Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life [2005]

This is a Lifetime movie about a teen boy who gets addicted to online porn. The fact that it's a Lifetime movie, and therefore needs to be pretty clean, really colors the perception of this film in hilarious ways. For one, all the porn he looks at is pretty covered up. At most we maybe see a brief shot of someone in lingerie or a full body latex onesie, but a lot of it is girls in tank tops with bras peeking out. Additionally, they never mention masturbation and at one point only slightly imply it just by having him look at porn without his shirt on. It seems like maybe he wouldn't have such a porn issue if he wasn't edging himself constantly, but that's just a suggestion.

The film starts with Justin, a champion swimmer, just looking at extremely tame porn on his computer, some of which is weirdly of a girl in his high school named Monica. Apparently she's a senior and just does this? It's a bit confusing. Justin has a girlfriend named Amy who loves Jesus and therefore won't let him sex her. At one point his mom catches him looking at porn at 1AM and tells his dad that he needs to have a talk with him about it. With no specific intent to this conversation specified, the conversation is vague and basically amounts to "sex isn't love but everyone looks at porn so whatever." We were similarly confused by the issue. Of course though, his porn consummation expands. He starts looking up porn on his girlfriend's PDA and emailing it to himself, he shows porn to his little brother, and at one point alienates a potential cool friend by showing him latex porn, which makes the kid call him a freak instead of doing the normal teen thing and going, "Yo, weird" and moving on. His mom is pretty ignorant of most of this outside of the little brother thing so she starts putting parental controls on the computer before disconnecting the internet entirely. Justin will not be stopped however and he steals his parent's credit cards to pay for both internet and porn. His girlfriend checks her PDA's search history and dumps him. Eventually he hits up Monica for some free sex but can't go through with it. Unfortunately Monica is insane so she beats herself up and claims it was Justin so a bunch of her high school fanboys beat him up. The film ends with a symbolic baptism as Justin jumps into a pool and decides to start a new life.

This film is mostly funny for the reasons I said in the beginning, the fundamental issue of Lifetime trying to make a movie on this topic, but there are also a couple over-the-top acting moments or insane zooms as well. 

To take the movie seriously for a second, the movie's thesis really hinges on a slippery slope argument rather than actually interrogating the ethics of pornography. There could have been an interesting film here about if there's a way to consume porn ethically given the way the industry works or whether there might be genuine concerns if someone is consuming a lot of porn that is specifically violent or genuinely aberrant like bestiality. But no. If you want something more like that Shame is a great movie about sex addiction and Pleasure is a great movie about the porn industry. What this film is really warning against isn't porn. It's
* Staying up so late that it starts to affect your performance at school and sports.
* Using your girlfriend's tech for things she wouldn't want you to use it for.
* Showing scandalous things to your younger sibling who isn't as careful as you.
* Not correctly reading a social situation before you decide to show your new friend weird stuff.
* Stealing
* Getting involved with crazies.
* Apparently, not actually masturbating so you can clear your mind of all the dirty thoughts and be a productive member of society.

The problem isn't the porn; it's the teenage lack of impulse control.

Spoon Rating: 4

Wabuu: The Cheeky Raccoon [1996] & The Secret Of The Hunchback [1996] & A Recipe For Seduction [2020]

In a surely desired sequel to the Dingo Pictures Pocahontas, we started the evening with Wabuu: The Cheeky Raccoon, about Pocahontas' raccoon friend who hops and laughs by shaking alarmingly. The German-singing raccoon wants to capture the sun to save it for a rainy day but then instead goes on some puckish Tom Sawyer hijinks. In the end, he makes a nice picnic for all the animals but put sneezing powder or something on it. We've decided he's a primordial chaos god. The movie has all the Dingo Pictures staples like bad animation, bad acting with strange pronunciations*, poorly timed voiceover, thin plot, and an eerie twanging circus background music that repeats throughout the entire thing. The bonuses from this one are that it's shorter at 30 minutes and has such inclusions as Wabuu getting accused of child murder and a character saying, "Shit."
*Someone said they had to get their shuffle (shovel) from their gay rahge (garage).
Spoon Rating:  7

