REWATCH: Various Shorts & The Pricemaster [2001]

Today was a special night because John, my friend and coworker, finally came to a movie night! Because we did a vertical drama last time, we decided to do a collection of shorts and favorite commercials including "Instant Adoring Boyfriend," the Game Crazy training video, a "Rainbow Sponge" compilation, "You Could Stop At Five Or Six Stores," Mike's Golf, Eagleman, Phil Davidson, Cami Secret, the Uroclub, Tiddy Bear, Booty Pop, etc. 

The highlight was a video John offered up called "The Pricemaster." To be clear, it wasn't bad but a delightful piece of performance art that immediately became a part of our obscure set of BMN phrases. The film starts with a quote from "The Medium is the Message" and a short cold open that clearly lays out that the medium is "garage sale." At this garage sale in Texas, there is a small stage for the Pricemaster: a figure clad in a red balaclava, gold mask, silver jacket, and red harem pants with Togo-esque structure. He speaks into a booming, reverb mic a few key phrases including "Make me an offer" and "I am the pricemaster." Whenever someone makes an offer, he raises it by hundreds, thousands, or millions of dollars. He also repeats those same phrases in Spanish. Sometimes he does weird, slow dance moves. No one buys anything. He is flanked by a sign that says "Thank you for shopping here. Your business is appreciated" but no business happens. It's beautiful.

No spoons but probably 4/5 stars. 

Good Burger [1997]

After a few weeks off due to illness and family stuff, we came back with a blast from my childhood. One day Adam and I were discussing movies from when we were kids and how they sometimes made good bad movie night picks, and I remembered how at one point my brother and I watched Good Burger over and over for two days straight before we had to return it to the video store and I never saw it again. So Adam whipped up some good (impossible) burgers with good patatas bravas instead of our usual BMN soup and we started the evening with some of the All That sketches that inspired the film. Much to our surprise and pleasure, they weren't unwatchable. In fact, some of them were genuinely funny. Good news for good burgers.

The film has a pretty simple premise stuffed with wacky hijinks. Kel plays Ed, the character we know from the sketches, and Kenan plays our everyman, Dexter, who thoroughly messes up by borrowing his mom's car while she's away and crashing into his teacher's, Sinbad's, car after driving without a license. In order to pay for the damage, he has to get a summer job, starting at the pretentious new Mondo Burger and then getting a job at the titular Good Burger when he couldn't hack it. He somewhat begrudgingly becomes friends with Ed, hits on Monique (one of the other employees), and drives the Burgermobile, which is still more dignified than the Wienermobile. Things change for Good Burger though when Dexter tries Ed's special sauce and they start putting it on the burgers, making them real competition for Mondo Burger and their space suit uniforms. From there, it's wild moment after wild moment. Dexter takes advantage of Ed's ignorance to get 80% of his sauce bonus! They make a delivery to Shaq! Unfunny Lori Beth Denberg cameo! Mondo Burger sends Carmen Electra to seduce Ed into revealing the recipe and it fails! Monique discovers that Dexter is exploiting Ed for money and tells him to leave! Ed buys Dexter a thoughtful gift showing that Dexter really is an ass! They get thrown in a mental hospital with Abe Vigoda (the fry cook who longs for death), George Clinton, and the girl from Freaks and Geeks in her first film role! MENTAL HOSPITAL DANCE SEQUENCE. Did I mention the Good Burger manager is Dan Schneider?! Mondo Burger is putting dangerous chemicals in their burgers to make them huge! Ed saves the day! Play the Less Than Jake punk ska version of "I'm A Dude"!

Honestly, this is a completely watchable film. I don't know if kids nowadays would find it as fun as my brother and I did when we were little, but as nostalgic millennial adults we all got some genuine laughs and weren't bored.

Spoon Rating: None.

Star Rating: 3/5

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

Bad Movie Night Update

So it's been a while since there's been a post about Bad Movie Night so here's a full rundown of the month of July and why there haven't been any posts.

