Beowulf [2007]

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

Blame Kay for this one. The original goal of the evening had been to watch a wildly anti-Semetic Christian movie Sarah heard about on a podcast but, in the absense of the internet, Kay had another suggestion. The possibility of watching "Beowulf" had been a vague threat for years but with the fact that Kay is currently teaching the poem to a bunch of high school seniors it made perfect sense to suck it up and finally watch this beast. Before getting into the plot, it should be noted that one of the absolute worst things about this movie is apparent immediately and actually caused Sarah to stop watching this movie after five minutes when she tried to watch it a few years ago: this movie is animated and it looks terrible. All the characters are made to look like the actors but with dead eyes and a lack of expression. This movie lives in the uncanny valley. It was also clearly made to be 3D so random things are thrown at the screen constantly.

If you've read the poem before, think that times 100 Hollywoods. Hrothgar, king of the Danes, has a slight problem with an unholy demon named Grendel, played by a burnt Crispin Glover, who breaks into his mead hall and eats a bunch of his warriors. Thankfully, Beowulf, the awesomest guy ever oh my god, lives just across the way in Geatland and comes to his aid. He decides to fight Grendel barehanded (and naked for some reason) because GLORY. Unfreth, a hater played by the ultimate hater John Malkovich, is unconvinced. After offing Grendel and proving he's the real deal, Baewulf ventures into Grendel's lair to fight Grendel's mother who for some reason has been reimagined from a hag into a naked, gold-covered Angelina Jolie. They bang so he can make up for killing her son by giving her a new son and she promises a kingdom in return. The terms of the deal are a bit sketchy but he doesn't really think about it until Hrothgar falls comically to his death and he becomes the new king. A few decades later when Beowulf is older but still banging a teenager in addition to Hrothgar's former wife, a dragon attacks who was the result of him banging Grendel's mom. He kills it and dies in the process. Wiglaf, the loyalest bro in history, weeps. 

This movie was very obviously made in a post-"300" world. Beowulf says, "I am Beowulf" at least five times which lead all of us to an "I'm Spartacus!"-like frenzy. It's very silly and will make you cringe if you know the original but it's not without some enjoyable moments once you get past the early Playstation Two graphics and obvious 3D pandering moments.

BMN Quotes:
Unferth: "I don't like the smell of this, my lord."
Keith: "Something's rotten in Denmark."

Quotes:
*Hrothgar blatantly falls off the railing*
"He must have fallen!"

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

Spoon Rating: 4

Chopping Mall [1986]

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

There should have been a movie night on Halloween. There should have been a good movie night actually. Unfortunately, Sarah ended up in the hospital after an allergic reaction and Kay had the flu so no one was ready to party. At least we managed to pick up Bad Movie Night again the week after with "Chopping Mall," a clear winner from the title. In the same way that "The Skateboard Kid" epitomized the 90s aesthetic, this movie WAS the 80s. It was also a ripoff of "Dawn Of The Dead" and "Repo Cop" in the form of waist-high robot mall cops that are about as intimidating as a dalek wearing a flower crown.

A new mall, 80s church, has a great solution to the problem of shoplifters: a crew of robots that will stun anyone who doesn't flash a valid employee ID. There's no way this could go wrong, right? After hours, a quadruple date goes on that involves the three of the four established couples having sex in display beds while the two people on a blind date watched "Attack of the Crab Monsters." Since we have fairly recently watched "Attack of the Crab Monsters," we immediately predicted the rest of the movie to follow a similar pattern to that one. Somehow a thunder storm causes the robots to become killing machines and they go after the fornicators. The least likable couple dies first: dude gets his throat destroyed, girl gets her head blown up. Then comes the stupid couple. The survivors confuse the robots with mannequins but it doesn't solve everything. The married couple dies heroically since they weren't sinning as much. The final girl sets the last robot on fire and the bad movie watchers come out alive. As well they should.

Overall this movie is very silly and adheres very strictly to the three act formula but the actual worst thing about it: no chopping. None whatsoever. These robots shoot lasers and pinch but they don't ever chop. 

Spoon Rating: 3

Pumpkinhead [1988]

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

 

Tonight marked the epic return of Randy. Not Pumpkinhead. We've actually never watched it on Bad Movie Night before. But original BMN member, Randy, decided that if he was going to come back, he was going to need to bring something especially awful and he definitely succeeded. Directed by special effects master Stan Winston, this film had a guarantee of quality . . . in the field of special effects. The rubber suit was quality. The rest of the film was not. How this film became a cult classic that spawned many sequels (and a comic book?!) is kind of a mystery. Most of the time a good horror movie is made and then shoddy sequels follow. It should also be noted that Randy bought this movie at Walmart and that it was the "Special Collector's Edition." Why someone would want to collect a special edition of this movie is beyond any of our comprehensions.

