Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes

1955 sci-fi horror movie

Rating: 4/20 (Libby: 4/20; Fred: 6/20; Josh: 7/20)

Plot: A really dysfunctional family of three living on ranch with a mute ranch-hand have their unhappy lives disrupted by an alien.

The most interesting thing about this movie for me was Chester Conklin who plays Ben, an elderly neighbor. His performance stood out in a mostly boring movie because he acts like he's only seen silent films with every expression and gesture exaggerated. I was entertained and looked him up. Turns out he was in over 300 movies from 1913 to 1966 including a role in The Great Dictator where he's shaved by Chaplin to Brahms' Hungarian Dance. This movie hammers home the family-sticking-together theme, hammers so hard that it's painful. For the first half of the movie, they really are as dysfunctional as a family can be, so much that it's actually a little uncomfortable. The mother, played by Lorna Thayer, is an especially abrasive character. Paul Birch plays the dad, stoically. He can't make his ranch work, probably because he spends all day driving around, but he sure becomes an expert on this alien invasion really quickly. I think the makers of this--director David Kramarsky was allowed to direct nothing else while screenwriter Tom Filer only had one other movie [The Space Children] to his name--decided that they were running out of time and had to rush things along at the end. Something like that must have happened with the title of this thing, too.

MGM executives: Hey, guys. We need a title for that science fiction movie. We need to start advertising that sucker.
Kramarsky: Hmm. What should we call this thing?
Filer: Don't look at me! This is the only thing I've ever written.
MGM executives: Hurry, fellas, or we're not going to let you make anymore movies.
Filer: Umm. Uhh. The Beast! Call it The Beast!
Kramarsky: Yeah, that's good. It's got three eyes, too. Let's go with The Beast with Three Eyes!
MGM executives: The Beast with Three Eyes? That ain't gonna sell. We need more eyes!
Filer: How about a hundred?
MGM executives: Ehh.
Kramarsky: A thousand?
MGM executives: Hmm. That's better.
Filer and Kramarsky: A million! The Beast with a Million Eyes!
MGM executives: Fellas, we've got a hit on our hands!

They make you wait for that titular beast. Wait, wait, and wait some more. When you finally get to see the thing, you're disappointed that it's a monster with two eyes with one eye superimposed over it. They show it for about thirty seconds, presumably because it's too ridiculous to show for longer. The best effect, by far, is during a couple bird attack scenes when fake birds (I hope) are thrown at a car by somebody off camera. The monster or the brainwashed birds (or dog or cow--those are the "eyes," I guess) aren't nearly as creepy as the mute who doesn't have a name until they decide to give him one at the end of the movie along with a back story. This is a movie that manages to make very little sense but still seems derivative, and that combination is no easy feat. And this is a strong contender for worst dialogue to end a film ever [Spoiler Alert!]:

[Characters see and almost shoot an eagle.]
Wife: Allan, wait. Have you ever seen an eagle around here before.
Husband: No, what's that have to do with it?
Wife: Let it go. Don't kill it, Allan. I wonder where it came from. And, Allan, there's something else. What killed the creature in the ship?
Husband: Where did the eagle come from? Why do men have souls?
Wife: If I could answer that, I'd be more than human. I'd be. . .
Husband: Yes.
[End of movie]

What?

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: Invasion of the Saucer Men

1957 science fiction movie

Rating: 9/20 (Libby: 7/20; Fred: 16/20; Carrie: 9/20; Chris: left because of newborn issues)

Plot: Teenagers' make-out sessions are interrupted by the titular invasion of some broccoli-headed aliens. One couple runs over one with a car, and they find themselves in trouble when a dead human is found in its place. Oh, snap!

The broccoli-headed aliens are great. Not sure how they even walk with heads that bulbous. I also liked a scene where a severed alien hand grew a hand and started moving around. Man, teenagers could make out in the 50's. They were going at it for what seemed to be hours of movie time. They've all got that "golly-gee" attitude that I'm sure all 50's teenagers actually had. They're all essentially the same character except some of them get to talk more. My favorite character was the farmer who owned the fields they were parking on in order to lock lips for hours. He's played by Raymond Hatton who acted in 416 things in his nearly 60 year career, a career that started in 1909. I'm sure this nearly unintelligible farmer was one of the highlights. Frank Gorshin, playing the town drunk, is also in this movie, but I didn't know that until about five minutes ago when I was looking up the farmer's name. The best thing about the movie is the morality they try to inject into the thing at the end, a hugely silly anti-booze message. The worst thing about the movie is the oppressive soundtrack. The music is constant and overwhelming. Phone-cranking and looking out of windows just aren't actions that need music to make them more cinematic. This is just silly enough to be watchable.

Detour

1945 film noir

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A piano player on his way across country to visit his girlfriend in Los Angeles runs into some trouble after the man he hitches a ride with dies. The piano player assumes his identity and picks up a really mean passenger.

