REWATCH: Johnny Mnemonic [1995]

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

I did a full review of this movie in June 2014 when we first watched it that can be read here. It's still great although one wonders how awkward it would be for Dolph Lundgren if they had named the heroin addict hacker dolphin Dolph. 

Speaking Of Mr. Lundgren, we ended the evening by watching a video of him singing Elvis, playing drums, and breaking boards and you should too. End all your evenings this way.

(New) Quote:
"You are fucked up severe."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Good."

REWATCH: Deadly Prey [1986]

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

On Monday we decided to give a rewatch to a very old favorite, that blatant synthesis of "The Most Dangerous Game" and "First Blood" known as "Deadly Prey." As with the last time I wrote about this movie, there isn't much to say about it aside from the fact that it's gloriously crazy.

In a remote location near Los Angeles, there's a mercenary training camp where the potential mercenaries hunt guys they kidnapped off the street because realism. One day they make a mistake by kidnapping a mulleted guy off the street who . . . used to train with them? I don't know. He knows the guy running the joint, the non-corporate Big Bad. They strip him down to his booty shorts and do a loving slow pan up his oily body before letting him loose and find that he's too good at not being killed. The rest of the movie is mainly just everyone saying, "We've got to kill this guy" which was the entire goal from the beginning anyway. At one point his father-in-law shows up to take out some guys including the corporate guy behind it but he dies. The main character escapes to his own house but returns when he finds that they've kidnapped and raped his wife. Then he teams up with an old friend and they kill everyone except the Big Bad who gets put into the game himself. It ends on the main character's looped scream and the credits roll to an incongruously chill 80s slow jam called "Never Say Die."

This movie may not sound like much but it's in the execution where the weirdness comes. There are tons of lines that sound like all the mercenaries are crushing on the main character, strange reads, weirdly short range gernades, and a scene where instead of having an explosion, it sloppily cuts to an inserted explosion shot that was clearly shot at a different location and time. Oh, and the main characters cuts off a guy's arm and beats him with it. You really don't want to miss that.

Quotes:
"You're supposed to be the best at what you do. Do it better."

"Friend or enemy?
"I'm a friend!"
"You're a liar."

Gayest Lines:

"This guy looks like fun."

"Let's hope he lasts more than ten minutes."

"I'd give anything to have 20 men just like him."

"I want you . . . dead."

Saving Christmas [2014]

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

By no hyperbole, this movie is probably the most highly anticipated movie that we have ever watched. We have been looking for a way to watch it since last December after hearing such glowing facts like that it has a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, that it's a crazy religious movie that a lot of religious people didn't like, and that it stars one of the leaders of the totally illogical Christianity nonsense squad, TV's Kirk Cameron. And it did not disappoint. In fact, it's a new Christmas tradition.

I know I can't cover every ounce of bonkers this movie has to offer but I'm going to try to hit up the major points. The film starts with Kirk chilling in the most Christmas room to ever Christmas and talking about everything in the room that he loves especially the hot chocolate which he talks about a lot throughout the film. We wonder with mild horror if the whole movie is going to be him talking at us from an armchair but we are soon treated to one of three intro screens that tells us the movie has been funded by Liberty University, of course, and then we find ourselves following a very slow Games of Thrones character while Cameron waxes poetic on the nature of stories.

 Needs more Christmas, honestly.

 What is this contraption?

 HOLY HOT CHOCOLATE.

Get me seven more of these.

Now we're at a Christmas party thrown by Cameron's sister (but not his real sister) and the so-called plot can really begin. See, Cameron's brother-in-law, hilariously named Christian, hates Christmas so much that he sees it through rave-vision, but not for the reasons godless heathens hate Christmas (rampant consumerism, bad music, etc.). He hates Christmas because it's full of pagan traditions and doesn't nearly have enough Jesus. So he hides in his car and Cameron joins him to tell him why he's all wrong and that actually all the pagan stuff is Christian stuff. It's a hoot.

"Where's the Jesus?"

