Demons At The Door [2004]

This movie was hell, both literally and figuratively. It starts in Unnamed Islamic Nation with some archeologists (presumably) and a "terrorist" who is American before some military guys bust in and save them. One of them dramatically tears off his shirt and needs to get a new one. At this point, we thought the movie may have potential.

Apparently this thing the archeologists  were investigating was actually a door to hell and a bunch of demons get released. The next hour is just fighting demons coming out of drains who swear a lot while Nickelodeon slime pours everywhere and Insane Clown Posse music plays. Eventually we started to think the movie might actually be an attempt at comedy rather than gross-out horror, in the vein of Evil Dead, but it absolutely does not succeed. It gets stupider and less funny as it goes on. At the end our main shirt-ripper goes to hell and discovers that Satan is a little dog. Funny and clever. 

Do not waste your time.

Spoon Rating: 2

Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park [1978]

In order to cope with this Scooby Doo film meant for kids ages 10-13, we spend a good lot of the run time talking about better rock bands. It's not hard. While Kiss is unquestionably iconic, that is a title that comes from their look and their theatricality. Divorced from that, their music is quaint and unimpressive. It feels like rock meant for preteens before they get into heavier stuff like Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin. Their "danger" is solely pretense and really they look like escapees from a queer BDSM club, a comic con, a furry con, and a Japanese print turned into a porno respectively. Even the name Kiss sounds more like a K-pop girl group than a rock band. When they played "Rock And Roll All Nite" Sarah realized that this was a Kiss song and she never realized. The point I'm making here is that any flack Kiss might have gotten for this schlocky cash grab film, probably should have been thrown at them earlier. They are not a serious band.

The plot has to do with an evil automaton/cyborg maker at an amusement park. A pretty girl loses her fiance who has been kidnapped by the evil scientist and Kiss are the only ones who help her. It takes 45 minutes or so before this plot even really starts though. Apparently Kiss all have magic powers that are loosely tied to their "things" (Simmons breaths fire for real, Stanley uses his star eye to spy, etc.). They have talismans that hold their powers and also their ability to make mediocre music. They get kidnapped eventually. They escape. We get a lot of concert footage and a scene of them all wearing wizard cloaks by a pool. Kiss make all the other actors look like Oscar winners. The effects are bad even for the time and the whole thing looks like it was shot on the worst cameras. 

As someone who wasn't alive in the 70s, I do have to ask if this kind of product was profitable. Kiss were big, but comparable to what I ask? Either way, it's hard to imagine even diehard fans defending this movie unless they are below the age of ten when they saw it. My favs could never, but also my favs would never.

Spoon Rating: 2

Wee Sing In The Big Rock Candy Mountain [1991]

Today we dove into Sarah's childhood again with this candy-colored acid trip. There's not much of a plot but there's a lot of public domain songs and a morale. Jade seemed to like it at least.

Our main kid is playing with her two friends but after they can't agree what to play, she decides to let them go off without her while she stays home and hallucinates for an hour with her two giant sentient teddy bears. They go down her slide into the rock candy mountain land that also has a Rasta ragdoll lion(?), a giant bird who speaks in idioms, and his My Little Pony translator. They hear from some mice about Bunny Fou Fou whacking them on the head, which will eventually become a thing. They sing a bunch of songs, watch a fly and bee puppet get married, eat lunch, look at clouds, and tell a lot of really bad jokes. Eventually Bunny Fou Fou is punished for assault with polka dots and crinkled ears. It turns out, he didn't want to play the games the mice did and they didn't want to play his games so he turned to violence. This is the lesson for our main who learns that sometimes you gotta do what you don't want to if you don't want to be left alone with your imagination. She returns to reality and consent to playing soccer with her neighbors.

This film wasn't funny per se, but it was engagingly weird.

Spoon Rating: 3

Cade: the tortured crossing [2023]

I didn't make a mistake with the capitalization in the title; that's just how it's written in the film. On the poster it doesn't even have the colon. 

This new film by Neil Breen is something of a sequel to 2019's Twisted Pair. I say something of a sequel because while it definitely features the twins - good Cade and bad Cale - it is a completely different story in every other way. Aesthetically, it is also quite different because while its predecessor took full advantage of free shooting locations like a local college and empty houses, this film is 100% CGI.  Every single scene has a CGI background with some real props to try to integrate the person into the scene. While we couldn't identify every single location, Cade is clearly seen getting hit by an Amsterdam tram in front of Centraal Station in the beginning, his castle home looks a lot like something you might see in the German or Eastern European countryside, and Adam wondered if the skyscraper footage came from somewhere in China. The "best" CGI is actually of Cade fighting a white tiger and the person who did the graphics for that got a shout out by name in the credits. The fight isn't significant and apparently they are actually friends and the tiger is really a busty woman dressed for a Ren Faire, but it's a memorable scene (with no point).

So the plot. Cade is a rich benefactor for a mental hospital but he makes a point of mentioning many times that he has never actually visited there. On an outing with some of the patients and two doctors, their SUV explodes or something and Cade appears to put them up in his giant castle. When they get back to the hospital we get more detail about how the hospital isn't really a hospital but part of a human trafficking and gene experiment organization with some evil corporate figureheads. Basically, ninjas kidnap people on the street (often the same people over and over because there are only so many actors in the world) and they are brought to the dingy hospital, which is clearly a crumbling church CGI, where the evil doctor experiments on them. The person really behind the crimes is Cale, who is running the experiments because his alien chip mentioned in the previous film doesn't work because the aliens rejected him and he is trying to find a work around. 

