Years Of The Beast [1981]

While we love a good Christian movie, especially one with the promise of Revelations, this one we really can't recommend. It starts off kind of promising when a college professor, who's teaching Faust, sees one of his coworkers who is openly Christian disappear into thin air. From there, the world goes into a pretty minor amount of hooliganism (like The Purge but as imagined by Christians) as the professor travels to his father-in-law's house. A leader who's the Beast raises up to get power and wants everyone to receive his symbol, but our group of new Christians refuses and becomes outlaws. Most of the film is unfortunately just wandering around. There is a brief moments of some bad special effects but considering the insanity of Revelations, this was a giant letdown. We were hoping for some genuine Christian fearmongering and extremity but no dice. Skip it.

Spoon Rating: 2

Mega Man 8 Cutscenes [1996] & Revolution: A Demonstration of the Video Toaster [1992] & The Secret Rulers of the World: The Satanic Shadowy Elite? [2001]

We started the evening with a video of cutscenes from the Mega Man 8 video game, which was full of bad acting with strange accents. 

Next we had Revolution: A Demonstration of the Video Toaster, an instructional video about video editing computer software. What makes this video worth watching is that it's presented as a dialogue between two people: one who knows about the video toaster and is trying to seduce you by explaining its capabilities, and another who is there to ask questions and occasionally tell jokes with some light seduction. Even the music under the video has a softcore porn sound to it until the guitar solo credits and even then there's a definite music-video-beach-sex-scene sound. It's the strangest foreplay we've ever seen. After the credits there's just a series of scenes over music to show all the features without sexy commentary.

Spoon Rating: 8

Then we watched part 4 of a documentary series called The Secret Rulers of the World, which was called "The Satanic Shadowy Elite?" Yes, the question mark is part of the title. It ended up being about Bohemian Grove and starring a 26-year-old (but 40-looking) Alex Jones, who wants to discover the secret cult sacrifices the wealthy and influential are doing during the gathering. Burning rituals with pageantry are real but Alex Jones specifically wants to prove they are Satanists who are sacrificing children in the rituals. Turns out he was always an insane conspiracy theorist. He interviews a guy on how to infiltrate and is saddened to learn he just needs to dress preppy and walk in so he goes shopping and practices his preppy talk. And yet, they don't have a cover story until the drive over. 

Either way, he gets in and films the ceremony. Although no one is killed, Jones insists that they are symbolically killing someone so it's just as bad. The film maker is clearly trying to get Jones and his associate to realize they are making stuff up but doesn't succeed. He does interview a woman who lives nearby and has researched the Grove and is just concerned about how they're a detriment to the environment. He also interviews a guy who went who basically says it's nothing and that the only crime is taking it seriously instead of viewing it like a frat of rich men. The most interesting detail from the film maker was how he said that the more time he spent around Jones, the more he felt himself buying into conspiracies. Take note.

While seeing a young Alex Jones was a good, funny time, you would get the same effect from any Alex Jones clip.

Spoon Rating: 4

Have a video toaster.

Vulcan, Son Of Jupiter [1962]

Last week Adam pulled out a 50 pack of gladiator movies that he just had sitting around and started reading off titles. Most of them were unsurprisingly Hercules related, but because of that homogeneity we were all pretty drawn to one called "Vulcan, Son of Jupiter." It just seemed like such a strange idea to make a movie about Roman Hephaestus, the disabled god of fire and blacksmithing who was most known for getting cucked by Aphrodite. Kay, being a giant mythology nerd, was ready to dispel inaccuracies and we all hopped on board.