"Oh, jeepers. He makes a lot of good points. What do I do?"

"Oh, I know! Lie!"

First he butchers the nativity story and talks a lot about the swaddling cloth. He mostly just says swaddling cloth a lot. Then he draws the Christmas tree back to Genesis because, you know, God made trees and also the solstice so you're totally honoring the Jesus with your pagan symbol, duh. He also literally draws a connection between the tree and the cross by saying that Jesus' crucifixion is just Adam symbolically returning the fruit he ate from the tree in the garden of Eden (we all had assumed when Cameron said that Adam needed to give back the fruit that Adam was supposed to return his poo to God). And what about Santa Claus? Santa Claus is not Jesus, Kirk! But you know who he is? A bar-fighting metalhead, GoT extra named Saint Nicholas who pummels heathens to dub-step and then gives toys to kids.

Santa needs his weekly protection money.

"I heard you had some of that sweet Ghanaese hot chocolate."

Finally, Kirk Cameron's brother-in-law realizes Christmas IS THE BOMB and literally penguin belly slides into the presents while his wife watches dubiously. Then, in what can only be the logical conclusion after being subjected to so many sanitized hip-hop versions of Christmas music (or as Adam calls it, "Santa-tized"), we have a bunch of white people try to dance to a hip-hop "Angels We Have Heard On High" which has the line, "put your wings in the air" in it.

 Kirk Cameron is the devil on our shoulder.

 "I feel something coming on!"

 "Perhaps it's time for some white guy dancing?"

 I think Kirk is controling him with his damn magic.

 "OMG PRESENTS!"

X-TREME CHRISTMAS

In the epilogue of slow motion eating, Cameron justifies materialism and again brings up the nature of stories but now it makes more sense when he really insists that we need to create our own meanings for things. Kirk Cameron wants you to lie because history is not Christian enough.

"Buy things!"

For this viewing party we were joined by Adam's sister and Keith's daughter, Leah, and her fiance, Matt. They assimilated quite well into our crew for the night and I think we all learned a lot about the value of bullshitting. So happy birthday to Adam and Grandma who were both born on December 21st which also happens to be Yule, that pagan holiday that Cameron has stolen all the traditions from. Happy Yule to all (except Kirk Cameron) and to all a good night!

Quotes:
"You're wrong."
"About what?"
"Everything you just said."
". . . I said a lot."

"I saw it on Fox News so I know it's true."

"This Christmas I'm gonna give you something you've been wanting for a long time."
"What is it, Big Papa?"

"Sure, don't max out your credit cards or use presents to buy friends, but remember this is a celebration of the eternal god taking on a MATERIAL body so it is right that our holiday is marked with material things."

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

Adam's Review: "This is the whitest Christmas ever."

Kirk Cameron: He's basically God himself.

Santa's Slay [2005]

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

After wondering for a bit which movie we should inflict upon everyone tonight and encountering some pretty tempting offers including some kind of crazy religious movie about going to hell, former Bad Movie Nighter Randy chimed in via text with a more seasonably appropriate option that makes us wonder about the important things in life. Like: why are there so many Christmas movies with wrestlers playing Santa?

Set in a town called Hell (an actual place in Arizona but this is obviously Canada even with the American flags everywhere), Santa comes down the chimney of a rich person's house and massacres a bunch of pretty recognizable actors who have nothing better to do including Fran Drescher and Chris Kattan. Then we cut to our protoganist: romantically inept teenager Nicholas who just wants his kooky grandfather to stop messing with inventions and celebrate Christmas like everyone else. When he finally asks his grandfather why he's so reluctant to celebrate, Grandpa pulls out an ancient Norse tome that reveals that Santa is actually Satan's son and literal counterpart to Jesus and that he has only been nice for the past 1000 years because he lost a curling match to a mysterious old man. Now Santa's out to make up for lost time, killing strip club patrons and setting the place on fire, stabbing the deli owner with his own menorah, killing a bunch of cops at the police station, and then running over Nicholas' grandfather with his sleigh, pulled by an angry buffalo. Santa has a showdown with Nicholas and his girlfriend at the high school's ice rank where Grandpa comes back from the dead to reveal he was an angel who turned human for love and was the mysterious old man who beat Santa at curling 1000 years prior. They compete, Santa loses, and his sleigh is shot down by Nicholas' girlfriend's redneck father. Santa lives and goes home to return eventually in 3005.

