Fist Of The Vampire [2007]

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

Let's talk about fame for a second. When a lot of people think about fame they think specifically about the biggest actors, musicians, etc. but they tend to forget that there are certain communities that have their own famous people and if you don't follow those communities, you won't know anything about the big figures in it. You could be someone who doesn't follow sports and walk by one of the most famous athletes in the world without knowing it. That being said, sports is a community people have heard of but there are even communities unheard of by most people. This is all to say that we watched an interview with the director of this movie where he talked about actors in this movie like they were famous and we weren't sure if he was completely delusional or if they really are famous, just in specific communities we are unfamiliar with. Of course, no one in this movie could act at all so who knows where these people might actually find their fame.

The curiously named "Fist Of The Vampire" is a movie intended to combine a bunch of things the director apparently likes: fight clubs, crime, vampires, metal music, and girl-on-girl scenes. A trio of vampires - nu metal, leather lesbian, and the one who looks most like a vampire and is actually the director using a pseudonym - run a fight club and also dabble in drugs. These concepts are really bizarre because vampires for the most part seem to not really need money. If they had some in the bank when they died, they probably have enough interest to be fine and they don't need to pay for things like food or healthcare. Either way, they are being watched by a DEA agent who enters the fight club as a fighter for reasons unclear and a cop; at the end they have a shoehorned in romance. Random murders and fights happen for most of the duration until the final battle. We find out that the DEA agent is a boy from the beginning of the movie who watched the vampires kill his parents.

This movie is fantastically poor quality but not so poor as to diminish the enjoyment of it. The sound is a little off. The green screen use is just the right kind of bad. The acting is uniformly bad but in unique ways (the DEA agent's boss has a particular over-enunciation tendency that makes his performance a joy). There's bad CGI gunfire and explosions but practical blood effects. The beginning of the movie is set in 1977, which is shown by added lines to the footage like it's abandoned film from the 30s. The movie is punctuated with a diverse music selection from knockoffs of Evanescence, Slipknot, surf rock, and other styles that saw popularity in the mid-2000s. All of this combines to make it a real adventure.

It's definitely worth a watch and was even enough for us to contemplate watching other movies by the director. Especially because in the interview with him, he made it sound like this movie was in improvement over the two that came before it. 

We want to know what worse is.

Spoon Rating: 6

Do Or Die [1991]

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

It's been a long while since we watched an Andy Sidaris movie. So long that I hadn't noticed his name was spelled wrong in the tag. So it goes. Andy is a connoisseur of a few things and it only really takes one movie to get an idea of what those things are. He is an auteur with an aesthetic defined by vague action plots, fast moving transportation machines, and lots of female nudity. We had started our dive into his work in 2013 with "Malibu Express" and "Hard Ticket To Hawaii" the first of which was disappointing but the latter was a gem of badness. It had seemed inevitable that we would make it back to him eventually since Adam bought a 12 pack of his movies but what specifically brought our focus to his work was the intersection of Adam having this 12 pack and a book his brother-in-law bought him about bad movies espousing the quality of "Do or Die." Alright then.

"Do Or Die" follows two "government agents" on a journey around the US from Hawaii to Vegas to Louisiana as they are hunted down by pairs as part of a "Most Dangerous Game" knockoff run by Pat Morita. In Vegas at a model aircraft convention they pick up two other cops or agents or something to assist them, one who is banging the dark-haired girl and the other who is Erik Estrada and is clearly going to hook up with the blonde girl. In Louisiana they acquire two more couples who include a girl who sings French chanson/country mashups in assless chaps, the guy she's banging, a woman with giant fake boobs, and the guy she's banging. This movie had a sex scene for every couple including a hint of one with Pat Morita and a girl young enough to be his daughter. After defeating five of the six teams sent to kill them, the blonde girl finally realizes that Pat Morita's goons had put a tracker on her watch, which was how they kept finding her. They battle the final team, two guys proficient in martial arts, and trick them with dummies in a makeshift shed that they blow up. It ends on a bit of a cliffhanger as Pat Morita's daughter/girlfriend puts a tracker on him and the four couples somewhat vow revenge against him. As far as we can tell, there isn't a sequel.

This movie has so many marks of an Andy movie: absurdly long scenes of girls getting dressed, cool looking but impractical guns, explosions, a lack of establishing locations, characters barely speaking except to dictate the plot, just everything you want. At this point, we can make Andy Sidaris bingo. While this movie wasn't particularly exemplary over say "Hard Ticket To Hawaii" and we don't feel like we need to watch it again, the repeated amusement we get from his movies means that it is worth watching at least one Sidaris movie of whichever title you pick, if not more. And we've got nine more to choose from.

