Masters Of The Universe [1987]

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

So, it's no secret that Dolph Lundgren is very well liked among the members of the Bad Movie Night crew. We ended one night by watching this video of him and if you don't happen to think he is awesome, I advise you to read through his IMDb biography or his Wikipedia page and then report back to me. Because of this, it made a lot of sense for us to watch "Masters Of The Universe", one of his earlier films and a live action adaption of "He-Man" which sounds like a terrible enough idea without even knowing any of the details. "He-Man", for those who don't know, is a totally ridiculous superhero/fantasy cartoon where the main character wears barely any clothes and that is mostly known now for its homosexual undertones. Our expectations were high.

Unfortunately, this movie, while kind of campy, was really bogged down by one of the worst scripts we've encountered in a while. The movie pretty much starts with no introduction. Things start happening right away with no reason as if you are already thirty minutes into. Skeletor, the bad guy, has kidnapped Sorceress, a good guy, to steal her power and He-Man and his two friends need to save her. Instead, for some reason, they instead end up meeting this dwarf whose name changes depending on who's saying it (Squirldor? Grimdor? Mordor?) who has made a magic key that can get you into anywhere. Skeletor wants that key but they end up using it to transport them to the modern world for some contrived reason. In the real world, the four of them meet Courtney Cox and her boyfriend, not-Benedict Cumberbatch, and the humans essentially make things difficult for the heroes when Skeletor comes to town. At one point Skeletor captures He-Man and whips him and we finally got some of the kinky, gay content we were hoping for but most of the time we were just really confused about what was going on and why anything was happening.

Skeletor was fairly campy and Dolph Lundgren was actually unusually inarticulate but overall this movie really didn't have the comedy we were looking for. The script was nonsensical and alienating for anyone who didn't know the He-Man story while also clearly not delivering for any fans who may watch it. The idea of going into the modern world was particularly silly and overplayed and the movie didn't even give us any memorable quotes worth noting. Also, isn't He-Man supposed to be the leader? The movie really didn't put the kind of emphasis on him that it probably should have. It was kind of easy to forget he was there aside from him being half naked and greasy (which has its merits but still). By the power of Greyskull, just don't bother.

Spoon Rating: 2.

REWATCH: To Catch A Yeti (1993)

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

While Kay was still overseas, the rest of the Bad Movie Crew did a rewatch of "To Catch A Yeti" since Adam's nieces came over. When asked what they thought of the movie, Adam said, "They were afraid of Meatloaf." This seems reasonable since, after all, Meatloaf really was the scariest, most peculiar thing about that movie. I mean, there wasn't anything else about that movie that really reached such astronomical levels of uncanniness and unrealisticness and just genuine nightmare fuel as Meatloaf's performance as a yeti hunter who is very oh-god-call-the-police in his interactions with the children in the movie. What could possibly top that in terms of things likely to disturb children . . .

Right. Click here to see the original write-up.

REWATCH: Birdemic: Shock And Terror [2008]

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

Since Kay, me, the writer of this blog, is overseas right now, it seemed that I would be unable to make updates regarding the state of Bad Movie Night. However, Sarah, always more vigilant than the rest of us, sent me an email about last Monday that was titled, "Guess What We Watched" and contained these two pictures:

Perfect. If you want to read an actual review of the movie click here.

Raw Justice [1994]

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

There is a definite formula for a bad 90s action movie and the more you adhere to the formula, the more generic your movie becomes but at least you can guarantee badness. If "Raw Justice" wasn't a generic enough title for you apparently this film is also known as "Good Cop, Bad Cop" or "Strip Girl". Those other two titles don't make much sense by the way. The main character is a bounty hunter, not a cop and while at one point there is a good cop and a bad cop, the good cop dies pretty quickly after choosing the side of good. "Strip Girl" is even more confusing since the one woman in the movie, Pamela Anderson, is not a stripper and isn't on a strip but is a prostitute who was forced into hooking by her drug addict ex. And she is barely a main character and doesn't spend the movie wearing anything resembling the outfit on the cover.

A bounty hunter/former cop whose behavior is punctuated by the "Born To Be Bad" riff, finds out that his ex, the mayor's daughter, was murdered and decides to find out who did it. He ends up running around with the prime suspect, the dude from "Airplane!" who had gone on a date with the girl the night she was killed, and a hooker whose clothing the bounty hunter had stolen the night before. It turns out the murder had been a joint effort of the deputy mayor and a crooked cop because the mayor's daughter was going to publish a tell-all book. The deputy mayor then steals the unpublished book, adds in a section accusing the mayor of incest, and uses it as blackmail to get him to not run for mayor again. Needlessly complicated plan? Oh yeah. Bounty hunter saves the day. "Airplane!" guy and hooker leave town to start over somewhere else.

