Cats [2019]

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

Well, we did it. We finally watched "Cats." And we're here to tell you that it's probably not worth it to watch it yourself. The actual experience of watching "Cats" is fairly unpleasant, and I say this on both a musical level and a movie level. While none of us has actually see the musical on stage, I have enough of a musical theater background to know what it's about and that seeing it has been a regret of many friends of mine. So take what is already an utterly bizarre and silly musical without a plot and add uncanny valley CGI, less dancing, and worse singing, and you have something no reasonable person will want to sit through.

The plot of "Cats" can basically be summed up as: a bunch of cats sing songs about their lives for the opportunity to die and be reborn. The movie tried to give a little more plot to the story but only barely. They made Victoria, a dancing cat, the lost protagonist so the other cats can explain things to her. She gets a song and the actress playing her was clearly selected for her dancing. Macavity, the kinda-antagonist, kidnaps a bunch of the cats throughout instead of just Old Deuteronomy at the end. Otherwise, the story is kept kind of weirdly formless. Basically, the main crew of cats keeps wandering around the streets of London, encountering cats who need to sing their feelings and then they will often disappear from the scene right after. Mostly you are meant to be mesmerized by the singing, dancing, and visuals. At least they were right on with that last one but not for the right reasons.

I could go into detailing every painful moment from Rebel Wilson unzipping her cat skin to show more cat skin underneath to the fat jokes to the mouses with children's faces, but I won't bother. Go watch a YouTube review (I recommend Lindsay Ellis') and trust me on this.

Spoon Rating: 2

We wore cat ears for the occasion.

Now for some of the moods inflected by "Cats":




Amusement

Shock.

And numb horror.

Dolemite [1975]

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

It was only a matter of time until we got here. We've been waiting for weeks to finally watch the Rudy Ray Moore classic, "Dolemite." As big fans of "Disco Godfather" and "Petey Wheatstraw" we were so ready. We figured out how to work Kast and made it happen.

In the beginning, Rudy is released from prison (in for theft of furs and drugs) and basically immediately murders three guys, although we as the audience are supposed to forget that for later when they are trying to arrest him for other things that he didn't do. It look a full fifteen minutes or so before we got our first rhyme, but he did two full routines in the movie anyway so it's all good. After one of them a woman actually said, "Let's have it for Rudy Ray!" which either means she forgot she was in a Dolemite movie or the scene was filmed independent of the film.

Although we are told early on that drugs and guns are being sold to kids, this ended up not being the plot. The first half is a lot of weirdness with the Hamburger Pimp and a preacher who's ready for 'the fourth war' and has plenty of guns in his congregation. The real plot is we have a conflict because Willie Green, Dolemite's rival, has gotten control of Dolemite's club, The Total Experience, while he was in jail. The actual process of getting it back isn't as complicated as you would think and mostly takes up only the second half of the film. All Dolemite's dancing girls have gotten martial arts training to fight for their club back but it's mostly Dolemite and his kicks that don't make contact saving the day. It actually ends with him pulling out Willie Green's guts. There's also a subplot with a corrupt politician in addition to the other two subplots based around fun characters and a fair amount of brothel moments.

While it's clear that Rudy Ray's movies get better over time, "Dolemite" is a classic for a reason. The budget for the clothes was clearly where most of the money went (well spent). The boom mic basically had it's own subplot too with how often it appeared, sometimes not physically but in shadow. There was also some solidly strange editing, the jewel probably being when the entire middle of a sex scene got cut out.

All in all, a great watch. I would recommend starting here and saving "Petey Wheastraw" and "Disco Godfather" for after because the weirdness only increases with time.

Spoon Rating: 7.5

How To Get . . . Revenge [1989]

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

So we started the evening by watching some bad audition videos (after the joy of "You Could Go To 5 or 6 Stores" Adam had a hunger for more) but two of them seemed a bit too fake to be enjoyable. One called "casting audition for soft drink commerical" was pretty good and seemed real if you've got a few minutes but nothing could top the video from last week.

Our main feature for our first quarantine Bad Movie Night with all members calling in was "How To Get . . . Revenge," a curious entry from our favorite Occult Demon Cassette. Before the video starts, it mentions that it is a humorous piece for mature customers, but what makes it so curious is that so much of it is dead serious. There are a few moments that feel like intentional comedy, like when they show a stereotypical 80s nerd getting heckled by a stereotypical 80s biker, but so much of it feels like a completely genuine instructional guide. Linda Blair hosts and has guests who specialize in car revenge, phone revenge, mail revenge, and home revenge. A lot of the advice is pretty expected, and some would be a lot harder to pull off in 2020, but it's all delivered in a pretty straight forward way that ends up being kind of tragically funny The most startling comment was, "If your mark is a minority, try calling immigration services," but there were plenty of things discussed that would definitely get you arrested, like writing out a fake death certificate and breaking and entering. One of the best moments was when a guy starts his story with, "I got fired for no god damn reason. . ." and then details how he got revenge, thus proving that his firing was definitely likely to be justifiable. 

