Hillbillys in a Haunted House

1967 horror comedy country western musical

Rating: 3/20

Plot: The titular hillbillys [sic] have car problems on the way to something called a jamboree and have to stay the night in the titular haunted house. Songs are performed. Spies and a gorilla harsh their mellow.

So in the first shot, they're traveling in Boss Hogg's car with slightly more ornamentation, and they're singing a song about being "on [our] way to Nashville, Tennessee." I should have taken it as a warning, ejected the dvd, and hurled it at a chicken. If you like bland old-timey country and western music, you're in for a treat. There's really about 30 minutes of movie here, and the rest of it consists of musical performances. In fact, the final 20 minutes of the movie is the jamboree, so it's just a series of songs that have nothing to do with the haunted house. You get to hear Ferlin Husky, the guy who plays Woody, sing "Livin' in a Trance," a song which sounds like it was recorded in a cave or something but is at least more awkward than it is terrible. Some random people then show up to tell the hillbillys [sic] that they never come near the house even though they are standing inside the house while saying that, and they perform a couple impromptu songs because the movie's plot wasn't quite ready to get started. They do "The Cat Came Back" which features two gitfiddles, a couple guys just standing around, invisible drums, and a guy hitting a small shovel with a brush before complying with the woman's request for a love song, a song that has her twitching in a way that made me wonder if she was reaching orgasm. That gal--Boots, played by a very fetching Joi Lansing--gets her own random song later during a fantasy dream sequence. "Gowns, Gowns, Beautiful Gowns" might be the most pointless things I've ever seen. Later, a character watches television, and Merle Haggard gets a song. There are probably over 15 songs in this motherfucker! And if you don't like country and western music or don't enjoy laughing at terrible film-making, there's nothing for you to see here. I've seen this on a couple "Worst Movie Ever" lists, and it probably deserves to be in consideration. It's very poorly written. I believe this chunk of dialogue is supposed to be humorous:

Woody: Where are we?
Gas station guy: Sleepy Junction.
Woody: Sleepy Junction.
Boots: Where are we?
Woody: Sleepy Junction.
Boots: Oh.
Jeepers: Hey, Woody, we're in Sleepy Junction.

Jeepers is an actual name of a hillbilly, and he's played by Don Bowman who was the host of some country music countdown show. His only other acting credit is the movie this is apparently a sequel for--The Las Vegas Hillbillys. He plays "Don Bowman" in that though, and not Jeepers. As Jeepers, he gives a performance that manages to still seem like one of the worst performances ever even though the movie is a complete disaster anyway. That first shot with the hillbillys [sic] singing in the car? He isn't singing, merely sitting in the back in what seems to be an illegal way. And he can't even get "just sitting there" right! He looks bored. That's actually the best he gets in this movie, too. Most of the time, he looks like he's got ADD or is some kind of tweaker. He spends most of the movie twitching and squinting, but he does get a moment to shine when he starts yelping about seeing a "weirdwolf" in the closet. Oh, and he does get his own song during the jamboree--"Wrong House Last Night" and it is a thing of beauty, one of those things that has to be heard to be believed. Bowman can't even sit still during a fifteen or so minute scene where he just needs to watch television. That, by the way, is one of those "What the hell?" moments as the country music he's watching is interrupted by the faces of Carradine, Chaney Jr., Rathbone, and Ho--the four bad guys. Why their faces start appearing on the television screen to stare at Jeepers is beyond me. Speaking of those guys. You would probably never expect Lon Chaney Jr. to be any good, and he isn't. Neither is Basil Rathbone, though he's the best of the bunch. John Carradine might be the worst of them all, but somebody named Linda Ho isn't far behind. Her acting consists of reading lines phonetically. I did like this conversation:

Woody: We're entertainers.
Ho: What kind of entertaining do you do?
Woody: I sing and pick a guitar.
Ho: How nice. (With this absolutely disgusted look on her face that I'm not sure was supposed to be there.)

The best performance is by George Barrows as Aniatole the monkey. John Carradine's character really hated that gorilla. It was never actually explained why these spies traveled with a gorilla, but I've never been a spy and don't know much about how these people operate. I guess having a gorilla around would make perfect sense. Anyway, George Barrows is the guy who plays one of my favorite movie monsters of all time--Ro-Man in The Robot Monster. Ro-Man is a gorilla suit from the next down and a deep sea diver's helmet for a head. Barrows has one of those acting careers I love looking at. He acted in 108 titles, and he played 16 gorillas. At least! Some of his roles were just names, and those might be gorillas, too. He also played Monstro in a movie and Slouchy McGoo in the Adventures of Superman television series. And he played "henchman" a lot. Barrows and his suit (I'm going to go ahead and assume he owned his own gorilla suit) are actually the best special effect in the movie. Some wobbling skeletons, bats on strings, and the "weirdwolf" mask are nothing short of embarrassing. There are also some lightning effects in a night sky when the action is clearly taking place in daylight and a couple visible boom mics, but if you have problems with that, you're nitpicking. I almost feel bad criticizing something that I'm sure was made by very nice people for very nice families to sit around and enjoy, but it's one of those works of art where everything just came together so imperfectly to make something so magical and deserves to be seen by connoisseurs of crappy movies, even those who don't like gorillas or country and western music.

Suing the Devil

2011 Christian movie

Rating: 3/20

Plot: A law student sues Satan for 8 trillion dollars.

