Mayflower II [2020]

Part of the selling point of this film was Sarah telling us that it had a budget of only $30,000 and it took six years to make. Obviously, it looks terrible. It's also Christian. It even stars the "Jewish" couple from The Unexpected Bar Mitzvah. The real problem with this movie is that it's completely incoherent. To give a little credit, it's clear that the writers had a dystopia in mind and really wanted to show and not tell, but the end result is that we never knew what was going on at any given moment. Still, I'll try to relate the plot.

There's a guy whose brother is some kind of Christian radical in a world where all Christians have to conform to a specific view of Christianity. We are never really told what this view is. Our guy is told about a secret ship his brother has stashed away for an escape called the Mayflower II, but when the brother's prayer meeting is raided by the cops, our guy and his wife take off in the ship alone to Mars. There's a colony there, that is definitely a mashup of a college campus and a midrange hotel, but you aren't allowed to leave. We don't really know why except that it's supposed to be a prison of sorts. However, they do leave when they learn that the government is planning an attack to blame on the Christian radicals. They go to Earth to save them and they all escape in the Mayflower II ship bound for who knows where. Probably starvation realistically, but apparently this was the first of a planned trilogy.

The sheer confusion we suffered watching this really brought down the viewing experience but there was a lot of fun to be had in the cheap sets and costumes and the fact that the main actor only has one distressed face that he uses the whole film. We wouldn't recommend a watch, but at an hour and fifteen minutes it could have been worse.

Spoon Rating: 4

Stone Cold [1991]

This is an action movie, and it does not take that title lightly. There is so much action in this movie, that the plot is really hard to follow. There are so many explosions, that appears to be where the entire budget went. There are so many fights and shoot outs that we all collectively could not remember that the main girl who was the love interest got unceremoniously offed with ten minutes left in the film. That's what I have to say for Stone Cold really: it's not boring but it's not strictly bad-movie-good.

The plot seems to be about a cop (probably) from Alabama who is in New Orleans to infiltrate a white supremacist biker gang. Apparently the Nazi affiliation isn't the issue so much as something to do with drugs. There's a guy named Chains who seems to lead it all and he hates the DA who is called Whip and wants to give all the bikers the death penalty or something. Every scene that isn't some sort of fight or chase is only about 30 seconds long so it's hard to gleam what's happening but the main mullet man did have a partner right at the beginning who disappears for most of the movie to reappear at the end. There's a helmet with a head in it, a biker funeral that's really a Viking funeral, some bar fights, a character known only as "the Bolivian," a severed and tattooed ear, at least two major car accidents, an exploding gas station, plenty of topless women, and a lot more explosions than I can really remember. The best part of the movie was the last ten minutes or so where we got some exploded dummy action and a scene of a motorcycle going out a window and slamming into a helicopter, causing an explosion. 

So was it worth it? Well, we don't regret watching it, but we can't really recommend it unless you stick to just the end.

Spoon Rating: 3

Cop Rock: Episodes 1-2 [1990]

Every once in a while at Bad Movie Night we have the dubious honor of watching something that isn't funny-bad or painful-bad but mysterious-bad, unusual-bad, curious-bad. The only times I can really remember that happening were with After Last Season, the money-laundering scheme that was hidden behind a movie no one was meant to see, and Deadly Lessons, a movie I am completely incapable of summarizing. Both of those films we gave 5 spoons to with an asterisk saying that you should maybe just watch it for the strangeness, and that's exactly how we feel about this television show. To be clear, Cop Rock is a canceled show of eleven episodes that's half police procedural and half musical, and you probably should not watch the whole thing. We watched two episodes before deciding that was enough. If any brave soul wants to attempt the whole thing, you can but we decided two was enough to get the picture.

We went in wondering if it would be an episodic show but it turned out to have a few consistent threads: the mayor is corrupt or something, two of the cops really want to bang but one is married to a potentially lying detective who isn't as hot as her coworker, a cop gets killed in the first ten minutes of the first episode and his partner gets a new partner who likes to sing Motown, one of the cops abuses people in the interrogation room, etc. The problem is, there is no investment in any of these characters at all (and I kind of couldn't tell any of the white guys apart either). The show is really blandly written. In fact, were it not for the musical aspect, this show would have flown so far under the radar as to be invisible. It's really a very standard and boring police procedural until someone suddenly starts singing. Of course, when they sing it is also a boringly written song that often sounds like a rip-off of something that would have been on the radio at the time. One song was clearly Bryan Adams, one sounded like "The Joker", and there are a lot of late 80s style ballads. Each 45 minute episode has about five songs, most of which are pretty mercifully short. Are they good singers at least? Some are. A lot aren't notable and some are kind of confusingly bad, shocking since according to Wikipedia 200 people tried out for this show. 

Aside from the obvious absurdity of the premise, this show invites even more questions when you watch it. Chief among them is probably, who is this show for? As a musical fan myself, I have asked this question a lot about shows doing the theater circuit and the answer is often a misguided attempt at getting those straight male dollars. But this isn't Broadway trying to court a new demographic; it's television. It's meant for maximum appeal on some level. Could the target be old people? Conservatives who like radio hits? Army wives? I just don't know. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is one of my favorite shows of all time and even though it's a brilliant comedy-drama-musical, it had a hard time finding an audience because of its title but won people over with its writing and clever use of music. But that's a show about more universal ideas around mental health, identity, and relationships and not a corrupt police force.

