Ninja Terminator [1986]

The plot of this one was utterly unable to be followed, but the film itself did provoke a lot of laughs. 

A three part golden statue that makes you invincible from the waist up is stolen by three ninjas in black. One is killed, has a sister named Machiko who works in a restaurant, and gets his piece taken back by the red ninjas who originally had it. One plays with fire. One has a mustache and is named Harry. They receive death threats in the form of a cute little smoke robot and later violent VHS tapes on a different little robot. The three people with the pieces fight at the end but each of them has an invincible part of themselves. There's a crew lead by a man in a terrible Party City wig trying to get the pieces. Some other guy named Jaguar is trying to investigate the killed guy's death and that whole subplot feels like it walked in from another movie and dominates at least half the run time. At no point do the plots intersect.

The dubbing on this movie is bad, the fighting results in boing-like sound effects, and there are a bunch of fun lines. The filming and editing is also bad with scenes that end too quickly, zooms-in to the space between two people, and blocking with both people sitting out of frame. If you want to know what's happening, this will frustrate you. If trying to follow the plot doesn't matter at all, you might actually love this one and rate it even higher than we did.

Spoon Rating: 5

The Pumaman [1980]

With the popularity of superhero films, we decided to get on board with the trend! I think we missed the boat though somehow?

Pumaman starts with a title card informing us that the Aztecs believed in a puma god and that god did, in fact, deliver a pumaman to the world . . . with aliens. Gods apparently weren't enough. That pumaman begot a son, our current pumaman, who has no idea of his celestial origins. Some latex wearing "archeologists" discover a gold Aztec mask and the evil one uses it to control the girl one. She crosses paths with pumaman and we get to experience their painful flirting. Pumaman at one point jumps out of a window to avoid an attacker and lands on his feet. Turns out the attacker was actually there to find the pumaman and help him. Do not question why pumaman is white and his helper appears to actually be of native descent, which would make more sense for pumaman if he's related to an Aztec god (but he's actually an alien? I don't know). Pumaman is given a belt that allows him to fly (you know, a thing pumas can do) and then has to try to take down the evil guy who wants to control the world with oil. He can also portal jump and stop his heart to appear dead, other common puma behaviors. His helper gets taken by the bad men and actually destroys the mind controlling mask, making it pretty easy to take down the evil man from there. The film ends with the aliens being called and pumaman basically announcing that he and the girl are going to screw to make the next pumaman. 

This was a tough one. The first half of the movie had a lot of really funny moments including bad special effects and incredibly strange lines. It does start to drag a bit in the second half though after pumaman has realized his mission. For that reason, this film is on the cusp. Watch it if you want, it won't really waste your time, but if it doesn't sound like your thing, skipping it is okay too. If you're really unsure, there's apparently an MST3K episode about it, which might soften the blow.

Oh, and there's no Aztec puma god; just a jaguar one. Why could he not be jaguar man? It would make equally as much sense.

Spoon Rating: 4.5

Verotika [2019]

 "I don't like Danzig. He gives me the impression of someone who will say he doesn't care what people think of him but deeply wants to be taken seriously." - Adam

This is a weird one for a lot of reasons. First of all, it's written, directed, and scored by Glenn Danzig of Misfits fame and for being a solo artist who also had a song better covered by Johnny Cash. Second of all, while it is definitely a high ranking bad movie, I would not recommend it to everyone. Sure, we have watched our fair share of bloody or horny movies, and make no mistake that this is both, but the film started out in a way that was so distressing we had to stop until Adam and Sarah put Jade to bed because she started screaming. Basically, to spoil the first two minutes, an Elvia knockoff gouges out the eyes of a screaming, chained-up girl with her acrylics, and it's actually quite realistic looking. I, who am most disturbed by ritualistic sacrifice and body horror, retreated into the couch a bit and wondered how I'd do with the rest of the film. Spoiler: that was just an intro scene, the gouger is our narrator to our trilogy of stories, and nothing is ever that realistic or disturbing again. In fact, the bad acting combined with incompetent directing, nonsensical script, and bad effects and sets, ultimately makes this one a pretty good time. I would just avoid it if you are really disturbed by gore and blood.