I feel the need to explain a little about how I stepped in this chunk of dog shit before I being describing how bad it smells or how it ruined my carpet. Because this might be the worst movie experience of my year for me. I saw half of a plot synopsis, noticed that Malcolm McDowell was playing the devil, and enthusiastically put this on. I could have done some research. I could have noticed the involvement of Rebecca St. James, a contemporary Christian artist whose name I recognize or maybe looked into the company that made this and realized what it was. I didn't, and I was severely punished. About three minutes into the thing, tipped off by some oppressive music and the production quality, I said to myself, "Uh oh. This feels like a Christian movie." Now, I don't have a problem with Christianity or really any religion. I do, however, have problems with what Christians make when they decide to get creative. The movie I wrote about here is a perfect example. I wouldn't have been surprised to see Kurt Cameron in the credits for this. What I am surprised about is Malcolm McDowell's involvement. Now, he's not awful or anything in this. As a matter of fact, he plays the devil about as well as I expected him to. But he must be either really desperate for work because he looks too weird to be in people's movies or he lost some kind of bet. A few nice lines are scattered throughout this courtroom drama, and McDowell gets to yell a little bit, but there's not really much to work with at all. And there's a scene where [SPOILER ALERT, I suppose, since this is near the end] a Bible reading leads to a marathon of McDowell belching which is far from his finest moment on the silver screen. Or a straight-to-video television screen. Other than McDowell, the acting is universally bad, especially from this Bart Bronson character who played the protagonist. He's either Australian or spoke in a faux-Australian accent for inexplicable reasons, but he's got the type of accent that makes everything he says seem like whining. The performance is brutally bad, made worse because the writing is so terrible. "Don't tell me I left the bullets at home!" is a line that shouldn't have made me laugh given the context, but the delivery and awkwardness of the whole thing did just that. Of course, I also know brain cancer isn't funny [Oh, shoot. SPOILER ALERT!] but a scene in which its revealed that his wife has brain cancer cracked me up. And I learned that brain cancer apparently makes you cough a lot. My favorite Bart Bronson moment: "Oh yeah. Nice magic trick, dude!" Shannen Fields, a woman who plays his wife and can't even spell her first name correctly, might be worse. And then there's a mention of Section 666 and a gavel drop and some awesome special-ed effects featuring twitching demons in hoodies and angels and this nifty exploding head trick, and it all manages to sink this thing even further until holy hell, you realize that this is probably the movie that Satan tried to show Job after God told him he could have his way with him.

Job: "You took my family, destroyed my property, and gave me leprosy. But this movie is too much, Satan! Uncle!"

You can watch this if you want, but it'll probably make you root for the devil. I'm not sure how comfortable you'd feel with that.

Santa with Muscles

1996 Christmas comedy

Rating: 3/20

Plot: A millionaire is chased by police after some wild driving while on his way to some paintball shenanigans. He hides out in a shopping mall and puts on a Santa Claus outfit to elude the po-po, but an accident knocks him out and gives him amnesia so that he actually believes he's Santa Claus. A shady character named Lenny tries to take advantage of them, and the duo try to save an orphanage from evil scientists.

I wanted to give this a try to see if there's a worse Christmas movie than Sinbad and Arnold Schwarzennegar's big F-U to Christmas. The best thing I can probably say about this one (and that one) is that it's not as offensive to Christmas as a Santa Claus who molests children would be. But it's closer than you'd think. I'm trying to decide who you'd have to consider dumber--screenwriters Jonathan Bond, Fred Mata, and Dorrie Krum Raymond who have a grand total of zero other writing credits to their names because they were more than likely blacklisted after this came out or the characters they create. The characters are all pretty stupid, so that's also closer than you might think. Now, if I had blog readers, one of them would argue with me that this is completely harmless. On the contrary, this movie is so dumb that watching it could give a person brain damage. Not only that, I think I now hate Christmas because of this movie. I also hate professional wrestling, magic crystals, orphans, bodybuilding supplements, paintball, SUV's, science, Mila Kunis, and puns. Oh, and Christmas. What? I already typed that? See, that's probably an effect of watching this movie. I would wonder if Hulk Hogan's terrible performance, one that is really one of the worst you'll ever see, was the result of him watching this movie, but I can't think of how that would be possible and my head hurts just thinking about it. He's so bad here when he's not beating up scientists, but in his defense, the script doesn't help him out much. There's one great scene after the bad guys are defeated (oh, c'mon--like you were A) going to watch this, B) get to this part of the movie, and C) not know how it was going to end) and the Hulkster says something about how one of the bad guys needs to go defrost himself and then laughs. It's a thing of beauty, ladies and gentlemen. I've not really experienced the magic that is Hulk Hogan outside his early wrestling career, another movie or two, and a terrible venture into rock 'n' roll that I happen to own on cassette.

That album, by the way, makes Randy "The Macho Man" Savage's rap music album seem as good as Abbey Road. Oh hell, who am I kidding? The Macho Man's rap album is gold anyway. But I digress. As a matter of fact, I don't even remember how I was going to follow the "I've not really experienced the magic that is Hulk Hogan" idea that I started above. I'm distracted by wondering if it's really fair to have one movie that has both Hulk Hogan and Clint Howard in it. This one does, and that just doesn't seem right to other movie makers. Can't you just imagine a film producer saying the following:

"What? Cabin Fever Entertainment, distributor of Silence of the Hams, is releasing a movie with Hulk Hogan and Clint Howard? And Hulk Hogan has hair? And Clint Howard is playing a cop? That's it, everybody. Wrap it up. We're giving up here."

I just read that the original author of this gem sued to have his name removed, supposedly because the story had been changed so much. But really, anybody who sees this is going to know the real reason.