Such a fascinating little movie. On the one hand, it looks really cheap and the characters are generic. Edgar G. Ulmer directed the thing on a nothing budget in just six days. Tom Neal is awfully whiny as our protagonist and narrator and lacks punch, but he's an acceptable dupe. Ann Savage with her "homely natural beauty" is a vicious little bitch, squeezing pulpy insults out the sides of her mouth ("Kiss him with a wrench," "You'll pop into jail so fast it'll give you the bends") and bringing the feisty a little too hard. He's mopey and she's nasty, but together, they approach something close to noir magic with their hateful exchanges that dominate the second half of this movie.And Ulmer does a whole lot with his little. This storytelling's got lots of style with all these sneaky voyeuristic camera movements, hazy exteriors, a great use of shadows and light, and a terrific scene following a death with an in-and-out-of-focus glance around the room. With an interesting though less-than-plausible plot and a handful of damned characters, some who even realize they're damned, this is pretty far from perfect but still a good example of the genre made during its golden era. I would have preferred a less obvious ending, however. This should have ended with a shot of the protagonist walking on the shoulder of a highway, a lost doomed soul completely alone. It's too bad the lost doomed soul had to be arrested at the end because this movie was made in 1945.

Note: I'm surprised film noir classics I watched as a toddler didn't turn me into a smoker. I almost want to start smoking now so that I can talk with a cigarette in my mouth like characters like Al do. How did these movies not turn me into a smoker when I was a lot more impressionable?

Blood Bath

1966 horror movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: An artist who may or may not be a vampire kills attractive women and then dips their bodies in hot wax.

This one recalls the superior and more comedic (blackly) Bucket of Blood with its sculpting techniques and beatniks. Blood Bath, a movie that unfortunately isn't as interesting as the above poster makes it look, has an interesting history which explains why it's kind of a mess. Corman produced this movie and wanted Jack Hill of Spider Baby and The Wasp Woman fame to use footage of a movie Corman released in Europe but not in the U.S. He wasn't completely happy, so another director (Stephanie Rothman) came along and added a few scenes and changed the story around a little. So it's no wonder that this is disjointed and confusing. And it's too bad that it's slightly incomprehensible because the movie has so much style. There's great atmosphere early in the film with greasy atmosphere and impossible architectures and creepy bells, great black and white shots that look like they could have been in The Third Man or something. Later, there's a cool desert "He was mad!" scene and a nice shot of floating high heels in a swimming pool. The climactic scene, the only thing that even approaches horror, is effectively and efficiently dark and creepy. There's some cool movie artwork and even a little satire with some beatniks discussing the application of quantum physics to painting. This doesn't really overcome its convoluted production history or problems, but it is interesting enough to take a peek at.

Note: Like A Bucket of Blood, this has a very misleading title. There's sort of a bath, but no blood. And remember, you're not quite getting the cleavage or "the shrieking of mutilated victims caged in a black pit of horror" promised on the poster.

Pink Flamingos

1972 high art

Rating: I don't want to give this a rating.

Plot: Divine and her son Crackers live in a pink mobile home with Mama Edie and enjoy their notoriety as the filthiest people alive. That title is challenged, however, by the Marbles, a couple who kidnap women and sell babies to lesbians. Filth vs. filth action ensues.

For a movie I don't really enjoy, I sure have seen this enough times. I find it impossible to rate. It's a terrible movie and very much the "septic tank explosion" that the person compares it to on the poster there. It's revolting for the sake of revulsion with its dumptruck load of talking anuses, fecal matter, sex acts involving (and killing, reportedly) chickens, magic marker hair dye jobs, bad narration (Waters himself), egg men (Paul Swift who was in three other Waters' movies), drug references, arson, curse words, syringe violation, and transexuals. But something that succeeds in shocking and sickening this much almost deserves respect, right? Waters is either a very sick individual or a guy who had a perverse vision and with almost no budget succeeded in bringing that vision to life on drive-in screens. And if you dare look hard enough, there's a message beneath all this madness, and disturbingly prescient message at that. In a way, this foreshadows the extremes people will go to in order to have their Warholian fifteen minutes of fame and predating reality shows by about twenty-five years. Of course, reality shows don't go to these extremes. Nobody eats dog crap on reality shows. Or did they do that on Fear Factor? With its anti-style, in-your-face ineptitude, and belligerent distastefulness, this is unlikely to be a movie that very many people can sit down and enjoy. Still, it's a unique statement and an unforgettable piece of work.

The Wizard of Gore

1970 horror movie

Rating: 4/20

Plot: The titular magician has a gratuitously violent stage show in which he dismembers, decapitates, and disembowels female volunteers from the audience before magically putting them together again. It's really stupid. Later that night, the volunteer's wounds reappear which is even stupider. And the fact that nobody can put the pieces together and figure out what's going on? That would be stupidest. A writer--a female one, of course--is intrigued enough to investigate.

