Teen Witch [1989]

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

Usually we have a tendency to dip into Sarah's past for bad movies since she apparently had horrible taste as a child. This week, Kay had a vague memory of an 80s fever dream to share, only recalling fully that she had watched it a few times on the Disney channel in the last 90s and that it was full of plot holes and rapping white kids. Oh, it proved to be so much more than that.

"Teen Witch" was probably made in the wake of "Teen Wolf" but with roughly half the effort put into it. The story follows Louise Miller, a high school girl with seemingly substantial wealth but sub-par popularity because of her tendency to dress like a sister wife and her unsubtle crush on the school's dreamboat named Brad. After the worst day ever, she gets stuck in the rain with a flat bike tire and ends up at the home of Serena, a tiny witch lady who tells Louise that she in one of them and will receive her witch powers on her sixteenth birthday. It's a rough start at first with things happening basically because she wishes for them including for her creepy dance date to go away and an instant where wordplay turns her really unnerving brother into a dog. She gets a necklace from her drama teacher that is apparently the source of her powers and uses it to give her drama teacher a sweet life. She also gives her best friend rapping abilities so she can rap battle the weird boy she likes in probably the most bizarre scene in the whole movie which Adam watched in a state of sheer amazement (see below).

Serena starts lowkey using Louise since her powers are drained or something and gives her a magic book to learn spells from. This movie has absolutely no consistency with how magic works. At one point water makes it disappear. Sometimes you need to say something, sometimes you need to wish for something, sometimes you just need to think it - there's no logic. Either way, Louise considers using magic to make Brad love her but decides not to. She does however, decide to do a massive spell to make her the most popular girl in school. Brad starts to like her anyway and takes her to his creepy murder shack to . . . apparently just kiss. Weird that it wasn't more than that but hey, it wasn't murder. There isn't really a climax so much as Serena gives Louise words of advice ranging from "no one's happy" to the more positive "be yourself" and Louise decides to ditch her magic necklace at the dance, presumably ending the popularity spell as she and Brad dance, although it isn't clear that the spell is broken at all. Maybe she just decides she has all she needs. There's no answer.

This movie is a ride. In a way it can be summed up by a moment in the beginning of the movie where the cheerleaders in the locker room all start dancing around in a choreographed number called "I! Like! Boys!" and Adam turned to Kay and said, "So this is a musical?" and Kay answered, "No." This movie has no idea what it is or what it wants to be. The magic concept, as I said above, is completely unfleshed out. The plot has holes all over the place especially as it relates to character (Why didn't the teacher get fired for stripping? Why didn't Louise ever make up with her best friend? Why is Louise's brother acting like he's the harbinger in a horror movie at all times?). And in addition to the one musical number and the inexplicable rapping trio moments, the entire intro of the movie is basically an 80s music video that goes on way too long until you realize it was just Louise's dream. This movie also reeks of 80s from the clothes to the music to the utter nonsense.

When the film was over we actually had a discussion about it to try to make sense of every dropped element.

This is art. Top that!

Spoon Rating: 8

REWATCH: Gymkata [1985]

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

This movie is an old one for us: old enough that it's on the original picture of the first few movies we watched when we had just started Bad Movie Night in 2012, old enough that Sarah hasn't seen it. Because it had been long before the Facebook group or the spoon rating system, and since we often just shout out, "gymkata" as an explanation of a specific kind of movement, we figured we should watch it again and properly review and rate it.

"Gymkata" tells the story of "Enter The Dragon" but with gymnastics. We have some opening shots of the lead, actual gymnast Kurt Thomas, doing his thing while somewhere else a man is running from some guys on horseback who kill him. We are given the plot at breakneck speeds: Thomas has to enter some vague competition called The Game in the country of Parmistan and win so he can request that a US satellite be built there. Weirdly enough, the odds of dying in The Game are high and yet, Thomas agrees anyway. For a satellite. Also, his father died in The Game. This is a great plan.

Thomas trains for The Game with some experts and the Parmistan princess and they have a thing even though (or perhaps because) she doesn't talk. In Parmistan, the princess is taken and brought back to her father where she is expected to marry his right hand man who also runs The Game and is planning a coup against the king. Thomas enters The Game where the right hand man is basically doing whatever he can to kill him and bumps into his father along the way who is quickly killed. Thomas defeats the right hand man and saves the entire government of Parmistan so quickly that when we got a final freeze frame we kept looking at each other and saying, "Wait, is that it? Is it over?"

So let's get the obvious out of the way: gymkata, the fighting style of Thomas' character, is very silly. It's fighting gymnastics. Also Thomas runs like he's going to vault and without a pole in his hand, he looks bizarre. Other than that, the premise is derivative, the plotting is expected, the acting is bad, and the flag-holding ninjas look bored -hang in there, guys- but I list all of these as examples of why it's worth a watch and we got a few solid laughs.