This and Jingle All the Way double feature! I want to meet the man who can stomach that onslaught.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked

2011 sequel to what I assume are movies that are just as bad as this one

Rating: 3/20 (Dallas: 5/20; Rodrigo: 15/20; Osni: 17/20; Melany: 16/20; Dutch: 18/20; Lance: 15/20; Drake: 1/20; Ig'Enid: 5/20; Kimberly: 11/20; Mary: 16/20; Jaidah: 16/20; Breona: 17/20; Adrian: 19/20; Kuenton: 17/20; Justin: 10/20; Cierra: 1/20; Matthew: 1/20; Danel: 19/20; Sarah: 2/20; Tyler: 13/20)

Plot: Talking chipmunks fall off a boat and Jason Lee ruins his career looking for them.

So this is the complete bullshit they're forcing me to watch at school now? I saw the terrible and terrible-unfunny punny title of this and said to myself, "This thing loses points just for the title." And then the chipmunks started talking and singing, and there went the rest of the points. Speaking of their voices, here's a question: Why do they need famous people--Amy Poehler, Anna Faris, Justin Long, Jesse McCartney, Chritina Applegate (some of them are famous, right?)--to do the voices for the chipmunks? Their voices are speeded-up and unrecognizable anyway! You know what I think? I think they're doing it just to screw with me. That's right. Director Mike Mitchell, who after this and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo should probably never be allowed to work again, cast Justin Long as Alvin just to screw with me. Well played, jackass! Jason Lee looks really uncomfortable here, and I'm not sure if it's because he has to talk to himself (well, imaginary chipmunks) the whole time or if he's upset that his career has come to this. And what's David Cross doing? His appearance actually makes me a little angry because there are a lot of things that David Cross could be doing with his time that doesn't involve him walking around in a chicken suit in this movie. This is annoying on more levels than I knew a movie could be annoying on. The chipmunks rap, sing, sing some more, rap again, and sing. And gyrate. There are way too many songs, and I was really close to sending one of my students out to pull the fire alarm so that I could a) hear something more pleasant and b) have a reason to go outside for a while. There are also all kinds of awkward references to much better works of art--Cast Away, Lord of the Rings, James Bond, television commercials, and Internet memes. All of them seem tired, and some of them won't make any sense in a few years. Hopefully, nobody's being subjected to this trash in a few years though. This movie really loses steam when they run out of things to do on the island, and it really didn't have any steam to begin with. I will say this, however: the chipmunk animation works well with the animals blending in with their surroundings perfectly. Unfortunately, they must have run out of special effects dough before making the volcano. I think this completes a "bad volcano trifecta" actually.

There was a movie that the chipmunks watched on the boat that had this monster that could shoot lasers out of its mouth. I really wanted to watch that movie instead. Hell, I really wanted to watch any other movie ever made instead!

Yes, I lowered the grades of any student who gave this above a 5/20. It makes me tremble when I think of our country's future.

And really. This and Deuce Bigelow? Blacklist this fiend!

The Godmonster of Indian Flats

1973 monster sheep movie

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Mine fumes or something create a mutant sheep in a place that might be called Indian Flats but seems to be called Virginia City, an old mining town in the West. The godmonster is taken to the lab of the scientist you typically see in towns like this that movies like this take place in. Meanwhile, a businessman strolls into town wanting to purchase land for reasons that I didn't bother paying attention to, but some guy named Silverdale isn't selling. When the businessman refuses to leave town, Silverdale has to get his main thug, the town's sheriff, and the town's sheriff's sideburns involved. Later, the godmonster ruins a picnic.

This is the type of movie that will change your life. You just won't be the same after the closing credits of this one. There's all kinds of nonsense at the beginning with the guy I thought was going to be the main character. I think his name must have been Tito. We're told it's a "time full of banjo dust and starry-eyed broads looking for a good time," and Tito steps off a sheep truck in Reno, wins two-hundred bucks in a slot machine in a room that is at first completely empty but then almost full a few seconds later, and then ends up in a room with these people

where he is eventually beaten and robbed. I posted that picture only because I'm pretty sure that piano man is either Shane MacGowen or the crazy drugged piano player from Reefer Madness. Then, he's in his barn where there's a sheep attack that is sonically and visually the most bizarre thing I've had the pleasure of experiencing in a while. First, the guy's in a darkened barn while the sheep running at him are in daylight. Then there's the sheep noises, one which I swear is a a guy going "Baa! Baaa!" Eventually, I lost track of what was going on and just assumed the guy was being sheep-gang-raped which, I have to admit, is a movie first for me. Next morning--sheep mutant. But the main conflict of this movie is Silverdale and his cronies vs. the black guy who rolls into town looking to buy some property, and that conflict dominates the screenplay. In fact, the godmonster doesn't really do much of anything for about an hour. When filmmaker Fredric Hobbs finally unleashes the mutant sheep, the movie becomes magical. He lumbers around with his freak limbs--scaring girls trying to picnic; dancing with Tito's love interest in a scene that rivals the dance scenes from Pulp Fiction, Beauty and the Beast, or anything from Footloose; and blowing up gas stations. He's about as intimidating as John Merrick after a night of drinking. But it doesn't matter because although he's in the title of this thing, he's really nothing more than a distraction. This movie's really jumpy with some odd transitions where sounds or last pieces of dialogue bleed into next scenes. There were a few times when I just lost track of what was going on, and I suspect most of the characters did, too. One baffling scene features a fake dog funeral complete with a tiny dog coffin following a fake dog murder following a wacky parade. It put me in a stupor from which I still haven't recovered. The movie also contains the following brilliantly-written line: "I've been following you all the way from the glory hole." If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that. . .

This isn't really a trailer as advertised, but it does contain two great godmonster scenes.

http://youtu.be/SLTUV1RitPM

The Garbage Pail Kids

1987 garbage pail movie

Rating: 3/20

Plot: A frequently-bullied, delusional kid accidentally frees the seven disgusting titular puppets from their garbage pail prison in a magician's antique store. They wreak havoc in disgusting and unfunny ways.