Quote: "Speak to me, you son of a bitch." (how I'm answering the phone from now on)

Spoon Rating: 6

Spice World [1997]

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

It's a spice world and we all just live in it. Not sure why Adam dug this one up but it took a few weeks for us to get to it because people kept being absent from Monday movie night and we needed everyone there to enjoy this piece of 90s esoterica. Kay and Sarah had a good basis of knowledge to explain the significance of the Spice Girls in their time and to explain both the real names and "spice" names of all the members*. Adam had the generic 90s concepts as a basis. Keith was befuddled. And yet, none of us could really make sense of this movie. This movie didn't have a plot. It didn't even have subplots. Things just happened for a feature run time and then it was over.

The film follows the Spice Girls in what is purported to be their regular lives as a lead up to a concert at Royal Albert Hall that is going to be a live broadcast. They travel in circles around London in a Union Jack bus that's bigger on the inside and designed with five sections to specifically reflect their manufactured personalities. For the reference those are:
- Scary (Mel B): She yells, I guess. She also dresses in a lot of animal print and even if the other four have managed to dress in a way that doesn't specifically reflect the era, she always looks as 90s as possible with the highest of platform shoes. I think her personality is that she's rebellious and takes no crap.
- Baby (Emma): Her part of the bus is like a play room and she always has either a stuffed animal in her hand or a lollipop in her mouth. She wears a lot of baby doll dresses and is possibly the youngest of the four. The weirdest moment is when she names all her stuffed animals for a man in a tiny bathing suit as an explanation for why there'd be no room for him in her bed.
- Ginger (Geri): She has red hair. That's the point of the name. Or maybe it's because she's spicy. Interesting since it's the only spice. She's the one who's always saying, "Girl power" and the movie frames her as the one who knows things, reads a lot, and engages in discussion with random men about feminism.
- Posh (Victoria): She's the fashionista one although she mostly just wears black and heels, which is admirable. If Baby is the immaturely stupid one, Posh is the adult stupid one. She doesn't do much aside from drive the bus in the final act and stand very straight.
- Sporty (Mel C): As her name would indicate, she is the sporty one. She wears athletic wear 95% of the time, spends a lot of time on an exercise bike, and occasionally will be holding a random sport ball. She's snarky and also seems to be the only one who has a range of more than half an octave.
The Girls meet aliens, have a photography montage, go to dance camp, stay at a National Trust property for a night, have two young fans join them on the bus before they go steal a boat and ride (and accidentally swim) the Thames, perform a concert in Milan, take their pregnant friend to a nightclub, help that friend give birth, and finally perform at Royal Albert. In the background their tour manager wears monochrome suits and freaks out a lot while taking orders from his boss, Roger-Moore-always-holding-a-small-animal. There's also a photographer following them who is trying to find dirt on them for some Daily Mail knockoff and Alan Cumming trying to make a documentary or something about the Spice Girls but he can never get very close to them. And some people trying to pitch a Spice Girls movie which somehow turns into narrativing the movie as it's happening and culminates in fourth wall breaking during the credits. Oh, and Meatloaf is their driver.

This movie is fascinating in a way but not fun to watch. Keith said it's like "A Hard Day's Night" and that seems likely that was the vibe they were going for. The only real enjoyment you might get from this is if you are a Spice Girls fan. Otherwise there's a lot of what, but very little of it is funny. There were however, two jokes that land and one that kind of lands. One is a visual joke of all the girls walking by in army fatigues only to have Posh bring up the rear in a camo dress and heels. The other is when Ginger tells the pregnant friend to keep her legs closed and Scary comments, "She should have done that nine months ago." The one that kind of lands is when an effect of the tour bus going over Tower Bridge is cut with an obvious model of the bridge and a Matchbox bus. There. Now you know the best parts. Unless you're a fan or a 90s completionist, you can skip this one.

*In the US they had three platinum and three gold hits; eight platinum, one gold in the UK.

Spoon Rating: 1

The Gay Deceivers [1969]

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

We took a risk with this one on the sole basis of an amazing movie clip that has been making the internet rounds for a while. You can watch it here. We had to know what movie this clip was from and we found "The Gay Deceivers." The premise made it pretty clear that it was a comedy - two guys pretend to be gay to get out of the Vietnam War draft - but it was really the acting and dialogue of the clip that showed bad movie potential. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the film turned out to be not bad as a movie. We got a few real laughs and made some good puns on our own but it's really not a bad movie. The gay characters are incredibly camp, expected really since non-camp gays seemed to be nonexistent before Will from "Will & Grace," but are portrayed as much more together than our messy straight mains. The clip in the link is actually kind of out of character and the whole scene even feels random in the film.

