REWATCH: The Phantom [1996]

Ever since we first watched "The Phantom," it has lingered in the backs of our minds (or at least the minds of Kay and Sarah for some reason). Now finally getting back on the rewatch vibe, we decided to give it another go and it was just as delightful as we remembered. A lot of that can be attributed to the fact that the villain is the campiest villain since M. Bison in "Street Fighter." It's a joy. You can read my original review of this movie here.

Spoon Rating: 8

24 Hours To Midnight [1985]

After our enjoyment of "Low Blow," Adam discovered that Leo Fong, the star, is also a film maker and was specifically responsible for an early Cynthia Rothrock film called "24 Hours To Midnight." Or at least it's technically a Rothrock film. Her character spends most of the movie in a full ninja costume and it's definitely not her. A big giveaway is the fact that she doesn't actually fight, but she still is here to kill. Apparently, she pulled out of the film, so a "Plan 9" Bela Lugosi tactic was used instead.

The plot is your standard "Kill Bill" concept. Her husband is killed within the first few minutes of the film and she spends the rest of the movie killing off the frugal mob gang responsible for his death with a new weapon each time. Fairly frequently we get flashbacks that are often just the scene of Rothrock crying in her car unconvincingly and we get some voice over from her to try to conceal her lack of presence in the film. In the b-plot meant to pad out the film, we have two cops, a guy who looks about 17 and a woman with fried hair and face, and they are investigating gang activity in the area and trying to find the source of these deaths. They are really incompetent and not convincing as cops and were maybe added into the film to pad it out when they couldn't have Rothrock kicking butt.

Overall, this movie was pretty dry. There was a little comedy, bad acting, and a boom mic in a shot, but ultimately it didn't really pay off. You can do better and you can especially do better if you want Cynthia Rothrock.

Quote: He whipped on them people like they was his stepchildren.

Spoon Rating: 3

Night Of The Kickfighters [1988]

We got another with a title that doesn't match. Apparently this film is also called "Night Raiders", which isn't much better but as Adam pointed out, there's a lot of kicking in this movie for a movie that shouldn't really have any. This movie is ultimately a rescue mission movie with a team of characters but that premise doesn't even get established until at least halfway through. And aside from our main character (somewhat) none specialize in kicking.

We get an opening that doesn't really tell us anything aside from establishing our main villain lady who is campy and dresses like a D&D villain and our hero who looks way too much like other white men in the movie. We get some set up about a government developed laser that doesn't come up again and a girl who is about to get married when she gets kidnapped. Our main guy gathers together a ragtag group including a stoner witch a lot of gadgets he developed and a magician with a grandiose voice and style. They interrupt our villain's lazing around wearing a snake and being fed grapes by her tall lackey when they break in but she uses microwaves to melt some brains. In they end, they blow up her boat with a very bad effect and the kidnapped girl is able to get married with our ragtag group in attendance.

Overall, this movie is really borderline. We got some solid laughs from the characters and bad effects, but the film was also poorly constructed in a way that occasionally left us a bit confused. Watch at your discretion.

Spoon Rating: 5

Alien Beasts [1991]

Occasionally we watch a movie that seems like someone's weird fetish. Sometimes we watch a movie that clearly has no budget. By that slim metric, "Alien Beasts" is technically nothing new for us, but somehow it is more utterly incomprehensible than anything else we've seen (and therefore more likely to be fetish based somehow) and seems to have had a budget that amounts to the cost of a gas mask. The Spanish language videos we made for high school in 2005 are better films than this movie. Our childhood videos filmed by our parents on the same camcorders in 1991 are better films than this one.