This came very close to being the first movie in the nearly four year history of this blog to be too embarrassing for me to admit that I watched. I could attempt to justify spending an hour and a half with this movie, one without a single redeeming value, by saying, "Well, I've seen it on some 'Worst Movie of All Time' lists, and I'm on a quest to find the worst movie of all time," but that wouldn't make it any less embarrassing. I could say, "Well, you know. It had puppets in it" or "Hey, I was watching it ironically!" or a variety of other things that would make it a little closer to OK that I watched this, but I don't think anything could make it OK that I watched this. Don't get me wrong! I did learn a couple valuable lessons from this thing: 1) Don't shake hands with Messy Tessy. 2) Don't watch anymore movies produced by the Topps baseball card company. Apparently, there is something more difficult to digest than that nasty gum they included in those card packs. Farts, projectile vomit, puppet rapping. If somebody shoved a copy of this into an 80's time capsule, likely to get rid of it so that none of their friends would catch them with it, then whoever digs that up is going to likely want to invent a time machine just to go back to the mid-80s and eliminate the race of man before this movie or any movie like it could be made. Here, I'll tell you a story to illustrate just how painful and embarrassing the experience of watching this movie is: I saw a can of Pepsi yesterday, remembered that the Pepsi company had for whatever reason decided to include a little product placement in this movie, remembered that I had watched this movie a few days ago, and attempted suicide by running head first into a cement wall. So this movie, out of the hundreds that I've seen and written about on this blog, came the closest to ending my life. True story.

Pinocchio

2002 family fun

Rating: 2/20 (Dylan: 0/20; Emma: .5/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Pinocchio, as made by mentally challenged people.

"Who stole the salami?"

This may be the worst movie ever. Unless watching Roberto Benigni hop around like he's doing on the poster, only with less blue, is your cup of Pinocchio, you're not going to like this. Abbey claims to have liked it, but this might just confirm my theory that she's on drugs. At the 21 minute mark, Dylan started screaming in anger and ran upstairs. I continued watching but passed out and woke up later with the hair on half my head shaven. This is an ugly and stupid movie without a single redeeming quality. I will say this: We watched a dubbed version that is available on Netflix, and it was really tackily done. Sometimes, that can be comical; here, it's enough to make one old guy sick and a younger guy scream in anger and run off. Add to that some of the worst special effects you'll find. It's almost like there were real special effects, like Italian special effects or something, but the producers didn't think that Americans would understand them and dubbed them with really cheap C-studio special effects. A loud and painful movie.

Here's the question that I'm left with: What the hell is a puppet in Italy? Or a boy? Because a 50-year-old Roberto Benigni looked like neither. I think "puppet" must mean "ornery old man" or something over there. Or "one who inflicts great amounts of torment and pain." Or "character who is going to make your career much harder to defend to my friends."

Urine Couch AM Movie Club: The Dukes of Hazzard

2005 idiocy

Rating: 3/20

Plot: See a synopsis for pretty much any of the television episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard but stretched into twice the length. Boss Hogg wants Jesse Duke's farm, Daisy Duke's got long legs and a vapid expression, and Bo and Luke drive their car around really fast. Honk-honk-honk-honk-honk-honk-honk-honk-honk-honk-honk-honk. (Now go back and read that again to "Wish I Was in Dixie."

The good ol' boys, according to Waylon Jennings, were never meanin' no harm, but I'm not completely convinced the makers of this film version of the television show weren't. Or were. Too many double negatives and too much time for me to spend in Hazzard County to figure out what I even typed there.

Here's the biggest issue that I have with this movie: Johnny Knoxville--a guy I like when he's lighting his balls on fire or shoving toy army soldiers into his anus; also, a guy with a charisma and natural charm and good looks that could have made him a star if he would have made better decisions--and Seann William Scott--a guy with not only too many first names but too many N's in one of them--recreate the Duke boys as really unlikable characters. The television cousins were rude but always retained some likability. You rooted for them even though they were breaking some rules because they were firmly on the good side. These Duke boys are impossible to root for. They're jerks. And really stupid. You'd expect a character played by Jessica Simpson to be stupid, but I don't remember the Duke boys being so dumb. Or maybe Bo was. I don't remember. Actually, there's not a single performance on this that I enjoyed. Jessica Simpson looks good enough. Just ask Gene Siskel's ghost's erection! Willie Nelson looks confused, almost like he's wondering how his career hit such dismal depths. Watching him on the little motel television set me made really sad. Burt Reynolds? He's obviously just showing up for the paycheck and isn't half the actor that the porcine Sorrell Booke. I mean that literally and figuratively. M.C. Gaines doesn't even attempt that "Goo-goo-goo" giggle that the great James Best's Rosco P. Coltrane had. They even found themselves a Waylon Jennings imitator. There's just no spark to these characters. They go through the motions, sort of look like the original characters, and get in the same car crashes. But they very obviously are not the same characters and this Hazzard County is not the same world that the television show created.

Or more than likely it is but desperately needed to be half the length that it was with a few commercial breaks. I need some breaks from all the car crashes. As it is, it's one of the most mind-numbing pieces of crap I've ever seen, and I really feel more dumber for spending time with it. My vote for most ridiculous moments: Anytime Bo Duke talks to his car. I half-expected there to be a Bo Duke/General Lee sex scene at some point. I would have given it a five point boost.

