The 420 Awards [2021] & The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo [1996]

We started the evening with the third annual "420 Awards," Derek Savage's increasingly sad attempt to have an award show. Since the first one was really the best because of the terrible performers he got to attend, every subsequent one has been a real waste because of the pandemic. This year he had two comedians who were both just horrendous and offensive, some tall man he called Ms. Pres, a twenty-something kid with a genuinely good announcer voice, and a guy in a blunt costume. The nominees were seemingly the same as last year because Derek Savage has no idea what's popular or when things are released, but what made this one unusual was that he didn't give himself an award for once. We all released that we should have gotten high for the event, and Sarah lamented being pregnant and therefore unable to get high right now.

It would be easy to claim this was a complete waste of time, but it actually wasn't for one very specific reason. In the middle of the show Derek Savage's latest fursona, Dirty Dog, interrupts the show because he's the bad guy counterpart to Cool Cat. He does some gymnastics to an amazingly terrible song about himself and then drops that you can see more of him in Savage's latest film Cool Cat Fights Coronavirus. Adam stopped the video, googled the film, and immediately added it to cart while solemnly murmuring, "oh no. oh no." So look for a post on that in the future.

Spoon Rating: 2.5

After, we decided to continue our Hunchbackening with a free animated series on Amazon called The Magical Adventures of Quasimodo. This show is inexplicable. The whole time we found ourselves just questioning why this thing was ever made. It obviously doesn't follow the book or even the Disney movie because it's a series. 

In the first episode Quasi meets Esmerelda and her brother (?!), Francois, who is maybe a stand-in for Pierre Gringoire. They end up going to a costume party to try to stop Frollo (who straight up looks like Nosferatu) from KILLING THE KING. What even is the goal here?! To quote Adam, "Unless he's got some Cromwell plan here, I don't think he knows how monarchies work." Frollo even dressed like an executioner. There's also a guy at Notre Dame who isn't the Bishop but is just some guy named Denis who is nice to Quasi. And Frollo has a dog he abuses. And Esmerelda's grandma makes some comment about being a gypsy that implies it's a choice and not a marginalized ethic group. And the animation is terrible, obviously, to the point where we were thinking maybe the reason Quasi is ostracized has more to do with the fact that he's got a pretty normal face compared to most of the characters. And the acting is bad, although admittedly the guy voicing Frollo does sound like the guy from the Disney film. 

All in all, it was a weird experiment but we decided it wasn't worth continuing.

Spoon Rating: 3

Fight To Win [1987]

When Adam found out there's a Leo Fong directed movie staring Cynthia Rothrock, we knew we would have to add it to our list. Fight To Win is honestly a really curious film for a couple reasons. The fact that Rothrock is given such a prominent place in the advertising is weird from the perspective that she doesn't come into the film until something like 30 minutes into an hour and twenty minute movie was definitely the most disappointing part. Interestingly, there's also a cameo from Bill "Superfoot" Wallace, a legendary martial artist who only has one good foot and who once kicked Adam during a seminar (apparently he kicked everyone as part of the seminar and yes, it hurt).

The film starts with some background on a martial arts competition for three statues of Chinese deities. Twenty years later, this really cocky young martial artist is approached by an Australian guy in a parking lot who challenges him to a fighting competition and he accepts for some reason. Minutes later, his instructor has a heart attack and is unable to train him. For a while, our main character just sits by his bedside, not training at all, and he loses the competition. A rematch is planned and his instructor tells him he's going to send him a new instructor to help: Cynthia Rothrock. Cue all the sexist jokes until she kicks him in the face (and even then they don't really stop throughout the whole movie). She trains him. At one point they go out to dinner and we see his deplorable table manners and that he has absolutely no game. They have to fight random guys in parking lots just so there's a reason to see them fight. Finally it's time for the competition but they realize that the Australian (who's also Rothrock's ex) had no interest in playing fair. He just wanted to collect all the statues, so he pulls out guns on them. In the last twenty minutes of the movie, it becomes something of a break-in film with a lot of pretending-to-be-gay to distract, a deus ex machina guy on a motorcycle, and the instructor who had a heart attack showing up out of nowhere. The main character learns nothing, but they win.

