SPECIAL: 420 Awards [2019]

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

So last Monday the Bad Movie Night crew rewatched "A Talking Cat!?!" since Kay was on vacation, but on Friday night Adam and Kay ended up watching something that was such prime bad movie content that it is going to end up a future rewatch on an actual Monday: "The 420 Awards." How did we find something like this? It was created by Derek Savage, occasionally more well known as Daddy Derek, the guy behind the Cool Cat. We were browsing his IMDb page, as you do on a Friday night, and discovered this weird little thing, which happens to be on YouTube in its entirety. 

So there isn't a plot obviously; it's an awards show, an awards show with tens of people in the audience. It is the worst awards show we've ever seen. The award categories were for "favorite kiss-ass movie," "stoner movie," "hottest actor," "hottest actress," "male singer," "female singer," "stoner song," "stoner music video," "indie movie," "movie," and "all-time favorite movie." The selections were mostly pulled directly from Derek Savage's behind with the exaction of "indie movie" where four movies that were definitely not independent were nominated against, you guessed it, "Cool Cat Kids Superhero." At this point the entire purpose of the awards show is clear: Derek invented an awards show to give himself an award. The awards are all accepted by random people although Derek, who also hosts, really tried to get people to show up and mentions calling agents. In between the awards we have three comedians who are all terrible, a harpist who sings a pot-themed version of "Danny Boy," two magicians who are both bad, a ventriloquist who's just hiding his mouth behind his hand, and a singer who sings karaoke jams. Also remember that this is all done with Derek Savage's trademark horrible editing. He also got copyright strikes for playing songs and trailers of the things he nominated so he replaced the music with "Cool Cat" songs.

We laughed from beginning to end.

Spoon Rating: 9

Deadly Scavengers [2001]

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

It's been a while since we've seen a movie worthy of a rewatch. We've seen a fair amount of decent films lately, ones that should definitely get on your list, but nothing that we felt so passionate about that we will be watching it again in the future. Enter "Deadly Scavengers." This movie has everything: "Birdemic" level graphics, bad acting, a plot with elements that are ripped off from better movies and dialogue that explains rather than flows like natural conversation, and some of the worst sound design we've encountered (not as bad as "Still Flowin'" or "Guru The Mad Monk" but definitely as bad as "Black Ninja"; so it's intelligable).

As far as we could gleam, the plot is about a giant cockroach that's going around killing people. Note: there may be more than one, but it seems to be just the one. It kills someone in the beginning who doesn't matter and then attacks some scientists who may be responsible for its existence. Then we are treated to totally different characters for a solid 45 minutes with no attacks. A squad of "cleaners" are called in to cover up these attacks and they include a guy and girl with a past involving a lot of belligerent sexual tension, a man with the worst fake Irish accent ever, a woman who abhors all things girly (late 90s feminism everyone), and a former Marine who's sensititve. They find the daughter of a murdered scientist in a tree, and she turns out to be the former Marine's ex and a former, at this point, bug scientist. There's a lot of awkward sex scenes in tents. In a parallel story, there are two government agents who don't get along who are also investigating the bug attacks: a guy who accidently killed someone at the agency and can't forgive himself, and a women ironically named Lovejoy who also won't forgive him. They fight a lot until seconds before the man is killed by a bug. Most of the cleaners die in stupid ways that I'd rather no spoil and the former Marine double crosses bug girl and we are ultimately left with just Lovejoy and bug girl, who decide to be friends? Or girlfriends because they both need love? It's unclear, and we couldn't hear the dialogue.

So this film is choice. We laughed a lot consistently throughout the film, and there was rarely a dull moment. Enjoy!

Spoon Rating: 7.5

Howling II: Your Sister Is A Werewolf [1985]

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

"Howling II? Do we need to see Howling I?"

"I think it's like Troll II."

"But this one is specifically good?"

"This one is infamous apparently."