If Herschell Gordon Lewis was more well known (read: more infamous) outside B-movie/gore circles, this is the movie that would have given him his nickname. He could have gone down in cinematic history as the Wizard of (Cheap and Gratuitous) Gore. It's easy to see that Lewis had absolutely no budget at all to work, and all the funds he did have (fifty bucks?) was used to purchase meat and tomato juice. The stage show violence is so over the top that it crosses the border between Scaryland and the Continent of Goofy and then continues all the way around the world like a squelchy perverse Magellan so that it can scoot over the border another time. The goofiest thing about these scenes is that they're shown multiple times. So you'll see the saw going through a woman's abdomen, then a shot of the audience looking rather bored, then Montag digging around in the woman's viscera, then another shot of the audience, then a shot of the woman's abdomen without any injury at all, then a shot of Montag's face, then a shot of her being sawed again. It's awkwardly edited. It's the same with the spike-in-the-noggin scene and a scene featuring a guillotine. Movies with guillotines, by the way? Automatically more awesome. Orson Welles wishes he had some guillotine action in Citizen Kane, and according to an unauthorized biography I imagined and then pretended to read, that was his biggest regret. Montag is played by Ray Sager, a guy with an arguably respectable career. Here, he's predictably terrible, but straight from the get-go, it's almost like he's lost his faith in the words he's been given. It's hard to say, "And you were expecting a mere handsaw!" in a way that makes you look like a real person. At one point, he mispronounces his own name. He's such a talky magician, going on and on and on about. . .well, magic, I guess. The audience doesn't know how to act during these scenes, so they just randomly gesture. I didn't take the time to verify, but I'm willing to bet the same extras were used for the audience members. Sager's bad, but the auxiliary actors might be worse. There's one guy who discovers his wife dead in bed and shows off what might be the worst acting ability ever. And the delivery of the line "Craig, Craig! Look at your hand! Your hand is bleeding!" is pure classic B-movie bliss, a line that I would have quoted endlessly with my brother if we had seen this as kids right along with "Give me back my hand!" or "Oh no! A bimbo with a gun!" Screenwriter Allen Kahn, whose only other writing credit is the Lewis-directed The Year of the Yahoo, throws a Shamalamadingdong-esque twist into the climax which, on the surface at least, seemed kind of cool until I thought about it a little more and realized I didn't even understand what happened. And maybe that's my fault, but I'm just not ready to take the blame.

Two more notes: 1) I really liked how there was plastic on the floor of a restaurant where the sawed-in-two lady falls apart. "Yes, you can use our restaurant for your stupid movie, but we're putting plastic on the floor so that you don't mess up our carpet." 2) "The guy's no magician. He's just a hell of a technician." It's 1970, and some white dude invents rap music in The Wizard of Gore. Little known piece of trivia there.

Popatopolis

2009 documentary

Rating: 14/20

Plot: C-Movie directing icon Jim Wynorski attempts to make a feature-length film called Witches of Breastwick in three days.

I'm not familiar with Wynorski's work, but he makes the type of movies I hate to love. His famous is 1996's Chopping Mall. And yes, Witches of Breastwick was finished and released and even got a sequel. He likes boobs a lot. Here's a list of a bunch of his other movies:

Busty Coeds vs. Lusty Cheerleaders
Piranhaconda
Dinocroc vs. Supergator
Busty Cops 1 and 2
Busty Cops and the Jewel of Denial
Busy Cops Go Hawaiian
The Hills Have Thighs
Cleavagefield
The Devil Wears Nada
The Lusty Busy Babe-a-que
Bone Eater
House on Hooter Hill
The Breastford Wives
The Da Vinci Coed
Alabama Jones and the Busty Crusade
Bad Bizness
Cheerleader Massacre
The Bare Wench Project (and its sequels The Bare Wench Project 2: Scared Topless and The Bare Wench Project 3: Nymphs of Mystery Mountain)
Scream Queen Hot Tub Party
Munchie (and Munchie Strikes Back)
Ghoulies I-IV
976-Evil I and II
Sorority House Massacre II (I don't see a 1)
Big Bad Mama II (don't see a 1 for this one either)

It's 90 titles in a little over 25 years. Let's see Martin Scorsese top that!

There's some footage from previous movies to give you a taste of Wynorski's repertoire. His claim is that all you need is "big chase plus big chest" and you've got yourself a winner. He's also, although maybe not a great filmmaker, really smart as evidenced by his ability to make quick films based on current movie trends. For example, his Dinosaur Island was made for 190K in order to take advantage of the Jurassic Park craze. His frequent collaborators, most who have a love-hate relationship with the guy, talk about his past failures and notable triumphs, my favorite being his direction of some extras with the words "Run, you fucking monks, run!" The documentarian also interviews his mother who hasn't seen many of his movies but who really liked Chopping Mall. She didn't like the nudity in it though. "Nudity. Why did he have to do that? You just didn't do that. Not even in your own house did you do that." What? Most of the movie chronicles Wynorski's attempt to make the movie in three days and the problems that arise when one attempts to make a movie in three days. As a connoisseur of bad films, I enjoyed watching the process, and Wynorski himself, quite the asshole, was interesting as either this really complex guy or this really simple guy. On the one hand, he's simple to pin down as a guy who enjoys boobs and fire. On the other hand, you wonder what he really wants with his career and what he could have been if some breaks would have bounced his way. There's one absolutely painful five minutes where an actress named Julie, classically trained, tries to deliver a line about a tow truck. She does have a fantastic rack, however.

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

Equinox

1970 demon movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Picnicking college kids find a laughing old guy and an old book in a cave and incur the wrath of some devil monsters. That, in case you don't have much picnic experience, is worse than ants.