This movie was silly but, as with many things we watch, not really in the right ways. There were a lot of puns, a lot of obvious sound stages, a lot of comical deaths that make you feel totally numb, and a lot of really unfunny, obvious jokes (one of the cops is named "Cock" for instance). If you want a murdering Santa you are better off just watching that episode of "Futurama".

Quotes:
[while in a town called Hell] "What in Hell do we have here?"

[while in a kosher deli] "Something here just isn't kosher."

"He's scary yet educational."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It was good. I liked it."

Santa With Muscles [1996]

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

The movie for Monday was going to be "Barbarella" but as Kay had seen it and couldn't decide if it was sufficently funny enough and because we are now into December where we can really take advantage of all the bad Christmas movies in existance, we switched to this film. Aside from the irresistable title, the film stars a pre-hair loss Hulk Hogan and a pre-fame Mila Kunis. Adam compared the tone of the film to "Undercover Blues" which is honestly really indicative of what kind of kid's movies were made in the 90s: the good guys beat people up happily and the bad guys are bumbling idiots who can be easily taken down by children.

Hogan plays Blake Thorne, a gajillionaire who likes to fight his staff for fun (with their consent), stage city-wide paintball games, market his health food products, and generally act like a man child with little regard for anything. While escaping the cops, he runs into a mall and puts on a Santa costume to disguise himself but he gets knocked unconscious and an elf who stole his wallet tells him he is Santa. He fumbles through his mall Santa duties but ends up earning fame as "Santa with muscles" when he beats up two sanatized-for-kids, 90s-era thugs (one was wearing a DARE shirt) who tried to steal donations to the town orphanage. Santa!Thorne visits the orphanage and finds out that evil germaphobic gajillionaire Mr. Frost wants to shut it down for some reason. Mila Kunis, one of the three kids still there, pimps out the Santa costume and they try to stop Mr. Frost and his evil henchmen. It turns out that in a vault in the catacombs of the orphanage, also the kid's clubhouse, there's a room full of electric crystals that are also bombs and Frost wants them. Thorne lightsaber fights Mr. Frost with them in the final battle. It's awful. Also, Thorne was an orphan there once and after the place gets blown up and the bad guys are defeated, they turn Frost's mansion into a new orphanage.

Aside from one scene about angels in a church and the obvious presence of a Santa costume, this movie really lacks Christmas. It also lacks any realistic characters, clever jokes, or good writing. But what it does have is a slow motion scene of Hulk Hogan drinking milk while "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" plays and it makes the whole thing worth it.

Here Adam has painstakingly captured the whole thing for you to save your time:

Quotes:
"I'm not gonna let this guy get away with Santa fraud."

"Santa, you sleigh me!"

"You're not really Santa Claus, are you?"
"No. I just thought I was for a while."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Not bad."

The Giant Spider Invasion [1975]

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

It has been a little while since we have watched a movie so universally disliked by everyone at Bad Movie Night. This movie wasn't like all the movies we had watched that were just painful; its only crime really was being dull. And the great boredom it instilled in all of us was not helped by the fact that Sarah had to leave in the middle for an emergency, meaning we had to struggle to fill her in on the plot when she got back.