On July 4th, Kay was on a road trip and movie night didn't happen anyway.

On July 11th, Kay had just come back from her trip and instead of a movie night we all just hung out and chatted.

On July 18th, no one was particularly motivated to watch a movie so we rewatched "High Impact Hand Safety," a bunch of other bad movie shorts from Adam's playlist, and some decent Saturday Night Live sketches that Kay had collected into a playlist.

Then yesterday because Adam had cancelled his classes, we had an earlier Bad Movie Night with Erik finally in attendance. With the extra time we decided to rewatch our favorite Bollywood film Singham and order a ton of Indian food. Baby Jade was enthralled by the film so we know she'll grow up right. 

Next week there may or may not be a movie night because Kay is going away again, but, as usual, normalcy should pick up again in late August at least.

Serial Mom [1994]

It didn't take us long to figure out what we were getting into with this movie. While we all settled in for a bad movie, we were quickly treated to a title card that told us we were about to watch a John Waters movie and we immediately realized our mistake. John Waters doesn't make bad movies. He makes camp, black comedy, weird films, but definitely not bad movies unless you simply don't get him. Either way, we decided to settle in for a good night.

The plot follows Kathleen Turner as a neurotic housewife who goes on a murdering spree for often the most minor of offenses. She starts by just phone harassing a neighbor for cutting her off in a parking lot, then progresses to murdering her son's math teacher for his criticism of her parenting, offing her daughter's ex, killing a couple for interrupting her husband's weekend, and a few others. She is caught and brought to trial where she manages to get herself free on many technicalities, only to then murder a juror for wearing white shoes after Labor Day. 

It's not a bad movie at all. It's at least three stars out of five on a regular rating. Not my favorite John Waters (that's Cry Baby) but definitely a good time. 

SPECIAL: Live Freaky! Die Freaky! [2006]

Today was a very important bad movie night for a lot of reasons. The biggest and most obvious reason is because it was the inaugural night for our newest member, Jade, Adam and Sarah's daughter who was just born last Wednesday. At one point in the middle of a sex scene in the film Adam turned to us all and said with a small amount of shame, "This is her first movie." What else would you expect really? On a lesser note, it's a return to bad movie night after a few weeks off due to things like Kay getting covid, Erik having covid scares, and Sarah being just too damn pregnant. Finally, this night is important because we dusted off a personal classic to show Erik and for the rest to experience after a very long time.

"Live Freaky! Die Freaky!" isn't really a bad movie, but it's very hard to call it good. It's weird. Mostly just that. Adam and Kay credit "Blue Velvet" with being the start of our interest in both art house and bad movies because although it's a good movie, it sent us down the path of just "weird movies," which often fall starkly on one end of the line of good and bad. In her freshman year of college, Kay watched our film tonight for the first time after one of her friends mentioned hearing about a movie Davey Havok of AFI was in and they decided to just Netflix it (back when Netflix was a mail service) out of curiosity. They were horrified, amused, watched all the special features to try to make sense of it, and kept singing the songs a few days later. It ended up becoming something inflicted on others to get a laugh and, of course, Adam was one of those people. Even after having not rewatched it in years, one of us quotes it at least once a month.

"Live Freaky! Die Freaky!" is a stop-motioned animated musical about Charlie Manson and the Manson family voiced by famous punk rock stars. Even with that description, I swear it's even weirder than you think. It's a black comedy and a satire to the most extreme degree and has more offensive lines and pornographic clay sex than you would ever want. It's art in the worst way and a landmark event in one's life where you can divide your life smoothly into the before watching and after watching times. When you start it up, there's literally a screen that says, "You have bad taste."