In an American South filled with redneck gypsies and where the outside is very blue and the inside is very orange, there lives a man and his tiny son. The son gets killed in a tragic dirt bike accident and the father decides to foolishly take revenge on the yuppies who ran him over.He does this by visiting a scary demon in the words who tells him to dig up the grave of a slightly less scary demon that will take revenge for him. Some magic is done and now the fates of Pumpkinhead (the lesser demon) and the man are entwined. All this backstory feels like it takes up a full hour of the film. Pumpkinhead goes on a killing massacre of the yuppies that takes him through the hollowed out remains of a church ad up trees. There's a comical amount of head grabbing in this movie: from the dad grabbing his son's head, to the yuppie boys grabbing the yuppie girls' heads to try to comfort them, to Pumpkinhead grabbing heads as a means of stealing people (maybe he wants a normal one). Ultimately the man realizes that revenge is bad and allows himself to be killed so that Pumpkinhead can die as well. The end shows the demon lady burying the corpse of the man in Pumpkinhead's pedestal-shaped grave in the pumpkin patch, setting up for an infinite amount of sequels.

Quotes:

"We have to go back to look for Steve!"

"We don't know what's out there!"

"STEVE IS OUT THERE!"

Spoon Rating: 3.5

REWATCH: Death Bed: The Bed That Eats [1977]

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

We watched this classic, "Death Bed: The Bed That Eats," for the first time almost three years ago and we still can't seem to follow the back story of how this bed came to be evil. According to Wikipedia, most reliable of sources, "Long ago, a demon fell in love with a woman and conjured up a bed on which to make love to her. The woman died during the act, and, in his grief, the demon wept tears of blood which fell on the bed and caused it to come to life. While the demon rests, the bed's evil is contained, but once every ten years, the demon wakes, giving the bed the power to physically eat human beings." Okay. The bed also moans, eats, boozes up, and is best friends with a consumptive wall hostage from the 1800s who he spared from death so he could suffer eternally. The film is divided up into four parts: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Just Desserts, obviously. It is madness and worth every second of the hour and 17 minutes you will spend watching it. Read the original review here.

Also in the original review we tried to come up with as many death bed puns as possible. Because we did such a thorough job last time we only have a few more:

• Death Bed: Fitted For A King
• Death Bed: Bed, Death, and Beyond

"Death Bed: Making The Bed" is still a crowd favorite.

Quote (and new BMN motto): "You're nothing if you're not grotesque."

Spoon Rating: 7.5

REWATCH: Troll 2 [1990]

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

"Troll 2" is a masterpiece of bad movies. I can't even fully explain it all in a post. From the fact that there isn't a single troll in the movie, to the forced acting and extravagant overacting, to the odd script, to the weird fact that plants are evil, to the lack of ending and so much more, it's hard to pick a favorite thing.

Some things that happen:
* A kid hallucinates his dead grandpa who at one point appears in the mirror of his sister's room by accident.
* The sister's boyfriend is clearly banging his friends in a trailer after they stalked her on her family vacation.
* The family vacation her dad picked is to go to a town of 65 people and do a house exchange. The town is called Nilbog. Spell it backwards.
* The locals are not quirky. They are goblins in people suits.
* They also want you to eat their weird green food so you turn into a plant that they can eat.
* Speaking of: "They're eating her! . . . And then they're going to eat me! . . . OH MY GOOOOOOOODDD!"
* One of the boyfriend's friends gets defeated by a baloney sandwich given to him by Sherrif Gene Freak. Such a trustworthy name!
* Two of the friends end up in a church that is now the home of the Goblin Queen (way less awesome than the Goblin King, of course). She's melodramatic, some sort of fakey Druid, and uses a magic spell to get hot so she can seduce the third friend. They eat a corncob together and makeout in a sea of popcorn. This scene is never explained but it's very corny.
* At one point the kid pees all over goblin food to save his family and his dad lectures him about how he, "can't piss on hospitality!"
* The movie actually uses the line: "Only the power of goodness can destroy these monsters."
* But it doesn't totally work because the goblins also poisoned their food at their house and the mom turns into goblin food.
* Cliffhanger! 
* I don't think there's a "Troll 3."
* Were there actual trolls in "Troll"?

Other Quotes:
"You're human!"
"Very human. Wanna see?"

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Kinda good, kinda bad."

Spoon Rating: 8.5

Attack Of The Crab Monsters [1957]

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

Often movies in which something attacks are pretty straightforward. There are usually scientists of some sort alongside blue collar workers who notice something strange, that something strange is some kind of anomaly of nature, that strange thing goes on a rampage, and then the scientists kill the thing usually with fire or electricity. "Attack of the Crab Monsters" follows this formula pretty closely and was ultimately unexciting enough that we started watching it at 1.25x speed even though it was only a hour anyway but there were a few really unique parts to it:
* Part of the plot involves a ravine suddenly appearing where there was no ravine before. I can't be sure whether this had anything to do with the story in particular by the scientists talked about it a fair amount.
* Two guys play poker where they use sticks of dynamite as betting chips. They were smoking cigarettes the whole time.
* A guy loses his hand and somehow immediately dies from this.
* Whenever someone gets eaten by one of the giant crabs, they are absorbed into the crab collective hive mind and can somehow communicate telepathically with humans. They use this skill to lure the protagonists into their caves.
* The crabs have human eyes which are hilarious on the one hand and a horrifying abomination on the other hand.

BMN Quotes:
Adam: "He got crabs."
Sarah: "Usually a round of antibiotics will clear that up."

Spoon Rating: 3

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

Abunai Sisters [2009]

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

Boobs. And total nonsense. Mostly boobs though and the show wants you to know that.

Spoon Rating: 6

Adam's Grandma's Review: "That was cute."