REWATCH: Manos: The Hands Of Fate [1966]

The first and only time we've watched "Manos: Hands of Fate" was in 2013, fairly early in the nearly eight year life of Bad Movie Night. Because it was so long ago, we never gave it a proper spoon rating so we decided to give it a rewatch.

The plot is basic for horror. A family gets lost on a desert vacation and ends up staying at an inn with a fawn-like porter named Torgo who keeps talking about "the master." The mother and father of the family spend a lot time staring at an ominous painting of the master and his dog who Torgo seems to imply is both dead and alive. Turns out there's a secret closet-cave-thing for a cult consisting of The Master and his many brides who mostly just stay in some kind of catatonic state but arise to worship their god, Manos. The family's dog dies, possibly by the Master's dog. Torgo ties up the father outside seemingly in part because he wants the mother to be his. The wives wake up and debate whether to kill the daughter or perserve her because she's female and have a brawl over it. Torgo gets punished by the Master by being massaged to death by the wives, but then he arises and the Master lights his hand on fire. The father escapes after one of the brides untied him and pulls a gun on the Master, but it seemed to be for nothing. We get a hard cut to a couple arriving at the inn with the father replacing Torgo and the mother and daughter in the garb of the wives, now under the Master's control.

This movie is bad but what makes it notorious is really how strange the aura of this movie is. None of us could quite put our finger on it. Erik mentioned that it feels kind of like a hazy dream. Adam said that it feels something like a silent movie that happens to have dialogue. This aura is created through really long sequences that move very slowly, repetitive and simplistic dialogue, background music that resembles improvisational jazz (with the exception of Torgo's theme), and a lot of moments that contribute to a sort of unreality: the fact that the daughter's few lines of dialogue are barely audible when everyone else is, the occasional cuts to this couple making out in a car who literally never move over what is at least 24 hours, the Master's lair being a room in the inn that seems to not exist all the time, the reoccuring hand motifs, and even the lack of a real climax as if that moment was cut from the film. It's fascinating enough to watch once, but maybe not engaging enough for a second time, I mean, unless maybe you wait seven years like we did.

Spoon Rating: 6

Lady Terminator [1988]

After watching and being very disappointed by "Lady Exterminator," we had to seek out the actual genderbent namesake of the classic science fiction movie and see for ourselves what kind of a narrative would be constructed. And, unlike with "Lady Exterminator" we were not disappointed with what we found. "Lady Terminator" is part explotation-y remake and part shot-for-shot ripoff (so basically the lady plus the terminator) with a delightful overlay of Indonisian folklore as a contrast to the cyberpunk aspects of the original. Apparently there's a whole rich history of Indonisian horror and exploitation films that a bunch of the DVD extras wanted to tell us about so this seems like another bad movie subgenre we will be looking further into on future Mondays.

We start with a goddess-like queen in some past time screwing men to death. She meets her match in a man who extracts an eel from between her legs and turns it into a dagger, an act which pisses her off enough to say that she will get revenge on his great granddaughter. Highly specific threat but okay. We fast forward to modern times where a lady, who fiercely corrects anyone who calls her a lady with "I'm an anthropologist", goes to research the Queen of the South Seas in Indonisia after an old man in a library tells her not to. After her diving adventure goes array with some light S&M and an eel getting all up in her, she is possessed by the Queen and ready for murder. She uses the same technique of death sex at first with some drunk by the shore, but her real goal is to get that granddaughter, identifiable because of her necklace (so her great granddad gave her an ID for the Queen to get her eventually). She ends up offing some girls wearing immitations of the necklace or just being witnesses and then suddenly the movie just becomes "The Terminator." We have a club (not called Tech Noir), we have a chase, we have an eye gouging scene, and we have the granddaughter taking refuge under a bridge with some rando cop because the time travel element isn't in this movie. It all ends how you would expect, and then we went off to do more research on the Queen of the South Seas, an important figure in Indonisian myth.

This movie was pretty solid. There were a lot of super strange reads and the whole premise itself is ripe for riticule. Add it to your list!

Spoon Rating: 7

Titanic: The Legend Goes On [2000] & Creating Rem Lezar [1988]

For years we were apparently under the incorrect assumption that we had seen both of the animated Titanic movies, but last week we discovered that we were wrong (and this probably wasn't the first time we noticed this error). So we decided to remedy this by finally watching Titanic: The Legend Goes On. While the ending certainly isn't as wild as the ending to The Legend of the Titanic (why all these claims that it's a legend when it's a verifiable historical event), this movie had plenty of weirdness in the fact that it had no real plot and instead sustains its barely hour long run time with a ton of subplots, many that feature talking animals. A list of those plots includes:
1. An orphan girl named Angelica has an evil foster mother and two evil stepsisters (don't question it) and she's looking for her mother who gave her a locket when she was little. No idea why she's totally gonna be on this ship but oh well.
2. The mice who Angelica was nice to are trying to get her locket back.
3. Angelica, a poor, falls in love with William, a rich.
4. Some racially insensitive Mexican mice are trying to get home after a tour.