The other really weird thing about this show is the tone. This show is completely devoid of humor during the non-singing scenes with the small exception of one joke in episode two that worked. The music is also seemingly meant to be serious. However, because of the absurdity of the tone shift when the song playing is something upbeat instead of a solemn ballad, it ends up being funny: not in a laughing way but the slack-jawed-what-is-happening way. The best moment in the two episodes was a song called "He's Guilty" where they just start singing a gospel song in a court room, again seemingly not trying to be funny but succeeding by sheer audacity.

So should you watch it? I don't know. You could definitely get some amusement from the clips on YouTube of the best songs. In a way though, you kind of need to see that tone shift for yourself to really process how weird this thing is. It's not really fun or worth your time but maybe you should anyway?

Spoon Rating: 5*

*I mean, what else do you have to do?

Ghosts On The Loose [1943]

The dice gods do not like us and want us to suffer. At least it was only an hour.

Ghosts On The Loose is a film featuring a "comedy" troupe called The East Side Kids who are a void of humor. One of their sisters is getting married so the beginning is all about them preparing for the wedding by stealing flowers and a suit from dead people. Then they go to the house the couple has bought and steal the furniture from the supposedly haunted house next door. Turns out the two houses are connected by a tunnel or something and Bela Lugosi is a Nazi spy who is mad about the house being sold because he needs it for Nazi business. He tries to scare them with revolving bookcases and picture frames or something. It sucks. One of the guys comes down with German measles, which means his face is covered in little swastikas. Har har. 

I honestly can't top this review from the film's Wikipedia page, "The Los Angeles Times called the film 'a feeble and cheaply produced bit of unenticing nothingness.'"

Spoon Rating: 1

Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainville [2007]

We're down to rolling a d12 to decide on our movie, and the dice really didn't like Kay since they picked the one movie she least wanted to see, Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainville. In addition to Kay not liking serial killer things and fixating on the very inaccurate 50s costuming, Erik was prepared with the facts and ready to debunk every misstep in the retelling of Ed Gein's life. This still didn't make the movie watchable.

The movie seemed to have absolutely no concept of plot or pacing. Ed goes around killing people until he is found. He isn't really the main character since the film actually focuses on a cop whose girlfriend ends up being one of the abducted. They are insanely boring. The only interesting part of the whole thing is in the very beginning when Ed is digging up bodies with a friend who, after apparently doing this multiple times, finally questions the morality of what they are doing so Ed kills him and ties him to his truck like Achilles did to Hector (in spite of him having a flatbed truck?). We mourned his loss. 

Visually this movie is frustrating. The whole thing has this washed-out look that's like dirty faux black and white without being fully black and white. There are some gross scenes, as expected, but something about the utter lack of realism in the visuals kind of helps from anything being too traumatizing. And, of course, as a movie set in the 50s, the clothes are mostly wrong, the hair of both the men and women is entirely wrong (although one woman curiously has good 40s hair), and the makeup is basically modern. 

Do not bother. This movie cost Adam and Sarah $4, and they were robbed. With so many losers, soon we'll be switching over to watching some episodes of bad TV including the fever dream known as Cop Rock. It will get better.

Spoon Rating: 2

Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal [2001]

We rolled a critical fail on the dice role and on the movie as our film for today was Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal. Adam had seen the first Turbulence film and basically predicted that whatever the plot was it was going to end with a random person having to land the plane.

The basic premise is that a Marilyn Manson-esque rocker named Slade Kraven is going to be performing his last show on a modified plane with 40 fans in attendance. We are introduced to a bunch of random characters including a normie-ish fan who wants to be a journalist and her horny friend, a woman investigating a hacker of the cameras on the plane, the guys in air traffic control, the pilots, the flight attendants, a reporter of the concert who's a jerk and her cameraman, and, of course, the band. The show starts and Kraven quickly turns from shock rocker into literal murderer when he kills the copilot and seemingly holds the reporter hostage. The hacker and investigator learn that Kraven is actually someone else who disguised himself as the rock star in an effort to get publicity for his Satanic cult. He, the reporter jerk, and the pilot are actually all part of the cult and they have plans to crash the plane into a church in Kansas as part of some doomsday ritual. The real Kraven ends up escaping from the storage unit and gets in contact with the hacker who helps guide him in what's going on. He fights the imposter, sees the pilot kill himself, and then gets the guidance from the hacker to successfully land the plane and save the day. Hacker and investigator hook up. The normie girl gets report on the events with the help of the cameraman. Kraven is a hero. 

For its kind of wild plot, this movie is pretty boring. So much of it is just people on the phone with each other, and it feels like forever for the plot pieces to come together. The most interesting part really was trying to actually categorize the band's music (the menu song sounds like Godsmack, the first song they play sounds like Smashing Pumpkins, and the whole song performed sounds like Marilyn Manson; none of it is the "death metal" it claims to be).

Spoon Rating: 2

Time Cop [1994]

The dice determined that we would be experiencing the final of the three "double Van Damme" movies tonight, which also happened to be a favorite of Adam's when he was a kid. Van Damme plays a cop who tries to stop time crimes after time travel is invented. Of course, it is immediately used to make money to fund a political campaign. This being a Van Damme movie, he also has a wife who he has sex with and then she immediately dies, clearly setting up a future motivation to save her life. 

In general, the movie was kind of strange to follow. The plot wasn't specifically complicated, but, ironically, the pacing of the movie was really off. It was kind of hard to tell where we were in the film and every major plot point seemed to either happen way too early or way too late. Perhaps that's the real joke here: bad timing. Overall, it was just a bland Van Damme film, without anything specific to note about it. It certainly was missing some of the weird lines of other movies of his. The two main highlights involved some body horror CGI that was very mid-90s, but otherwise it's pretty forgettable.

Spoon Rating: 2