Kickboxer [1989]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Last Monday we watched what I believe is the fourth Van Damme movie since Bad Movie Night started: "Kickboxer." Since this movie is about 75% filler, it's impossible for me to give a summary without explaining the entire movie. Van Damme is American (as always and inexplicably) and after his brother wins a kickboxing championship he decides to go to Thailand to fight Tong Po, the undefeated champion of Thailand. He gets paralyzed so Van Damme decides to learn Muay Thai from a master so he can avenge his brother. There are a few disposable side characters who contribute nothing but mostly the film is Van Damme training among the beautiful scenery of Bangkok. And in case you didn't get enough training montages the first time, there's also a ton of sequels and a planned reboot coming soon. All in all, "Bloodspot" is funnier and has slightly more plot if you want an 80s Van Damme fighting movie but at least there's plenty of hilarious Van Damme faces as he tries so very hard to emote.

Quotes:

"I'm in the best ship of my life! I'm a butter fighter!" (transcribed phonetically from Van Damme's dialogue)

"GOODBYE TO BUGS" (the last thing listed in the credits without explanation)

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Wasn't bad."

Disco Godfather [1979]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

We've been having a lot of bad movie milestones lately and last night's movie was another one: our first blaxploitation film ("Black Ninja" has elements of this, true, but doesn't count). I know; we can't believe it's taken this long either. 

The film in question was "Disco Godfather", a movie about a disco owner and reserve cop (played by the amazing and unfathomable Rudy Ray Moore) and his attempts to combat the selling and use of angel duss. Angel dusss becomes a problem when his nephew goes crazy on it and ends up in the hospital sharing the same hallucination with other angel dussss users (one of whom has a reverend and church choir circling her bed while praying for her soul because prayer is better than modern medicine). Mr. Godfather and a politician put on a rally to "Attack the Wack" or possibly "Wack the Attack" on angel dusssss. It's a little ambiguous whether they want to stop it or encourage it. The movie pretty much breaks down to 25% disco dancing, 25% street fighting (of which apparently you can get random joggers to join you in the cause of stopping angel dussssss), 25% hallucinations, and 25% actual plot. 

But all you really need to do to solve your problems? "Put your weight on it!"

Quote:

Police Chief: "I don't get you!"

D.G.: "I DON'T GET ME EITHER!"

Abduction [2011]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Last Monday's movie was pulled directly from the category of "big budget films with less than a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes": the Taylor Lautner vehicle (see: desperate attempt to escape "Twilight") "Abduction". This bottom-of-the-barrel action movie starts when the main character happens to come across himself on a missing children website and starts wondering the important things like, "Why are there only two baby pictures of me?" and "Why am I Native American but neither of my parents are?" Suddenly everyone wants to shoot at him, no one can be trusted except Sigourney Weaver, and he has to spend a lot of time hiding in the woods and on trains with the literal girl-next-door who recently broke up with her boyfriend for talking about nothing but football. It's like they totally understand teenagers, you guys. Curiously, said Love Interest Not Essential To Story even gets tied up at one point and manages to escape on her own, thus proving that she isn't completely dead weight but can't even be used as a cliche plot device. The writing is stupid, the acting is mostly phoned in (Lautner cannot cry on demand without it being hilarious), and somehow every room manages to have at least 20 lamps turned on and still be too dark to see anything. But the worst part? No one got abducted. Not a single character.

Also notable: There was a song in it called "Blame It On The Boom Boom."

I, Frankenstein [2014]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

Yesterday was a Bad Movie Night first: an outing to see a bad movie in the theater! The movie in question was the critically panned "I, Frankenstein", the trailer of which had us all laughing and insisting that it was the perfect thing to go see and, as if we had planned it, there was no one in theater but us. The guy who sold us the tickets even told us that he thinks our crew was the most tickets he has sold for the movie so far.

This movie wanted so badly to be "Underworld" but instead of a fight between vampires and werewolves, it was between demons and gargoyles and somehow Frankenstein's monster (named Adam by the gargoyle queen and, yes, we all giggled every time someone said "gargoyle queen") was in the middle of it. There's also Bill Nighy hamming it up as the leader of the demons, a scientist chick who manages to not be a love interest and who is trying to reanimate things, and oh, so many stupid fight scenes. What made them even better was that the demons explode into ash and fire with the slightest touch while the gargoyles are made of freaking stone. Throw in a religious undertone, Frankenstein's diary which none of the four groups (gargoyles, demons, scientists, and Adam) can keep track of, and the "Dark Knight-iest" title drop ever in the final voice-over of the film and you have the perfect formula to have Mary Shelley rolling in her grave.