It was a great and very strange watch all around and only about 45 minutes.

Spoon Rating: 8

Low Blow [1986]

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

We may all be stuck inside during this time of pandemic, but Bad Movie Night marches on. We've been doing this for seven and a half years; a little virus isn't going to stop us. We've just had to go virtual as you can see below. Also as you can see below, we were down an Erik tonight but four out of five's not too bad. We decided to watch "Low Blow," a low budget fighting movie that is conveniently available on YouTube.

This movie was highly entertaining. The plot revolves around a man whose main personality trait is that he's bad at driving (also of note, seemingly not the man on the cover of the DVD to the left) and he's a butt kicker who kicks butts. Sometimes without reason. He runs some sort of jack-of-all-trades crime fighting agency and never has any money. One day he's asked to save a girl from a cult run by a man who's always sitting and never removes his hood even if his shirt is off. His right hand is a crazy lady who loves to hype people up but doesn't care for all the love nonsense he preaches. The movie is a meandering journey to this rescue, but it's full of nonsense on the way there. There's a fighting competition in a pit, the complete and oddly calm destruction of a bad guy's car with a buzzsaw, and a joke about eggs that makes no sense. In addition to the weirdness and bad acting, it's also got some pretty atrocious sound mixing so, you've been warned.


It's definitely worth your time. 

Spoon Rating: 6.5

Afterwards we decided to experiment a bit with Watch2Gether, the application we were using to watch the movie. Adam put on his favorite "Eagleman" commercial and we realized there are a ton of sequels we haven't seen that are equally great. The crown jewel of the YouTube search though was a video called "You Could Stop At Five Or Six Stores," a highly-memed complication of people's acting reels. Even if you don't have time for "Low Blow," commit the eight and a half minutes to this one. 

Spoon Rating: 9

Heavenly Deception [1983]

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

Again, we have to put off "Dolemite" for another week because Erik wasn't there again. Although it is worth noting that Adam now has a box set of all of Rudy Ray Moore's film including past bad movie night watches, "Disco Godfather" and "Petey Wheatstraw." Either way, tonight we turned to Occult Demon Cassette. We decided to watch something called "The Cults," which turned out to be something of a combination between a news report from the Waco Texas incident and a dramatization of one man's experience falling into the Moonies cult.

Overall, it was a kind of interesting film but not especially funny in its own right. We got a solid laugh out of, "It's not deception. It's heavenly deception!" and there were a few chuckles out of the comically evil leader who recruits the main character, but otherwise it wasn't really worth your time. We were hoping for more of a Satanic panic sort of thing, but this film didn't have nearly enough misguided fear mongering.

Spoon Rating: 2

Kung Fu Arts [1978]

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

Because Erik wasn't there, we decided to wait on watching "Dolemite," Rudy Ray Moore's classic, and instead opt for a movie that Adam could verify the quality of. The title isn't much but during the very cheap credits we got a very interesting detail about an actor who is described as the "French monkey star." Kay automatically assumed this meant the actor is a monkey but Adam pointed out the monkey could be a nickname for some Frenchman. Kay was right and it wasn't just a little cameo either.

The plot involves a large rivalry for the throne and a king's daughter getting poisoned. He decides that to cure her he will offer her hand in marriage to whoever can make her better. The one who does is a monkey. So she marries a monkey. And the father, in shame, sends her away on a boat with her monkey husband. There is no irony in this premise. The daughter has a son with a non-monkey. Lots of poorly-lit fighting happens. You never get accustomed to the fact that this women is just married to a monkey. Some political stuff happens but it's pretty irrelevant to all the monkeyness.

This one is definitely worth a watch, but it's probably a more enjoyable watch if you don't know where it's going. In addition to the absolutely wild premise, there's a lot of bad camera work, bad lighting, gloriously bad dubbing, and some really wild costumes.

Spoon Rating: 6

Isaac Asimov's Robots [1988] & Reality Check [1998]

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

A few weeks ago we had an Occult Demon Cassette double feature of "Isaac Asimov's Robots" and "Reality Check." The first was a VCR mystery game that we didn't actually have the pieces to play along with but it did have some weirdness in its very 80s character designs.

Spoon Rating: 3

The second thing we watched was "Reality Check," a delightfully bad self-defense video. It's a solid time.

Spoon Rating: 6

Enjoy these ambiguous screenshots.