This movie is very borderline. There were some great bad line reads, sloppy edits, a guy hired solely to impersonate Eddie Murphy, and more boom mic than you could ever dream of. However, the plot was pretty boring until it gets weird more than halfway through. Overall, we decided that if Leo Fong's direction or Cynthia Rothrock's presence or just bad martial arts movies in general are amusing to you, this is a good one to add. Otherwise, maybe don't bother.

Spoon Rating: 4.5

REWATCH: The Room [2003]

In honor of the nine year anniversary of Bad Movie Night, we decided to rewatch The Room for the first time in about four years. It took us about three hours to watch just because we kept pausing it to have deviating conversations or to explore the artistry. Some highlights include: stopping to tell the story about how Kay's mom called her a homewrecker when she wasn't doing anything, an in depth analysis of each character's utility to the story, Erik and Kay randomly talking about D&D, Sarah making more quesadillas, a passionate defense of Mark's cluelessness when Lisa is hitting on him since we are actually all exactly that stupid ourselves, Adam pointing out which lines specifically have become a fundamental part of his lexicon and his waxing poetic about how much he enjoys the character of Claudette, and many more.

We ended the evening by watching a serious of bad porno openers on YouTube because, honestly, they aren't too dissimilar to The Room.

Spoon Rating: 10

Pagan Invasion Volume 2: Invasion of the Godmen [1991] & Pagan Invasion Volume 3: Meditation, Pathway to Deception [1991]

 We decided to do a double feature of 45 minute episodes of "Pagan Invasion." We had done the first episode as part of an anti-Halloween special and thought that it wasn't especially great, but the comments on these two seemed promising enough for us to give them a chance as well.

Volume 2, in spite of the incredible title, is not about some race of Godmen, but just about various yogis, many of whom started cults or got in trouble with the law for something. Because this is Christian propaganda, they are trying to convince the audience that these few men are 1.) all equally evil and 2.) proof that Hinduism itself is evil. Volume 3 was almost a continuation of the previous idea but with a specific focus on how meditation is actually evil and should be avoided if you want to live a good Christian life. It was an interesting sort of time capsule when you consider that meditation is completely nonreligious and promoted by just about every mental health care professional in the West. Being that Adam has a minor in religion, Sarah is a yoga practitioner, and Kay has at least seen "Wild, Wild Country," we were unconvinced by either of these narratives. 

Both episodes were genuinely interesting, but we didn't really laugh much. The only thing that really got us was when one of the interviews said, "the evils of meditation and stress management" as if either of those things is bad.

Spoon Rating: 2; 2.5

Shocking Dark [1989]

There's a certain joy in seeing low budget movies that are clear homages to other films. A lot of low budget filmmakers, in the absence of creativity, just want to make their version of their favorite science fiction or horror film, and there's a charm to it. It feels honest. Then there's "Shocking Dark." This movie was also released as "Aliens 2" and "Terminator 2" in a very transparent marketing ploy. Although, the titles are not really unwarranted on some level. This movie follows the exact plot of "Aliens" to the point where it's barely worth doing a plot summary. Adam, who remembers "Aliens" well, was losing his mind all night. The only major difference is that it is set in Venice in the not so distant future where they have to go through these underwater tubes set up by the Tubular company to find out what's infecting the water. They basically wander a warehouse in sci-fi suits. So where does the terminator come in? About 3/4 of the way through the movie, it is clear that one of the guys on the task force is a robot very obviously designed around the terminator. Our Ripley and Newt of the movie escape through a time pod. He follows them. They still beat him in the end, and since they're in the past they have time to save Venice before the Tubular company can mess it up.

Overall, this one dragged a little but when it was good, it was really good. The acting was often over-the-top, especially in how everyone screamed like they were being murdered regardless of the context. The characters were completely flat, and there were some little bits of side racism between characters that they never had time to grow out of. And let me not forget the dummies. So many good dummy moments. Ultimately though, I think this one suffered a lot for being a cynical attempt at tricking people into buying the wrong movie. Still worth one watch though.

Spoon Rating: 5

Popstar [2005]

When Erik brought this film to our attention last week, we were a little skeptical. While this Aaron Carter vehicle is not a Disney Channel original movie, its marketing definitely feels like it, and we've had mixed results with DCOMs in the past. Honestly though, because this movie isn't confined by the standards of a DCOM, it had full invitation to be a lot weirder, a little less formulaic, and also slightly horny in an appropriately PG-rated way. Erik also invited his sister Kat who, in spite of being born in 2003, apparently has a lot of feelings about Aaron Carter. Since Adam has always culturally lived under a rock, we started the evening with a viewing of "Aaron's Party (Come Get It)" and a brief Wikipediaing of him to realize that 1.) he is still making music and 2.) he's only 33. Adam, Kay, and Sarah were shook to realize he's our age, but also to realize that he was 18 when he made this movie. Why is that surprising? Partially because he was past his prime at this point but mostly because his costar, seen on the movie cover looking like his mother, is 25 and it's really obvious and distracting. 