Sidebar: I was talking about this movie and t.v. show with a black friend of mine. My token black friend so that I can make a few racist remarks every now and then and defend myself by saying, "It's ok because I have a black friend." It's the same reason that I'm friends with a gay guy, a little person, and a Republican actually. And a mentally-challenged guy. They're my entourage. Anyway, this guy's about my age and talked about loving this show as a kid without having any idea that a racial undercurrent was there. I always wondered growing up whether this show had any black fans. My black friend (See? That almost makes me a better person just for typing that!) said he remembers a recurring black character on the original series, a guy who was always in the big city they would sometimes go to. He didn't have any lines though. I think there should have been an episode where Bo and Luke interact with some black guys. The scene would freeze as they stand face-to-face and Waylon Jennings would say, "Black guys? The Duke boys sure are in trouble now!" and then that banjo riff would play. It'd be the ultimate cliffhanger because black people are really really dangerous. And I can say that because I have a black friend.

I'd be surprised to find out that this movie had any fans, by the way.

Zontar, the Thing from Venus

1966 remake

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Dr. Taylor befriends what he believes is a friendly alien from Venus and helps him figure out a way to come to earth to solve all of our problems and make us as technologically advanced and wonderful as his planet. But Zontar turns out to be a mean "thing" and actually has other plans, plans involving mind control and mayhem! Arrgh! Zontar!

So somebody at Azealea Pictures decided that it would be a good idea to remake a Roger Corman B-science fiction flick (It Conquered the World) with a worse director. See that poster there with the menacing "thing" that looks like it could be straight from the sketchbook of a possibly schizophrenic child? That's actually a fairly accurate visual. The "thing" doesn't look much better than that. I swear, by the way, that I've seen that exact screaming woman in the exact same pose on a poster for another movie. This is just as bad (just as good if your glass is half full) as Larry Buchanan's other movies (see Attack of the the Eye Creatures [sic] or It's Alive [the proud Manos Award winner for my blog two years ago]) which means it's fun enough to watch at least seven times and has this mystical quality that almost makes it worth basing a religion on. This is stuffed with some juicy dialogue, philosophically insightful stuff about good and evil. There's a lengthy quote at the end about how man needs to find the answers within as opposed to without and about how "war, misery, and strife have always been with us and we shall always strive to overcome them." I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was plagiarized from The Diary of Anne Frank. Oh, and the reason the thing is called Zontar? That explanation is priceless. There's also some really unfortunate attempts at comedy, mostly courtesy of a pair of soldiers. One of them says "I saw a funny-lookin' boid" about six times (because it's funny?) and once, my response (an "Ehhh" like I'd been punched hypogastrically) was the exact same as one of the characters. Zontar, as I mentioned, looks ridiculous, like a greasy owlish swamp thing with pterodactyl wings. When Larry Buchanan makes that thing fly though? That, ladies and gentlemen, is movie magic. Well, assuming seeing funny-lookin' boids is magical. My favorite scene: panic in the streets; a woman stops a policeman to ask a question about manually operating an iron lung. What the hell? The fact that she yells "Stop!" while standing face to face with the policeman adds another level of greatness.

I have to go. I have more Larry Buchanan movies to watch. God bless America!

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

1964 "monster musical"

Rating: 3/20 (Dylan: 2/20)

Plot: Jerry takes his girlfriend and his buddy to an amusement park so that they can run around like teenagers in the 1950s used to. While there, Jerry is seduced by a stripper and hypnotized by a murderous prognosticator which I guess makes him a Mixed-Up Zombie. Or an Incredibly Strange Creature. Whatever he turns into, it understandably messes up his love life.

According to the poster, this is starring an actor named Cash Flagg, but don't be fooled. Cash Flagg is Ray Dennis Steckler, a guy who apparently wanted to prove with one movie that he could neither act or direct. It's famously bad, known for its ridiculously long title (although Roger Corman's 1957 The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent beats it) and for being cinema's first "monster musical," a genre that in hindsight is likely unncecessary. About half of the movie consists of these excruciating song and dance numbers. They were bizarre and badly performed and succeeded only in making me feel like a Mixed-Up Zombie who wanted to stop living. The poster also advertises that it was filmed in Terrorama which must be a euphemism for "We only had a budget of a hundred bucks." Actually, I found through my research (that's right; I research) that the budget for this was 38,000, money apparently used unwisely. Steckler also used a nifty trick he called Hallucinogenic Hypnovision which involved people in masks running around the theater scaring the audience. Another interesting bit of trivia: the producers of Dr. Strangelove were annoyed at the original title of this film (The Incredibly Strange Creature: Or, Why I Stopped Living and Became a Mixed-Up Zombie) and threatened lawsuit. Anywho, the movie, one that might inspire a person to use words like anywho. It's got an unscripted quality, probably because Steckler was the type of director who didn't use scripts. Scripts? Who needs 'em!? Steckler also apparently utilizes a special filming technique called Nausea Cam, most naturally during scenes on a roller coaster and almost naturally during some of the dancing scenes but not naturally at all when the actors are just standing there having a conversation. The actors look nauseated themselves a lot of the time. My favorite character in this mess is Ortega, the fortune teller's assistant. I think he might be one of the titular strange creatures. He might have been just a clown or a hobo though. My favorite performance, however, was Atlas King (another pseudonym?) as Jerry's friend Harold. Atlas is only in one other film, another Steckler masterpiece released the same year. I'm sure bad sound contributed, but I couldn't understand a word the guy said, something that surprisingly didn't really make the movie any more difficult to understand. And the bad sound didn't make the other actors unintelligible. Dylan watched this with me as a punishment and took his own notes. He gave me his notes, so if you don't believe me that this film is a must-see, maybe you'll trust him: muffled/undiscernable voices, dark and blurry and hard to see, really bad music, really bad dancing, camera angles--what's with that under-the-car shot?, disembodied voices, day/night continuity errors, random and irrelevent shots, long boring songs that don't advance the plot, no incredibly strange creatures in the movie. See? It's exactly what lovers of bad cinema look for in a movie!

