Italian Spiderman [2007]

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

We try to avoid comedies. Mainly this is because if a movie falls under the blanket of "comedy" and "bad movie", that generally means that the movie simply fails as a comedy. Sure it might have some of the bad film making and script moments of fun bad movies but it is more often painful. We also try to avoid movies that are intentional parodies of bad movies because they are usually too self aware to be funny in the way that bad movies are. Here we have found an exception.

This is an Australian production that is a parody of bad foreign remakes of popular films and it's actually hilarious. It's Adam West's "Batman" meets James Bond starring Nacho Libre and set in Italy in the 60s. Nothing about it resembles "Spiderman" aside from the fact that the main character who has a weaponized moustache and mostly just goes around punching people has a spider on his shirt. Explaining the plot is ultimately useless because it's mostly nonesense but I can tell you some reasons to watch it. There's a surf contest with attack penguins. There's a guy who looks like young Weird Al who points at stuff in shock. There's all the coolness of the 60s mod vibe but everyone's a flailing idiot. Any, hey, t's less than 40 minutes of your life wasted if you don't have fun. But you probably will.

Quotes:
"Respect women!"
"Thank you, Italian Spiderman!"
"Shut your mouth, pussycat, and make me a macchiato, pronto!"

"I summon penguins!"

Spoon Rating: 9.

Adam's Grandma's Review: "That was better!"

Gayniggers From Outer Space [1992]

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

Kay is going on a trip to Copenhagen soon and has been on a streak of watching Danish movies in preparation (especially Danish movies that aren't by Lars Von Trier or Nicolas Winding Refn since she's seen most of those). So imagine the joy felt upon realizing that one of the movies Adam picked for the night is by a Danish director and even has a random advertisment for Carlsberg, "the best beer in the universe," before the title even shows! And with a title like "Gayniggers From Outer Space", we already knew there was no way this wasn't going to be . . . something.

Coming in at less than a half hour, there's not an overwhelming amount of plot to this movie. A bunch of black, gay aliens with punny names like General B. Dick from a planet of only black, gay aliens called planet Anus are traveling through space when they come across Earth, a planet that has women on it. They decide this is a problem so they go country by country, sending down a representative to eliminate all the women from each place (even though he usually only kills one or two), thereby freeing the men. Each primer on the countries is full of racial stereotypes and the men they beam down to are always being "oppressed" by the woman, usually by being made to do housework or something, and somehow they are all perfectly happy to live in a gay society. In the end, one of the aliens turns himself into a white dude to go down and be the ambassador to the newly women-free planet, which is also drenched in unfortunate implications really. 

This movie is sexist, racist, made with only the cheapest materials, with the laziest acting and special effects . . . and it's kinda funny. It's not a laugh-a-minute movie and you'll definitely raise your eyebrows before chuckling with a bit of shame but as long as you don't take it or yourself seriously, it's an amusing way to spend a half hour. 

Here are some things we learned:

Spoon Rating: 5.

Adam's Grandma's Review: "What's to think?"

Fire Maidens From Outer Space [1956]

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

Hey! Do you like fiercely patriarchal societies and nonsense science?Hm, you don't? But how about if they're IN SPACE? Yeah, I didn't think so. Unfortunately, even with such a promising title that immediately begs an answer to the question, "What exactly is a fire maiden," this movie failed to deliver in a lot of ways and felt much longer than its hour run time.

In a time period that is either some time in the future or the 1950s, a bunch of space-suitless scientists at desks have a very casual journey to one of Jupitar's moons where they had heard a rumor that life could be brewing there. Turns out the air is breathable, gravity is the same, space is loud, and all the space natives speak English. How conventient! The head scientist sees a woman in a very short skirt get attacked by a beast and then she takes him to her leader: the only man in the community. It turns out they, as well as the other 15 girls there, are descendents of survivors of Atlantis who had left Earth thinking that the entire planet was going to sink into nothing. Sure. Then the girl is given to the scientist as a wife-present. The leader wants to use the scientists to help kill the beast who is kind of keeping them captive and probably killed the rest of the society. They do. At one point the main girl is thought to be going against the community after she drugs the leader and they dance around her before a ritualistic burning that gets stopped by the scientists. This is the only explanation we have for, "what exactly is a fire maiden." With the beast gone, the scientists leave with the main girl but promise the other maidens that they will return . . . with HUSBANDS! It's all a girl wants, really.