As with any movie like this, it had some laughs and lots of cliches which is why it's so hard to write any more about it. For the next three Mondays, Kay will be overseas so updates will commence when she returns. It's likely there will be a lot of rewatching.

Quotes:
[guy wakes up to a bunch of people pointing guns at him]
"Is this one of those Japanese game shows or something?"

"Don't ever call me a son of a bitch!"
"Why?"
"Because I love my mother."

Spoon Rating: 5

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

Ben And Arthur [2002]

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

Knowing our and every bad movie enthusiast's passion for Tommy Wiseau's 2003 classic "The Room", it is difficult, impossible even, to resist the allure of a movie that Adam referred to simply as "The Gay Room" before specifing that the characters, not the room itself, were gay. From the opening credits we were struck by the fact that the technical quality was not up to "The Room"'s standards and clearly didn't have "The Room"'s confusing $6 million dollar budget but that pretty much every componant of the movie including directing, writing, producing, and acting included Sam Mraovich or someone with the same last name. This is the most personal of personal stories.

Ben and Arthur have been together three years and want to get married in Hawaii where gay marriage has just been legalized. However, before they can the law is overtured and Arthur finds out that Ben has been married to a woman for the past five years and she refuses to get a divorce. In spite of this, Ben and Arthur get married in Vermont (which is apparently full of palm trees, a fact this room full of New Englanders could not stop laughing about). The wife tries to kill Ben and he takes the gun and everything is fine. Meanwhile, after some minor subplot involving Ben and Arthur quitting their terrible restaurant jobs to get better jobs as a nurse and sex shop owner respectively, Arthur tries to get on better terms with his crazy religious brother Victor who thinks being gay is a sin in spite of the fact that he pings all the gaydars himself. Victor hires an investigator in a subplot that goes nowhere and then murders Ben and Arthur's lawyer who was trying to get their marriage recognized in the state of California. After a dinner of poptarts at Victor's that was supposed to be a truce, Victor somehow manages to get even crazier, leaving a "holy water recipe" on their door and then deciding to kill them after learning that the church is kicking him out for his gayness by association. Arthur meanwhile goes to the priest who kicked out his brother and set him on fire, proving that while gayness may not run in the family, insanity sure does. The final showdown happens when Victor goes to Ben and Arthur's apartment, kills Ben, and then drugs Arthur so he can baptise him in the bathtub. Arthur wakes up, grabs Ben's wife's gun, hits on his brother in the creepiest turn of events, and then both end up killing each other. Roll credits with "Pachelbel's Canon" playing you out.

This movie is a mess in every wonderful sense. The acting is weak and campy, the dialogue is mostly odd or full of unnessecary swearing fits, it's full of plot holes, every character is reprehensible to varying degrees, the whole premise is over-the-top and kind of offensive to both gay people and religious people, and it's just so, so low budget. The church was one of our favorite set pieces including a bad painting of Jesus tacked to the wall, a cardboard cross illuminated by a flashlight, and walls that didn't even connect in the corners. At one point the bed in Ben and Arthur's apartment had a different comforter every time it cut back, totaling three linen changes in one night. And Keith definitely saw a mic in the corner of a shot. Does it live up to the title of "The Gay Room"? We were all in agreement that there were enough similarities to justify the title and it's definitely a worthwhile watch.

Quotes:
Victor: "My brother is planning on marrying a man. I need to know his next move."
Detective: "I think what you're doing is morally wrong."

(to her husband) "Remember me?"

Spoon Rating: 8.5

Adam's Grandma's Review: "That was pretty good."

A Talking Cat!?! [2013]

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

I'm pretty sure there is no way to read the title of this movie without sounding goofy. Perhaps appropriately for the family fun we were about to endure, we started off our evening with a pre-show of an old training video for Game Crazy where a white lady named Zelda Scott utilized all the hip slang of the early 00s. It was deeply awkward, as was the entirity of our feature presentation that followed. The film was directed by a guy  who has made a lot of movies but seems to split is time between family films and horror films, all shot in the same location with similar looking actors, and all of them seeming to suggest that perhaps this man missed his calling as a porn director because that's really the kind of quality and vibe we're dealing with. It seems likely that we will watch another of his films in the future.