After a lot of repeating scenes, Cade starts to save the day. He trains the "patients" in fighting for justice with poor kicks and punches and dates the blonde doctor who has a change of heart about her job. Cale eventually comes to him with his face breaking down and begs for forgiveness and death so Cade summons a sword to kill him. I guess there won't be a third film? At least we got a completely random dance sequence of the "patients."

This film was pretty solid but it's not quite at the level of Fateful Findings (his best film) or Twisted Pair. I think the genuine effort to make the CGI work brings down the comedy a bit from the last film, and honestly, not letting him have use of CGI like in his early films would probably be to his benefit. 

Spoon Rating: 7

High Voltage [1997]

All 90s action movies are roughly the same, but you have to respect the director of this film for their clear appreciation for John Woo movies without the execution. A team of three guys and a girl rob a bank but it turns out the bank is run by the Vietnamese mafia and the bank manager (played by Shannon Lee, Daughter of Bruce) is kind of a lackey of the mafia leader. She has some sexual tension with the lead robber so he promises to get her out, steal money, and kill him eventually. There are a lot of random side people, like the guy from Cobra Kai and his girlfriend, some dude in a bar bathroom with a glory hole, etc. but they are mostly just more punching bags for the final battle. At one point the token girl in the gang's boyfriend gets shot and killed so they hold a priest at gunpoint to marry her to the corpse. It's wild. Our final showdown takes place at the lead robber's Sicilian uncle's hotel. Shirts are ripped. Rooms are destroyed. The bad guys are defeated by the other bad guys. Equilibrium achieved.

Overall this movie is almost worth it, but it drags a bit. We got some really bad acting and reaction shots and other weird directing so if you have a higher tolerance for low budget 90s action, this might be worth your time.

Spoon Rating: 4

How To Be A Teenage Ninja [1990] & How Can I Tell If I'm Really In Love? [1986]

Today we had two short films. They're both on YouTube though so you can check them out there.

First we had How To Be A Teenage Ninja, an instructional guide on some basic martial arts moves. Some kids are being chased by bullies so they hide in a cave. There a ninja man (or spirit, it's a bit unclear), instructs them in martial arts until they are ready to be released back outside to scare off the bullies. You are clearly meant to do the moves and exercises with the kids who are all standing way too close to each other so they're all in the frame. They manage to go from white belts to yellow belts to green belts to red belts in 25 minutes. Overall, there were a few chuckles, but it's mostly an exercise video.

Spoon Rating: 3

The second film was a 50 minute hodgepodge of teens, including Jason Bateman and Ted Danson of all people, talking about what they think love is. No clear conclusions are made. It's chaotically edited with no clear organization, consensus, or definitions, and plenty of weird images just stuck onto scenes like someone just learned video editing software. It's somewhat anti-sex and very heteronormative and stereotypical, which is kind of funny, but mostly it is way too long. That being said, we did get a good amount of laughs from the unhinged editing and some of the comments the kids made.

Spoon Rating: 5

Good Burger [1997]

After a few weeks off due to illness and family stuff, we came back with a blast from my childhood. One day Adam and I were discussing movies from when we were kids and how they sometimes made good bad movie night picks, and I remembered how at one point my brother and I watched Good Burger over and over for two days straight before we had to return it to the video store and I never saw it again. So Adam whipped up some good (impossible) burgers with good patatas bravas instead of our usual BMN soup and we started the evening with some of the All That sketches that inspired the film. Much to our surprise and pleasure, they weren't unwatchable. In fact, some of them were genuinely funny. Good news for good burgers.

The film has a pretty simple premise stuffed with wacky hijinks. Kel plays Ed, the character we know from the sketches, and Kenan plays our everyman, Dexter, who thoroughly messes up by borrowing his mom's car while she's away and crashing into his teacher's, Sinbad's, car after driving without a license. In order to pay for the damage, he has to get a summer job, starting at the pretentious new Mondo Burger and then getting a job at the titular Good Burger when he couldn't hack it. He somewhat begrudgingly becomes friends with Ed, hits on Monique (one of the other employees), and drives the Burgermobile, which is still more dignified than the Wienermobile. Things change for Good Burger though when Dexter tries Ed's special sauce and they start putting it on the burgers, making them real competition for Mondo Burger and their space suit uniforms. From there, it's wild moment after wild moment. Dexter takes advantage of Ed's ignorance to get 80% of his sauce bonus! They make a delivery to Shaq! Unfunny Lori Beth Denberg cameo! Mondo Burger sends Carmen Electra to seduce Ed into revealing the recipe and it fails! Monique discovers that Dexter is exploiting Ed for money and tells him to leave! Ed buys Dexter a thoughtful gift showing that Dexter really is an ass! They get thrown in a mental hospital with Abe Vigoda (the fry cook who longs for death), George Clinton, and the girl from Freaks and Geeks in her first film role! MENTAL HOSPITAL DANCE SEQUENCE. Did I mention the Good Burger manager is Dan Schneider?! Mondo Burger is putting dangerous chemicals in their burgers to make them huge! Ed saves the day! Play the Less Than Jake punk ska version of "I'm A Dude"!

Honestly, this is a completely watchable film. I don't know if kids nowadays would find it as fun as my brother and I did when we were little, but as nostalgic millennial adults we all got some genuine laughs and weren't bored.

Spoon Rating: None.

Star Rating: 3/5