This movie is sloppy in a way that is only funny in small isolated moments. Once you are done laughing about the chill scientists with their lack of science and the fact that the whole movie has a giant single spot of lighting right in the middle of the frame that shows they thought they didn't need a lighting person, the fun is pretty much over. Instead you're just left with questions like "why didn't the 16 girls overthrow their leader when they clearly could take him?" "how did one man-sized beast wipe out a whole civilization that probably knew a thing or two about weapons?" and "is there a way this movie could have included more fire to justify its title?" We were hoping the maidens might be on fire or have fire powers or even just worship a fire god (they seem to worship Aphrodite) but alas, no.

Quotes:
"We're here to explore, not to get involved in something we know nothing about."

"Hold your fire. We'll try to scare him away." [shoots gun]

"Beautiful! Gorgeous! A speciman that requires the most extensive research program!"

Spoon Rating: 2

Mac And Me [1988]

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

Have you ever watched "E.T." and thought to yourself, "This movie is good and all but it could really use more obvious product placement and even weirder looking aliens?" Enter "Mac And Me", a movie made six years after "E.T." that seems to have come into existence solely because Coke, Skittles, Sears, and McDonald's paid heaps of money to be prominently featured in it. Appropriately, mac and cheese was part of what we ate for dinner and we had a pre-movie feature from the 1960s about the dangers of marijuana and heroin. They really should have discussed the dangers of Coke because the aliens in this story are clearly addicted by the end of the film.

On another planet, a family of aliens who wiggle awkwardly and have circular mouths that never close find their way onto a NASA contraption and are brought to Earth. The littlest one gets separated from his parents and ends up going home with a family consisting of a mom who works at Sears, the nearly-mulleted older brother, and the younger brother in a wheelchair. For an unreasonable amount of time, the younger brother and their similarly-aged neighbor try to figure out what all the weird stuff going on in the house is caused by when they discover Mac (mysterious alien creature). During this time we learn that he's a destructive little shit who can shoot electricity from his hands but he does save the boy after his wheelchair goes rolling off a cliff, which he really should have died from. They discover that he only likes Coke and Skittles and they make it their mission to help him get back to his family. The boy dresses him like the world's most frightening teddy bear and takes him to McDonalds where there's a crazy synchronized dance party going down with Ronald McDonald. He leaves with his brother, the neighbor girl, and the girl's older sister and they find the alien family in a cave close to death. But what can they do to revive this alien species they know nothing about? Give them a Coke. Towards the end, the boy is injured trying to save them from the government agents who want them dead and it's clear the aliens will need to bring him back to life with their electricity hands. After so many stupid, cliche plot points, Kay announced, "If that boy walks, I do." Turns out, their magic alien powers can bring him back to life but not fix his paraplegia but the movie still ends with the insanity of the aliens taking their vows as American citizens. In the last shot, a cartoon bubble appears on the screen threatening, "We'll be back!" Mercifully, a sequel does not exist.

This movie is hilarious. The aliens are a constant source of unintentional humor, the product placement is so blatant that you can't help but laugh, there's incongruously upbeat music on occasion, the acting is weak, and the cliff fall scene I mentioned earlier is the height of accidental comedy. It was similar in feel to "To Catch A Yeti" but while we did laugh a lot, we weren't quite in the gasping-for-air hysterics that we were in with that movie. Still, for bad movie watchers, this one should be a requirement.

Quotes:
"Isn't he too old for a teddy?"
"He's from Illinois."

[one Sears employee to another]
"How long have you been in lingerie?"

Spoon Rating: 8

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I liked it. I think it was a 9."

Megaforce [1982]

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

Apparently, "Delta Force" may have been something of a rip-off of this movie, one that was much more of a failure: "Megaforce." Megaforce itself is a secret, elite military force that tries to go around covertly solving the world's problems with the latest in technology. It is also one of the most unintentionally funny movies we've seen in a while.Unfortunately, Sarah could not join us so we had to try really hard to figure out the plot on our own which was difficult because while most of the movie was weird and funny, the plot was explained in large, boring chunks that none of us could be bothered to listen to.