Trying to explain the plot of "Alien Beasts" is not really possible. There's no dialogue; only a voiceover who stumbles over his lines and repeats most of them twice and nothing he says makes sense. Even in scenes with people, they don't speak and the few times noises happen, it seems that they don't speak because the sound quality is so bad that the voiceover is meant to explain everything after the fact. The show opens on a man with a gas mask badly fighting a bunch of people in front of a house. By trying to decode the voiceover, it seems that there has been an extra-dimensional portal opened and there are some government agents trying to stop aliens or something. Mostly we get a lot of scenes of unskilled fighting, a guy under a bridge leaking fluid, and an incredibly long scene of an "alien" woman wearing a mask who breaks into a house and gets undressed really really slowly (hence, the fetish thing). Occasionally, the movie cuts away to the mask thing you see on the film cover. In the last few minutes there's a montage of weird art clips that look like an old Nickelodeon advertisement and that maybe suggest some sort of artistry that we never really got to experience, but that's it for the potential of quality. The film ends abruptly but the voiceover assures us everything is fine now.

This movie is really really bad. We got a laugh or two in the beginning because the quality of the film is so bad, but it quickly became tedious. We tried to make it more fun by imagining if Andy Sidaris made it or by imagining that the director is trying and failing to emulate David Lynch, but ultimately it didn't improve the experience. If you want to watch any of it to understand how bad it is, skip around and fast forward.

Spoon Rating: 1.5

Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter [2001]

Adam gave us a few options for tonight and Erik and Kay immediately insisted on "Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter" on the basis of an amazing name. It asks the question we've all had of, "What if Jesus had his second coming during an epidemic of vampire lesbian murders in Ottowa?" And the answer is of course, kick ass in the name of love.

We get an introduction with some metaphor about a home from a bearded man emerging  from the bushes, the source of all the best advice. After a techno laced intro credit sequence, we get a vampire lady draining a victim and then lamenting, "Where have all our lesbians gone?" The scene cuts to a punk priest reading about the missing lesbians and discussing this with a priest in robes who is concerned about these missing children of god. He goes with another priest to find Jesus on the beach, baptizing and then dunking a woman in the sea. A trio of vampire women show up to fight and both priests get killed. Jesus takes their bike into town while a weird song plays listing the books of the Bible. Jesus gets a haircut and performs a music number with some people. He meets up with the priest from the beginning who tells him that lesbians are dying around the city but the church isn't really willing to step in because homophobia. It's good to know Jesus is an ally. The "atheists" show up to fight Jesus in a veritable clown car and he fights them all off with more techno playing. When Jesus gets back to his place there's a woman named Mary Magnum who discusses her work hunting the vampires while they hang in a sauna. They go clothes shopping at a thrift store with a white owner who speaks in Rudy Rae Moore quotes and it's awkward. The duo trail a vampire lady to the hospital where a crazy surgeon is doing work  to make vampires immune to sun. They go to a Lesbian Drop-In Centre ('cause those exist), which has already been infested with vampires. Mary and Jesus fight a vampire duo and Mary gets feasted on while Jesus wanders the streets alone. He is rescued by a person who seemed to be an offensive caricature of a trans woman. God then talks to Jesus in his ice cream and he meets up with a luchador named Santos. They go to a club where a man scats about "Star Wars" and fight vampires there. After a brief chat with his mom, vampires break into Jesus' apartment and he has a showdown with them in a lot. Mary is saved and Jesus resurrects her vampire girlfriend, Maxine. Everyone is happy.

Overall, the movie was strange in a mostly fun way. On the awkward side there were some random bits that didn't fit. We get a random bi character named Maggie who is Santos' love interest but none of us remember her introduction at all. There's also a random lady whose butt gets groped everywhere she goes and this seems like it's supposed to be a joke. And then there's the suspected transphobic vibe and the weird shop owner. Aside from those things, there's a lot of good silly moments throughout and it's worth a watch.

Quotes: 
"We're running low on skin. I suggest we harvest another lesbian."

"There's nothing deviant about love."

Spoon Rating: 7

Aladin [1993] & The 420 Awards [2020]

We started our evening with "Aladin," a Dingo Pictures production. We previously watched their version of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" so we figured this would be a pretty good time, and we were right. 