There's a promising start with the opening credits, creepy Bernard Hermann-esque music with shots of clock innards, something I never mind seeing in movies which makes me wonder if I should have become a watchmaker. Then, this really goes nowhere for a while. There are a few minutes of a guy running awkwardly and a car driving by itself and then some talking. The story's told in flashback by the lone survivor of the worst picnic of all time. That's one of the few reasons this 1970 movie feels like a 50's B-science-fiction movie. There's some terrifically bad performances throughout Equinox. Director Jack Woods keeps popping up as the creepy Forest Ranger Asmodeus. Woods apparently thought it would be good for his career to show extended close-up shots of himself doing this:

A crazy laughing guy in a cave is really awesome, and I'll have to figure out his name if he ends up winning my Torgo Award this year. And science fiction/fantasy author Fritz Leiber has a small role as Dr. Waterman and although he gets no speaking parts, he still manages to be really awful. It's a special performance. Things aren't looking good, but then there are these great stop-motion tentacles, a stop-motion ape thing murdering a stop-motion old-guy-from-cave, and a stop-motion devil bat thing that nearly saved the movie. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing anyway. Low-budget effects, but pretty cool. There's also an exploration of the evil book that reminds me a lot of what Sam Raimi did with his book in the Evil Dead movies. Parts of this manage to be effectively eerie, and it's worth a look if you like 1950's B-movies that were made in 1970. Oh, and it ends with a "The End" that morphs into a question mark which you've got to love. You just imagine the makers of this saying, "Hey, our story won't really make anybody think that a sequel is needed, but just in case, we should probably put a question mark at the end!"

Question: Why did Criterion release this one?

The Brother from Another Planet

1984 urban sci-fi production

Rating: 13/20

Plot: The titular brother, a mute alien, crash lands in Harlem. He tries to adapt despite his inability to speak. Two mysterious men who I think might come from those Matrix movies in black pursue him.

This is far from the 1980s blaxploitation picture that I was expecting. Netflix kept telling me that I would like this one, so I finally said, "Fine, Netflix! I'm starting the damned thing! Are you happy now?" It's a science fiction B-movie with a dopey title, but it's not nearly as goofy as you would expect it to be. There's nothing over the top with the possible exception of the protagonist's toes, and all of the humor is very low key. My favorite scene is a short one where those aforementioned men in black walk into a bar while searching for the brother. I don't know what effect is used, but the film just seems off, like it's filmed backward or something. The men in black move with this lurching motion that is really cool. There are other cool small moments in this, but it really fits more into the "interesting failure" category than anything else. There's some social commentary (character names: The Brother, West Indian Woman, Hispanic Man, Haitian Man, Islamic Man, Korean Shopkeeper) and a lot of no-budget effects. The story's not always interesting, but I did like watching Joe Morton as the title character. He does a great job considering he's not given a single line. In all, I'm glad that Netflix recommended this even though the parts don't quite add up to enough of a whole. If nothing else, it was cool seeing all those early video game machines.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror

2010 masterpiece

Rating: 1/20

Plot: A young couple fall in love. Eagles inexplicably begin attacking; sometimes they explode. The couple fights for survival and learns about the importance of taking care of the environment.

James Nguyen directed this. The story goes that it took him four years to make this beast of a film, and he was understandably disappointed when Sundance rejected it. To promote the film, he decorated his van (probably the same one in this movie) with fake blood and birds and drove around blaring screaming and screeching sounds out of speakers. He got the idea for Birdemic: Shock and Terror from watching The Birds and An Inconvenient Truth.

This'll be the worst movie I see this year. It's The Room quality but with more action. You know, because of all the exploding birds. They don't show up right away though. Like Hitchcock, Nguyen gradually builds up the suspense. The first forty-five minutes involves the main characters hooking up, but about half of that time is used for scenes of the guy character driving around. There's even a lengthy scene where he leaves his house, gets gas, and then goes back home. That's it. Nothing else happens. He just gets gas. Another great scene that seemed utterly pointless involves a business meeting-turned-celebration where the actors stand around clapping for a very long time. I'm talking about an unnaturally long time.

Unlike Hitchcock, this movie's got this wild is-this-thing-on camera work and the worst sound problems you will ever experience while watching a movie. I don't think I'm wrong about that either. And the birds look like cartoons and don't mesh with the real stuff at all. It's the worst CGI that I've ever seen, and I'm pretty sure your average ornithologist, when given very tiny magic markers, could have done a better job just drawing directly on the film. And, as I mentioned before, they sometimes explode when they collide with things. The juxtaposition between the romantic plot of the first half of this movie and the bird apocalypse of the second half is so jarring. There are a couple of scenes that might foreshadow a bird apocalypse, but for the most part, it's just wham-bam-thank-you-m'am! Bird attack! Add the most irritating sound effects ever, and you've got something pretty special. Just check it out for yourself:

Yeah, those are coat hangers that they're defending themselves with. But don't worry--the guy in the brown shirt's got a machine gun in his van, and believe me, he knows how to use it!