Werewolf movies are rarer than vampire movies but this movie did manage to get their hands on a vampire in the form of Christopher Lee. He's an occult specialist who attends the funeral for some guy's sister and very cryptically tells him that his sister is a werewolf and gives him his card. The brother and a coworker of the dead girl go to his creepy house where he explains the plot: there's a werewolf girl who is going to visit a werewolf queen and we have to kill them all. They go to "Transylvania" where the werewolf queen, Stirba, is having black masses and orgies. Lee assembles his red shirt army, the brother and the coworker start boning, and there's a delightful festival in the small town of "full of wolves." Ultimately evil is defeated and Lee and Stirba burn together because apparently they're siblings. The title really doesn't lie. TWO sisters were werewolves.

What makes this movie a worthy watch is hard to capture in a plot summary. There are a lot of lines and acting moments that imply that second takes weren't really an element of this film. The special effects are horrifying to look at, but this is at least partially the result of the movie being made in the 80s. Still, the choice to put the actors in suits that just look like regular human hair grown out as opposed to fur suits gives the werewolf sex an especially unnerving quality. There's unnecessary nudity, plot points that are explained after the fact, and the same rock song played on at least seven occasions including at the very end while edited with scenes from the film (and specifically a shot of Stirba ripping off her clothes at least 18 times). The fact that all of this is juxtaposed with Christopher Lee's gravitas and actual acting ability, makes it even better.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

The Crow: Wicked Prayer [2005]

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

It's been a while. In the last few weeks Kay has been on a road trip around the American west (occasionally seeing bad movie landmarks like Guerrero Street in San Francisco where there's supposedly a hospital and the salt flats in Utah where Gerry killed Gerry), Sarah has been working every Monday night, and Grandma has been unable to attend. Therefore Bad Movie Night has been mostly Adam and Keith sitting around talking and occasionally watching good movies. But we're back and still trying to test Adam's theory about amusement being derived from the fifth installment of a series. "Twilight" 5 was fairly successful so we figured we'd try "The Crow: Wicked Prayer." We're all fans of the original "Crow" movie, which is neither good nor bad but highly enjoyable, but it was clearly a great premise and aesthetic for a future bad sequel. This movie also has the strangest cast since "Johnny Mnemonic" starring Edward Furlong, Tara Reid, David Boreanaz, Danny Trejo, and Dennis Hopper.

The plot is truthfully kind of confusing, and we didn't have Sarah to help us. Everyone wants some sort of revenge. There's a larger conflict between a Native reservation (of the Raven Aztec tribe, which is the fakest name) that wants to build a casino on their lands and mine workers who are having their mine shut down. But this is kind of just a backdrop for the story of Edward Furlong's character who is going to propose to his girlfriend, a tribe member, which is controversial for the tribe because he was sent to jail for inadvertantly killing a tribe member who had attacked his girlfriend. Regardless, they are both killed by this tiny Satan worshipping group named after the four horseman of the apocalypse (plus Tara Reid) as part of a ritual meant to bring about the devil in the body of the guy who calls himself Death. Per "Crow" tradition, Edward is brought back to life to get revenge on the Satan group who are going around getting revenge on other people they hate. It's kind of a mess but ultimately he gets his revenge and seems to meet up with his girilfriend in the afterlife.

This movie was pretty solid. Aside from the incoherent plot, it was very high on the overacting that becomes comedic rating. David Boreanaz gets incredibly silly after becoming the devil, Tara Reid is always comically out of place, and Danny Trejo never puts down a Bible throughout the film, but the real standout is, expectedly, Dennis Hopper who plays a pimp and the clergy who officiates the wedding between Boreanaz and Reid's characters. The movie is kind of worth watching just for that.

