Blood Freak [1972]

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

Christian horror is apparently a thing but it's hard to find the difference between this movie and you typical 70s horror a la Grindhouse. Although there is a religious character who ultimately plays a role in the first and final act, all the Jesus is pushed aside for gory violence. It's a little hard to get the Christian message when you are distracted by fake blood and paper-mache bird heads but I guess they tried. If nothing else this movie managed to earn itself an X rating for violence although X ratings were a lot easier to come by in the 70s than they are nowadays where everyone is desensitized and I think that rating is only used for actual porn. 

In spite of the poster saying this is like a Dracula movie, it's actually closer to the painfully dumb Thankskilling. A biker named Herschell helps a girl, Angel, with a flat tire and she brings him to a drug den where her sister, Anne, is a user. Angel isn't though. Angel is a Christian in the shortest of shorts and she's here to try to reason with the druggies about turning to God. Herschell is indifferent about both the drugs and the God but is soon taken in by Anne and her cartoon character makeup. She convinces him to try some drugs and what follows is a sex scene that reminded us a lot of Samurai Cop. The girls' father asks Herschell to help out on his turkey farm and the scientists there offer him money and drugs to taste test a chemically enhanced turkey. Herschell accepts, eats it, seizures, and then emerges from his fit with the head of a turkey and a lust for druggie blood. Anne is relatively unconcerned about her boyfriend's new turkey head. Herschell writes her some letters and then goes out killing. At first it seems like he's only killing young, attractive druggies but then we realized they they're in Florida so he can afford to be picky. Some rando tries to rape Anne so Turkey!Herschell cuts off his leg and drinks his blood too. Finally Herschell is tracked down and his head is chopped off which leads to cut scenes of an actual decapitated turkey. This was easily the most traumatizing part of the movie. Then Herschell wakes up. It was all a dream and he's ready to give up drugs and accept God. Also, throughout the film, there is narration by the director who is constantly smoking and blatantly looking down at a script in front of him. He is the best character.

This movie is incompetent. The sound is so bad we had it at maximum volume and still struggled a lot to hear the dialogue, the lighting was often too dark to be sure what's going on, the camera was never steady, and, again, paper-mache turkey head that seemed to be lined with a feather boa. It was the Zaat-level of monster quality. There were some overly long scenes that didn't keep our interest but there were also a few moments when we laughed out loud at the bad effects. You could often see the tubing used to spray blood out of the victims. And the turkey head. Can't mention the turkey head enough. On the plus side, the DVD had a bunch of trailers for other 70s horror movies so you may soon being seeing posts about The Blood-Splattered Bride or Night Of The Bloody Apes.

BMN Quotes (about the main character's name):
Adam: Herschell wants to do your taxes.
Kay: Herschell is going to help you sue your neighbor.
Adam: Herschell really understands the metric system.
Kay: Herschell wants to sell you a gently used Toyota. Herschell goes golfing on the weekends and might get wild by having a beer with lunch.

Quotes (that sounds like a come-on):
"I need a husky man like you to help on my poultry farm."

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

Spoon Rating: 4

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 [2004]

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

We have delved into the genre of family friendly films but it's been a little while since Theodore Rex and even longer since Undercover Blues. I think in those few family-free months we had forgotten how utterly insufferable family films can be. They are the essence of the idea that a compromise leaves everyone unhappy. Who really is the demographic for a film like this? Babies, while apparently psychologically intrigued by seeing their own faces, have no need for a plot. Children are often looking towards teen or adult figures who have more freedom and opportunity for adventure (which is why many people see Star Wars for the first time when they are 6-8 years old). Teens are well beyond caring about anything like this. Similar to teens, childless adults can only be unnerved by the uncanny valley babies talking, annoyed by the childish hijinks, and unfocused because there are no jokes or plot complexity to appeal to someone whose age is in the double digits. Adults with kids only really care about the cuteness of their own kids and not some random other babies. This live action cartoon movie is for no one.

In the world of the movie, baby babble is actually a fully developed language and some babies are actually geniuses who have complex conversations in this language, in spite of all lingustic logic which indicates that baby babble is the first stage of developing a real language. Instead of doing something fairly easy and not aesthetically strange like subtitling real babies speaking, they decided to dub the babies in English with creepy CGI lip movements. Knowing this bit of body horror, does the plot really matter? Well, a legendary figure known as the Big Kahuna, who is a 70-year-old genetically superior guy stuck with the body and interests of an eight-year-old, comes to town to try to stop a television executive (I think) who is manipulating people through a children's program. I can't really be more specific than that because everything that happens is just nonsense. Jon Voight is a Nazi with a terrible German accent. Scott Baio apparently got a paycheck. Big Kahuna lives in a Willy Wonka room that's made of toys instead of candy. He also floats and backflips a lot. An orphaned teen boy works for him and has a romance with the teen babysitter. The babies are not actually babies but two year olds who somehow haven't learn to speak yet. They also get transformed into superheroes at random times. Things happen and it's awful. At the end the teen boy's mom came back and somehow all of us expect Sarah missed the point that he was orphaned so we woke her up to explain how this was a conclusion to a dangling plot point.

