Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace [1996]

This movie really made us all ask a question of sequels: is it better to make a sequel assessible to people who did not see the first movie, or is it better for a sequel to presuppose that anyone watching it is already familiar with the original? This movie definitely did the latter and as we were all unfamiliar with Lawnmower Man, this movie was an utter mystery for most of it. Adam would not give specifics on how he found this movie although whether he forgot or was protecting his sources, we don't know. Either way, this movie is a ripoff of basically every sci-fi movie that came before it and the Man himself sometimes seems like he's doing a bad Jim Carrey impression on top of that.

The plot, as far as we could piece together, is about a guy called Jobe who invented a computer chip that controls an entire virtual reality world. Some Republicans who only care about money are using him to do their dirty work but he has been corrupted and wants to destroy the world to live in the virtual world. This is a very stupid plan. There's a doctor with horrible white dude dreads who is trying to stop him with some other scientist he has romantic tension with and some kids, one of whom is a friend of Jobe and remembers him as his family's lawnmower man. We never learn if this means something other than, you know, a landscaper. The world gets saved but also Jobe goes back to normal. This is the best I can do with this plot as none of us understood it.

The movie was really mediocre. Most of our joy came from the liberal use of the verb "to jack". Often it was "jacking in" or "jacking out" but at least once it was "jacking off" and we were pleased.

Spoon Rating: 2

 

Skull Forest [2012]

We had our potato and cheese soup with a side of Len Kabasinski, the director of Fist of the Vampire coming back to our screens with Skull Forest. This is a film that gave us genuine headaches through its incredibly liberal and poor use of shaky cam and Dutch angles and was also yet another "Most Dangerous Game" rip off. Overall, not bad.

The film follows mostly four women who are hard to tell apart since three are blonde and two look like sisters and none have names. We called them The Mom, The Businesswoman, The Slut, and The Cop. Of course, we foresaw that The Mom was going to survive according to horror movie rules. On the flip side of this game we have a cast of characters who were introduced at a gala with stock music playing. We couldn't really remember most of them outside the racist stereotype native girl and the Russian sambo fighter. One of them was also the director. After a series of wacky murders, we get down to just The Mom, who at one point had to crawl naked out of a grave, and the director. The film ends right as she whacks him in the head with a shovel. 

It's a simple film and short at just an hour and 15 minutes, but it was pretty good. Laughs were had.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

A Talking Cat!?! [2013]

It's been a while since we've seen something decent so we decided to rewatch A Talking Cat!?!. Read the original review here.

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