Kraken: Tentacles Of The Deep [2006]

I'm just going to spoil this whole thing right now: don't watch this. It's really unexciting, the acting is bland instead of funny, and the CGI is not quite bad enough to be enjoyable. The plot is about as simple as you can get too. A perpetually bikini-clad marine archeologist is looking for an opal that has something to do with the Greek myth of Scylla but Kay, resident Greek myth expert, had never even heard of this variant. The archeologist is on a boat with a guy who's hunting the giant beast who killed his parents, an intern, and a traitor who sells them out to some treasure hunters. Intern and traitor die. Archeologist and revenge seeker survive and kill the beast. They don't get the opal, but they get an artifact anyway and make out.

Our lack of joy at this movie can only slightly be attributed to Erik proposing the idea that the treasure hunters are actually a kraken cult, only for us all to not have our dream fulfilled.

Spoon Rating: 1.5

Quasimodo (Mondo TV) [1998]

This movie is an incredibly mysterious one. At first we couldn't find an IMDb page but we did look up Orlando Corradi, the writer and producer, who also wrote one of the terrible animated "Titanic" movies and produced the beloved "Samurai Cop." Eventually Adam found the page but it's entirely in Italian. Also, there's a YouTube video from a guy who seems to have seen as many "Hunchback" adaptions as we have, but it didn't shed much light on this film outside of what we already know.

Aside from the fact that Frollo is accused of being a sorcerer a bunch, the first 45 minutes of this roughly hour long movie are actually really accurate to the book but move at a full run. Basically, characters come on, introduce themselves and their motivation, and then do a few things to keep the plot going. For a while we were playing "Hunchback" bingo and we had barely any spaces. What makes this version so notable is that the last 15 minutes of this movie are absolutely wild. Esmeralda appears to get shot and hanged, but they keep insisting that she is still alive and that the hanging was actually faked by Pierre and Frollo. Quasi pushes Frollo into the Seine and also flings himself into the Seine using one of the bells (geographically, this would be difficult but okay). They are then dragged out by the gypsies. A fortune teller basically says that everyone is going to be okay and that Clopin will be the one to fix things. It turns out Clopin has real magic. He brings back Esmeralda. Then he makes Phoebus and Fleur as ugly on the outside as they are on the inside and they become the new bell ringers. Djali, the goat, gets turned into a hot wife for Pierre in order to work around that creepy fixation he has on a goat. Quasi is saved and made "handsome," and he and Esmeralda get together. Frollo even holds a double wedding for our two couples! I guess his overwhelming lust got cured by nearly dying. Basically, we get an ending so "happy" that it feels like someone's retcon fanfiction.

This one is particularly special if you are familiar with the "Hunchback" adaptations, but even if you aren't there's terrible pacing, confusing animation, and really bland writing. Even before things got insane, we were laughing quite a lot.

Spoon Rating: 6

Alien Private Eye [1989]

Trying to explain everything about this movie isn't exactly easy. There's kind of a lot. But let me start by saying that this is a good one, but it's a difficult one to find a good quality version of. The video quality on what we watched was really bad, which made the film occasionally confusing in ways it wasn't meant to be. 

We are first introduced to a man who has apparently styled himself at least somewhat after Michael Jackson with a fedora he never takes off. He encounters a girl named Renee on the street, goes dancing with her, and in the middle of sex, she takes off his hat and discovers that he has elf ears. Instead of just saying it was a birth defect or something innocuous like that, he tells her he's an alien from the planet Styx, currently living on Earth and working full time as a private detective for some reason. We learn that he has two other aliens paying him to get some kind of disk. It seems to be significant from a historical standpoint, but it actually has something to do with this addictive drug called soma. Some drug dealers keep shooting people up with the soma and our alien friend is going to stop them. There are more specifics to the plot but it doesn't really matter.

What matters is that this movie is nuts. The acting is deliciously campy and a special shoutout goes to a guy who is doing a Peter Lorre impression the entire time and it's just grating and ridiculous. At one point a bad guy prays to Hitler just so you know he's evil. Every time someone gets shot up with drugs, you're in for a treat. The alien aspect is almost removable from the film in how minor it is. There are some absolutely amazing music stings that make it sound like the musicians themselves are reacting to what's on screen. And, of course, it's poorly written with strangely choreographed fight scenes. We even got a cameo from a boom mic!

There was a bit of a debate about what to rate this one. Adam was fairly certain it was rewatch worthy but the rest of us were a bit more borderline and annoyed by the poor quality. This might mean that Adam will be purchasing a copy of the film from the UK. Either way, we compromised on our rating.

Spoon Rating: 7

Superman IV: The Quest For Peace [1987]

This film genuinely feels a bit like a really long episode of a Superman television show more than a movie that had a real budget. Or maybe three episodes. The plot is kind of overstuffed and pieced together, and the special effects look really bad even for the time. 

The film initially sees Superman saving some Russian cosmonauts, refusing to sell the family farm to corporations, and then saving a subway car. None of this has anything to do with the main plot so I guess it's a crash course in Superman for the uninitiated. At The Daily Planet, they find that the paper has been bought by a rich guy by the subtle name of Warfield who has a daughter who wants nothing more than to get in Clark Kent's pants despite his strong waiting-until-marriage vibe. Also, Lex Luthor is broken out of jail by his totally rad nephew. Following so far? Good. Next a kid asks Superman to destroy all the nuclear weapons (topical!) and he just . . . does it. With full consent of all the nations. Sure. But he actually just destroys the ones people know about because Luthor is still dealing in nukes on the side. Although that's not his goal. His goal is to make a man more powerful than Superman using his DNA. The battle between these two actually encompasses the back third of the film. Yes, the nuke subplot was just that: a subplot. There's also some real Three's Company nonsense when Clark and rich girl are on a double date with Lois Lane and Superman. Speaking of Lois Lane, in this film she and Clark are just good friends, but she's in love with Superman. At one point, Clear reveals he's Superman basically to have an honest chat with her and then AMNESIA KISSES the memory away. Adam said he did this in the second film too so this implies that this is actually a reoccurring behavior for him. Basically, Clark either needs to commit to honesty or get a damn therapist instead of using the woman he supposedly loves as an emotional depository. 

Overall, we laughed a bit but we can't necessarily recommend it. 

Spoon Rating: 4

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