In a land of totally indeterminate geography (there are frequent establishing shots that contradictorarily suggest we are in the mountains, at the beach, near a lake, near a river, and in both tropical and temperate climates), a seemingly homosexual dad and son live in their fancy but tackily decorated mansion. The dad is a retired computer mogul and the son is trying to impress the popular girl. In another house nearby with confusing family dynamics, a mom who is trying to make ends meet lives with her app programer daughter who has dreams of getting rich off her product and her son who thinks he's no good at anything. For some reason the mom discourages the daughter from going to college and encourages the son to do things that he is unsure about while not acknowledging the skills he has. In the area, a cat, who is Eric Roberts recording dialogue in 15 minutes, wanders between these people, giving each a piece of advice because he can only speak to each person once. This interferance leads to the dad meeting the mom, the daughter meeting the dad who ends up wanting to help her develop her app, and the sons meeting and confusingly not falling in love even though they have a lot of chemistry and go swimming together. Seriously, the pool scenes were a gay porno waiting to happen and we were all kind of sad when they instead had the son sort of get together with the popular girl. After, the cat gets hit by a car and they need to find his magic collar to save him. So they do. And everyone's happy expect the son who thinks he isn't good at anything because his boyfriend got stolen by the chick who hates books. Lame.

This movie is hilarious. Aside from the aforementioned establishing shots, the awkward acting, and the thin premise, there's even more low quality fun to be had. The laser pointer that was used to direct the cat is visible in multiple shots and the animation to make the cat talk is pre-"Jingle Cats" quality with its mouth looking like a black void. The music is all public domain, mostly "La Cucaracha", and made with a Casio keyboard that involved liberal use of the slide whistle, Adam's most hated instrument. The app the girl creates involves scanning all your clothes so it can customize outfits which is not a bad idea although Cher Horowitz had the same program in "Clueless" in 1995 and the "scanner" is actually just a booklight. Also, check out this sweet cat torniquet and note that this is not the same cat on the movie poster above:

Quotes:
"I'm such a good friend."

"Is she in trouble?"
"Yes."
"Sweet."

Spoon Rating: 8

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

The Humanoid [1979]

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

Last week we watched a movie that was a parody of crappy Italian remakes of popular movies. Today, we watched an actual crappy Italian remake of "Star Wars" made only two years after "A New Hope" was released. While the plot has relatively little to do with "Star Wars", the visuals and costuming copies are so blatant, legal action really could have been taken. It features a cast of no ones, but it does have a really tall guy who played a James Bond villain in "Moonraker" and the music was composed by Ennio Morricone, most well known for his work with Sergio Leone and often featured in Tarantino films, who probably had a weekend to spare to throw together some incongruously happy synth scores for the fight scenes.

Sarah was not around to explain the plot and the Wikipedia page has nothing in the way of a summary so here's my best shot at explaining. Darth Helmet, actually named Graal which sounds like a really lazy D&D name, and an evil scientist turn a really tall rouge pilot into humanoid with intentions of creating ana army of humanoids. A humanoid as far as we can tell is a super strong and nigh invulnerable being that just wants to kill for its master. Meanwhile, Darth Helmet's girlfriend, Helmet Hair, is bleeding young girls to stay young looking like she's Countess Bathroy but this has relatively little to do with the main plot. The humanoid abandons his robot dog and walks around Tatooine, eventually stumbling upon a teacher and her genius child student who has his own cult. They teach him about the meaning of friendship so he won't kill them. Then they team up with the good guys to try to stop the bad guys. Everything works out. The genius kid joins his cult members on another plane or something and the teacher, pilot, and "hero" settle down in a triad relationship with their Robodog. Probably.

The plot is conventional and sloppy, the acting of the so-called hero is at least two Kevin Costners on the wooden scale, footage is reused with reckless abandon, and a lot of the dialogue is just silly but nothing can really top all the obvious "Star Wars" thief. The titles use the same opening crawl, the first shot is a direct replication, the pilot's ship looks like a lazy attempt at a Millenium Falcon, it takes place heavily on a desert planet, and the costumes are just copies of "Star Wars" costumes made more ridiculous. The villain wears a huge black helmet with leather straps over his face like an S&M interpertation of Rick Moranis in "Spaceballs", the villains look like World War II generals in black, and the good guys wear flight suits and interpertations of martial arts uniforms. You're probably just better off watching a "Star Wars" movie. Unless it's the prequels. Then maybe, you should watch this and laugh.

Quotes:
"We are approaching gravity."

"Kid, you gotta be outta your gravity zone."

"Well I'll be disintigrated!"

"Nothing can stop me now, princely hero!"

Spoon Rating: 7.5

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