I recommend this movie to people who really like to suffer and not in the glamorous existential way.

Quotes:
"I am too many and two powerful."

[on inspection of Big Kahuna's room]
"A little candy cane for my tastes but then I'm an adult."

Baby Bottle Rating: 2

The Incredible Melting Man [1977]

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

This movie was not without its amusing moments but the plot was so dry (unlike its main character who is quite slick), I immediately took to Wikipedia before writing this post to see if there was anything of interest. It turns out this film was originally supposed to be a horror comedy but at the last second they decided to go straight up horror and oh boy, does the movie suffer for it. 

Three astronauts go on a mission to Saturn and two are burned up while the third is just severely burned. At no point do we get any explanation as to how the ship makes it back to Earth but he's here now and he's mostly okay . . . until he wakes up, rips off his bandages, and freaks out at the sight that is. He goes on a killing spree while slowly losing a lot of gooey mucus and the occasional body part. He takes out a nurse, a fisherman, an older couple who stopped to steal some lemons, and, tangentally, unintentionally stops a sexual assault. He's basically a zombie who needs to feed in order to sustain life. There's a whole main plot surrounding the melting man's scientist friend who is incapable of showing sincere emotions and some truely irrelevant subplot going on regarding his wife's propensity for miscarriages. The scientist tries to track down his drippy friend and manages to prove that Melt Man still has some human in him before the scientist is gunned down by incompetent police. After lots of hardcore melting action and apparently not enough manflesh, Melty goes into an alley and reaches his inevitable state of sticky puddle. A janitor cleans him up off the street but will never clean up our souls after seeing this.

This movie is just weak. It was not without its funny moments, mostly to be found in curious facial expressions and lines, but overall the weak plot and slow pace mostly just makes you want to put Dissolving Dude under a heat lamp to speed up the process.

Quotes: "He seems to be getting stronger as he melts!"

Spoon Rating: 3

Singham [2011]

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

It's been a long time since I made a post. it's not that we haven't been doing Bad Movie Night the last two weeks but the two movies we watched I have nothing more to say about: "Saving Christmas" and "Birdemic." Two classics I have talked about enough. However, this week we are back to watching things we've never seen before and we came back with a bang. Literally. I wouldn't even call this movie bad. It's like "Inhuman Resources" which we all loved so much: it's a movie that knows what it wants to be and is well aware of its ridiculousness and doesn't care. This movie knows no boundaries. On a scale of one to ten it is pretty much always operating at an eleven and never drops below a nine. After this, it's pretty much a gurantee that there will be more Bollywood movies at bad movie night because it was so damn fun. None of us had even seen a Bollywood action movie before (Indian movies in general, yes, but not like this) and Adam described it well with, "This is like old school Hollywood. You're here for a show and godamnit we're going to entertain you."

In a rapid prologue of Dutch angles and flashbacks we get the story of a Goa city cop named Rakesh Kadem who killed himself after being framed by the city's top gangster, Jaikart Shikre, who has the whole police force bending to his whim. Kadem's widow knows he only killed himself because of the pressure but on him by Shikre and wants to clear his name of corruption charges.

Suddenly, the story changes entirely as a man emerges from a giant pool as if summed by the gods and we are treated to the first of three musical numbers. With lyrics saying, "The heart races. The body trembles when you know he's coming. Singham!" you know what's up. Singham is a cop, the perfect cop actually (Indian Chuck Norris, really), in a small town outside of Goa. Everyone loves him. He literally sends men flying up into the air by tapping them on the head. Cars flip over in his presence. He's basically the Jesus of fist fighting who ends his battles by whipping his opponents with his belt. Among this mad display of manliness we are treated to a silly comedic side story about how his friend's daughter falls in love with him and pretty much demands marriage. We get another musical interlude. He says he loves her so I guess they're engaged. 

Everything is swell until Shikre is given conditional bail and must travel to Singham's village every day to sign in. Initially he sends some goons but Singham is not having it and embarrasses Shikre into complying. Shikre gets revenge by having Singham transfered to Goa where he can make his life hell with the goal of driving him to suicide as well. Singham is frustrated with the state of Goa and how none of the other cops will help him try to take down Shikre because they're all afraid of him. Singham almost gives up and goes home. There's another song break between Singham and his girlfriend.

