Hercules In New York [1969]

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

Inspired by last week's "dubbed body builder in a low budget film", we decided to watch another one! Although we've seen plenty of movies featuring, say, Van Damme, we had yet to see a Schwarzenegger film (well, other than "Batman & Robin" but he wasn't the star of that one) and it was about time for that to be rectified. He was only a 22-year-old unknown when this movie was made and because of his accent, he was dubbed over by some other guy. Apparently there is a version where you can hear his real voice (Adam kept insisting there was and the internet confirmed it) but we ended up with the original dubbed one.

In "Antique Greece", Hercules is a whiny and arrogant demi-God who wants to chill with the lesser beings so Zeus sends him down to earth which somehow means New York in the late 60s. After terrifying (and possibly arousing) an old lady on a plane by flying outside it and then getting picked up by some sailors and refusing to do any work on the ship, he meets a New York stereotype who sells pretzels named, wait for it, Pretzey. Herc and Pretzey stumble on some college guys doing athletic stuff so Herc decides to show off and this somehow earns them an invite to some rich people's house. The daughter of the house ignores her puny boyfriend in favor of going out with Hercules and we get to see him wrestle a man in a bear suit of Ed Wood level quality. Meanwhile, Pretzey signs over Hercules' soul to some guys who will break his thumbs if he doesn't comply and Hercules ends up becoming a famous wrestler or something. He picks up heavy things and puts them down, progressively trying to pick up heavier things than his opponent. All is pretty swell for Hercules until Zeus decides he's an embarassment and sends Mercury to try to get Herc to stop partying and go home. When he says no, Juno, suddenly remembering that she hates him, decides to rid him of his strength with the help of Nemesis and Pluto (Greek and Roman names are interchangable in this movie). Zeus finds out and fixes everything and after Herc comes home, Zeus decides to peace for the mortal world himself with no lessons learned.

This movie is pretty spectacular. There's pretty much always something weird happening with the only explanation being Arnold's character shouting out "I AM HERCULES" in a flat but loud voice. There's also plenty of cheese to go with that ham with scenes like Hercules stealing a horse drawn carriage, Pluto entering New York via the depths of the subway, and the scene where he fights a bear which is worth seeking out if you want a laugh. All in all, yes, Arnold is right to be ashamed.

Quotes:

"When myth and history combine into mystery . . ."

"That's just for college guys. You're not allowed."
"I AM HERCULES."

"Watch your talk."
"I can hear my talk. I can't watch it."

[On seeing a poster for a Hercules movie]
"He doesn't even look like me. Look!" *rips off shirt*

Adam's Grandma's Review: [enthusiastically and without being asked] "It was good!"

The Seven Magnificant Gladiators [1984]

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

I'm pretty sure it's a written law of the universe somewhere that if something becomes popular and iconic enough there must be a crappy foreign remake of it. A few years ago we watched "Russian Terminator" which had absolutely nothing to do with the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie so perhaps it was just a marketing thing to name it that. But this movie? Not at all. This movie is a rip-off in the truest sense. They changed the setting to ancient Italy, got cheaper actors including Lou Ferrigno with someone else dubbing his voice and a girl who was in "Malibu Express", and just lifted the entire plot of "Magnificent Seven" which is already a remake of "Seven Samurai." This is the kind of commitment we look for in our movies.

What can I say about the plot really? Go watch "Seven Samurai" or "Magnificent Seven" and then imagine it with way less technique or writing skill and you've got the plot. Okay fine: A guy in a high-collared spandex unitard claiming to be a demi-God terrorizes a town. Some of the women of the town bring a magic sword into nearby towns trying to find someone manly enough to wield it and discover chariot racer (and also gladiator?) Lou Ferrigno. Together with a group of bar fighters and random dudes they find hanging around, they go to save the town. One guy is only in it for the potential of chicks. One guy joins because he seems to have nothing better to do. The one girl in the group is hoping there will be gold. Really there's just a lot of fighting, at one point a character who looks like a grown up Bam Bam from "The Flintstones" fights Joey Ramone and Slash and it's very special, and the town is saved even though three of the so-called gladiators died. 