The first story in our trilogy, "The Albino Spider of Dajette," is by far the most unique and the one with the most plot. None of them are good, but this once had that going for it. A French girl with eyes instead of nipples sheds a nipple tear onto an albino spider who becomes an evil mime-spider-man who acts out her murderous dreams. He kills her roommate and then a random prostitute and then has sex with someone while Dajette sleeps in a porn theater where the projector is a box fan with a light behind it. Dajette, wracked with guilt, kills herself to prevent the spiderman from hurting anyone else and then he gets shot up by cops. They comment on her eye-nipples but they never get explained.

The second story, "Change of Face," is about a serial killer stripper who has some minor facial scars so she goes around killing women by cutting off their face skin. Most of the segment is strip club scenes with no plot but this segment has the best side character in the form of a cop who talks like Christian Bale's Batman and who is either taking his role very seriously or camping it up on purpose. Six months later she's just working in a different club but still hasn't been caught.

The last story and by far the worst is "Drukija Countess of Blood" and if the title didn't give it away, it's just an Elizabeth Bathory story with even more nudity than usual. Most of it is just the Countess playing in blood like an excited toddler.

So let's count all the ways this film actually made us laugh hysterically. The acting is completely toothless, with the exception of the cop in the second one, and this seems to be because the cast is made up of dead-eyed porn stars and strippers with lip filler. We don't know this for sure but if you look at some of the actors' names, you'll see where we got this idea. The directing is full of zoom-ins to nothing followed by fades-to-black and, of course, gratuitous male gaze. There's tons of padding (the script of the last one was probably two pages long at most). The costumes get worse as it goes on, probably as a result of all the budget getting spent on the eye gouging and fancy bathtub. In general, the whole thing is an exercise in aesthetic over substance, and it's a bad aesthetic. Danzig is a 13-year-old boy who never grew out of his serial killer fascination phase and now we all can see his kinks on full display.

Spoon Rating: 6*

*Again, not for the especially squeamish, but you may be fine if you just look away at the first scene?

Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saved The World) [1982]

This movie is not really known by its real name, but it is instead often referred to as "Turkish Star Wars." It's not that the film is particularly like Star Wars in any way outside of being a science fiction movie. The nickname comes from the fact that it uses a ton of footage from Star Wars to provide galaxy scenes and battles to the movie. And that's not all. It excessively uses the theme from Indiana Jones during fight scenes. I don't know enough about copyright law to comment but I would imagine that the Turkish film industry of the 80s wouldn't have much of an impact on Western media. 

So if it's not actually a direct ripoff, what's it actually about? The film gives a massive information dump right in the beginning that is a little hard to follow but here's what we got: Earth has exploded into smaller rocks, aliens don't have brains and want human brains because they have superior willpower, and humanity's fate is in the hands of a martial artist and a misogynist. From there the film involves the two characters getting captured over and over and fighting off the aliens in completely absurd ways. The absolute best moment is when one of them rips off a red, fuzzy aliens arms and beats him with them. Eventually the misogynist friend dies and the other guy goes on a hilarious killing rampage. That's most of the film really. There's some religious stuff in there about Islam being proof of humanity's power and Jesus building a seven layer underground bunker to protect people, but I couldn't tell you how that fits into anything.

While a bit slow at first, this film is a winner. The fight scenes and effects are absurd, the dialogue is hilarious, and the liberal thievery just adds to the whimsy. It's one of the best we've seen in a while and well worth your time.

Spoon Rating: 8

SPECIAL: White Fang [2018]

This one was another mistake watch. Sarah recommended it after she went over a patient's house and saw them watching it and was baffled by the bad animation. In truth, the animation for the humans specifically is very unappealing and too harsh but the animation for the scenery is actually really nice. The actual plot is fine, although none of us has read the book so we can't judge the accuracy there. Overall, it's a completely inoffensive film so we can't in any way call it bad. Hilariously though, when we started watching it there was about a five second delay between the dialogue and visuals, but it turned out to be an easily fixable mistake. 

Star Rating: 2.5/5