He is inspired then to try to turn everything around after meeting Kadem's widow and remembering the true meaning of taking down the bad guy. He arrests Shikre's top lieutenant by framing him but Shikre gets revenge by kidnapping Singham's girlfriend's sister. Then Singham decides to beat up more bad guys in public and give rousing speeches to the police officiers about their duties. They agree to band together to take down Shikre. Which they do. By killing him. And making it look like a suicide. No chill. And Kadem gets cleared of all charges and his widow is personally apologized to by her husband's coworkers. 

Explaining the plot of this movie does little to get to the meat of why this movie is such an experience. It's so hard to describe the most over the top fight scenes you will ever witness juxtaposed with essentially pop music videos (which you can watch on YouTube by the way). And the sound effects! Sound effects dissimilar from any you have heard in the known world! Oh, and every time Singham is being really badass, his theme plays. Or at least the part that says his name. And we will be singing it for all eternity.

SINGHAM!

BMN Quotes:
Adam: "This is the film equivalent of an eight minute Metallica solo."
Kay: "This is the film equivalent of pounding Red Bull."
Adam: "This is the Dragonforce of cinema."

Spoon Rating: 9

Pass Thru [2016]

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

In the last review of a Neil Breen movie, "I Am Here.... Now," Neil played an alien assessing the humans to seem if they were worth keeping around and decided to give them one more chance. Apparently, he changed his mind. Also, my assessment that this movie would improve upon the Breen formula was wrong as "Fateful Findings" is definitely still his best film, but this movie definitely helped us to come to an understanding of why. "Fateful Findings" has the most straightforward story while still being full of weird moments and deviations from the main story. It's Breen's "Mulholland Drive." His latest film "Pass Thru" is more like his "Inland Empire": It seems to have a plot but there are so many thrown in scenes that don't show a definite order that you have to piece together the background and why on your own.

Neil Breen, out of work bridge troll, plays "artificial intelligence from the future" who is currently slumming it in the desert, living in a shanty trailer and truck, and shooting up heroin when he isn't communicating with rock paintings and hanging out with a poorly CGI-ed tiger. Also in the desert are a bunch of immigrants with American accents who got mixed up in the heroin trade which is specifically given out to people like "the bankers," "the pimps," "the government officials," and "the CEO" (just the one). Neil lets one immigrant and her niece live in his dirty trailer and they all have some wacky hijinks that mostly involve throwing things. After a while, Neil decides he's going to do something about this messed up planet and decides to "disappear" anyone who has every harmed another. Ignoring the fact that this includes everyone, he first disappears the evil drug trade people and frees the American immigrants. Then he goes to a fancy party at a green screen mansion and kills everyone's vibe before blowing up the mansion in a beautifully crap CGI effect. His final act is to disappear the newscasters reporting on the disappearances and then to give an endless broadcast about what has been done, proving the Neil really should be on late night cable more than a film screen. In a really minor subplot, a bunch of kids who are into astronomy bring their scientist friend into the desert to look at some space phenomenon that clearly has to do with Neil's character but we aren't totally sure how. The film ends with Neil and the aunt walking through a sea of dead bodies which are actually just the same ten people duplicated over and over again.

This film hits a lot of the Breen standards, but it makes us a little worried that he's running out of ideas. Premise wise, this movie is quite similar to "I Am Here.... Now," but at least it still contains the expected weird dialogue, reused footage from different angles, bad acting, and nonsensical plot. In addition, this is truly some of the finest poor CGI we have ever seen.

Quotes:

Newscaster: "It's as if all the harmful people on the earth are disappearing!"

Rich Lady: "They don't need to know why or any reason."

Spoon Rating: 7.

The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah [2015]

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

Two households both alike in dignity, in fair South Dakota where we lay our scene, from ancient grudge break to new community, where everyone loves Jesus now so our sins are washed clean. 

Yes. It has finally happened. After weeks of trying to find it online, attempts to order it directly from the website it's sold on and finding that none of the links actually worked, and then finally setting on a fairly reasonable price on eBay, we have gotten it: "The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah." And this movie delivered. It was one of those perfectly bad movies where the production value is not terrible but still makes it look like a home movie with a decent camera, the acting is bad but the actors are really trying, and the script is just insane while trying to be as earnest as possible. Truely these are the elements of the best kind of bad movie: the movie that tries so, so hard to be good, but is off in every way. With this one you can also throw in a hefty dose of preachiness and anti-Semitism to really round out the film. Talking about it won't do it justice but here it goes.

A conservative Jewish stereotype dad takes a college professor job in South Dakota where his family must live next to his very Christian boss and his family. They both have sons (Abraham and Paul) of about the same age who love Tim Tebow and Harry Potter and they become friends. The Jewish father gives his son books on the Holocaust and talks to him about preparing for his Bar Mitzvah. The Christian father gives his son books about Jews who love Jesus and talks to him about doing missionary work in his own backyard *hint, hint*. After some brief discussion about Jesus with his friend, Abe states having dreams where Jesus essentially tells him that he needs to accept him as his savior and that Harry Potter is evil. He has three dreams that are shot in the exact same way as he discusses them with Paul and a neighborhood girl, Sarah. He also speaks in tongues. Paul starts wondering if his father's "Harry Potter is okay and speaking in tongues is weird" stance is backwards and he and Sarah go to research more conservative churches. Meanwhile, Abe talks to God. Seriously. We didn't think the movie would go there but it did. 

