REWATCH: No Retreat, No Surrender [1986]

As graduate school winds down for Sarah and Kay, the need to mostly do rewatches increases until finals are over. It had been quite a long time since "No Retreat, No Surrender," a movie that acted like Van Damme was the lead even though he maybe had 15 minutes of screentime while some Bruce Lee-obsessed teen was actually running the show. He did karate, worshipped Bruce Lee's grave, made a token black friend, had a very long montage with the ghost of Bruce Lee (played by a man who neither looked nor sounded like Bruce Lee), and eventually triumped in the end. And did a lot of retreating and surrendering. Ironically.

Wrestling Women Vs. The Aztec Mummy [1964] & REWATCH: Samurai Cop [1991]

Quick update here.

Last week the writer of this blog was overseas so everyone else watched the strange but kind of underwhelming "Wrestling Women Vs. The Aztec Mummy." It did deliver on the title but was structurally leaving a lot to be desired.

This Monday we did a rewatch of the classic "Samurai Cop." Read our previous review here.

TC 2000 [1993]

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

When someone sets out to write a martial arts movie, there is a spectrum of how much love and care you want to put into it. Will your lead actor or actress be a known name? Will it feature cops, military, or just martial artists? Will there be an explanation for why Jean Claude Van Damme is an American with an accent or is the audience just supposed to roll with it? And, most importantly in terms of memorability, will it have a unique plot? It will be hard for us to forget last week's "Dark Angel" because of its unique alien drug dealer premise, but what if you just want to make a thing and don't care much? Rip off other movies and only create the thinnest of scripts. That's what this movie, "TC 2000," chose to do. The film smashes together such films as "Mad Max," "The Terminator," "Total Recall," and other, better, movies with roughly the same science fiction action movie aesthetic. In spite of its influences, this movie is about 10% plot and 90% punching faces.

Not Wesley Snipes (Billy Blanks a.k.a. Tae Bo guy) and Not Jessica Alba are cops in a dystopian future who live underground and take orders from Not Tom Selleck and his scientist underling Not Steve Buscemi. He doesn't get along well with fellow cop Not Dolph Lundgren (who was actually the same guy who played the drug dealer alien in "Dark Angel"). A new gang of Saturday Morning Cartoon villians lead by a Hamburgler-esque man called Nicky PIcasso start causing a lot of trouble above ground and they go to stop them. Not Jessica Alba gets shot and dies and is recreated by the scientist to be essentially a Universal Soldier. Billy Blanks realizes there's some sketchy stuff going on and leaves the police force to get Nicky Picasso on his own. He teams up with Bolo Yeung and we get a lot of training montages. Meanwhile UniSol!lady teams up with Picasso because it turns out the police is corrupt and in cohots with Picasso's gang. A final battle ensues. There's also some big thing about destroying or repairing the ozone layer with a key that UniSol!lady's dad gave her and that she wears around her neck. The ozone layer is saved. Probably. This movie was mostly just punches, kicks, and killing people with your thighs. And bad monochromatic cinematography. And sets with pipes everywhere.

Quotes:

"My overlord seems like a decent leader."

"Time to die!"

"Time to get a new watch."

"Of the two men that have entered, only one may leave." 

[Not at all ripped off from "Mad Max."]

We forgot to spoon rate this. Or ask Grandma for her opinion. That's how apathetic we were.

Dark Angel [1990]

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

As it has probably been mentioned before, the Bad Movie Night crew are collectively into Dolph Lundgren and will watch anything with him in it. Even a stereotypical 90s cop movie with the added bonus of drug dealer aliens. You're welcome. For the reference, the reason why the title of this post and the title on the poster don't match is because the film was originally called "Dark Angel" but then after realizing that there were already two movies by that name (and many more things eventually after this movie was released), they decided to rename it "I Come In Peace." This title both makes more sense and is highly inaccurate.