The lead actors are awful. Alan Bagh might as well have been made of plywood. His co-star, Whitney Moore, is cute as can be, and I nearly gave the movie an extra point just for her posterior. But the "supporting casts" (that's what it says in the credits) is what really makes this a magical experience. Moore's character's mother seems bad at first, but then there's an extended shot where she's giving a thumbs-up sign that made me change my mind. There are two child actors playing Susan and Tony, and they are truly awful, even compared to other bad child actors. But in this movie, they just fit right in. There's a hippie character whose lines are stolen from John Lennon songs (and An Inconvenient Truth) and he might get the line of the movie when he says, "Whoa! I hear a mountain lion!" Guy-in-Easy-E-Shirt and Lady-on-Bus-with-Colorful-Shirt are only on the screen for a few minutes, but they really shine. So good. And just when I think periphery character acting can't get even worse, our characters enter a gas station and meet the gas station employee. Oh, boy. There's also a great musical number called "Just Hanging Out" sung by somebody named Damien Carter.

There's another picture of a bird attack. I know I didn't set it up or anything, but neither did this movie. And I wanted to both shock and terrify you. I apologize if you wet yourself. Here's what happens to you after you get attacked by these birds, by the way:

The thing that makes this one even more special is that Nguyen's got an environmental message that he wants to hammer into our heads. It's clumsy hammering though, like he's using a giant inflatable hammer and trying to drive in a thumb tack. There are news snippets (fake ones) about polar bears dying, scenes where the main character is trying to have solar panels added to his house, conversations with an environmentalist/bird professor ("You certainly know a lot about birds." "I should. I'm an ornithologist."), and my personal favorite touch--a scene of serenity near the end of the movie where the characters eat seaweed on a beach, serenity that is interrupted by the little girl saying she wants a Happy Meal which apparently is the cue for the cartoon eagles to start attacking again. Nguyen must not like McDonalds.

I wonder how Nguyen feels about Zubaz, the best pants money can buy?

This movie is highly recommended to all lovers of bad movies. It really has to be seen to be believed.

The Giant Claw

1957 giant bird movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: A troublesome alien bird that is "as big as a battleship" is on the rampage, wrecking airplanes and destroying buildings. Electronics specialist Mitch MacAfee tries to figure out a way to stop it before the hand of the person operating the beak gets tired.

You might think that a movie that Fred F. Sears (that second F. probably stands for Fred, too) made only a year after Earth vs. the Flying Saucers wouldn't be so bad, but you'd be wrong. No, this is impressively inept filmmaking, a science fiction movie that would probably offend most scientist. Or maybe just confuse them. The bird is described as being made from antimatter, and I guess that makes sense. It all sounds really scientific, and we kind of have to believe the character because he's got a giant model of an atom. You've also got to appreciate when these 1950's B-movies explain what a UFO is to the audience. Maybe the acronym wasn't widely used back then? The story is dull, and the acting is bad. So dull and bad, that they must have felt like they needed to go a little crazy with the amount of bird scenes. In some movies, they save the monster and the big special effects for a little later in the film. With The Giant Claw, it does start out as a fuzzy blob during some initial scenes, but you still get to see the monster early on. Early and far too often, especially since the monster looks like this:

Now I know what you're thinking--that looks realistically terrifying! I'm actually thinking my mother must have seen this still from the film and that it's the reason she refuses to fly. The obvious-toy plane crash is as realistic as "obvious-toy plane crash" might make it sound. None of that's as terrifying as the police officer played by Robert Williams, a gravedigger in Hang 'Em High. He's a cop who can't keep his hands off his own belt buckle, and gets superb lines like this one: "If you see this big bird, it's a sign that you're gonna die [dramatic pause] real soon." Louis Merrill acts squares around the rest of the crash as "Pierre," a French character played by a man who is definitely not French and who's probably never heard the language spoken. Pierre's cool because he's got Eraserhead hair. That hair might be the best special effect in this entire film actually. It's definitely not the child's Play-doh globe at the beginning of this thing, an image followed by a film strip I think I might have seen in my 8th grade science class. But none of that's important, readers, because the giant antimatter bird is coming right at you in 2-D!

You really need to imagine that with the incredible sound effects, my favorite being the chomp-chomp sound that you can apparently hear whenever a bird "as big as a battleship" makes when eating a paratrooper. The Giant Claw is nearly entertaining for the duration. And hey, if you get bored, you can play a drinking game where you drink a shot every time you see a wire to help the bird move or the toy airplanes fly around. It all builds to a stunning climax during which the monster destroys New York City, including a scene where he's perched on the building doing his best King Kong impression. Or maybe he's impersonating that Korean ape from A*P*E. I wouldn't put it past him. Anyway, it's the most damage a puppet has caused since. . .well, I thought I had a joke there.

A*P*E

1976 Korean King Kong kookiness

Rating: 2/20

Plot: There's a guy in a poorly-constructed ape costume on the loose. He's beating up sharks, destroying models that are as poorly made as the ape costume, and most terrifying of all, fluctuating in size. The army's called in to help. Meanwhile, the monster goes ape for Kurt Cameron's mother. And God ain't gonna stand for that!

Look at that poster! I want that son of a bitch hanging in my living room.