Abe decides to tell his father that he has accepted Jesus in one of the best scenes in film history. The father asks if it's a girl that has his mind occupied. He says it's a guy and the father has a gay scare. Then Abe clarifies that the guy is question is actually Jesus and his dad responds by tearing his shirt open and growling.

Abe's father sends him off to New York to be with his uncle and be in a more Jewish friendly environment in hopes that it will cure him of Jesus fever. Instead Abe drives away a rabbi, a "deprogramer," and heals his cousin's multiple sclerosis. They all convert to Abe's "Jew but with Jesus" ideology. Why anyone is still worshipping Jesus at this point when Abe is clearly the messiah is beyond me.

Abe's father and Christian dad argue about religion where Christian dad actually compares not believing Jesus is the messiah to not believing that the Holocaust happened as if one of these things is not 100% provable while the other is pure faith. Abe comes home having converted everyone and his mom and dad decide to read some literature about Jesus to try to understand their son. They walk away converts. Also, Paul convinces his dad to follow a stricter idea of the Bible. Now everyone loves Jesus and hates fun. Let's go to a Messianic church together! Also, Abe's cousin is here and being shipped with Paul! And Abe and Sarah are also being shipped because of their names! Ignore that it's creepy for parents to play matchmaker with their 12-year-olds! And let's have a bar mitzvah for everyone! "Hava Naglia" plays on repeat for eternity. We wonder why it took us three hours to watch a two hour movie and then realized it was because we stopped it so often to laugh or discuss the movie's various inaccuracies about Jewish people. If that isn't a sign of this movie's quality, then I guess you'll just have to pray to Yeshua for answers and hope he brought his megaphone to answer you with.

Quotes:
"It only takes one bad egg to ruin the egg salad."

"Think with your heart, not with your logic."

"What did your family do when you came out of the closet about Jesus?"

Spoon Rating: 7.5

Single Room Furnished [1968]

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

This movie is an experience. Not every movie we watch is an experience and not every movie described as an experience is necessarily a movie that's so bad it's worth watching. Although this movie rated below the "5 and up is worth watching" threshold, it's such an experience that it won't be a complete waste of time to watch it. It is odd in a way that I can only describe as a failed Tennessee Williams play: all the melodrama and none of the substance. On the Wikipedia page the movie is described like it's a drug deal: "The feature was Jayne Mansfield's final "filmed" starring role. . . The feature was released "legally" and "officially" in 1968." Why so many quotation marks, movie? What are you hiding?

This "movie" is initially introduced by a guy who really wants you, the audience, to know that this is Jayne Mansfield's last role and a dramatic role and that you should really like it or else you are shaming the ghost of Jayne Mansfield. We are then treated to an apartment set that is definitely not on a sound stage and a snippy teen fighting with her mom about being slutty and Italian. The teen then encounters the super of the building who tells her a series of stories all featuring this one woman's decline and how she kept trying to reinvent herself. First he tells her about the woman, then called Johnnie, and how she got married young to a guy who left her six months later to join the navy because his super hot friend is having such a good time there. If we were playing Tennessee Williams Bingo this is where you would mark off "gay subtext." Johnnie has a miscarriage and renames herself Mae. Then the super tells a story of the only happy couple to live in the building, Charlie and Flo, and we have to watch their intensely awkward courtship filled with fish smells and admitting they don't know anything (side note: no characters in this movie have any education). Charlie is friendly with Mae who got knocked up by a random drifter who gave her a fake name. He feels bad and spontaneously proposes to her before realizing what a stupid idea that is and marries Flo instead. Finally, in the present, Mae is now Eileen, a prostitute in a relationship with another navy guy who wants to marry her. In a fit that shows how mentally unstable they both are, he threatens to kill her but kills himself instead. Snippy teen gets perspective. Eileen continues to wallow in crazy.

This movie is clearly trying to teach something or at least get to the heart of the lives of regular people. If only the writer knew anything about how humans communicate. Aside from strange dialogue and the Home Depot sound stage set, the acting is peculiar (yes, Jayne too; my apologies to her ghost), and the direction is really strange. A lot of the time it's shot like a stage play but sometimes the camera will go off in a random direction while someone is talking.

Also, there's more than one room. And furnished is a generous word to use for most of them.

Quotes:
"Take your stinking boat and throw it in the ocean!"

"Where does he get off playing dollhouse with real life human dolls?"  

"The world smells like BEER."

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

Spoon Rating: 4