From the opening credits we could tell this was one of those cheap Italian films where they hire a bunch of foreign actors and dub it later, leading to built-in dialogue comedy throughout. The plot starts off with Venus messing with Adonis so Jupiter commands that she marry someone, either Vulcan or Mars. Both want her but she runs off with Mars to Milos, king of the Thracians, where the men hatch a plan to build a tower to overthrow Jupiter. Meanwhile, Vulcan (who isn't disabled but is a bodybuilder) ends up in Sicily and meet Aetna, a daughter of Oceanus. He gets captured by monsters, gets out, hangs out with Aetna in Neptune's lair, and then leaves to go find Venus again in spite of the vibes between him and Aetna. Vulcan meets up with his dwarf buddy Geo, and Aetna gets kidnapped by the Mars crew so Vulcan has to rescue her. Venus and Aetna act catty and then brawl while a giant fight scene happens among soldiers and Vulcan and Mars. The fighting ends with a Zeus Ex Machina when Jupiter comes in to stop it. Jupiter vows to punish Mars and Venus but "condemns" Vulcan to stay on Earth. It's implied to be a great thing since he gets to be with Aetna. Also in the background of the film Pluto acts like a jerk to Jupiter for some reason and then enlists Eris to cause conflict between Aetna and Venus. According to Sarah, Pluto was trying to get in on Mars' overthrowing plan but it was mentioned so briefly we missed it. Pluto is important mainly because in this cheesefest he is the actual hammiest.

Some fun facts about this movie include the fact that it was originally called "Vulcan, Son of Giove" which seems to be a town in Italy but doesn't have anything in particular to do with Vulcan and the only thing under "Reception" on Wikipedia says, "The film's romantic scenes have been dismissed as lacking chemistry."

Aside from the already mentioned bad dubbing and over-the-top acting, this movie has a lot of greatness. The whole movie has this sexless porno vibe, especially any and every moment Venus is on screen. The editing is weirdly abrupt every time, there are random dancing and fighting moments, matte painting backgrounds, and everyone is wearing the sluttiest clothes possible that only vaguely allude to Ancient Rome. Also, there's a lizard monster that is just a man in a suit and they don't even try to hide it. It's amazing. Give it a watch.

Spoon Rating: 6

REWATCH: Inhuman Resources [2012]

It has been a long time since we accidently watched "Inhuman Resources" (also known as "Redd Inc.") on bad movie night, a really solid horror comedy that we all loved. You'll be happy to know, it's still amazing. You can watch it for free with Tubi and we highly recommend that you do.

To give a little context, our main character is a cam girl who witnessed a violent murder conducted by a serial killer called The Headhunter, who kills CEOs. Later she is kidnapped by him and chained to a desk in an office where she and other people related to the Headhunter case are forced to research the case or die. I won't say much more because I don't want to spoil it. Just watch it.

Spoon Rating: N/A, 4/5 stars

Mommie Dearest [1981]

After seeing a bunch of clips of "Mommie Dearest" in "You Don't Nomi" we decided we had to watch it. This movie is famous for its level of melodrama and this did provide a fair amount of laughs. The downside of this movie is that in between the wild moments, the movie is a little flat. There's pretty consistent strange acting that is probably best described as "soap opera acting", but it doesn't always keep you engaged and laughing.

The movie is about Joan Crawford, specifically through the lens of her adopted daughter Christina, and their tumultuous relationship. When the cameras are rolling Joan is a loving mother and Christina is as alarmingly obedient as a child in a horror movie. Outside of that Joan routinely flies off the handle and often takes it out on her daughter. She loses her contract with MGM and hacks up the garden in a way that made us wonder if she was going to hack her kids next. She goes into Christina's closet and flips out when she finds a wire hanger that she then uses as a switch it whip her with. Her son Christopher is mostly shown tied to a bed without further explanation during the childhood years and then disappears from the film until the very end. Even when Christina gets older, she gets shipped off to boarding school (seemingly for interrupting her mother flirting with a guy), then taken out of boarding school by her mother for making out with a guy and sent to a convent school. As an adult, Joan chokes her out at one point for not doing an interview perfectly, and when Christina is in the hospital with cancer, Joan decides to replace her on the soap opera she's on in a wild move. The film ends with Joan dying and her children getting nothing in the will but the last word, implying the biography that Christina will write. Overall, the relationship is really hard to draw conclusions about other than it's really really unhealthy.