Note: Ray Dennis Steckler directed Rat Pfink A Boo Boo, a movie that I have been wanting to see for twenty-two years.

You can watch this on Hulu or, with the Mystery Science Theater robots, on Netflix.

The Eye Creatures

1965 Larry Buchanan sci-fi remake

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Titular eye creatures (see below) invade earth and interrupt necking teens. One of the teens, a thirty-year-old one named Stan, hits one of them with his car because he's driving without his headlights on. He and his girlfriend try desperately to get the police to believe their story, but he's arrested for hitting a drifter instead. They return to the scene of the accident to look for evidence of aliens. Or maybe just to make out again.

Larry Buchanan, director of the Manos Award winning It's Alive, sure knew how to make bad movies. The silliest thing about this Z-movie is the whole night/day continuity error thing. The story takes place during a single night; however, half the scenes are being filmed in obvious daylight. It almost seems like every other scene switches from day to night or back again, and if I didn't know better, I'd think they did it on purpose to be funny. Or maybe the silliest thing about this is the acting. Lots of Torgo contenders here. The guy who plays "Jim" is really great, especially that moment when he spots a wildly spinning UFB (unidentified flying hubcap) and spitting out, "This one was green!" with far too much excitement. The old man who, although he only gets one line (essentially "Get off my lawn, kids!"), gets to say it over a thousand times. The pair of Peeping Tom surveillance dudes were also impressive. I can't find any of these thespians names because the cast list doesn't show that the characters even have names. But I know that guy's name was Jim! The scene where Stan hits one of the aliens with his car should be used as a "how not to" in an editing course in film school. The girl screams, Stan looks over at her, there's a screech, the girl says, "Oh no!" or something, and then there's a thud, all with this comical choppiness. The alien monsters themselves, eye creatures apparently, were obviously dudes in hastily-assembled costumes. Here's what they look like:


Not quite as embarrassing as the monster in It's Alive, of course, but still pretty dopey. Watching one of their severed rubber arms prowl around was about as embarrassing though.

Here's my favorite tidbit about this movie though:

Apparently, this was shown on television and the producers wanted to jazz up the title a bit by adding "attack" in the title. I guess it makes it seem more menacing. Problem is, as you can see above, they didn't bother proofreading their work and ended up with Attack of the the Eye Creatures as the title. That is awesome. And so is Larry Buchanan who, as I examine more of his work, might have a body of work that is more inept than even the great Ed Wood.

Santa Claus

1959 Mexican Santa Claus movie

Rating: 3/20 (Jen: 1/20 [fell asleep]; Emma: 2/20 [fell asleep]; Abbey: 10/20)

Plot: Pretty much your standard Christmas story. It's Christmas Eve and Santa Claus is somewhere in space or heaven overseeing his sweatshop while children from many different cultures help him prepare for his magical flight. Of course, Satan wants to stop him and sends demon Pitch to tempt kids to be naughty and kill Santa. And of course, Santa has to get help from Merlin the magician to survive the night and ensure that the nice children wake up with a living room full of presents. Even the poor little girl who just wants a freakin' doll!

You have to love a Christmas movie that has the ability to punish viewers who fall asleep while watching it with hellish nightmares of holiday demons and laughing reindeer robots. This is bizarre from the get-go. It starts with a seemingly endless scene with Santa playing an organ while showcasing the variety of countries that the jolly old elf has apparently kidnapped children from to work in his sweatshop. For a moment, I thought I was watching a live-action film based on Disney's "It's a Small World," something I'm sure is on the horizon. Each group of children got to sing a little song that sounded like it could have come from the country they represent, and my favorite was when the American children did "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Seriously? That's the song that best represents America? It's not even a Christmas song! The next scene takes the viewer naturally to hell where the "King of Hades" lights a firecracker and leads a poorly-choreographed dance. Then it's back to Santa where we get a chance to see just how he knows if you've been sleeping or if you've been awake or if you've been bad or good. Apparently, he's got a big machine with giant lips, a telescope with an eyeball, and a satellite thing with a human ear attached. The surreal props and goofy sets show some creativity, but it also makes it obvious that the people who made this thing only had a rudimentary understanding of Santa Claus. I mean, there aren't even elves and his four reindeer are clunky robots. Speaking of those robots, at one point one of them laughs (he he he ha he ha ha ha ho he) and it might be the scariest thing I've heard in my entire life. Santa's almost nonstop maniacal laughter (nonstop except when the devil is trying to murder him) isn't much better though. There's just so much about this movie that is so awkward, and a lot about this movie that is downright unsettling. A pair of dream sequences--one with giant dancing dolls and one with a kid who opens up coffin-like presents containing his parents--are just weird, and almost every scene with Pitch gave me the chills. Of course, Pitch was a poorly-costumed red-painted demon, so I guess that was the desired effect. One of the scariest moments was when the little poor girl was having a repetitive conversation with the devil about stealing a doll. She must have said "No, I don't want to do evil" five or six times. The good characters, absent-minded Merlin and a magic-key-making blacksmith, are fun. Merlin's got this weird bouncing gait that makes Torgo's walk look normal, and the blacksmith has some hair glued to his chest to, I guess, make him look more blacksmithy. Nobody's going to mistake this for a Miracle on 34th Street or an It's a Wonderful Life, but this just might be my new favorite Christmas movie. Like those movies, you get to learn beautiful lessons like how "a dream is a wish that the heart makes" or how people on earth eat "even smoke and alcohol." Fun for the whole family unless some of your family members would rather not have Satan anywhere near their Christmas entertainment.