It's 1976. Korea finds out that America is going to release a Kong Kong remake and decides to beat them to the punch with this thing, a half-serious-attempt/half-spoof that ends up a fantastically entertaining affair for mostly wrong reasons. The action's fierce from the get-go in this one as we start in medias res because as most Kong aficionados would tell you, all that stuff on Skull Island is pretty dull. No, here we start on the boat with some characters talking about how they hope the gas will keep the monster out. Cue a big giant monkey hand (great effects, as you could probably guess) and an "Oh shit!" leading into some badly-edited chaos ending in the boat blowing up in a sparkly explosion. And you'd probably guess that an explosion would end the big opening action sequence, but you'd be wrong. The magic is only beginning as we have a fight scene between the guy in the ape costume and a rubber shark (a Jaws reference maybe?) in which the monkey dunks and spanks his foe repeatedly. You could almost say that the movie jumps the shark right here, but you'd have to quickly correct yourself and say that it actually spanks the shark instead. Great fight scene though, almost masturbatory.

The monkey on land is even goofier than the monkey fighting a rubbery shark in the water. Now I'll admit that I've not actually studied gorillas, but I'm fairly positive the guy in this suit hasn't either. I'm not sure apes act like this, and if a bunch of monkeys ever got their hands on this movie and watched it together, they'd get ahold of a bunch of typewriters and a room so that they could eventually type out a letter of complaint to the makers of this movie. The monster in this has terrible posture and kind of humps around awkwardly. Later, during a scene which has to be included just as filler, we get to see the ape throw a snake for no reason (it's not nearly as exciting as the poster makes it look up there) and actually hit the camera. Lesser filmmakers would probably have shot that scene over again, but not the makers of A*P*E.

Speaking of that title, what's with the asterisks? A M*A*S*H thing?

But back to that monkey because believe it or not, there's a scene in this that actually manages to top that ape-on-shark action at the beginning. You didn't think a movie as classy as A*P*E would shoot its proverbial wad too early, did you? This scene involves some parasailors. One points and screams. Then, there's a shot of a cow. Then, there's a shot of the ape lumbering over a fake cow. It's pure bliss, but where I shot my wad (non-proverbially) was when the ape started clapping and dancing. But the ultimate monkey shot (that's a pun though it has nothing to do with anybody's wad) might be one of a peeping Kong with mouth agape that made me laugh for a solid thirty-five minutes because I have time in my life for thirty-five minute fits of laughter.

Other special-ed effects: The makers of this really seem fond of their fake-rocks-on-strings trick, and there's a scene where the monkey vomits blood. It's beautifully realistic.

Just as the makers of this have seemingly never seen an ape, they also have likely never seen humans or heard them communicate. The Korean characters are great as they speak English without dubbing. An American character named Colonel Davis (played stoically by Alex Nicol) seems to be impersonating The Duke with all his lines. Imagine John Wayne saying "Now what kind of bullshit you trying to hand me?" and you've got Colonel Davis. My favorite Colonel Davis tough guy moment is when he yells, "Screw the logistics!" in a way that would make Chuck Norris cower in fear. Oh, no wait. I forgot that he says, "Let's see him dance for his organ grinder now!" That's badass! The curly-headed hero gets plenty of chances to be manly, too. He's the type of guy who jumps on the sides of Jeeps and says, "I'll just hang on here," after all.

But the most awkward or unnatural human moment in this? There's a scene with fleeing Koreans, and you just have to see this one guy running down the stairs. It just has to be the guy who plays the ape without his suit.

Oh, there's also a scene of endless battle preparation, a montage that actually features one soldier who waves at the camera.

You also have to wonder what kinds of movies the makers of this have seen. At one point, the ape disrupts the production of a kung-fu movie that apparently features circus performers. And what kind of movie is Joanna Kerns' character making in this? They show the filming of two scenes of this movie-within-a-movie, both featuring attempted rapes. The rapist, by the way, might get the line of the movie: "Gentle? This is a God-damned rape scene and you want me to be gentle?"

This makes four Korean monster movies I've seen in the last month, and although this is definitely the worst of them, it's also the only one I would wholeheartedly recommend to anybody.

Bruce Lee Fights Back from the Grave

1976 Bruceploitation pic

Rating: 2/20

Plot: It's Bruce Lee fighting back from the grave. Duh! No, actually it's not Bruce Lee. It's some other guy who may be of the same nationality of the kung-fu superstar who finds out that his kung-fu master has been murdered and wants to find the people responsible--a cowboy, a guy with a cape, etc. Along the way, he gets himself a girlfriend.

I don't trust the people behind this movie. It's one thing to throw Bruce Lee's name in the title to put asses in the seats. But add to it the most bitchin' movie poster of all time that makes it seem like you're about to watch a movie about an immaculate dead guy (Bruce Lee doesn't decompose?) popping from 6 feet under to battle a beast with the head of rapper Slick Rick and the body of a bat while a scantily-clad woman looks on. Everything pre-credits, the part that does include stock footage of bad weather and a guy really emerging from a grave misled me into thinking I was about to watch the greatest movie of all time. But like the bitchin' poster and title, it's all just misleading. This is as offensive to the legacy of Bruce Lee as all those Dr. Seuss movies are to Theodor Geisel. They really over-do the Bruce Lee chirping noises, especially during the fight with the black guy who has a cape and an ax. They also pull a Dolemite and give you some slow-motion instant replays for a couple of the fake Bruce Lee's better moves. And he's got some good moves in his arsenal. He's not Bruce Lee though. You do get to see him fight a taxi at one point, so that's something. The action's overall pretty stale though, and this is one of those modern kung-fu movies where it takes place in an urban setting, and I just don't dig those as much. The best action scene, by the way, starts with the woman going to her car and a guy without a shirt hiding in the backseat. I think there's an urban legend about that actually. This guy made me think, at least momentarily, that the movie should have been called Chuck Norris's Chest Hair Fights Back from the Grave. Anyway, a chase ensues, and there's a sound effect that makes it sound like both of the characters are wearing high heels. The chase through an airport parking lot is just about endless. The worst things about this are some of the choppiest editing I've ever seen and the poorly-translated dubbed dialogue. Observe the following interrogation scene:

Po-po: You're going to get the chair.
Fake Bruce: What sort of chair is that?
Po-po: You what? What's with this guy? He wants his own special kind?
Other po-po: He wants his own maid. (I played this several times. I couldn't hear anything else.)
Po-po: The fool!
Other po-po: Are you putting us on? Give us some proof or you're gonna fry, boy.

And the voice work, as you'd expect, is not good. Especially the guy (I think?) who does the voice for a character named Welby. Oh, and you don't believe me about the bad dialogue? Check this one out:

Girl: What are you going to do tonight?
Fake Bruce: How am I suppose to know what I'm doing tonight?
Girl: Tell me.
FB: What do you mean?
Girl: I mean, where are you gonna go to?
FB: I got nowhere. I don't know a single soul in the city of L.A.
Girl: Where are you gonna go?
FB: Where my fancy takes me, I guess.
Girl: Really? Your fancy just go anywhere? (Rewound this one a few times, too.)
FB: I'll just wander (dramatic pause) around.
Girl: You poor boy. I've got a better idea. Why not just come home with me?
FB: Where to?
Girl: Come on!
FB: You don't have to, you know.
Girl: Come off it!

Do I sound bitter while writing about this bad movie? Maybe. But I feel like there were promises made and promises broken. I mean, a character with an ill-fitting cowboy hat is introduced, and I'm thinking, "Oh yeah! I can't wait to see this guy fight!" But then that fight [SPOILER ALERT] is just the fake Bruce Lee jumping 40 feet backward to avoid being shot by the cowboy. He doesn't kick or punch at all. Disappointing.

If I were you, I would not see this movie.

Octaman

1976 movie with a title you have to put [sic] after when typing

Rating: 2/20

Plot: Scientists in Mexico discover half-people/half-octopi and piss one of them off. It responds in the only way an octaman [sic] knows how--tentacle slapping.

"How can I believe that there's a creature with arms of a sea creature that walks like a man?"

See, in Octaman, they don't make you wait to see the monster like in a lot of 70's B-monster-flicks. No, the guy in the rubber suit is all over this one, so the audience gets to be disappointed within the first ten minutes of the movie. I imagine some movie theaters would even give a person his money back within the first ten minutes of the movie, right? I thought I recognized the director's name--Harry Essex. He seems to have had a nice Hollywood writing career, but didn't direct very much. Octaman, as you'd guess from its quality, is the last movie he was allowed to direct. There's a David Essex acting in this movie, and this is his only movie credit. I'm just going to imagine that this entire movie was made because it was David's dream of being in a movie and Harry wanted to help him out. I really liked during the opening credits when it said that the movie, which is called Octaman, is "starring The Octaman." The rest of this thing doesn't disappoint. You get a liberal use of what I imagine was referred to as Octa-cam, lots of really awkward shifts to found footage, day-night continuity errors galore, and what might be the worst special effect featuring an octopus baby ever--the moving of an octababy that was actually Rick Baker's work. I'm sure it's not something he includes on his resume. There's a colorful crew of characters including some Mexicans who sing the exact two songs that you'd have them sing if you didn't know anything about Mexico but wanted your characters to seem Mexican. Go ahead and take a guess at the two songs they sit around and sing. I'll give you some time to think about it. Did you guess? You're right! "Cielito Lindo" (Aye-yi-yi-yi) and "Jarabe Tapatio" (The Mexican Hat Dance song). My favorite character might be Fake Cowboy #3 though, a guy who talks about King Kong as if nobody would have ever heard of that movie ever. Of course, with any monster movie, the real fun is watching the monster wreak havoc on its victims, and you get plenty of that here. Well, if you call flailing around action. And then there's a scene in which the titular beasts both slaps and squeezes, and it's double the mayhem. My favorite scene, and a scene that has to be the best use of a dummy I've seen in a long time, is when the man in the rubber suit throws a guy off a cliff after slapping his eye halfway out. But that's not just a flash in the pan bit of genius. You get Ernest P. Worrell giving a speech about environmental responsibility and saying cool things like "I don't savvy all that talk." Twice. Essex must have really been proud of that line. There's also a really cool scene where a guy is carving a little figurine out of a chunk of wood. Another character says, "You have talent, Evido," probably because they're all waiting around for the monster to attack again and have nothing else to talk about. But you have to see the carving that this guy made. A two-year-old with a knife could make what Evido did. But oh, that monster. See, a lesser director would realize that his monster looks completely ridiculous and that people are going to laugh and make sure to not include too many scenes with it, all in the name of building suspense or something. Not Harry Essex. Here's a guy who understands the potential for comedy and includes the Octaman in nearly every scene. You get to see him fight an alligator or crocodile or whatever the hell they have in Mexico, and you get a terrific scene where he slaps an RV and makes it bleed. There's also this inexplicable moment where he walks past a half-decayed cat. Just a terrifying monster. Well, until you realize that all you have to do to save yourself from his vengeance is yell "Back! Back!" Highly recommended if you enjoy stupid crap.