Spoon Rating: 6.5

Black Roses [1988]

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

It feels like we have been suffering for weeks without a delightfully bad reprieve but when I look back, it has only been three weeks since the charming "Die Hard Dracula." I guess the last two weeks have been especially rough. Either way, this one may not be a classic of bad movies but it was a nice way to spend an evening if you like horrifying 80s aesthetic, heavy metal, and fakey Satanism. Which of course we do.

In a backwoods suburban town, the teens are a-buzz with news that Black Roses, a popular heavy metal band that never plays lives shows, will be during a five(?) concert series at the high school, curiously paid for by the school board. Some parents are aghast because of the band's antisocial, anti-religious content but a few minutes into the first performance, nothing seems amiss so they leave, prompting the band to strip down to their leather harnesses and praise Satan. As the nights of concerts go on, the students seem to develop the ability to turn into demons but it's unclear how or why and they become increasingly more disobedient. One kills the principal after killing her mother, one seduces her friend's dad with strip poker and kills him, and one who's already obsessed with the mustachioed English teacher, kills the teacher's ex-girlfriend and tries to seduce him in his house before turning into a demon that he kills. She's somehow okay later in human form at the last Black Roses concert. The teacher goes to the concert to stop the demonic activity and seems to, but later Black Roses is playing Madison Square Garden so I guess nothing is fixed. Also, all those people are still dead. And we never find out if the kids were saved from their possession. And there's basically no closure. 

This movie has all the 80s cheese you would want including silly acting (especially a man who is definitely in his 30s playing a teenager by just having too much energy), bad sound effects, and a plot that doesn't really make sense or go anywhere. Hail Satan?

Spoon Rating: 5

Science Crazed [1989]

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

"Science Crazed" is a Frankenstein movie that would have been a decent 30 minute bad movie but has been mutated and cruelly malformed to fit a feature run time. It was apparently salvaged from two different recordings but they didn't seem to cut anything so we see the same victim-stalking shots over and over, seemingly to build anticipation for the "fiend's" kill, but mostly to bore us into fast forwarding through most of the film. The plot is just about a mad scientist who never takes off his sunglasses making a woman go through a 21 hour pregnancy to give birth to "Frank Jr" who promptly kills his father and mother and then goes around a . . . gym . . . hotel . . . something, killing people. He is stopped by the scientist's assistants and a detective they hired who dresses like a detective in a 1940s noir. Aside from the long, repeating shots, there's some looping bad 80s background music but in between we get gloriously badly dubbed dialogue that kind of make the whole thing worth it. Watch it, but fast forward until you get to dialogue.

"Science Crazed" is a Frankenstein movie that would have been a decent 30 minute bad movie but has been mutated and cruelly malformed to fit a feature run time. It was apparently salvaged from two different recordings but they didn't seem to cut anything so we see the same victim-stalking shots over and over, seemingly to build anticipation for the "fiend's" kill, but mostly to bore us into fast forwarding through most of the film. The plot is just about a mad scientist who never takes off his sunglasses making a woman go through a 21 hour pregnancy to give birth to "Frank Jr" who promptly kills his father and mother and then goes around a . . . gym . . . hotel . . . something, killing people. He is stopped by the scientist's assistants and a detective they hired who dresses like a detective in a 1940s noir. Aside from the long, repeating shots, there's some looping bad 80s background music but in between we get gloriously badly dubbed dialogue that kind of make the whole thing worth it. Watch it, but fast forward until you get to dialogue.

"Science Crazed" is a Frankenstein movie that would have been a decent 30 minute bad movie but has been mutated and cruelly malformed to fit a feature run time. It was apparently salvaged from two different recordings but they didn't seem to cut anything so we see the same victim-stalking shots over and over, seemingly to build anticipation for the "fiend's" kill, but mostly to bore us into fast forwarding through most of the film. The plot is just about a mad scientist who never takes off his sunglasses making a woman go through a 21 hour pregnancy to give birth to "Frank Jr" who promptly kills his father and mother and then goes around a . . . gym . . . hotel . . . something, killing people. He is stopped by the scientist's assistants and a detective they hired who dresses like a detective in a 1940s noir. Aside from the long, repeating shots, there's some looping bad 80s background music but in between we get gloriously badly dubbed dialogue that kind of make the whole thing worth it. Watch it, but fast forward until you get to dialogue.

Like this film, this post would have been a decent, if short, post but in the interest of making it the same length as my other posts, I decided to just repeat it over and over.

Spoon Rating: 5

Black Devil Doll From Hell [1984]

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

It has been a long time since we suffered like this. I hesitate to compare anything to "Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star" but for a solid 20 minute period of this film, we were all trying so hard to disassociate that I am almost uncomfortable writing this blog post as it forces me to relive the experience. We were expecting a blaxplotation version of Chucky and all the cheese that would imply, but oh, we did not expect this.