At the beginning of the movie two straight guys who are friends fake enlist in the Vietnam War and pretend to be gay so they will be blacklisted. They succeed but later find the doubtful recruiter lurking around their apartment where they were just fooling around with girls. They decide to up their cover and rent a cottage in a gay neighborhood decorated by the gay landlord Malcolm, who doesn't know his flowers. The straights agree to not having girls over to keep up the act but one of them is a slut and he has a hard time with this, although he is much friendlier and more comfortable with the gay community. The other is barely suppressing homophobia the whole movie and makes the stupid decision to not tell his girlfriend what he's doing so she eventually breaks up with him, sure he's gay. There are various hijinks including a gay bar, a round double bed in a very pink room, and the slutty straight mistaking a drag queen for a woman. In the end, they get excused from the army but plot twist, it's because they're straight and the recruiter is gay and only wants other gays around.

The film is interesting from an LGBT+ history perspective but otherwise the best thing about the movie is the short clip I linked to. Skip it as a bad movie, but watch it for real if you happen to be interested.

Quote: "I detest cheap notoriety."

Spoon Rating: 2
Star Rating: 2 out of 5

Bonus:
At one point Malcolm goes over to the straight house to borrow eggs and ends up cooking them dinner. Later when Straight #1's parents come over Malcolm says he came to borrow oregano. We envisioned a scene of him having to explain this to his husband.

Malcolm: I got the oregano!
Craig: You went over to get eggs.
Malcolm: Oh.
Craig: It's fine. Just go return the oregano and borrow some eggs.
Malcolm: I can't. 
Craig: Why?
Malcolm: I made all the eggs for their breakfast.
Craig: Is that why you were gone for an hour?

Baby's Day Out [1994]

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

On Monday we happened upon some very forbidden knowledge that we would like to share with all of you: John Hughes was never very good. Yes, everyone loves "The Breakfast Club" and if you were the right age at the time you have found memories of "Home Alone" but a really notable portion of the films he wrote were not good and only got worse over time. The pinnacle of that descent into intolerable reached its zenith with "Baby's Day Out," an utterly deplorable excuse for a film that Sarah's father apparently loved because he had terrible taste (recall that he also loved "Undercover Blues"). 

"Baby's Day Out" follows a baby from a very wealthy family on his journey around New York City. It starts with him getting kidnapped by some thieves posing as photographers but they are utterly incompetent. Baby gets out and goes around on various forms of transportation, he goes to the zoo, and he spends a lot of time at a construction site. Meanwhile, basically no one notices this unattended one-year-old and the three stooges keep ending up in situations that would literally kill someone as they try to get him back. This sadistic baby literally laughs whenever they are in pain. By the end of the movie, we estimated that each of the three robbers has survived through roughly three times when they should have died. Soon the reports of an unattended toddler make it to the family where the nanny realizes that the baby is somehow going to all the places listed in his favorite book called "Baby's Day Out." Yes, we are to believe that this baby not only has memorized this book but that he is able to navigate around New York to find these places at a crawling pace. Because the baby is so methodical, they manage to rescue him at the veteran's home.

This movie is a cartoon that happens to feature live actors. This movie has no target audience. This movie is the inevitable bastardization of "Home Alone" becoming successful, an extreme that only alienates and shows a lack of understanding of why "Home Alone" is liked by anyone. Do not watch this if you value your time but if you must understand, there's a solid Red Letter Media review of it that gives you all the experience of watching it made tolerable.

Spoon Rating: One baby spoon.

Mother Goose Rock 'N' Rhyme [1990]

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

A fairly reliable way to find bad movies is to go back to your childhood. Sarah brought us "Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." Kay brought us "Teen Witch." Now Adam has brought us a movie he watched over and over as a kid: "Mother Goose Rock 'N' Rhyme." A colorful movie full of fisheye lenses and various musicians who mostly don't sing, this film ended up explaining a lot about Adam including why he has multiple copies of the same outfit everyday, why he drives in reverse a lot, why he makes a lot of puns, and why he likes surreal art films.