The Wild Women of Wongo

1958 Girls Gone Wild precursor

Rating: 3/20

Plot: On an island named Wongo, you've got two tribes of folk--one with ugly men and beautiful women and the other with handsome men and ugly women--and some ape men. They're oblivious to the fact that other people are on the island until one of the handsome men arrives via raft to get help following an ape man attack. They're not very nice to him. Then a bunch of other stuff happens, very little that I actually understood.

The most surprising thing about the alliterative The Wild Women of Wongo is that somebody was credited as a "dialogue coach." I'm not sure exactly what a dialogue coach does, but it apparently doesn't have anything to do with making the dialogue more realistic or performed in a natural way. This isn't worth watching despite some amusing moments. Scenes are often punctuated with a smart-alecky parrot who says things like, "Uh oh! Here we go!" It almost made me feel like I was watching the movie with a little feathered buddy. I also liked how the movie began with a prelude narrated by Mother Nature. There's a wacky catfight with this weird canned cheering, some great special effects with crocodiles making a meal of some ape men (all who have identical screams), and a great scene with one of the wild women wrestling with what looked to be a dead crocodile. You also get an extended scene with the wild women dancing right after the woman at the temple turns into an alligator woman. Yes, that's as corny as it sounds. There's a great (SPOILER ALERT!) happy ending that involves more winking men than I figured I'd ever see in one movie. I sincerely hope that'll be a record that is never topped. I know I may have made this movie sound like a fantastic way to spend an evening, but don't be tempted. This really isn't worth your time no matter how much you enjoy wild women.

The Screaming Skull

1958 horror movie

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Eric remarries following the accidental but suspicious skull-bashing and drowning death of his wife. He removes the furniture from the home, I think because it reminds him of his first wife, but leaves a painting of her and builds an elaborately silly grave for her. And he keeps the peacocks. Oh, and he apparently keeps his wife's skull. He also keeps the gardener, Mickey, who was great friends with the first wife. Once new spouse Jenni moves in, she starts getting creeped out by disappearing peacocks, spontaneously appearing skulls, limping gardeners, and scary sound effects. Has the ghost of the first wife come to haunt the newlyweds or is something more sinister going on? Only the peacocks know the truth.

This opens with a narrator audaciously promising a free casket to anybody who dies of fright while watching The Screaming Skull. Although there's one scene that does effectively create adequate suspense with little more than weird lighting and well-utilized sound effects, there's not much in here that will likely scare anybody to death. The producers probably should have offered a free coffin to anybody who was bored to death instead. There are parts of this that reminded me of Manos which, depending on your taste for movies that are both terrible and entertaining, could be both a good and bad thing. The music is similar to Manos, the plot makes about as much sense, and you get the impression that this might have been made by somebody with mental problems. There's also the character of the Mickey the halfwit gardener played by the director Alex Nichol in a performance that can only be described as Torgo-esque. It's a great character and a terrific performance. Goofiness abounds as a multitude of skulls float around and attack characters during an exciting denouement. There's also a ridiculous ghost that falls apart after it's hit by a thrown chair. It was terrifying. In fact, I think I almost died during that scene.

Future War

1997 movie that Claude Van Daame apparently turned down

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Evil beings borrow a few dinosaurs from earth's past and a few humans from earth's future to use as "trackers" and slaves. One of the slaves manages to escape and somehow ends up in 1990's America. As dinosaur heads and cyborgs chase him, he gets help from a nun. No kidding.

Another day, another terrible movie. The best part of this one is an (unintentional?) pun. The evil alien things are referred to as "handlers" several times during the movie, but the reason they have to kidnap earthlings to use as slaves is because they lack hands. Handlers lacking hands? Oh, the irony! That does bring up a question though. How did they build spaceships or time machines or whatever to come to earth for dinosaurs and people? And the cyborgs who chase him have hands. When were they created? That might be a plot hole. Regardless, if the best thing about your movie is a pun, you know you're in trouble. The first twenty minutes of so of Future Wars is the characters slowly walking through what I believe is the director's basement. It's a long, slow build-up to what can only be described as a special effects extravaganza--dinosaur PUPPETS! That's right--PUPPETS! They're intimidating puppets though, puppets that might scare the average three year old. Unfortunately, it limits what the dinosaurs can do in the movie. They can open their mouths and growl. They can lunge toward the camera. They can be held really close to the camera with the actors in the background so that they appear much larger than they actually are. Ummm. . .I guess that's about all they can do. Another effect used shows dinosaur and cyborg perspectives, an infrared deal for the former and this ugly robot visual thing for the latter. It's pretty distracting. The star is Daniel Bernhardt who, as the box above proudly proclaims, went on to do bigger and better things. I don't know who Agent Johnson even is from the Matrix sequels. Maybe Daniel Bernhardt is the reason why the last two Matrix movies sucked so much. Was he responsible for bringing down the franchise? He certainly doesn't help Future Wars very much. Here, he's a sort of Van Daame light. He roundhouse kicks frequently, screams at bums, runs in a way that would make Jimmy Stewart call him awkward, and has this stumbling way of talking (ostensibly because he doesn't know English although he picks it up in a couple hours) that makes the awful dialogue seem awfuller. Another thing I noticed: Following the 20 or so minutes of wandering around the director's basement, it flashes back to the runaway fleeing through a labyrinth of empty cardboard boxes as a dinosaur and a cyborg chase him. The cardboard boxes aren't supposed to be anything else. It's just a maze of empty cardboard boxes. It's shockingly cheap looking. But then there's a second fight scene in a maze of cardboard boxes and a third scene where cardboard boxes feature prominently. It really makes you start to wonder. I'm not sure what I started to wonder, but I wondered something.