Overall this movie is exactly what you except from a low budget ripoff. The costumes are hilarious (one ruler is wearing an outfit that looks like a second grader's class project to design a "pharaoh Pope"), the music is from the Renaissance era, the sets are just the actual ruins in Italy which, you know, wouldn't have been ruins at this time, and at one point we get the privilege of seeing someone's safety wire appear in a shot that makes it look like he was suddenly stabbed. Also, even though this was the time when Italy dubbed over all of their actors to save money, this didn't help the acting one bit and more than once it looked like someone was reading their lines over someone else's shoulder.

Quotes:
"I've been thinking about those women we're gonna fight for. I hope they're pretty enough to be worth saving."

"I've got a funny feeling."
"Really? Where?"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Pretty good."

Also when Adam said "Pharaoh Pope" at one point it sounded like "Feral Pope" and we decided this is a bad movie that must be made so we can watch it.

The Giant Claw [1957]

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

After the great reception we got from last week's movie, "Robot Monster", we decided to push our luck and try out another 1950s sci-fi horror fim: "The Giant Claw" apparently also known as "The Mark Of The Claw" which is slightly more menacing. While it wasn't quite the laugh fest that "Robot Monster" was there was still some comedy to be had as well as some really terrible conventions.

In a voice over that never fully stops a bunch of characters who work in engineering are introduced but the only two you need to know are the main character Mitch MacAfee, an aeronatical engineer, and the female mathmatician who he sexually assaults on a plane. Mitch sees an unidentified flying object and when people go out to investigate, including himself and the mathmatician, they are struck down by something. The two crash land in Canada and meet a French dude who thinks it's a monster in the sky. Then they go back to New York and, later, DC, convincing the military to go out to investigate and discover the truth: it's a giant chicken made of alien material that they think is antimatter. Why this thing didn't explode immediately when coming in contact with, oh say, air, is not explained. Considering the protagonists are an engineer and a mathmatician, they are clearly ill-equipted to solve this issue of extra-terrestrial biology and yet somehow they manage to make some staggering observations of the creature (that is gets energy from food and might reproduce) and then decide to kill it an antimatter destroyer which they are somehow able to make. The world is safe and Thanksgiving dinner has come early this year.

This movie has a couple really strange lines, a very bad puppet, blatant "King Kong" ripoff scenes, and some really hammy acting so it was a pretty enjoyable watch. However, we did start off the night with the best music video ever and ended it by introducing Keith and Grandma to the "Trololo" guy (and "Trolling Sauruman") so, it had some tough acts to compete with in terms of the best thing we watched that night.

Quotes:

"Get me the Pentagon . . . very fast."

"It has no element recognizable by man. Finding out was expensive."

". . . God foresaken antimatter galaxy."

"A nest? Eggs. More birds!"

"In a fantastic orgy of the destruction that the world has never seen!"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "No."

Robot Monster [1953]

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

It has been a while since we saw an old sci-fi movie which is a shame because they are Keith's favorite in the bad movie canon. Amusingly, we all genuinely thought this was an Ed Wood movie based on the title and, well, pretty much everything about the production. We actually found it curious that Bela Lugosi wasn't in it. Alas, the movie is actually directed by a guy named Phil Tucker and it was originally in three glorious dimensions which we could only hope made this hilarious movie even funnier. 