5. The other animals are doing stuff too that most involves partying and punishing the evil cat.

6. There's a butler and singer subplot with the singer's slightly too human-seeming Dalmatians.

7. A detective in disguise is trying to find some jewel thieves who are kind of the villains in 101 Dalmatians and are also incompetent.

8. A lady has fake jewelry and tries to marry an old guy for his money but he's actually in debt and was trying to get her money.

Every character with a plot survives except the singer who choses to go down singing. The mice even give us an epilogue about what happened to all of them.

In addition to the lack of plot, the film has three songs: a party time song sung by a rapping dog, a racially insensitive song by the Mexican mice, and the main theme, which is not horribly offensive but plays over and over until you've lost your mind. The animation is also mostly ugly, weirdly slow, and designwise seems cribbed from various Disney movies (including but not limited to Cinderella, 101 Dalmatians, An American Tail, and Lady And The Tramp).

It was pretty fun.

Spoon Rating: 6

Unfortunately, Titanic: The Legend Goes On was fiercely overshadowed by our second short feature, Creating Rem Lezar, an absolutely bizarre musical film that seems to have been made for children but only under the influence of a copious amount of drugs.

The film starts with a little boy getting yelled at by his teacher for talking about his imaginary friend Rem Lezar so on his walk to the principal's office he sings about dreaming dreams. Rem shows up to sing a bit with him and talks about how much the boy has touched him. A little girl, who is also yelled at by her mother for her imagination and is being punished by having to sleep in the dark, does a duet with Rem that is also at least somewhat dream related. At school, the kids both realize that they have the same god and decide to go into a shed and build him in effigy so they can worship him better. As they sleep (presumably) Rem Lezar takes them on an advantage to defeat a low pixel face in the sky by getting as high as possible. This requires them to go to New York City, a place where there are a lot of high things, and they come across a wild doowop group, a rapper with only a few bars, and a hype violinist because Central Park is just that kind of place. They end up at the Twin Towers and learn that there's nothing higher than love or something and manage to find Rem Lezar's Quixotic Medallion, a gaudy piece of bling with an infinity symbol on it. The kids wake up when a cop finds their Rem Lezar church and they both end up with their own Medallions as a devotional relic so they can continue to worship The Most Holy Rem Lezar.

This was an amazing piece of cinema and I can't recommend it enough.

Spoon Rating: 9

Lady Exterminator [1983]

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

Life in the quar is a little easier when we watch things that are available on YouTube and with a video title like "Lady Exterminator - Full Movie - The Most Misogynist POS I've Ever Seen-Indonesian Rape/Revenge Trash", we thought we knew what we were in for. Unfortunately in spite of that glowing endorsement right in the title, it was not a fun time. The strangest thing was that once we were over halfway through the movie we started to wonder if we were misinterpertating the title. We all expected a film where a lady got raped and then became a badass who gets revenge. Instead we had gotten plenty of rape but no revenge and we were thinking maybe instead of a lady exterminator we'd be getting an exterminator of ladies, which we really didn't want. It turns out we were right the first time but not until the literal last five minutes of the movie. That movie cover just barely not a lie.

The plot was so convulted that even Sarah could barely follow it. The problem was really a lack of transitions and the fact that everyone was dubbed with the same voice and had similar names (the two main men are named Roni and Rudi for instance). There are some drug lords with a gang of fighting ladies who don't ever really fight and they rape the pregnant wife of a rival who can only have sex with his wife if he's beating her up. Then the rival rapes the drug lord's sister as revenge. There's also some rape of random girls off the street. This movie is a lot of rape is what I'm saying and it is a horrifying chore to watch. Adam at one point bemoaned, "Can't these guys just be civiled and try to kill each other instead?" Then we get our final few minutes where the wife, who had a miscarriage from the rape and not from her husband beating her, appears to get some revenge but it was far too late by that point for us to care. The film ends strangely on a quote from revelations as if he was trying to have a moral.

In trying to look up the plot summary for this film because we were so confused it was actually really hard to find. Part of the reason is that it has a ton of different names. On IMDb it's "I Want To Get Even" and on this Wikipedia article its "Forbidden Items." Perhaps this movie should be more elusive. Perhaps it shouldn't be found.

Spoon Rating: 1.5

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Dingo Pictures) & The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Burbank Films) [1986]

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

Welcome to another entry into The Hunchbackening. It was just Kay, Adam, and Grandma again so it seemed fitting that we would delve deeper into this exploration that no one else wants.

The first animated Hunchback of Notre Dame film from Dingo Pictures was a real treat. This film is probably one of the ugliest and cheapest we've ever seen and it was amazing. I couldn't even find the date it was made or a cover for the film although Dingo Pictures, the company that made it, has a website that can be put in English or German. It kind of follows the Hunchback book plot but with Phoebus never even getting named or doing anything and with the addition of some nuns. Pierre speaks almost wholly in rhymes, Frollo is comically evil, and Clopin is super drunk, but every character is a delight because this is some of the worst dubbing we have ever seen. It was like every take was the first take and there is no attempt to match the lip flaps at all. The animation is also horrible. Quasi is by no means the ugliest character in the move and half the time characters emote by just shaking. There's also a random character in modern dress among all the semi-medieval clothes. The film ends with Frollo dying in the way he's supposed to (getting pushed off Notre Dame by Quasi) and Quasi going to jail but he's happy because Esmeralda managed to escape.