With this movie it's tempting to say just to watch a highlight reel, but the problem with a highlight reel is that it would likely take away from how absolutely random the really insane parts are. Even parts that aren't about Joan flipping out sometimes get elevated in a comical way just because of her tendency to bellow things rather than say them. It's worth it to watch the movie once, but you have to be prepared for parts of it to feel a bit drawn out.

Spoon Rating: 5

Wabuu: The Cheeky Raccoon [1996] & The Secret Of The Hunchback [1996] & A Recipe For Seduction [2020]

In a surely desired sequel to the Dingo Pictures Pocahontas, we started the evening with Wabuu: The Cheeky Raccoon, about Pocahontas' raccoon friend who hops and laughs by shaking alarmingly. The German-singing raccoon wants to capture the sun to save it for a rainy day but then instead goes on some puckish Tom Sawyer hijinks. In the end, he makes a nice picnic for all the animals but put sneezing powder or something on it. We've decided he's a primordial chaos god. The movie has all the Dingo Pictures staples like bad animation, bad acting with strange pronunciations*, poorly timed voiceover, thin plot, and an eerie twanging circus background music that repeats throughout the entire thing. The bonuses from this one are that it's shorter at 30 minutes and has such inclusions as Wabuu getting accused of child murder and a character saying, "Shit."
*Someone said they had to get their shuffle (shovel) from their gay rahge (garage).
Spoon Rating:  7

The Secret of the Hunchback, our latest entry in the ongoing Hunchbackening (Hunchback's back, all right), has a similar formula to one we saw before: a clear Beauty And The Beast design retrofitted into a Hunchback movie. Esmerelda looks like Belle and sings a song about "wanting something more than this." Frollo is a high sheriff Gaston ripoff with a Jafar voice and a LaFou-esque sidekick. Instead of Frollo, Quasi has two gay priest dads. Uncomfortably buff gargoyles come to life and sing him an inspiration jazz song about how what counts is on the inside. Instead of Phoebus, we have Pierre, which honestly feels like less of a stretch for a romantic lead and I don't know why we don't see more Hunchback adaptions making this choice instead. Pierre saves her from her captivity under the gypsies who gave her to Frollo and they sing a lame love song in the forest that was a ripoff of "Once Upon A Dream" from Sleeping Beauty. Frollo kidnaps Quasi's archdeacon dad to make him marry Frollo to Esmerelda. Frollo also fights with a belt in addition to a sword. He dies by knocking over a gargoyle with it that crushes him to death. Quasi falls to his death but wings sprout out of his hump and he flies away. It was insane but Sarah predicted it. For some fun inaccuracies, we have a joke about Protestantism, a pronunciation of Notre Dame like the college, and cowboys hats. Remember: this is meant to be the 15th century.
It has higher production values than a couples of the ones we've seen but where it really shines is in how wildly odd the story is and how much it borrows from Disney movies.
Quote: I've got a HUNCH we won't be seeing him anymore.
Spoon Rating: 7

We made Hunchback Bingo for our next one:

Lastly, we watched the already well known A Recipe For Seduction, a short Lifetime movie funded by Kentucky Fried Chicken with a sexy Colonel Sanders. It's only 15 minutes, which is kind of the ideal length since you get all the exciting parts without any of the drag. A rich girl falls for her family chef who wants to change the world with his special chicken recipe. Her jilted fiancé and her mom who's banging him decide to take out the chicken man, but he's rescued by the rich girl's gay best friend. Mom and fiancé go to a mental institution while rich girl and Sexy Sanders get married.
Spoon Rating: No spoons. Too corporate. Eat with your hands.

SPECIAL: Doombox Commercial

 This commercial for a better mousetrap ominously but appropriately called Doombox is one of the most unselfaware, morbid, and fascinating we've ever seen. This kind of tonal strangeness is often the essence of a truly enjoyable bad movie and this commercial viewed 33 times as of this post (three of those being Adam) is an experience you must have.