The movie starts with two kids, a brother and sister, talking to two scientists, one young and one foreign, in a cave before we are treated to a total non-sequitur of a scene of alligators wrestling each other (one with a fin taped to its back) and a few brief shots of dinosaurs. Then we see the robot monster emerge from the now empty cave, a monster that is half gorilla suit and half stereotypical space helmet. In a conversation with his boss man using rabbit ears and a bubble machine on some old equipment someone found in a dumpster we find out that all the humans have been destroyed but eight: the two kids from earlier, their scientist older sister, their mom, her foreign scientist husband who was in the cave in the beginning, the younger scientist from the beginning, and two dudes on a space station thing. He wants to destroy them all. Because he hates human emotions or wanted to neutralize a potential threat before they attacked him or something. The eight are immune to the ro-man's (yes, that's what he's called) death rays because half of them are scientists and they made a serum to protect themselves. The two in space are blown up and the oldest daughter comes up with a plan that involves a vaguely sexual wiring scene with the younger scientist that helps nothing. After seeing her on 1950s Skype, Ro-man wants the older sister to come to see him but the little boy sneaks off to reason with him instead and accidentally reveals all their secrets.Then there's an intermission. . . in an hour long movie. Back to the film, the two young hot scientists fall in love and the dude one has an unnecessary shirtless scene. They make out in the grass and decide to marry. The little sister gets strangled to death by Ro-man, the older sister gets kidnapped, and her new husband gets killed. Ro-man has a conflict of not wanting to kill the older sister (why do aliens always think humans are bangable? So human-centric) and so his boss kills him and destroys the world. More shots (okay, the same shots) of alligators and dinosaurs and SURPRISE. It was all a dream in the little boy's mind. What. The. Fu-

This was an instant classic. Everything was perfect bad movie quality. The acting was odd, it was full of ridiculous quotes (see below), the direction was flat, and editing was full of recycled shots and weird errors. At one point electricity on a wire stopped moving and we had to play it again. In fact, we stopped this movie a lot to laugh or replay quotes. 10/10, would robo again.

Quotes:
"I want facts, not words!"

"For the first time in my life I am unsure."
"You sound like a hu-man!"

"You're so bossy you outta be milked before you come home."

"You know something? You're either too beautiful to be so smart or too smart to be so beautiful."

"Do you realize what you tried to do was impossible and you almost did it?"
"But I didn't."

"Calculate your chances . . . negative . . . negative . . . negative."

"I think you're just a big bully picking on people smaller than you."
"Now I will kill you."

"I cannot but I must. How do you calculate that?"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was good. Funny."

Matthew Blackheart: Monster Smasher [2001]

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

The Book Barn never seems to let us down when it comes to finding the most obscure made-for-television movies that excite us just from hearing the title. Matthew Blackheart? Is he in Joan Jett's band? And what do you mean by "smasher"? As opposed to killing or destroying, does he punch them with a giant fist? (Spoiler: most unfortunately, no.)

The whole story is told in a framing narrative of Blackheart reading a comic book about his life. During World War II, a scientist named Dr. Franken (yep) pieced together a bunch of courageous American soldiers to make the ultimate patriotic weapon against monsters. Somehow or another he gets frozen for 55 years like Captain America and returns to New York to find that now the monsters look just like us. In detective-style narration, Blackheart tells us his story through ambiguous, out of order flashbacks with liberal use of nonsensical analogies as he searches for a place to go back to. At one point he stumbles into an S&M club in a church and we are treated to an odd fake!British Bjork-style rendition of "If You're Happy And You Know It." At the club, he ends up bumping into a teenager who sets him up with a place to stay and who turns out to be Dr. Franken afflicted with Benjamin Button disease. Blackheart has a tacked-on romance with a diner waitress who apparently falls for him after he hurls a series of misogynistic comments at her. Apparently he had a girlfriend or wife back in the day but there's no real resolution on what happened to her. She appeared to have drowned somehow. Most sadly about this movie is that the monster smashing is really minimal and not really smashing. Blackheart eventually finds the bad guy, who is the most annoyingly pretentious guy at the goth show, and his dwarf assistant. Although Blackheart never dons the American flag cape featured on the DVD cover, he does kill the big bad with an American flag flagpole which is an okay substitute.