Spoon Rating: 8

The second Hunchback film by Burbank Films Australia was not bad. It followed the book plot even more accurately. Quasimodo was mostly absent for the first 35 minutes of the 52 minute movie. He acts more like an Igor type character than anything else. The first portion of the movie is more about Frollo's lust for Esmeralda (he's randomly an alchemist in this one), Pierre joining the gypsies and his marriage to Esmeralda (in this one he has a hopeless crush on Esmeralda), and the Phoebus getting stabbed at the tavern subplot. The story progresses as expected and it is surprisingly good at showing and not telling but it definitely overlooks some development in the name of keeping the run time short. Frollo dies in this one too in the usual way and Quasi gets declared innocent by Phoebus when he's just wandering by to prove he's not dead. It ends with some really cheesy affirmations from Esmeralda about how Quasi is good so it doesn't matter what he looks like. Honestly, aside from the Disney version, it's probably the best animated Hunchback adaption we've seen.

Spoon Rating: 2. But like 3/5 stars.

A Witch's Spiritual Confession [1990s]

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

Back in June when we watched “Reefer Madness” we also watched a very curious video on Occult Demon Cassette called “A Witch’s Spiritual Hoedown,” a video of a singing session at a church service that felt like an eternity. We couldn’t understand why it had such an intriguing title without any kind of pay off to its supposed witchiness. Then a few weeks ago, we were wandering around Occult Demon Cassette again in search of things to watch and to our joy we found “A Witch’s Confession,” the next part of the sermon and the part we were clearly actually hoping for. Last night, we finally watched it.

The whole hour and forty minutes consists of a woman talking about the dangers of alternative religions and telling her story about how she got involved in all sorts of things before finding Jesus. She describes her fall as starting with reading the horoscopes in the newspaper, leading to calling psychic hotline, and then buying her own tarot cards (which with her southern(?) accent has too much emphasis on the “o”). Apparently this led her into Wicca, which she describes initially accurately but then insists that Wicca practitioners are all secretly doing black magic even though they claim to only do good magic. She spends a lot of time humblebragging about what a successful witch she was and talks about how she had to move onto voodoo because she had mastered all of what Wicca had to teach her.

The moment we were truly ascended was when she mentioned getting into the Necronomicon. She insisted that the book was not actually a fictional book by HP Lovecraft but that Lovecraft’s father was involved in the occult and after he died he left instructions to his son on how to find the book, which is a real magical resource. Adam commented that this justification sounded like an HP Lovecraft story itself. She apparently moved to California and joined a cult based around it, but left when she decided she didn’t want to be used as a sacrifice. 

From there she got into Satanism. She mentioned meeting Anton LaVey on two separate occasions that didn’t fully match up, but she did have pictures of what she claimed was her Satanic altar. She also mentioned all the money she made from her magic shops and while listing a bunch of the types of magic she did like tea leaves and palmistry, she included Dungeons & Dragons. Not sure what magic she was doing with an RPG, but considering the imagination this woman has, it probably was dangerous.

Aside from all the weird bragging, this woman didn’t come off as someone you would want in your church. While she clearly believes in fantastical things, when she “masters” Christianity, won’t she just move onto something else? Adam theorized that she’s probably a Mormon by now because she would clearly be excited by there being another testament to explore.

Overall, it was an enjoyable watch, vastly more enjoyable than the spiritual hoedown. During the last twenty minutes she gets pretty repetitive and we both kind of tuned out but there was some real gold before that.

Of course Adam, the philosopher who has studied religion a lot, pulled out his study Bible to verify some of her claims and from this he came up with a review for the video. From Job 42.3, “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.”

Spoon Rating: 5

REWATCH: Street Fighter [1994]

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

So we watched "Street Fighter" once in 2013 on Kay's birthday, and we never rated it so we were long overdue for a rewatch. Adam has compiled every movie we've watched into a spreadsheet with ratings with the somewhat ultimate goal of creating a list of 52 movies that all rank in the "rewatchable" score range to provide as a year of solid bad movies. 

Unfortunately, "Street Fighter" just missed the cut. We decided to give it a Spoon Rating of 6 because while there are a lot of funny moments, some of them feel intentional. There are a few moments we specifically know were intentional ("change the channel" and "you get paid?" being the two that come to mind) but a lot of the comedy comes specifically from the over-the-top performance of Raul Julia as M. Bison. Was this meant to be more menacing than scary? Who's to say? But it's hilarious. Otherwise there is a bit of comedy to be had from Jean-Claude Van Damme as Colonel Guile and some comedy to be had just from the strange nature of the script and how each of the one hundred characters is shoved into the movie with some kind of two sentence backstory and a plot device to get them into their video game costume.

So you should definitely watch it, but you don't really need to see it again. Just watch one of the many compilation videos of M. Bison's best lines.