The beginning of the movie is pretty inoffensively bad. We follow Miss Helen Black, a good church going woman who is proud of how she's waiting for marriage. It was hard to tell how old she was supposed to be as she was wearing those ridiculously large glasses that were fashionable in the 80s that make everyone look like a grandmother and her couch was covered in plastic. We get a lot of lingering shots of her apartment full of religious articles while she talks to her friend on the phone about much she needs Jesus. One day Miss Black goes into a thrift store and finds a really frightening puppet, which the store owner promises will grant her her deepest desire. She also mentions that the puppet always finds its way back to the shop, which seems like a bad thing to mention because it assures the buyer that ownership is temporary. Regardless, Miss Black buys the thing and props it up on her toilet while she showers. 

And here's where the film takes a turn. In between shots Miss Black enthusiastically soaping up her breasts, we are treated to horrifying images of the puppet licking her and having sex with her. It was unclear at this moment if she was imagining it or if the doll was. Even more unfortunately, this was foreshadowing as the puppet ends up tying her to the bed and raping her. This doll sex scene (because yes, it eventually became consensual) went on for what felt like days. We hadn't seen anything of the sort since the furry sex in "Wolfcop." If I could "Eternal Sunshine" those images away, I would in a heartbeat.

After the puppet sex, the doll disappears and Miss Black is now a nympho but no man can satisfy her. She goes back to the shop to buy the doll again but when she brings it home and begs it to have sex with her, it kills her. The film ends with someone else buying the puppet.

Do not watch this. Just don't. It is an exercise in misery. It is an endurance test that is not worth the suffering. If I ever were to encounter the director/writer/producer I would run away because I definitely know too much about him and none of it is good.

Oh, and the quality is VHS level with tracking issues and the acting and sound quality are very bad. But who cares? Puppet sex.

Quote: "I've slept with men . . . several to be exact."

Spoon Rating: 2

Die Hard Dracula [1998]

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

'Tis the season for vampires. According to the vampire tag, our previous vampire movies have featured a vampire dog, vampires in space, vampires based on a video game, and a "Twilight" ripoff. By that reckoning, this is the most normal vampire movie we have watched at Bad Movie Night and is also unquestionably one of the best.

This is a movie that seems to not understand transitions but we eventually managed to follow the plot. Dracula took a bride for himself 300 years ago named Sonia, which we need to be shown for some reason, and then we flash forward to modern California where our protagonist's girlfriend dies in a tragic water-skiing accident. Following the funeral, protag goes on vacation to Prague and ends up wandering the countryside. He walks into a small town bar and is baffled to see that the owner's daughter, Carla, looks identical to his dead girlfriend. This plot point goes nowhere. Also, the town has a Dracula problem. In this folklore, he can go in the sun but not direct sunlight and it weakens him, and he can be killed with silver. Dr. Van Helsing comes in and he is the weakest Van Helsing in media. Even with Dracula eating in the town bar, he neglects to do anything about it. The plot ramps up when Dracula kidnaps Carla after a weird sex scene with the protag and turns her into a vampire. Protag and Helsing go to save her but they both end up falling victim to Dracula. Uniquely, it's a happy ending because now they are all one big vampire coven and they dance around their tower while Dracula plays classical tunes.

There are a lot of reasons this movie is a delight. There's bad CGI, public domain music that often casts a comical light on something presumably not meant to be funny, bad acting, a low budget, and just all around madness. We're borderline on whether this movie deserves a rewatch but it most definitely deserves to be seen once.

Weird Credits:
Mr. Sachen's Girlfriend - Squishy
Mr. Sachen's Other Girlfriend - Vanda
Catering - Sometimes

Spoon Rating: 7

Elves [1989]

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

I actually don't know where to start with this one. On Wikipedia it only lists one writer but I could swear in the credits there were three and oh boy, does it feel like three different movies haphazardly smashed into one. I don't even want to try to explain the plot honestly so I'll keep this one short and sweet. 

It has Dan Haggerty of "Repo Jake" fame (oh and some television show in the 70s that wasn't well known or anything) playing the down on his luck good guy who may just be him in real life. There's a Christmas motif to this movie but it doesn't play much of a role outside of being set during Christmas, mall Santas, and some sort of "anti-Christmas" ritual in the beginning. There's an evil elf but they don't really seem to have anything to do with Christmas. More so the film is about Nazis and inbreeding in order to create a master race. Really. The main character is a result of her father and her grandfather being the same person and now she is expected to have sex with the elf to create powerful hybrids. Although we don't see elf sex and we mostly just get a lot of murdering and Nazis, they do set up for a sequel by implying that she got pregnant offscreen somehow.

Honestly, this movie isn't especially funny but it has its moments and it's kind of worth a watch because it's so bizarre.

Quote:
"What's wrong? Are we going to be alright?"
"No, Willy. Grandpa's a Nazi."

Spoon Rating: 4