There's not much more I can say about it except that if you think you can handle it, I urge you to watch it. Here are just a few (of many) memorable lines:

• "Now listen to Hex as he will be doing the majority of the killing because that is a man's job. You can have the girly jobs like painting the walls with blood and, if time permits, make some sandwiches!"
• "THE SON OF THE SON OF GOD."
• "Make sure to do something witchy."
• "This neighborhood looks positively middle class. Look at those messes... If you drove me to the valley, I'll stab you to death and rip your baby out of your stomach and fuck it."
• "Yay! I'm fucking a girl! I'm straight now!"
• "I'm snorting for two now."
• "You reek of menopause."
• "Oh, the indignity of being killed by a commoner!"

Legend of Zelda: Wand of Gamelon/Faces Of Evil Cutscenes [1993] & Dark Dungeons [2014]

This Monday was a nerdy and kind of unusual evening. We started off with a YouTube video per recommendation of Erik of a supercut of all the scenes from two early 90s Zelda games. Even without context, they were surprisingly funny with their super low budget animation and often tonally strange voice acting.

It was a decent use of 20 minutes.

Spoon Rating: 5

Afterwards we watched a movie that we are honestly having a hard time critiquing because it wasn't bad but also, on some level it was. We just can't parse the level. 

Dark Dungeons is a short film about the evils of role playing games as based on a Jack Chick comic of the same name. Clearly the Chick track was very anti-RPG and supposedly the plot and major points of it are taken directly from the comic, like the fact that a girl commits suicide because her character died. However, the film was made by people who saw the comedy in the comic and played into it intentionally. The campiness (and the heavy sapphic undertones) were very deliberate even if the original comic was meant to be serious. 

Did we laugh? Of course. We laughed a lot. We were especially struck by a scene of the girls asking their DM if they could ascend to the next level to gain more power and asking what the level was. The DM replied epically and maniacally, "LARP!" Oh, also they do real magic and raised up Cthulhu. As you do when you play D&D or whatever.

It would be hard not to recommend it, but we can't really recommend it as a bad movie. We all agreed that we would love to see a version of the movie made by believers who think the Chick comic is accurate and then maybe that would be a true bad movie. For now, if this sounds like fun to you, watch it.

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

SPECIAL: You Don't Nomi [2020]

Last Monday we watched the documentary "You Don't Nomi," about one of our favorites "Showgirls." The documentary highlights the legacy of the movie, gives a lot of background on the players and creators, and also features the variety of critical opinions on the film both from the time and in the years since it has attained even greater cult status. In a way, the film shows how people get completely different things from a piece of media, while also giving us different lenses through which to see the film. 

If you're also a fan, we're recommend it.

DOUBLE FEATURE: The Human Tornado [1976] & Dolemite Is My Name [2019]

A few weeks back we enjoyed Rudy Ray Moore's first film, "Dolemite", and here we are at the sequel, "The Human Tornado." The title makes him sound like a superhero but unfortunately this isn't a superhero movie. Moore plays Dolemite again and the title seems to just be a reference to his sexual prowess rather than a new title or anything (but the movie does come with a sweet new theme song, of course). 

We open on some Dolemite standup intercut with a woman dancing and then we are at a house party at Dolemite's mansion where a party is going on to raise money for children (this plot point is never explained and doesn't appear again). In spite of the party, he's busy because he's apparently so great at sex than one of the police officier's wives offers him money for it. The party is broken up when some very racist police break in and shoot the wife, pinning the blame on him. Dolemite and some friends escape the party and hijack a car to get to Los Angeles and the flamboyantly gay owner of the car is happy to go along for the ride. Once in LA, they go to visit Queen Bee (she was a figure in the first film too as a brothel owner I believe) and find that her club and her girls are under the control of a local mob boss. Two girls in particular were kidnapped and brought to the torture chamber basement of some witchy old woman's house. Dolemite makes it his mission to find the girls, get the mob boss to give up his control over Queen Bee and her workers, and also to evade the racist cops who have come all the way from Alabama to find him. This involves, as expected, a lot of weirdness but it is overall more coherent than "Dolemite." There's an absolutely Lynchian sequence where Dolemite seduces the mod boss's nymphomanic mistress and, of course, the girls all get trained in martial arts to fight the mafia guys during an all out brawl at the end.

