REWATCH: Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-In-Law [1977]

Read the original review here.

S. Darko [2009]

This film is just rude. It is an unauthorized sequel to the cult classic Donnie Darko, with no one from the original involved except for the lead actress who played the little sister in the film. This film wants so badly to be like the original with its subtle blue tint to its use of the rabbit figure to the time travel paths and theory, but it just makes no sense. 

It's a fanfic written by someone who didn't really get the original but wanted to use the general ideas and aesthetic. I don't often describe movies we watch on bad movie night as pretentious, but this definitely is. It is trying for the occasionally iconic dialogue of the original but mostly the dialogue sounds like a bunch of people speaking their intrusive thoughts. Plotwise, we have two instances of people going back in time to save someone and it ultimately ends with no real difference to the status quo except that a missing child who was found in one timeline never is. Oops. I don't have much to say about the plot but that's because the plot doesn't really happen. Donnie's sister and her annoying friend have their car break down on a road trip and hang out in a town full of creepy men and Jesus freaks (sometimes both in one person). That's all. Elizabeth Berkley is here for a post-Showgirls role. We like to imagine this is where Nomi Malone eventually ended up: in Utah and in love with Jesus.

Cinematically the film frequently looks more like a music video than a movie and the editing employs a lot of speed up or slowed down shots for no real reason. We get some moments that seem like they're trying to be symbolism, but the film lacks the depth to really say much of anything.

The one nice thing I can say about the movie is that the score is pretty good. All the songs with lyrics sound a bit like discounted versions of Echo & The Bunnymen or INXS songs but what can you do?

Don't waste your time with this film no matter how many copies you find at Goodwill.

Spoon Rating: 2

REWATCH: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun [1985]

We have a bad movie first here people: an accidental rewatch.

We rolled a d10 and got this one from our Book Barn stack not realizing that we actually watched it back in 2014. I only just now realized it because when I entered the title into the tag section, I realized we already have a tag for the movie. 

Were the signs there? Only sort of. Sarah realized very quickly that she had seen it before but being that we were all born in the 80s, we assumed it was some kind of childhood memory thing like Kay's love of Teen Witch and Adam's affinity for Mother Goose's Rock n Rhyme. Later on when Shannon Doherty's character said the line, ""You think I'm punk?! That's not as cool as new wave but it's better than preteen!" I felt extremely strong deja vu. I basically wrote it off as having seen a clip of it somewhere.

So, oops? I'll just link to my original review because frankly I'm hilarious and don't want to try to write a new one.  

Have a bunch of pictures of Helen's Hunt cranium accessories. 

Spoon Rating: 2*
*It's a low spoon rating because we honestly laughed at a lot of the actual jokes. It wasn't a bad film. Maybe like 2.5/5 stars but obviously pretty forgettable.

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.