Glen Or Glenda [1953]

[Originally posted on Facebook on January 29, 2013]

Last Monday we treated ourselves to a bad movie classic by one of the worst directors, if not the worst, in the history of film, Edward D. Wood, Jr. (who also plays the title role). The movie was “Glen Or Glenda” a semi-autobiographical story that is mostly about a man who likes to wear women’s clothing, a hobby Ed Wood himself enjoyed. Considering this, you would think the film would be more . . . positive? Sympathetic? Instead it essentially says that there are two types of cross-dressers: men who wear women’s clothes because of some childhood difficulties that must be resolved by partners in adulthood and men who want to actually be women and they are probably either hermaphrodites or pseudo-hermaphrodites. Tumblr’s social justice brigade would have a field day of outrage. Also, this is only about half the movie. The rest is stock footage, Bela Lugosi waxing poetic about the horrors of life, and a curious S&M scene that Lugosi watches in traumatized interest. The plot is paper thin, dialogue and scenes are repeated so often you can get up and use the bathroom at any time, and the acting isn’t even slightly believable but somewhere beneath all that failure, is probably a decent message about acceptance. Too bad it’s probably covered in a stock footage superimposition of running bulls.

Quote: [Huge Bela face] "PULL THE STRING!"

Aliens Vs. Avatars [2011]

[Originally posted on Facebook on January 22, 2013]

From the visionary film maker who gave us "The Incredible Bulk" we have the better looking but probably even cheaper (three cheers for stock footage) "Aliens Vs. Avatars." A bunch of stereotype kids go on a camping trip and encounter an alien who like to steal body parts as a means of killing and the avatar of another alien (that looks like the aliens in "Avatar") who is trying to kill it with a robot called Robotar that is currently not working. Convoluted? Not really. We're all just here to see these obnoxious kids die anyway. At least the special effects are of the usual standard with shots of space that look like Windows Media Player visualizations. Overall, it's a weak effort but not nearly as memorable as "Bulk".

Death Bed: The Bed That Eats [1977]

[Originally posted on Facebook on January 14, 2013]

There are times when you know a movie is a winner from the title and last night’s film was one such case: “Death Bed: The Bed That Eats.” How could that not be the best bad movie ever? Because of a demon in the form of a man and the death of his human lover, a canopy-style sleep machine is also a death machine, killing its victims with its bubbling digestive fluid. The bed also eats chicken wings (spitting back the bones), drinks wine (re-corking the bottle afterwards like a jerk), needs Pepto-Bismal at one point (who left that in the vicinity of the bed?), attacks an escaping girl with his Mr. Fantastic-esque sheets (after a ten minute scene of her dragging herself away), and makes actual snoring noises (and moaning noises when aroused and please don’t contemplate that one too deeply). There’s also a guy who died of consumption -har har- living in the walls of the bed’s room and narrating everything like he thinks he’s in a Poe story, a guy whose hands dissolve in the death bed into comical skeleton hands, and plenty of unnecessary female nudity. All in all, this movie is exactly what you could hope for from the title and really deserves to be among the classics in bad movies like “Troll 2”, “Plan 9 From Outer Space”, and “The Room”. 

Best Line: “She can’t appreciate your clumsy sadism!”

Adam’s Grandma’s Review: “It was crazy, huh?”

We love the title “Death Bed: The Bed That Eats” but it’s kind of strange how no one thought to give it a title that was more . . . intentionally silly. Therefore, because of our love of “Death Bed: The Bed That Eats” we have decided that this premise should be a film franchise and we have all come up with some titles for the sequels:
“Death Bed: Bed Or Alive”
“Death Bed: Breakfast In Bed”
“Death Bed: Day Of The Bed”
“Death Bed: Dead Tired”
“Death Bed: Death By Consumption”
“Death Bed: Don’t Give A Sheet”
“Death Bed: Eat, Sheet, and Die”
“Death Bed: Eternal Sleep”
“Death Bed: Fed Up”
“Death Bed: Final Resting Place”
“Death Bed: Laid To Rest”
“Death Bed: Midnight Snack”
“Death Bed: Night Terrors”
“Death Bed: No Comforter”
“Death Bed: No Rest For The Wicked”
“Death Bed: Once Upon A Mattress”
“Death Bed: Return Of The Futon” (His nemesis)
“Death Bed: Sheet Happens”
“Death Bed: Short-Sheeted”
“Death Bed: Sleep When You’re Dead”
“Death Bed: Sleeper’s Digest”
“Death Bed: Slumber Party Massacre”
“Death Bed: Three Sheets To The Wind” (Drunk Bed)
And of course, the documentary about the movie: “Death Bed: Making The Bed”