Tales From The QuadeaD Zone [1987]

From just the title screen I found myself saying, "I'm getting some Black Devil Doll From Hell vibes from this" not thinking about what I was saying too deeply. On a quick search twenty minutes into the film to figure out what the name of something was since the sound was so bad, we discovered the truth. Tales From The QuadeaD Zone is actually the second feature film of Chester N. Turner, his first being the most scarring movie we ever watched at movie night. I screamed, both in delight at how quickly I noticed the similarities and also fear of what this might mean, but thankfully this movie wasn't scarring at all. It wasn't particularly great either though. We also never learn what the QuadeaD Zone even is.

The film has a bit of a frame narrative. In the outer frame we have a woman who lives with the ghost of her dead zone. He has given her a book of tales to read him. How he manifested this book in the corporeal realm is never explained or even really commented on. The first tale is called "Food For ?" which is about a family or cult that doesn't have enough food to go around and apparently refuses to share and how each meal they have to grab for food when the bell rings and hope they're eating that night. One of the people grabs a gun one day and offs the right number of people so everyone can eat. The second tale is called "The Brother" and after a long build up of guys breaking into a funeral home without explanation and then stealing a body, we find out it's the body of one of their brothers. The brother plans to get revenge by dressing the body up like a clown and burying him in his basement instead of his fancy grave (the smell tho?). The brother's ghost inhabits the body and they fight to the death. Finally, we have the conclusion of the frame narrative. The woman's husband comes up and they fight, which ends in her stabbing him. The police arrive and she commits suicide in the bathroom while thinking about how she will be reunited with her son. The film ends with their ghosts sitting down to read more tales.

Like Devil Doll, this film has poor quality in all major movie aspects from editing to sound to writing. Some of it really drags and "The Brother" especially was really confusing at first. But unlike Devil Doll, I didn't have a PTSD moment recalling the film to write this post. Obviously the superior film. Adam has the two movie box set and apparently the film also has commentary from the director and lead actress, so that might be something worth exploring one day.

Spoon Rating: 3

Shark Exorcist [2015]

This movie was utterly inexplicable. I'm not totally sure where to start with this. Obviously the title is wonderful but we've watched a lot of angry fish movies that were ultimately disappointing. This was not one of them probably because the budget didn't allow for anything even remotely competent to happen. Instead you get a bunch of blonde girls in bathing suits who all are dressed and styled like it's 2003 but they have smartphones, one single CGI shark scene that they use multiple times, and a discount nun and priest outfit with a bonus Party City pirate knife. That knife is the only prop in the film, but there's some fake blood and a bit too much green vomit for most people's taste. The whole thing was shot on location in mostly a state park in Tennessee (although they went to Nashville to shoot one scene at the Parthenon). There was clearly very little budget left for editing, sound editing, other CGI, or really anything that could make the film look like anything other than a series of vaguely connected home movies.

As for the plot, we are supposed to believe that:
1. An evil murdering nun kills someone and throws them into a lake as a sacrifice to a "water spirit."
2. This causes a shark (IN A LAKE) to be possessed by a demon with the capacity to possess a person who could then bring them bait in the form of other people.
3. A blonde girl gets possessed by the shark, which makes her really into baths, seafood, and vaguely hitting on girls who might be good shark bait (one of whom seemed to have a developmental delay and it was uncomfortable).
4. A priest is enlisted to help with this demonic shark possession, which results in him sacrificing himself so the shark possess him. He then immediately bites the blonde's ombre friend.
5. In the film's only other CGI shot, ombre friend lures another blonde friend into the water to get eaten by the shark while standing on the dock.
Also, after the credits, there's a series of shots of a girl we've never seen before walking around what appears to be an aquarium gift shop, lovingly petting and cradling the shark plushies. Then she stares intently at a fish tank. This goes on for like seven minutes, and while it was probably the most incomprehensible of the filler scenes, it sure as hell wasn't the only one. I still don't know what was up with the witches in the graveyard, but it was nice to see some characters who didn't dress and style themselves like discount Nicole Ritchies.

Is all that okay with you? It should be. This movie is excellent.

Spoon Rating: 6.5

Forty Days And Nights [2012]

Not to be confused with the rape movie pretending to be a romantic sex comedy, Forty Days and Forty Nights. This movie is about a rainstorm of literally Biblical proportions. We have Sarah's mother, Kelly, to thank for this one as she found it because it was free on Roku and she immediately thought, "Oh, this is a Monday night movie." And she was definitely right.