The Secret of the Hunchback, our latest entry in the ongoing Hunchbackening (Hunchback's back, all right), has a similar formula to one we saw before: a clear Beauty And The Beast design retrofitted into a Hunchback movie. Esmerelda looks like Belle and sings a song about "wanting something more than this." Frollo is a high sheriff Gaston ripoff with a Jafar voice and a LaFou-esque sidekick. Instead of Frollo, Quasi has two gay priest dads. Uncomfortably buff gargoyles come to life and sing him an inspiration jazz song about how what counts is on the inside. Instead of Phoebus, we have Pierre, which honestly feels like less of a stretch for a romantic lead and I don't know why we don't see more Hunchback adaptions making this choice instead. Pierre saves her from her captivity under the gypsies who gave her to Frollo and they sing a lame love song in the forest that was a ripoff of "Once Upon A Dream" from Sleeping Beauty. Frollo kidnaps Quasi's archdeacon dad to make him marry Frollo to Esmerelda. Frollo also fights with a belt in addition to a sword. He dies by knocking over a gargoyle with it that crushes him to death. Quasi falls to his death but wings sprout out of his hump and he flies away. It was insane but Sarah predicted it. For some fun inaccuracies, we have a joke about Protestantism, a pronunciation of Notre Dame like the college, and cowboys hats. Remember: this is meant to be the 15th century.
It has higher production values than a couples of the ones we've seen but where it really shines is in how wildly odd the story is and how much it borrows from Disney movies.
Quote: I've got a HUNCH we won't be seeing him anymore.
Spoon Rating: 7

We made Hunchback Bingo for our next one:

Lastly, we watched the already well known A Recipe For Seduction, a short Lifetime movie funded by Kentucky Fried Chicken with a sexy Colonel Sanders. It's only 15 minutes, which is kind of the ideal length since you get all the exciting parts without any of the drag. A rich girl falls for her family chef who wants to change the world with his special chicken recipe. Her jilted fiancé and her mom who's banging him decide to take out the chicken man, but he's rescued by the rich girl's gay best friend. Mom and fiancé go to a mental institution while rich girl and Sexy Sanders get married.
Spoon Rating: No spoons. Too corporate. Eat with your hands.

Stalker's Prey [2017]

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

For our first Lifetime movie, we have a meeting of two worlds: a shark movie and a stalker movie. This film, "Stalker's Prey," came into our lives on the recommendation of a chorus of Kay's students who have all seen the film. Why has a whole room of high school seniors seen a specific Lifetime movie? It was filmed in their part of the woods, or I should say the sea. The police station is a local community college, a featured restaurant is a place she has actually heard of, and the school's distinct facade is shown with an obvious CGI name change. Although the town is supposed to be Hunter's Grove, they don't even try to change the sign on the back of one person's EMT jacket that says "Niantic."

Putting aside our connection to the film, let's get into the plot. The mumbliest teen in southeastern New England, Laura, gets rescued from a shark attack that left her boyfriend dead in the water. The guy who rescued her is none other than a politician's son who everyone in town immediately reveres. He checks up on Laura a lot and gives her gifts and while nothing seems amiss to Laura's family, the doom music warns the audience that his intentions are not the purest. Although the film seems to try to put forth this idea that he's a catch (fame, looks, volunteering with kids with cancer; also no pun intended), every action he takes seems a little off. He invites Laura to the marina (red flag) to be his date for a campaign fundraiser and suspiciously gives her a dress to wear (how did he know her size?). There's a blackout moment that may imply drunkenness or roofies. He lingers a bit too long with every interaction. 

After that Laura is weary of him but he keeps showing up everywhere: babysitting her sister, subbing at her school, and using the spare key her mom gave him to come inside and watch her sleep. He also starts attacking her friends who she fights with, beating one with a bat and hitting the other with his car. Laura finally decides to investigate his ex and discovers that although he said he talks to her all the time, she's been dead for years. Note: he wasn't lying but Norman Bates-ing it. Laura tries to get him to implicate himself for hitting her friend with his car and he responds by kidnapping her and taking her out on his boat to feed her to the shark he saved her from. They fight. She wins.

Aside from the amusing genre mixture and the ominous music, this movie has some great acting. The actress playing Laura is mostly unintelligible compared to everyone else while the guy playing the stalker is full of the drama. His freak-outs and crazed mutterings stand out as the highlight of the film. More unintentional comedy comes from the bad CGI shark, the car accident scene effect, and other miscellaneous odd choices.

Give it a try, chum.

Quote: "The TV movie writes itself!" [Thanks for the lampshading.]

Spoon Rating: 5.5