Overall, "The Human Tornado" is neck and neck with "Petey Wheatstraw" for best Rudy Ray Moore film that we've seen (although "Petey" still has the best theme song). There is never a dull moment in the film and we got a ton of laughs throughout. At some point we will have to watch them closer together to decide which one is actually superior, but we can guarantee that they are both wonderful so if you want to explore all of Moore's films, save them for last.

Spoon Rating: 9

Afterwards we decided to watch the latest addition to the world of good movies about bad films, "Dolemite Is My Name" (in keeping with the fact that we also did double features of "Plan 9"/"Ed Wood" and "The Room"/"The Disaster Artist"). As we were hoping, it was a great watch. Eddie Murphy plays Rudy so well and it was fascinating to see how they chose to portray Rudy's emergence in standup, his friendship with Lady Reed (who plays Queen Bee), and the process of actually making "Dolemite." Amusingly, because this was so fresh on our mind, we all observed immediately that they used footage from "Human Tornado" in their clips of "Dolemite" but we can forgive the transgression in the name of art.

We recommend the film for sure, but you should at least see "Dolemite" before you do if not a few of Rudy Ray's films.

The Gay Deceivers [1969]

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

We took a risk with this one on the sole basis of an amazing movie clip that has been making the internet rounds for a while. You can watch it here. We had to know what movie this clip was from and we found "The Gay Deceivers." The premise made it pretty clear that it was a comedy - two guys pretend to be gay to get out of the Vietnam War draft - but it was really the acting and dialogue of the clip that showed bad movie potential. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the film turned out to be not bad as a movie. We got a few real laughs and made some good puns on our own but it's really not a bad movie. The gay characters are incredibly camp, expected really since non-camp gays seemed to be nonexistent before Will from "Will & Grace," but are portrayed as much more together than our messy straight mains. The clip in the link is actually kind of out of character and the whole scene even feels random in the film.

At the beginning of the movie two straight guys who are friends fake enlist in the Vietnam War and pretend to be gay so they will be blacklisted. They succeed but later find the doubtful recruiter lurking around their apartment where they were just fooling around with girls. They decide to up their cover and rent a cottage in a gay neighborhood decorated by the gay landlord Malcolm, who doesn't know his flowers. The straights agree to not having girls over to keep up the act but one of them is a slut and he has a hard time with this, although he is much friendlier and more comfortable with the gay community. The other is barely suppressing homophobia the whole movie and makes the stupid decision to not tell his girlfriend what he's doing so she eventually breaks up with him, sure he's gay. There are various hijinks including a gay bar, a round double bed in a very pink room, and the slutty straight mistaking a drag queen for a woman. In the end, they get excused from the army but plot twist, it's because they're straight and the recruiter is gay and only wants other gays around.

The film is interesting from an LGBT+ history perspective but otherwise the best thing about the movie is the short clip I linked to. Skip it as a bad movie, but watch it for real if you happen to be interested.

Quote: "I detest cheap notoriety."

Spoon Rating: 2
Star Rating: 2 out of 5

Bonus:
At one point Malcolm goes over to the straight house to borrow eggs and ends up cooking them dinner. Later when Straight #1's parents come over Malcolm says he came to borrow oregano. We envisioned a scene of him having to explain this to his husband.

Malcolm: I got the oregano!
Craig: You went over to get eggs.
Malcolm: Oh.
Craig: It's fine. Just go return the oregano and borrow some eggs.
Malcolm: I can't. 
Craig: Why?
Malcolm: I made all the eggs for their breakfast.
Craig: Is that why you were gone for an hour?

REWATCH: Singham [2011]

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

We have spent the last two weeks rewatching "Singham" in addition to rounding out our evenings with some short selections from Occult Demon Cassette about Satanism and its apparent rampant influence on the youths.