We follow an old British man and his young female companion to the middle of nowhere where they encounter a dumb cowboy who is part of Megaforce. The Brit and the lady are both in the military of some country and are there to assist(?) with some sort of conflict that we thought was on the US/Mexican border but actually takes place in two fictional countries. We also weren't sure if it was the future but one of the quotes below made it clear that it was still the 80s (of some decade). The head of Megaforce is Commander Hunter, a man of eternal headbandedness and jaunty poses who has a romance with the female major that is mostly based on him questioning her competence and ultimately not letting her participate in the campaign because she's an outsider. There are some lengthy explanations of the attack Megaforce plans to lead, some long sequences of "futuristic" motorcycles that have guns on them, and a few scenes involving the team themselves who are mostly made up of slight racial stereotypes. In a sea of very shiny, half-zipped jumpsuits, Megaforce leads some very unexciting attacks on the bad guy who looks like a white Kanye and is an old friend of Hunter. All this fighting eventually leads to the highlight of the movie: a scene where Hunter flies his motorcycle onto a plane using the cheapest effects available in the 80s. We laughed throughout the entire thing.

"Megaforce" is a solid display of the best things about dumb 80s action movies and is already on our rewatch list. Although there were some very dry scenes of explanation and somehow even drier scenes of action, there's enough crazy in between to make it well worth the journey. At least now we know when it's safe to take bathroom breaks.

Quotes:
"That's totally inapplicable to anything going on here."

[repeated line]
"I want to remind you that the good guys always win . . . even in the 80s!"

Spoon Rating: 8.

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I liked the end part."

REWATCH: Robot Monster [1953]

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Kay could not make it to Bad Movie Night because of a snowstorm so the rest of the crew rewatched the absolutely wonderful "Robot Monster." But because Kay is the one who writes this blog, there's nothing more that can be said. Feel free and encouraged to read the review of "Robot Monster" from the first time we saw it.

Spoon Rating: 10

Samurai Chicks [2004]

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

I don't think we've ever watched a bad foreign film that wasn't dubbed before. "Don't Torture A Duckling" was an Italian movie that was clearly originally in Italian and then dubbed and "The Seven Magnificent Gladiators" was an Italian production that was, I think, always meant to be in English (also, at the time it was made, all Italian films were dubbed for cost reasons). This movie, though, marks our first subtitled bad movie which does lead to questions like, "Do we not understand the plot because the subs are bad?" Luckily, Kay minored in Japanese and can vouch for the fact that, no, the subtitles are not the problem. It's the movie.

After a particularly dynamic opening in which four teenage girls attack some suited dudes with a suitcase, at one point using what can only be described as a literal "booby trap" in the form of a bra insert that releases gas, we get what passes for a backstory. Our main character of the four girls, Yuki, talks about how she went to a dance school on the southern island she's from where she and her three comrades were drafted for the elite program. The program consisted of learning to fight and read coded messages in the dances of a popstar named Cocoe in order to ultimately bring down the "government" and maintain the "independence of the kingdom". We never get any real detail into this political conflict aside from what we can infer. It's not clear whether this is a futuristic dystopia or an alternate history. There might even be some kind of small reference to the poor treatment of Koreans living in Japan by the Japanese but that could be reading too much into it. Either way, Yuki's motivations for becoming part of the resistance seem to be that she was born during a riot and her mom was killed by a falling bolt from a military plane (which she dug out of her mom's skull and wears around her neck). During a series of missions, all of Yuki's comrades die, she is saved by the humorously floating ghost of her mom, and her former neighbor who's protecting her also dies. She finds out everyone at the dance school was captured and she goes to where they're held, managing only to save Cocoe who she sends floating away down the river while she fights, presumably to her death.

Amid fight scenes and dance scenes, there is some weirdness to be had here. Occasionally there are really rapid camera movements that Adam pointed out, "would be scary if this was a David Lynch movie but they're just funny here." Also, at one point a duck is swimming down the river and it turns out to be a guy in scuba gear with a duck on his head. It is nuts.

Spoon Rating: 6.

Adam's Grandma's Review: "I liked the dancing."