people being mean that are so over-the-top you have to laugh. Also, Kay had fun giving a running commentary about the accuracy of the costumes because she loves the 1910s and is always mad no one does it right ("That man has a fedora! Did he time travel twenty years into the future?!"). Overall, it's not really worth your time but it wasn't painful either.

Spoon Rating: 3

Who Killed Captain Alex? [2010]

This is a movie that we have had on our list for a while. We maybe actually did try watching it at one point but the quality was so poor that it simply wasn't worth it. Thankfully, you can know just rent it for yourself. This movie, toted as Uganda's first action movie, is kind of a bad movie legend. Overall, it's got a lot of the bad movie staples but what makes it truly unique is the presence of a VJ, a video jockey, who is doing a running commentary throughout. It's very Mystery Science Theater 3000 if the guys commenting were also occasionally acting as hype men for the movie you're already watching (or the country or some other film made there).

The plot of the movie is pretty simple. A military guy named Captain Alex is tasked with bringing down a crime group called Tiger Mafia. The brother of the Tiger Mafia leader gets kidnapped and he flips out. Thankfully for him, he has a spy lady who is fooling around with Captain Alex and can get info about his plans. However, one night when the spy woman left the tent, Captain Alex got killed. No one in Tiger Mafia claimed to do it, but also no one is sure who among the soldiers could be a betrayer. Captain Alex's brother, a martial artist, comes in to find the culprit and ends up becoming friends with the Tiger Mafia leader's wife who he tried to have killed. Somehow the solution to all of this involves bombing Kampala as a distraction. A distraction for what? Who knows? Also, we never find out who killed Captain Alex. Apparently you need to watch the sequel.

This movie is worth your time but only once. It reportedly had a budget of $85 which probably went into buying some cameo shirts, wooden guns, and some blood splatter and helicopter CGI effects. There's a lot of silly in the action and a little bit of silly in the VJ. The best scene was probably when the mafia wife was relating the story of her relationship and said something like, "It started out great" and we got a quick cut to her tied up and getting yelled at by him. Not sure if that was intentional comedy but we laughed a lot.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

REWATCH: The Warrior And The Blind Swordsman [1983]

It may be weird to title this a rewatch since there was never an original post on it, but that's because it was first watched when I was on a trip. The goal was the watch something that wouldn't be too good so I wouldn't miss anything, but they failed. The Warrior And The Blind Swordsman turned out to be so good that it was rewatch worthy. 

The plot kind of revolves around this friendship duo of the blind swordsman and the warrior. During the Dutch colonization of Indonesia, a general sets up a competition that the blind swordsman wins. He fakes the death of the warrior and all is going fine until some sort of evil goddess wants him for her mate and he rejects her. Things get pretty complicated from there with a guy who has a tail and kidnaps some girl child who is important to the swordsman, a bunch of the goddess's scantily clad female warriors, and the occasional involvement of the Dutch army. The plot is a little hard to follow but it doesn't really matter much. What makes this movie so special is the effects. 

Every time you start to have the thought that the movie might be dragging, you will suddenly encounter a special effect so bizarre that you will be howling in laughter. The moment when the guy with the tail first has his tail enter the scene by popping out from under his coat is so startling and unnerving that you can't help but scream. The blind swordman decapitates a man with what amounts to a pipe and the head goes soaring. People occasionally fly but so slowly that running would be more efficient. And then there's the final battle where it seems like everyone is just suddenly combustible. If you throw someone into something, they will explode. It is insanity. The highs are so high that the lows are forgivable. Watch it.

Spoon Rating: 8

Cool Cat Fights Coronavirus [2021] & Lion And The King [Dingo Pictures] & Puss In Boots [Dingo Pictures]

We started our evening with the long anticipated Cool Cat Fights Coronavirus, the latest Cool Cat film from Derek Savage. Regrettably this film is only twenty something minutes long and cost Adam over twenty something dollars. The return there is not great. How was the film overall? It was no Cool Cat Saves The Kids (original edition of course), but it was fun enough. The budget seemed way lower somehow and not just because of the lack of celebrity cameos. The three child actors in the film made the child actors from the original Cool Cat film seem like Oscar winners. Mama Cat simply didn't make an appearance at all, but we did get the official introduction of Cool Cat's rival, Dirty Dog, who mostly just scares a kid and does the same little rap he did at the 420 Awards. There were two new songs in the film that were both raps with decent beats and the absolutely worst lyrics and flow from Derek Savage, who voices both furries. One of the funniest things about the film was actually the credits where it listed Savage's patrons which included such figures as LemonEater5000, Dr. Clee Torres, and Derek I.S. Furry. All in all, watch it if you can get your hands on it, but it's not worth the retail price.

Spoon Rating: 6

Since the film was so short, we followed up with a Dingo Pictures double feature. The first film was Lion And The King, a Lion King ripoff. The plot follows Robin, our Simba stand-in, who meets a young panther whose father has . . . stolen a bunch of diamonds? The plot revolves around diamonds, a thing big cats would have absolutely no use for. It has a lot of the classic Dingo badness, but I wouldn't say it distinguishes itself too much from the usual. Also, there are no bears in Africa. Someone tell the movie makers.

Spoon Rating: 6

Out last film was Puss In Boots, called Puss On Boots on the YouTube video version we watched of it. This was a Dingo Picture worth noting. None of us know the actual story the film is based on but we're pretty certain that Puss doesn't just go around straight up threatening to murder people who don't go along with his plans. The youngest son of three inherits his dad's cat who asks him to spend the last of his money on a pair of boots. Not questioning this in the slightest, the cat is given boots and those boots are made for walking all over the countryside, manipulating everyone until his owner is presumed to be a lord and gets betrothed to the princess. He also outwits a magician in a cauldron, steals stuff, and again, threatens to murder peasants. A true hero. 

Spoon Rating: 7