There isn't really a plot so much as a bunch of subplots surrounding this one town. There's the Skipper from "Gilligan's Island" being the ditzy sheriff, two sisters: one drunk and married to an unfaithful redneck, some fire and brimstone preacher who everyone wants to shut up, and an astrophysicist and sexist guy from NASA who basically run around doing nothing while trying to figure out the source of the spider invasion and how to end it. From what little Sarah seemed to gather, the spiders came from a black hole (?!) and they need to overfeed and then blow up the head spider in order to end the invasion. Truthfully, the title is false advertising. We were expecting tons of giant spiders but really we got a bunch of regular-sized tarantulas, one medium-sized Halloween decoration, and one giant spider that seemed to be attached to the top of a car. The giant spider ate the redneck. It was the only satisfying part of the movie.

With a half hour left in the movie, we paused it for a wake-up intermission that consisted of Adam playing us disturbing commercials from the 1950s since this movie seemed like it should be from the 50s. They included a sexist Folgers one and a cereal commercial with a clown that Grandma liked but keep in mind this woman literally has a room in her house that is full of clowns. We decided this was way more fun than the movie so we watched the last half hour on 1.5 speed and then watched a bunch of offensive instructional videos from the 1950s including ones on women in the workplace (they're inherently detail-oriented, don't you know?), "How to Undress For Your Husband" (make it artful for both your husband and the guy peeking through your keyhole), and "Boys Beware! Homosexuals Are On The Prowl!" (the gay is a contagious mental disorder like smallpox and all men who talk to young boys want to rape and murder them). We learned a lot today.

Quotes:
"The only way I know you're still alive is when you flush the toilet."

"What did the preacher talk about?"
"Sin."
"What'd he say about it?"
"He was against it."

BMN Quote:
Video: "He told many off-color jokes."
Kay: "But they weren't considered racist because it was the 50s and racism was okay."
Adam: "So they were colored jokes?"
[insert everyone groaning and chastizing Adam]

Adam's Grandma's Review: "It's boring."

Thankskilling [2009]

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

"I'm sure we could make a better movie than this." - Kay

I don't think I even need to justify this movie with an introduction when I have the picture of the DVD cover to the left. Yes, the film literally opens on a boob. Yes, the phrase "gobble, gobble, motherfucker" is said by a turkey hand puppet. Yes, this movie is dreadfully self-aware about it being a joke, a fact we were not aware of because we only chose the movie based off the title. Here's the problem with movies like this: they bill them as so stupid they're funny but they are rarely actually funny. Movies that are actually so stupid they're funny usually aren't trying hard to be funny and lack self-awareness. Or they just are funny like "Inhuman Resources". Can we as a culture stop trying to make intentionally bad movies happen? They are polluting a world that already has organically bad movies that are so much more enjoyable.

After some boobs and an opening theme peppered with gobbling sounds, we are introduced to our "Cabin In The Woods"-textbook-perfect cast of stereotypes on their way home for Thanksgiving break: The Whore, The Athlete, The Scholar, The Fool (in this case a redneck), and The Virgin. One night they decide to camp in the woods and The Scholar warns them about an evil turkey that arises every 505 years to kill and they kind of laugh it off until a hermit validates their story. The Turkey, foul-mouthed, offering sex for rides, and killing people with shotguns, then goes around murdering their parents and screwing and killing The Whore. He also disguises himself as The Virgin's father by fashioning a skin mask. Remember that this is a regular-sized turkey hand puppet. Death to the suspension of disbelief. The turkey kills The Fool which prompts The Scholar who is only in the "cool group" by way of their friendship to have a long flashback montage of their good times with a stupid friendship song playing. Then The Fool and The Athlete get offed by a radioactive Turkey after they fail to kill him properly. The Virgin triumphs in the end with the help of the hermit and eats a radioactive, 505-year-old turkey leg in celebration. We all wonder how this movie was only an hour.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Kill as many turkeys as possible for the good of us all.

Quotes:
"I'm gonna drink your blood like cranberry sauce, bitch!"

[After a guy's parents are killed]
"Why? WHY? No pumpkin pie! No cranberry sauce! Just turkey!"

[End screen]
"To be continued . . . IN SPACE!"

There was also a song actually titled "Bad 80s Ballad."

Adam's Grandma's Review: She didn't really have one. She just let Adam apologize profusely to her.