Near Christmas, an alien comes down to Earth for unknown purposes initially outside of killing people with a weapon shaped like a CD. He is also only capable of saying, "I come in peace" in spite of this being incredibly false. The Christmas concept is quickly dropped for being to reminiscent of "Die Hard" and we are introduced to our main characters. Dolph Lundgren is a cop who failed to save his partner from getting killed in an attempted heroin bust. He gets paired up with obnoxious overachieving rookie and they try to solve the mystery of how everyone involved in the bust was killed with this mysterious CD object and why all the heroin disappeared. They take the CD to a scientist who is so hopped up on caffeine and other drugs that he can't stop fidgeting and screaming randomly in order to relax. He can't really explain it. Soon we are given enough intercut scenes of the alien injecting people with heroin and then extracting a fluid from them which we realize is endorphins, thanks to a random discussion by Lundgren's semi-girlfriend who's a coroner, that we realize he is a drug dealer from the stars. He also has an alien cop who speaks English chasing after him but he dies after losing too much cream filling. Lundgren and rookie track down the alien and defeat him. Earth is saved but only in a highly specific way.

This movie was pretty amusing. If you take out the alien part, it's your typical 90s action movie right down to the music choices and the font of the opening titles. 

Quotes:
"I like abuse as much as the next girl."

"Who's that guy?"
"Some asshole from outer space."

"I come in peace."
"And you go in pieces, asshole."

Spoon Rating: 4

REWATCH: Ben And Arthur [2002]

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

We were going to watch a bad Dolph Lundgren movie (because everyone loves Dolph) but the grad students needed to work so it was time for a rewatch: Sam Mraovich's masterpiece "Ben And Arthur," fittingly called by us when we can't remember the title, "The Gay Room." It's still delightful although on this rewatch I think we all appreciated the silly music choices more than we did the first time around. The titles show while "The Entertainer" plays and the credits roll to "Pachelbel's Canon." Everything in between sounds like bees or the world's worst nightclub.

To read the original review of this movie, click here.

Quotes:
"Let's go!" *song that is clearly called "Let's Go" starts playing*

Future Woman [1969]

The writer of this blog was sick last Monday and did not see "Future Woman" which is apparently also known as "Rio 70" and "The Girl From Rio." It's apparently some kind of James Bond knockoff with a suitcase full of money and a group of scantily clad women in the queendom of Femina who want to take over the world. A girl gets kidnapped by the women because they want her money. The James Bond figure with his suitcase of money gets kidnapped by them as well but the money was all a ploy so he could infiltrate their commune and rescue the rich girl. That's about it. Watch at your own risk.

Spoon Rating: 2.5

Frozen [2010]

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

This is gonna be a fairly short write-up because this movie can actually be summed up in one sentence. If you are irritated by this, I suggest you just . . . let it goooooooo. Let it gooooooooo.

So a bunch of annoying college kids go on a Sunday skiing trip in Massachusetts: guy, girlfriend, and annoying stoner friend who wants to hook up with someone. The guys convince the girl to flirt with the ski lift operator so they can get cheaper lift tickets and then nonsense happens for another 20 minutes or so. As the place is closing down, the three ask for just one more ride to the top only to have the place shut down while they are on the lift. They all freak out about how the place won't open until Friday and don't think to immediately cover every little part of exposed skin. As the BMN crew entirely consists of New Englanders, we had no sympathy for the frostbite they suffered since they wouldn't even put on their hoods. At one point the girl loses a mitten and doesn't put her hand in her pocket. She even falls asleep with her bare hand on the handle of the lift and has to rip it off. Idiots. Anyway, first stoner friend tries to climb the wire to the nearest ladder down but gives up quickly and tears his glove. Then the guy decides to just jump down but first disengages his snowboard which is a terrible idea because it could have somewhat broken his fall. He breaks both his legs and gets eaten by wolves. It is hilarious from start to finish: the bone prosthetics, the guy's screaming, his girlfriend's poorly acted crying. It's pretty much the scene that single-handedly bumped this review up from 2 spoons to 3. After that, the girl and stoner have a lot of pointless conversations and she pees her pants to dramatic music. The next day the sun manages to melt their frozen bodies a bit and stoner guy tries to climb to the ladder again and succeeds, going to get help. The apparently poorly made lift ends up falling off the rails with enough slowness that the girl manages to get to the ground without much injury and goes to find the stoner who . . . has been eaten by wolves. She gets to the highway and flags down a car. We wonder why the director hates wolves so much and shout out, "Hungry puppies!" a lot.

Spoon Rating: 3

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