Werewolf

1996 movie

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Some archaeologists digging around in the desert sands of Arizona discover an odd half-man/half-something-else skeleton. Immediately, they start brawling. One of the men scrapes his leg on the skull of their discovery, and while recuperating in the hospital, he transforms into a werewolf. Later, other characters who already sort of look like werewolves being to show signs of lycanthropy. An evil archaeologist might be responsible.


False advertising! I was so ready to watch Joe Estevez in another award-worthy performance, but he only a minor character in the first quarter of the movie. Oh well. This still qualifies as a really good bad movie. I was really confused by the nationalities of some of these people. What I initially thought was just extremely awkward, stilted acting turned out to be the result of casting the inhabitants of some unidentifiable foreign land, most likely a land where emoting or facial expressions have been outlawed. The woman archaeologist seems either bored out of her mind or confused throughout the movie, and, like Jimmy Stewart or Vincent Price, the simplest tasks seem difficult for her to pull off in a way that makes her look like a normal person. The evil archaeologist not only has a thick accent but also has this strange intensity that makes nearly everything he says laughable. My favorite character is a Santa Claus militia man who gets all the best lines and nearly steals the movie. The wolfman special effects range from mildly humorous to uproariously abysmal. The wolves sometimes look like tiny Sasquatch, sometimes like bears, and sometimes like dollar store Halloween masks fashioned into a kind of filthy puppet. There's also a really weird soundtrack, odd cello music that never really seems to fit right. It's all awfully silly stuff. Just don't watch it expecting to see a lot of Joe Estevez.

Zu Warriors

2001 martial arts fantasy

Rating: 3/20 (Jen: 1/20. She didn't even give it a chance though!)

Plot: Some guy covered in special effects wants to destroy the Zu Warriors, possibly because he's jealous of their special effects. They have a contest to see who has the best special effects.

This reminded both Jen and me of the Power Rangers television shows that some of our children watched. It looked about that tacky, but to be fair to the Power Rangers, at least they made perfect sense all the time. This was just about the grossest thing I've ever seen. About 90% of the movie was ugly CGI. It was like humans trying to wade their way through a video game or maybe a screensaver. I've decided that I just don't like these martial arts fantasy things, but really, I'm not sure I can accurately label this a martial arts film. The characters kicked (mostly at the air) and made some kung-fu poses, but those kung-fu poses just ignited some special effects wizardry--giant rings flying from hands, metallic wing things swooping through the air, iridescent tornadic swords. I had no idea what was going on about three minutes into the proceedings. I couldn't tell when characters died or remember who certain characters even were. What makes it worse is that I didn't even care. I have no idea how I even finished watching this. It definitely wasn't pleasant and quite possibly my worst movie-watching experience of the year.

Killers from Space

1954 B-movie

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Scientist Martin is killed in an airplane accident while surveying a nuclear testing site. Shockingly, he arrives back at the base completely unharmed except for an L-shaped scar on his chest. He's given a lie detector test and tells a story about bug-eyed aliens who never blink and mutant insects and lizards that the killers from space will use to take over the world. Nobody believes him.

1950's B-movie. Aliens. Radiation. Giants. Typical stuff. This one's got a great title though! Laughably goofy no-budget stuff here with Peter Graves apparently under the impression that he's playing a statue. The aliens are really cool, all black with those gigantic eyes. A scene where Graves tries to escape from a cave and keeps running into the giant lizards, a scene which seems to last for fifteen minutes, is also great in one of those ways where you're thinking, "These special effects are terrible," followed by, "My God! This scene's been going on for fifteen minutes! What the hell? Didn't they already show that lizard twice?" followed by, "This is the greatest thing I've ever seen!" Those lizards and goo-goo-googily-eyed extra terrestrials are only in the movie for a brief middle portion of the movie; the rest of the film does drag a bit. Lame dialogue, mumbo-jumbo B-movie science, and terrible cinematography where parts are too dark to even tell what's going on and actor's faces are shown in disturbing close-ups for no apparent reason. This was a Mystery Science deal which I like because it tricks me into thinking I have friends to watch the movie with.

Rollerball

2002 remake

Rating: 3/20

Plot: I don't know. I stopped paying attention after a few minutes. There's lots of rollerballing with intermittent music videos.

I had to invent a new blog label--"Movies I couldn't finish"--for this one. Glad I decided to pop in this loudly obnoxious piece of crap. And now, all of a sudden, I hate the first movie and the rap stylings of L.L. Cool J. Way to go, remake of Rollerball. Way to go. I'm not sure how big the list of people who thought this was a good idea is, but all of them should be lined up and kicked right in the rollerballs.

My Name Is Bruce

2007 junk

Rating: 3/20

Plot: Some Chinese demon is awakened by a storm or by some teenage vandals or by a combination of the two. He begins slicing the heads off the inhabitants of small-town Gold Lick, so they kidnap b-movie actor Bruce Campbell to help them out.

It's hard to tell whether or not this is self-referential or self-indulgent. I do know that every time I see Bruce Campbell, it makes me like Evil Dead II a little bit less. I realize this is actually supposed to be a bad movie, but that doesn't excuse it being so cliched, so unfunny, and, most heinously, so racially insensitive. I'm not sure what the Chinese have done to Bruce Campbell. Maybe there's some joke I'm not hip to, but regardless, I'm not sure I want to be in on it. Most offensive would be the special effects used to create the Chinese demon. No, most offensive are the terrible jokes. There are lots of references to Campbell's previous work (the "Give me some sugar" line is used at least thirty times), but it just seems so cheap. I can appreciate self-deprecating humor, but there is nothing clever about any of this and absolutely no reason to see it.