The film takes place in Rhymeland, a land created entirely from the imagination of Mother Goose that's populated with her creations. Her son, Gordon Goose, just wants to be normal and this manifests with him being a jerk to everyone around for no reason. One day Mother Goose goes missing and Gordon teams up with Little Bo Peep to try to find her and they have a lot of belligerent sexual tension. They encounter many other nursery rhyme figures, most of them represented in really unconventional ways that speak directly to the aesthetics of the late 80s, early 90s:

• The Little Old Lady Who Lived In A Shoe is Debbie Harry sunbathing.
• The Itsy Bitsy Spider is an annoying man in a bodysuit.
• Mary Mary Quite Contrary wears black and I guess this is how she's contrary.
• Old Mother Hubbard is a fast food restaurant without any food.
• The Three Men In A Tub are ZZ Top. Their tub can drive through space.
• Mary is Cyndi Lauper and her Lamb is Woody Harrelson.  They live in a trailer park and bicker a lot.
• The Crooked Man leads to a series of high jinks with opening various doors.
• Peter Piper is just annoyingly alliterative.
• Jack And Jill are a couple who fight constantly.
• Little Miss Muffet is actually tiny and looks like she's going to an 8th grade semi-formal.
• Humpty Dumpty is a nightmare.
• Old King Cole is Little Richard and he has one of the three songs in the show. He also hates to hear anything about bad news and has blackbird-in-a-pie dancers.
• And there's also a random rock band that does a number in the king's dungeon.
• Simple Simon is Paul Simon and his outfit is covered in symbols for some reason.

The whole plot is just Gordon and Peep going around and talking to people. They eventually ride the cow who jumped over the moon to where Mother Goose is and realize that she was removed from her book by a child. The kid puts them all back and Gordon accepts his weirdness.

We got a few laughs from this but we wouldn't necessarily recommend it. The scene with Cyndi Lauper and Woody Harrelson was definitely the best, so watch that if you can, but otherwise it's probably more fun if you know someone who seems to have been shaped by it.

Spoon Rating: 4.5

Nude For Satan [1974]

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

About ten years ago Kay and Adam walked into the Newbury Street Newbury Comics, which used to be full of quirky DVDs, and saw an Italian horror film called "Nude For Satan." Amused by the title, Kay read the back and while Adam eventually forgot about it (as he does; it is but his way), she never did. And it's a good thing she didn't because this movie was a decent watch. It's got a vibe like a combination of "Manos: Hands Of Fate" in terms of plot and "Death Bed" in terms of energy and overall 70s-ness. I will try to explain it, but it might not make sense.

A man driving through a remote part of Italy swerves off the road to avoid a mysterious woman in white only to hear another car crash behind him shortly after. He goes to the car and takes the female driver back to his own car before making his way to the nearest "castle." He encounters a guard in a funny hat who tells him he can't move from his spot before disappearing. The man enters the dingy mansion and is weirdly nonreactive to finding an alive servant man with a knife through his throat or a freaky sex scene behind random doors. He somehow ends up in a parallel universe with another version of the girl from the car accident who speaks in pseudo-philosophy and only knows how to kiss by biting. They frolic in the garden and have some sex. The girl from the accident eventually makes it to the mansion too where she meets a man in a suit (Satan) and then makes out with a random servant girl after a standing bath. She puts on a skimpy nightie and has softcore dreams about the servant girl before waking up to find the servant girl being whipped by the servant man. She freaks out and somehow stumbles into a void and ends up in a giant spiderweb with a kindergarten art class spider coming to get her. Somehow the man gets out of the alternative time and comes to save car accident girl from the spider. They then encounter their other halves who basically wax poetic about how they are their evil others. The man resists his but the girl absorbs her evil other and makes out with the guy's evil half while Satan appears and instigates an orgy with two other naked girls and two loincloth-wearing men wearing two tone body paint. The man realizes he can stop this nonsense by reading how in this giant book in the other room and discovers that Satanists hate fire, contrary to what would make sense about them. He burns it down and wakes up against his steering wheel. The girl has only just crashed but now they both have these medallions that represent their two halves or something. This movie may have been written on drugs.

This movie is a very trippy experience. Directorially it has what we started calling "the Italian angle" which is a Dutch angle that then shifts to tilt in the other direction without a cut. It happened a lot. There were also a bunch of filters so we felt like we were going crazy with the main character. Of course, the plot was bonkers and the effects were silly but it should also be noted that this movie is dubbed and it is dubbed so unenthusiastically that the main character has the emotion of Tommy Wiseau. It's worth a watch.

Quote: Forget about the past and the present. Only focus on the now!

Spoon Rating: 6