This movie was pretty enjoyable. It was hard to follow the plot with the way they did the weird flashbacks (even Sarah was struggling to understand) but really, more movies should be in detective-style narration. Needs more smashing. A protagonist who's less of a jerk would probably help to but who has time for kindness when 'MURRICA.

Quotes:

"Stop now!"

"I'm gonna stop you like a bad habit."

"He's got eyes like pissholes in the snow"

"Roosevelt?"

"No. Eisenhower."

*wistfully* "I liked Ike."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I don't know."

Exterminator 2 [1984]

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

After a two week extension of Bad Movie Night while Kay was in Italy, the nights are back with a crappy sequel to a crappy movie we watched a year and a half ago: "The Exterminator 2". The first one was pretty devoid of plot, a revenge story with some side vigilante justice done by a guy with a flamethrower, and the sequel is, well, almost the same movie just more 80s than 70s.

The Exterminator is still living in New York and maintaining his secret identity while lighting some murdering liquor store robbers on fire. He meets up with another Vietnam War buddy who drives a garbage truck and we know nothing is going to go wrong there. He's also dating a go-go dancer at a club he likes to go to where everyone dances like they are listening to a different song. Life is pretty great. Too bad about the uprising of a gang of street kids, mostly break dancers and new wavers, who all follow this "Road Warrior" styled dude who calls himself X and thinks he's Jesus reborn. They go around murdering, stealing money, and getting drugs from the mob to sell and somehow (the plot wasn't fully clear to us and Sarah wasn't around to explain it) they end up encountering the three good guys and decide to be evil to them. The girlfriend and the garbage truck driver get killed and then about one third of the movie ends up being the boss fight between Exterminator and X. Exterminator wins and goes off to presumably find a third Vietnam War buddy to start the revenge cycle again.

When the movie was over, Adam said it reminded him a lot of an old video game called "Bad Dudes" where you walk to the right a whole lot and fight ninjas until you have saved the president from ninjas thereby proving you are a bad dude. Watching 15 minutes of a 23 minute walk-through of this game was more captivating than most of this movie.

Quote: "I don't like that shit. Guys like that are freakos."

The Adventures Of Sharkboy And Lavagirl In 3-D [2005]

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

Theoretically, making a decent kid's movie shouldn't be too complicated. Invent some fully developed and funky characters a kid can relate to or look up to and a primary lesson that you want the kids to learn and build a compelling story around that. Maybe, if you have some skill, throw in some subtle winks to the parents in the audience and make the theme universal for all age groups. There's a formula, although as we have often seen, it's apparently not as easy to follow as one might think. And on a last note: don't let your kids come up with the premise if it makes no sense, Robert Rodriguez. 

The plot involves a kid named Max who sees visions, but not really because they're real I guess, of two superkids named Sharkboy and Lavagirl and, reasonably, no one believes him so he gets made fun of. Eventually all his classmates are proven wrong when Sharkboy and Lavagirl burst into the classroom and take him to Planet Drool, a manifestation of his dreams, because they need to save the planet from the bad guy who is also the class bully and his sidekick who is also the teacher. The rest of the movie follows a video game structure with tasks Max must perform to go onto the next task all in gloriously cheap CGI. Ultimately, he's trying to reconcile dreams with reality or something while working through the issues he has with the people in his life. Sharkboy and Lavagirl seem to have their own problems too that are never fully explored. Lavagirl literally has amnesia and Sharkboy has a superiority complex and is played by Taylor Lautner who is quickly becoming a Bad Movie Hall-of-Famer. Throw in a hasty resolution, things being waved in front of the camera (because the original was in 3-D, don't you know), and a pretty obvious "Be Our Guest" ripoff where Lautner sings about dreaming and does gymnastics and you've basically got the whole movie.

Here are some GIFs of the aforementioned song:

And some weird stills:

 I relate.

Kill it with fire.

Casual.

o god stop smiling i feel so unclean

Her response to Sharkboy's dance routine.

I have seen hell.

Quotes:
"The ground is thumping too much."
"My highly trained ears can hear it too."