As you could probably surmise, the film is about Aaron Carter being a famous popstar who has to go to a normal high school because he's failing his homeschooling. Our geriatric love interest there is the "smart girl" since she got a perfect score on her SATs, but hey, that must be pretty easy when you've been in high school for ten years. I keep emphasizing this point because it was consistently distracting throughout the film. While Aaron Carter may look a little haggard, he still looks like an 18-year-old. Our girl Jane here, is not a young-looking 25 and it is uncomfortable. They also clearly cast the other high school girls with actresses in their 20s to try to make it not so distracting, but even then she still looks incredibly old. Anyway, Aaron, called J.D. in the film, flirts with Jane when he finds out she's smart and then gets calculus tutoring from her. It helps that she's a mega-fan and he has absolutely no problem with her room being covered in pictures of him because he's an egotist. The movie doesn't have much of a plot but instead has a bunch of scenes. Jane gets upset that J.D. won't say they're dating to magazines. The popular girl who always has her entire midriff out tries to blackmail J.D. into going to prom with her (prom never happens in the film by the way). There's a magical janitor played by former pop star Leif Garrett who gets shoehorned into a relationship at the last second with Jane's sister who got left at the alter. A stereotypical nerd keeps asking out popular girls to no success. J.D.'s manager keeps dating young girls but ends up with Jane's mom in the end. J.D. has test anxiety so he takes his calc final alone on a stage. I'm not really putting these events in order, but it also doesn't really matter. The film is more about the vibe.

So how's the vibe? Excellent. The acting is terrible whether it's Aaron Carter's unconvincing reads to the lead actress trying SO hard to seem younger than she is with muffled dialogue and awkward walking. The plot, as you can see, is kind of a mess with too many characters doing too many things and everything wrapped up far too neatly in the last scene. The editing is clearly meant to be creative, but it renders a lot of things ambiguous or incoherent. And I didn't really even get into the vague horniness, particularly of the adult men in the film towards "teen" girls. The early-2000s were a different time. 

This one was definitely worth it. 

Spoon Rating: 7

Druids [2001]

Did you watch Braveheart and think, this is good but what if it was a lot more convoluted? Or did you watch Gladiator and think, I like this time period but what if I got that with far more inept film making? Well, let me introduce you to Druids. This movie came out right in that sweet spot of the beginning of the "swords and sandals" genre revival expect there aren't really sandals since this takes place in Gaul and the costumer also had no idea what they were doing anyway with either the Gallic characters or the Roman ones. This movie maddened everyone at bad movie night in different ways. Kay was maddened by the inaccurate and lazy costuming. Adam was maddened by the absolute lack of war strategy competence. Erik was maddened by how the movie is called Druids but druids only appear in the very first scene and the last and hold absolutely no barring on the plot. And Sarah was maddened by how hard it was to keep track of the plot.

With that in mind, I can only give a broad overview of what happened in this film. A kid-of-some-renowned's father is killed. Druids make a really vague prophecy. The kid grows up to kill his uncle and try to unite the tribes of Gaul. And that's just the first half hour of a two hour movie. Most of the film involves this guy, an actual figure in history named Vercingetorix, trying to unite Gaul, destroying Gaul in order to piss off the Romans, and then fighting against the Romans in a battle that he ultimately lost. It really strongly feels like the French Braveheart in its tone. The French title of the film is actually Vercingétorix: La Légende du druide roi or Vercingetorix, The Legend of the Druid King, which is a much more accurate title but the name probably didn't work in foreign markets. Why not just call it The King of the Gauls? Well, probably because so few people know who the Gauls are anyway. But druids? People know them. Or they think they do since historically speaking we actually know hardly anything about them.

This movie provided us with a few laughs from bad acting and dialogue but most of our fun with this movie came from us being exasperated by the poor choices. On it's own it doesn't hold up without people to make fun of it with.

Spoon Rating: 2.5