Nothing new to say here except that "Singham" is still the best, and Satanism is corrupting the youths through rock music. Read the original review here. Get corrupted by Satan here.

NEWS: Black Christmas [1974]

Okay, the news title is a bit of a lie. Although there kind of is news. "Black Christmas" is not a blaxsplotation movie like Adam thought but actually a really decent pre-"Halloween" slasher movie that was the first to use the "the call is coming from inside the house" plot twist. We haven't made the mistake of watching a good movie at bad movie night since "Inhuman Resources" so it was about time. We even checked to see if there is a blaxsplotation movie with the same title and there wasn't. There was a remake of "Black Christmas" in 2006 that is probably garbage though so maybe we will watch that at some point.

Oh well. Happy holidays!

SPECIAL: The Disaster Artist [2017]

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

Bad Movie Night went to the movies! It has been a while since we have gone to an actual theater to see a movie, but this time it wasn't a bad one. "The Disaster Artist" is a film based on the book written by Greg Sestero about the making of "The Room." I did a review of the book three years ago that you can read here. Like the book, the film was really worth your time, especially if you are a fan of "The Room."

The film centers around the friendship between two struggling actors: Greg Sestero, who is seen as young and with potential, and Tommy Wiseau, a man of indeterminate age, origin, and sanity level, and seemingly bottomless wealth. In their joint attempt at finding success in L.A., Tommy gets the idea to write, direct, and star in a film with Greg, which ends up being "The Room." The shooting of the film is fraught with issues from arguments between Tommy and the crew, to scheduling problems, to a lack of air conditioning that leads to one of the actresses passing out. All the while, Tommy and Greg's relationship is strained as Greg gets acting jobs and wants to move in with his girlfriend, which doesn't jive with the overly clingy Tommy. The film culminates in the premiere of the movie where the actors and crew are appalled to see how bad the film is. Soon shock turns to laughter which brightens the experience for everyone except Tommy, until Greg conveys to him that they really do love it, even if they don't love it in the way Tommy intended.

This film is a great example of a "good story, well told." Sometimes with films based off real events, it can be hard to tell the difference between a "good story" and a "good story, well told" and seemingly any story on "The Room" and Tommy Wiseau would be a decent watch because the real story is so compelling. What helps me to make this distinction is probably the fact that I know so much about the actual history from reading the book. Things were changed from Greg's original account, but each change was cleverly made in the name of making a more coherent film. For example, the acceptance of "The Room" as a delightful bad movie was not something that started at the premiere but something that happened gradually over time. Making this change for a visual medium creates more narrative coherency for an unfamiliar audience.

In addition to the script, the acting was startling. James Franco's Tommy impression is spot on and kind of outshines all the other amazing actors but everyone deserves props. As a special bonus at the end of the film, they showed scenes from "The Room" side by side with the actors from "The Disaster Artist" performing the same scenes and they were practically indistinguishable.

So go see it. If you are a fan of "The Room" or bad movies, it is a must. If you just like good movies, go watch it. But if you are unfamiliar with "The Room," do yourself a favor and watch the original masterpiece first.

Halloweentown [1998]

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

In honor of Halloween time, we decided to watch "Halloweentown," a nostalgic movie for Sarah and Kay that we were pretty sure wasn't particularly good. Overall, it's what you expect from a Disney Channel original movie in the days before "High School Musical." It's cute, simple, has a whiny pre-teen/teen for the audience to relate to, and it's very predictable. Bad is a strong word but I wouldn't go so far as to call it good. It's our childhood.