This movie is a complete winner from a special effects and set design perspective. They are absolutely atrocious, and its hilarious. From the very beginning we get a title card telling us we are in the Sahara when we are very obviously in California. No one even bothered to look up the differences between the very orange Sahara and a somewhat vegetation-covered California desert. Amazing. The desert then gets flooded with special effects that amount to a rain machine and a bunch of close-up shots of a beach. This continues the whole film. Sarah was in shock for a solid three minutes over a lab storage scene where samples were all being kept in plastic water bottles. The boots interior was all plastic and it had a hole that made it look like the boat was made of aluminum foil. The acting was great too. Everyone was wooden except the lead actress who still sometimes reacted to things in an unrealistic way and had the unfortunate experience of having to shoot some of her scenes in a see-through wet tank top without a bra (although she apparently found a bra in the woods because she was suddenly wearing one in the next scene).

I guess I could talk about the plot, but I don't really have to. There's a big world destroying rain storm. The military freaks out about it. They try to save bees. One guy gets kicked off the ark for telling his girlfriend about it. Ultimately everyone is okay and so are their families even though a bunch of people did die before the rain just stopped. Just watch it for the aesthetics. It's enough. Trust me.

Spoon Rating: 6

Bad Movie Night Update

So it's been a while since there's been a post about Bad Movie Night so here's a full rundown of the month of July and why there haven't been any posts.

On July 4th, Kay was on a road trip and movie night didn't happen anyway.

On July 11th, Kay had just come back from her trip and instead of a movie night we all just hung out and chatted.

On July 18th, no one was particularly motivated to watch a movie so we rewatched "High Impact Hand Safety," a bunch of other bad movie shorts from Adam's playlist, and some decent Saturday Night Live sketches that Kay had collected into a playlist.

Then yesterday because Adam had cancelled his classes, we had an earlier Bad Movie Night with Erik finally in attendance. With the extra time we decided to rewatch our favorite Bollywood film Singham and order a ton of Indian food. Baby Jade was enthralled by the film so we know she'll grow up right. 

Next week there may or may not be a movie night because Kay is going away again, but, as usual, normalcy should pick up again in late August at least.

Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace [1996]

This movie really made us all ask a question of sequels: is it better to make a sequel assessible to people who did not see the first movie, or is it better for a sequel to presuppose that anyone watching it is already familiar with the original? This movie definitely did the latter and as we were all unfamiliar with Lawnmower Man, this movie was an utter mystery for most of it. Adam would not give specifics on how he found this movie although whether he forgot or was protecting his sources, we don't know. Either way, this movie is a ripoff of basically every sci-fi movie that came before it and the Man himself sometimes seems like he's doing a bad Jim Carrey impression on top of that.

The plot, as far as we could piece together, is about a guy called Jobe who invented a computer chip that controls an entire virtual reality world. Some Republicans who only care about money are using him to do their dirty work but he has been corrupted and wants to destroy the world to live in the virtual world. This is a very stupid plan. There's a doctor with horrible white dude dreads who is trying to stop him with some other scientist he has romantic tension with and some kids, one of whom is a friend of Jobe and remembers him as his family's lawnmower man. We never learn if this means something other than, you know, a landscaper. The world gets saved but also Jobe goes back to normal. This is the best I can do with this plot as none of us understood it.

The movie was really mediocre. Most of our joy came from the liberal use of the verb "to jack". Often it was "jacking in" or "jacking out" but at least once it was "jacking off" and we were pleased.

Spoon Rating: 2

 

Skull Forest [2012]

We had our potato and cheese soup with a side of Len Kabasinski, the director of Fist of the Vampire coming back to our screens with Skull Forest. This is a film that gave us genuine headaches through its incredibly liberal and poor use of shaky cam and Dutch angles and was also yet another "Most Dangerous Game" rip off. Overall, not bad.

The film follows mostly four women who are hard to tell apart since three are blonde and two look like sisters and none have names. We called them The Mom, The Businesswoman, The Slut, and The Cop. Of course, we foresaw that The Mom was going to survive according to horror movie rules. On the flip side of this game we have a cast of characters who were introduced at a gala with stock music playing. We couldn't really remember most of them outside the racist stereotype native girl and the Russian sambo fighter. One of them was also the director. After a series of wacky murders, we get down to just The Mom, who at one point had to crawl naked out of a grave, and the director. The film ends right as she whacks him in the head with a shovel. 

It's a simple film and short at just an hour and 15 minutes, but it was pretty good. Laughs were had.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

A Talking Cat!?! [2013]

It's been a while since we've seen something decent so we decided to rewatch A Talking Cat!?!. Read the original review here.