Spoon Rating: 5

The Adventures Of Chris Fable [2010]

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

I need you to look at the poster for this movie to understand why it was our choice for the night. That is a set up for a "Harry Potter" rip off based on the font or at minimum some for of "Lord of the Rings" influenced fantasy. We were wrong. Right in the beginning, with so much shaky cam we all felt like we needed some dramamine, it said that the plot was based off of John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," which is a Christian allegory Everyman adventure from 1687. The basis lends itself pretty well to a dystopian story, which appears to be the setting, but overall it wasn't quite weird enough to be really worth the time.

Chris (changed from Christian) wanders into a church one day and meets Evangeline, a woman who introduces him to the concept of books and later teaches him how to read. There is one book in particular that is specal (guess which one). Evangeline finds out that Chris is estranged from his fisherman father and encourages him to leave the City of Destruction where they live to go to the Celestial City. Along the way he loses a friend named Duck to a swampy bog with a monster in it, meets up with a girl named Faith and later saves a girl named Hope, learns the art of the blade from a cowboy named Grant, fights off bugs that rival the "Birdemic" birds in quality, and hangs out in Satan's (Luc's) pleasure house before realizing it's all an illusion and fighting off his mech with his slingshot a la David and Goliath. In the end he gets pulled out of the water by a fishing net so we assume he achieved his goal of finding his father, but it's not really clear. The dad narrative was pretty superfluous. Why doesn't he just want to get to the Celestial City because the world is crap? They should have spent a bit more time fleshing out their universe instead of wandering around a national park.

Either way, it's not exciting enough to be an adventure, not bad enough to be especially funny, and only a mediocre adaption of the source material anyway. Allegory unclear: Luc's fun house seems fun. What is truth anyway?

Spoon Rating: 3

The Karate Dog [2005]

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

I mean, the title says it all, doesn't it? I don't even think I really need to write a review for this one. You can just let your imagination bring you to the world of "Karate Dog" and it will probably be better than actually watching the film.

Basically, Pat Morita has a talking dog he taught martial arts too, Morita gets killed by assassins, the dog is taken in by an idiot detective, the mystery of why Morita was killed is uncovered and has to do with a dog racing business run by Morita's former student Jon Voight, who uses an inability to remember his lines as some kind of vocal affect. Chevy Chase does the voice of the dog, and he wants you to know he's just here for a paycheck. There's a lot of really bad CGI of the dog fighting or even just standing on his hind legs (I guess the film didn't know that some dogs can be taught to do that). I think this movie was written in 20 minutes. The only really funny part was when they did a "Mission Impossible" parody that involved the dog putting an ID into a machine and a human hand covered in a fur sleeve emerged from the bottom of the screen.

That's it. Skip this one.

Spoon Rating: 2

REWATCH: The Amazing Bulk [2012]

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

We went way back to the beginning for this one. This film, "The Amazing Bulk," was the 18th movie we watched at movie night; when we first watched it, it was a new film. Although we have referenced it on occasion over the years, we have never rewatched it, probably because it was so many years ago that we usually found something more recent to rewatch first. 

But this movie is a triumph of bad CGI. Adam suspected that they were going for a "Sin City" kind of thing that just doesn't pan out when a lot of your sets are made in MS paint. Delightfully, whenever someone is sitting in a car, you can see the couch they are sitting on in the background as if it's meant to be the seat. At the end, there's an extended sequence of the Bulk running through the country and encountering every bizarre animal or thing they managed to acquire from the CGI team. Oh, and the running is hilarious, both of the Bulk himself and the humans. The acting is bad too but mostly not in the funny way, with the exception of these two cops who have seen many serious cop movies and want you to know that. The plot is of little consequence: it involves a scientist who looks like a member of a mediocre early 2000s rock band, injecting himself with a superhuman serum that turns him into the bulk. He ends up stopping a crazy German guy who wants to blow up the moon. That's about it. 

The thing to know about this movie is that it is fun and pretty short at only an hour and 15 minutes, but should you rewatch it, you should wait a while in between viewings. There's mostly only one joke (the bad CGI). It's a fantastic joke, but you need time for your brain to forget just how bad it was.

Spoon Rating: 7.5