The film centers around the Cromwell family where a single mother abhors Halloween and keeps her three kids (Marnie, the whiny teen, Dylan, the excessively practical one, and Sophia, the little quiet one) from experiencing anything relating to it for reasons unknown. Her rules are rocked slightly when quirky grandma who loves Halloween shows up for the day and helps to make their evening fun with costumes and stories. Marnie awakens in the night to overhear her mother and grandma talking about how they are witches but how her mother wants her kids to grow up normal and powerless. Marnie is not having that so she and her siblings follow grandma and hop the bus to Halloweentown, where she lives. It is a town full of all the monsters and demons you expect living peacefully together with the exception of a weird plague thing that's turning them evil. Grandma tries to make a spell to help save the town but it doesn't work out and just as they go out to start working on a new one, mom shows up to ruin the fun, and then mom and grandma get frozen in a movie theater. It makes a bit more sense in context. The kids take it upon themselves to complete the spell and destroy the bad guy who happens to be their mom's ex. They succeed and mom has a change of heart about the whole "witch" thing and invities grandma to come and live with them to teach them the ways of magic.

This film is pretty harmless. It's actually a solid kids movie albeit, it's 90s as all get out and has some weird makeup and bad green screen as a result of a low budget. Overall, it holds up in that respect. In order to make sure the night was actually ruined, Adam reminded us of the short-lived 90s Nickelodeon show "Weinerville" which is an actual nightmare that we had repressed. 

So yeah, "Halloweentown" is fun and not bad. If you want suffering, watch "Weinerville."

Lady Bloodfight [2017]

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

So did you watch "Bloodsport" and think, this is good but what it really needs is for all the major roles to be played by women? Enter "Lady Bloodfight," a film about a bunch of women from around the world in a martial arts competition and it borrows from every Jean Claude Van Damme movie and every rip off of a Van Damme movie ever made. It is also about as mediocre as one. I wouldn't call this movie bad in the traditional bad movie sense so much as it's kind of lazy and a kind of enjoyable. Keith said it best when he summed the experience up as, "Not as bad as a good movie, but not as good as a bad movie." We didn't make the mistake of watching a good movie, but it wasn't funny enough to be a bad movie. If you want ladies in a bloodfight, it will give you ladies in a bloodfight.

The film centers around these two Chinese women who were enemies who fought in a kumite (literally "sparring"; the name of the competition) and tied. They were given the chance to either split the prize money or train apprentices to fight on their behalves. They chose apprentices. One of the women is very spiritual and ends up running into an American girl, hilariously named Jane Jones, who fought off some muggers. The girl wanted to fight in the kumite anyway because her dad disappeared during a competition 18 years ago, but she initially denies the offer. The woman proves her training ability by . . . bringing a dead bird back to life. The other woman ends up training a girl who broke into her dojo to steal her sword and her style is a bit more brutal and merciless. We get a long series of montages of the two pairs training with calm, spiritual training versus harshness.

At the kumite we are introduced to a friendly Aussie girl who get brutally murdered in a fight with a psychotic Russian girl with prison tattoos and a bunch of other people we don't really see. We also get a shower room scene because this film was obviously directed by a man. The subplot about Jane's father comes up again when a sketchy dude with a mustache and a gold chain talks to her about money and it becomes clear that he 1. killed her father to rig that kumite 2. killed the brother of one of the Chinese women who was the fiancé of the other, causing their riff in the first place and 3. wants to kill Jane too in order to rig this kumite. In the final showdown between the two apprentices, his crimes are revealed and Jane wins the fight, which I guess is supposed to be some kind of proof that tranquility beats anger or something. And the two women become friends again. And Jane sees the ghost of her father and it's silly.

Spoon Rating: 2*

*This rating is contingent on the fact that the film lacked unintentional comedy with some small exceptions. The movie itself was neither good nor bad.