It seemed to follow the "Arabian Nights" plot more than the Disney movie. It starts with a wizard claiming to be Aladin's uncle. It turns out he was lying to use Aladin to go find some gold for him (or magic fruit or diamonds or something). Aladin finds a genie in a ring and a magic lamp genie too. We get some random subplot about a snake owner and a monkey owner who are mad at each other throughout. Next we are introduced to the princess whose dad, the Sultan, will kill anyone who sees her. Aladin sneaks in to see her and offers his treasure, but she's going to marry some other guy. The Sultan sets the dowry at an absurdly high price but before Aladin can pay it, the wizard steals the palace with the princess in it and moves it to his place in Africa using the magic lamp that he managed to get back. Aladin asks the genie in his ring for help and gets a magic carpet to get rescue her. Aladin poisons the wizard and they return safely.

Overall, we had a lot of laughs. The voice acting was especially bad, worse than "Hunchback," and we could even hear mic bumps and the pages of scripts in the background. There were a few songs too that were mostly if not all in German because they didn't bother to translate them. The animation, as expected, was really terrible, so terrible that sometimes it was hard to follow because of how rarely the dialogue matched the scenes. We really needed Sarah, plot follower, to help us get through this. We definitely recommend it but it may be a little too frustrating to watch a second time.

Spoon Rating: 7

After "Aladin," we watched the second annual "420 Awards," Derek Savage's celebration of his own personal triumphs while he mangles people's names and acts like he's famous. With the pandemic, he was unable to invite a bunch of untalented comedians and rejected birthday party entertainers to pad out the run time. Instead the awards were intercut with a dude in PPE dancing, that same dude dancing dressed as a large joint, Savage shooting coronavirus with "Birdemic" level graphics, and a joke about him having coronavirus from drinking Corona beers. All the awards not given to Savage himself (get gave himself two this year) were accepted by PPE man while Savage claimed he was famous people. This joke never seemed to stop amusing him. In terms of notable mistakes, he mixed up Zendaya and Haliee Steinfield during the "Favorite Hottest Actress" category and most notably called "The Big Lebowski" "The Big Lewinsky" and later announced it as "The Big Lebwisky." Here's hoping there's more to the third annual awards, which will surely happen so Savage can give himself three awards this time.

Spoon Rating: 6

Gary Coleman: For Safety's Sake [1986], An Idea Whose Time Has Come [1990], Hot Talk Starters: Episode 1 [1995], & Hotel Torgo [2004]

We decided to spend the evening with a bunch of short videos that we found online; the final three coming from our favorite Occult Demon Cassette.

The first one was from the genre of 80s videos you'd watch in health class. The premise of "Gary Coleman: For Safety's Sake" is that Gary Coleman is a god who sits in a control center as he tortures a young boy calling himself Jack Example with all kinds of nightmare scenarios in order to teach basic safety and first aid for children. At one point he even causes him to choke so they can demonstrate the Heimlich maneuver. We definitely got a few laughs from Jack's pain.

Spoon Rating: 5

The next thing we watched was an utterly baffling twenty minute video called "An Idea Whose Time Has Come". The whole video explained in detail a discovery made by an Austrian scientist that supposedly revolutionized the world. They then show people in the modern era drinking this darkly colored substance called KM and talking about how amazing it is and how you want to get it and be a part of it. At no point do they actually explain what the product does or why you should get it. It's pretty obviously a pyramid scheme but when we looked it up, we could barely find anything about it except that it's some kind of potassium based mineral supplement.

Spoon Rating: 7

The last comedic thing was episode one of something called "Hot Talk Starters". The show was divided into segments that were apparently meant to provoke a conversation. The first was about suicide (that called suicide the selfish choice), then questioning the existence of god, then dating with a touch of discussion about interfaith dating (we all took bets and Sarah won but Kay and Erik both knew sex would be coming next), and finally a bunch of interviews with teens in the KKK. It was interesting but not really funny. We probably won't watch more.

Spoon Rating: 3

The last thing we watched was a short documentary about "Manos: Hands of Fate"  called "Hotel Torgo." There wasn't much of note in it and we obviously didn't rate it because it wasn't mean to be bad. Either way though, we didn't learn much more about the film.