It's been a while since I've posted anything, but my Facebook pals and I are still watching bad movies every Sunday night. Here are the gems we've seen the last couple months:
Attack of the Crab Monsters is a Roger Corman classic from 1957. Scientists and two sailors who I'm not saying were gay but who were probably gay visit an island for reasons that aren't fully explained and encounter the titular monsters. Titular! Man, I've missed using that word. It's not like I can use it with middle schoolers because they'd giggle. They giggle whenever I say "Balls!" loudly and for no reason at all, too. So you know we're dealing with an immature group here. Nice little bad sci-fi here with a few cliches, a barrage of stock footage, incoherent science, a guy with a chasm in his chin, and some giant crabs that look only a little less goofy than the one featured on the poster.
1985's Barbarian Queen is a half-assed feminist fantasy action movie that seems like nothing more than an excuse to show off some women. "No man can touch her naked steel." That's some tagline. You just know the types of guys who watch movies like this in their basements. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. The plot seems half-conceived, and the fight scenes--most involving loads of people--are, at best, only adequately choreographed. Lana Clarkson, the woman Phil Spector's hair killed, stars and looks great. This one's for fans of Xena who always wished there could have been nudity. My favorite character was a guy with glasses who operated the torture chamber.
Shotgun's a terrific buddy cop movie from 1989 with a lead played by somebody named Stuart Chapin. The movie's written and directed by somebody named Addison Randall, but it seems like it was made as a favor for Chapin, like a vanity project. Randall probably called him up and said, "Hey, I've got some cameras and shit and a week to kill. How about I put you in a movie for your birthday?" Chapin's like a C-or-maybe-even-D-movie Dirty Harry. Ian "Shotgun" Jones breaks all the rules, but when he does it, you don't think, "What a badass!" You think, "What the hell is he thinking?" Most offensively, he seemed to have stolen Indiana Jones' hat. This is wall-to-wall ineptitude, but the best part of the movie might be the last five minutes when that tank thing on the poster finally appears.
This 70's flick attempts to blend mild horror and the supernatural with the popular biker genre with predictable results. Don't go into this one expecting a lot of werewolves because there aren't very many scenes with them. I wondered if the makers originally wanted to have the werewolves on screen more but then chickened out after seeing how ridiculous they looked. There's a lot of Satan in this movie if you're into that sort of thing, and the soundtrack was actually pretty bitchin' if you like fuzz guitar. We watched this one on Youtube, and it originally appeared on AMC, probably because it's an American Movie Classic. Unfortunately, I think it was edited, both making the plot even more incomprehensible and taking out some nudity. One of my friends pointed out that this movie was pretty much a riding montage followed by a fight of some kind followed by a riding montage followed by another fight followed by. . .well, you get the idea. This wasn't the most entertaining good-bad movie of all time or anything, but there was a great scene where all the characters are running around calling for a character named Movie. "Movie!? Movie!?" I had trouble finding a movie in all this mess, too.
Yep! I've now watched this twice. Unleashed former Manos Award winner The Room on my Facebook friends, and it was just as magical as it was the first time. I wrote about this one here. I just want to emphasize one thing though--what Tommy Wiseau does here is nothing short of a movie miracle. If you're a fan of alarmingly bad movies and haven't caught this one yet, stop whatever you're doing and find it right now. You'll never look at a football, a picture of a spoon, friendship, cancer, or bellybutton sex the same way again.
Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare, the action-packed story of a heavy metal superstar fighting Satan, is the rare movie that lives up to its poster. Don't believe me? Just check this image out:
This has heavy metal music, some sex, that dude's hair, puppets that look a lot like penises, Coca Cola product placement, and a really sweet-looking van. Alternate title: The Edge of Hell. Great bad movie here. Seriously, if you watch this and don't end up with a rockin' boner, you're not alive. Unfortunately, my favorite character--Carl the caretaker--didn't last very long. That guy up there with the hair and boobs? He wrote this thing, too, apparently as an excuse to show the world how awesome he is. Every movie needs a little Jon Mikl Thor. That's right--that's his name. He has a song on the soundtrack to Fubar, a movie I liked. Facebook friend Fred claimed this was the greatest movie ever made.
You won't believe Frankenstein Island came out in 1981. Actually, you won't believe it came out at all. John Carradine (one of the Carradines) plays the titular doctor, but he's not that doctor. This one confused everybody and caused a great deal of pain and anguish. I'd actually repressed the memory of even watching it and was only reminded that we'd done it when I came across it on Facebook about three minutes ago. The only thing I really remember about it is that there was a character wearing an ascot and a v-neck sweater with nothing underneath. Is that something?
Battle Beyond the Stars is one of the innumerable Star Wars knockoffs, and the variety of characters--some scantily-clad--made it fun enough. And George Peppard either plays a stoned space cowboy named Cowboy or was stoned when he was playing a non-stoned space cowboy named Cowboy. Either way, he's George Peppard, and there's a scene where he and the other characters are roasting wieners. Do you think there's another science fiction movie where that happens? This is Star Wars meets The Seven Samurai, and it actually wasn't all that terrible. I probably would have dug it as a kid anyway. But that's probably just because of the whorish fembot and a scene where the Han Solo character is messing with circuitry in her buttocks. I'm telling you--it was pretty hot. A lot of clumsy sci-fi dialogue and a paper-thin plot didn't help this one's chances of having any success although the space special effects weren't too bad. One spaceship did have tits, however. This was another Roger Corman flick, one he co-directed with Jimmy T. Murakami who did that touching cartoon When the Wind Blows. Most notable contribution this film made to my life: The line "Prep your thrusters! I'm coming aboard!" which I use with my wife when I think intercourse might happen.
Apparently, we were in a sci-fi mood for two weeks. This was produced by Roger Corman, and this time, they're ripping off Alien. Only there's a pyramid, a more overt alien-on-woman rape sequence, and a story that is more incomprehensible. Erin Moran apparently went straight from Happy Days to this, and this also has Robert Englund running around in it only without a striped sweater. None of us were too sure what was going on in this weird little movie, but we suspected it was some kind of metaphor for venereal disease. And it was yet another bad movie that set us up for disappointment by promising so much with that poster.
Somebody had a craving for a bad Western, so we picked this late-60's cowboys and Indians flick with not one but two William Shatner. That's double the Shatner as he plays twins. Poorly. The ladies would like this one because he's shirtless a lot. It's the only way you can tell he's the Indian character and not the one who isn't an Indian. Actually, there's one scene where the two Shatner characters are fighting each other, and they're both shirtless. That's four William Shatner nipples on screen at the same time. Actually, I'm not sure about that. Not sure they had the special effects abilities to put both Shatners on screen at once. I enjoyed the jazzy score this one had, mostly because it didn't fit the movie at all.
Bad Movie Club will continue happening every Sunday night at 9:30 EST right on Facebook from now until the end of time. Let me know if you want in on some of this action.
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