Singham [2011]

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

It's been a long time since I made a post. it's not that we haven't been doing Bad Movie Night the last two weeks but the two movies we watched I have nothing more to say about: "Saving Christmas" and "Birdemic." Two classics I have talked about enough. However, this week we are back to watching things we've never seen before and we came back with a bang. Literally. I wouldn't even call this movie bad. It's like "Inhuman Resources" which we all loved so much: it's a movie that knows what it wants to be and is well aware of its ridiculousness and doesn't care. This movie knows no boundaries. On a scale of one to ten it is pretty much always operating at an eleven and never drops below a nine. After this, it's pretty much a gurantee that there will be more Bollywood movies at bad movie night because it was so damn fun. None of us had even seen a Bollywood action movie before (Indian movies in general, yes, but not like this) and Adam described it well with, "This is like old school Hollywood. You're here for a show and godamnit we're going to entertain you."

In a rapid prologue of Dutch angles and flashbacks we get the story of a Goa city cop named Rakesh Kadem who killed himself after being framed by the city's top gangster, Jaikart Shikre, who has the whole police force bending to his whim. Kadem's widow knows he only killed himself because of the pressure but on him by Shikre and wants to clear his name of corruption charges.

Suddenly, the story changes entirely as a man emerges from a giant pool as if summed by the gods and we are treated to the first of three musical numbers. With lyrics saying, "The heart races. The body trembles when you know he's coming. Singham!" you know what's up. Singham is a cop, the perfect cop actually (Indian Chuck Norris, really), in a small town outside of Goa. Everyone loves him. He literally sends men flying up into the air by tapping them on the head. Cars flip over in his presence. He's basically the Jesus of fist fighting who ends his battles by whipping his opponents with his belt. Among this mad display of manliness we are treated to a silly comedic side story about how his friend's daughter falls in love with him and pretty much demands marriage. We get another musical interlude. He says he loves her so I guess they're engaged. 

Everything is swell until Shikre is given conditional bail and must travel to Singham's village every day to sign in. Initially he sends some goons but Singham is not having it and embarrasses Shikre into complying. Shikre gets revenge by having Singham transfered to Goa where he can make his life hell with the goal of driving him to suicide as well. Singham is frustrated with the state of Goa and how none of the other cops will help him try to take down Shikre because they're all afraid of him. Singham almost gives up and goes home. There's another song break between Singham and his girlfriend.

He is inspired then to try to turn everything around after meeting Kadem's widow and remembering the true meaning of taking down the bad guy. He arrests Shikre's top lieutenant by framing him but Shikre gets revenge by kidnapping Singham's girlfriend's sister. Then Singham decides to beat up more bad guys in public and give rousing speeches to the police officiers about their duties. They agree to band together to take down Shikre. Which they do. By killing him. And making it look like a suicide. No chill. And Kadem gets cleared of all charges and his widow is personally apologized to by her husband's coworkers. 

Explaining the plot of this movie does little to get to the meat of why this movie is such an experience. It's so hard to describe the most over the top fight scenes you will ever witness juxtaposed with essentially pop music videos (which you can watch on YouTube by the way). And the sound effects! Sound effects dissimilar from any you have heard in the known world! Oh, and every time Singham is being really badass, his theme plays. Or at least the part that says his name. And we will be singing it for all eternity.

SINGHAM!

BMN Quotes:
Adam: "This is the film equivalent of an eight minute Metallica solo."
Kay: "This is the film equivalent of pounding Red Bull."
Adam: "This is the Dragonforce of cinema."

Spoon Rating: 9

Inhuman Resources [2012]

[Originally posted on Facebook on July 23, 2013]

Well, we really messed up this time: we watched a movie that we all genuinely liked and thought was good. We figured this would happen accidentally at some point but it still came as a shock. With a title like "Inhuman Resources" and the cover you see below (the summary on the back was in COMIC SANS), you would expect perfect Bad Movie Night material. In truth, after the opening scene, we weren't making fun of the movie anymore because we got so absorbed in it. It's a well-written horror-comedy with an interesting plot, a compelling and amusing villain, and a fair amount of solid camera work and acting. It's far better than most of the horror movies you could see in theaters in the past few years. 

The moral of the story is: don't judge a movie by its cover/title.

Next week we will try to actually watch something crappy.