Curse of the Swamp Monster

1966 Larry Buchanan movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: A crazy scientist conducts experiments on the indigenous people who live down the swamp (by the way, I think this takes place in Texas, but these natives are a pretty primitive people), attempting to make himself a pet Swamp Thing. Hey! That's kind of like the guy in Human Centipede actually! Some folks come looking for oil and interfere with his plans.

Forget the Human Centipede Halloween costume idea. I'll just go as this Larry Buchanan monster that he apparently uses in multiple films. This is the same creature that was in my Manos Award Winner It's Alive! from a couple years ago. Well, it's similar anyway. Thing is, I'm pretty sure I could put together the costume easily enough, too.

Larry Buchanan is fast becoming one of my favorite directors, and this one was no disappointment. The scientist, played by Jeff Alexander (crazy scientist in Buchanan's Zontar, too), is really great. I really didn't know what a head could look like his, and he reminded me of a cross between James Taylor and John Malkovich but more jovial than either. He's got himself a greenhouse with alligators (or crocodiles, whatever lives in the swamps of Texas) swimming in what appears to be milk. He also gets really scientific things to say, ramblings about "gill transplants," "acute congestion," how his "dear Mrs. Wesley" will be a "perfect subject for the new derivatives" and be an "instantaneous transformation." He also wears his sunglasses inside which might make him the coolest mad scientist ever. Speaking of inside, all the interior shots contain the shadow of a ceiling fan. I'm not sure if that's a Buchanan stylistic touch or an accident, but I liked it. Who puts a light over a ceiling fan? The sound effects are especially bad. There are times when the scientist and Richie are talking when it seems like Richie is a couple rooms over. There's also this incessant jungle drumming that maybe explains why the scientist is so batty to begin with. Richie's death scene is one of the best I've seen in a while, by the way. And Richie, you were just warned five minutes early to stay away from the quicksand, weren't you? Loved his weakly yelled "Help me" while he sank though. Richie's also the character who abducts one of the natives (one wearing jeans and tennis shoes during a really lengthy dance sequence) and gets the line of the movie, one delivered breathlessly: "I've been watching you dance. Be good, baby. There's nobody here but us chickens." Although, Alexander's delivery of "My beautiful indestructible fishman" is also nice. Indestructible, by the way? These things actually seem to die pretty easily. I also got a kick out of this bit of dialogue:

Doctor Bald Head: How can you locate oil without equipment? Seismographs?
Oil Guy: [Sigh] It isn't easy.

This movie's got some of the most awkward pacing you'll ever see with lots of extended shots of random snakes, guys staring at lizards, guys smiling at lizards. It's also got some bitchin' fight scenes. I could have sworn during an early fight that one of the characters had this expression on his face that asked "Hey, shouldn't we choreograph something like this?" About eight minutes later, there's a weird motel room fight scene that repeats sound effects and features a guy with his pants tucked into his boots. That's right, folks. If you're looking for an action-packed Larry Buchanan movie to enjoy this weekend, Curse of the Swamp Monster is worth checking out.

Liquid Sky

1982 low-budget sci-fi flick

Rating: 8/20

Plot: Some aliens you can't see come to earth in search of drugs, disturbing some nice lesbians in the process.

I don't like the color of the 1980s. There are a lot of cult movies that I really like, and there are some that I really hate. I failed to connect with Liquid Sky at all, saw it as a barely-moving and pretentious bunch of silliness. Cardboard cutouts of the actors in this would have probably shown more emotion although I will say this--those cats can dance! Ah! That's what this reminds me of--Breakin' as directed by Derek Jarman but with lesbians, an irritating electronic score, and a complete lack of breakdancing. This probably fair since he had nothing since he had nothing to do with any of this, but I'm going to go ahead and blame David Bowie for this one. Or my brother. It's the exact type of movie I would have tried my best to love as a teenager, but it bored me to technicolor tears as a middle-aged man.

Sins of the Fleshapoids (plus The Secret of Wendel Samson and The Craven Sluck)

1965-1967

Rating: n/r

Plot: Sins of the Fleshapoids takes place in a far distant future after a nuclear holocaust. The titular Fleshapoids are the robot slaves of the survivors. The titular sins involve Fleshapoids falling in love in copulating. In The Secret of Wendel Samson, the titular protagonist struggles with his sexuality. And I don't really know what The Craven Sluck is about.

The Craven Sluck? What a title! These three shorts (they add up to an hour and a half of mayhem) were artfully constructed by the Kuchar twins, writer/director/actor siblings who were apparently an influence on John Waters. They're fascinating little cheapos, like B-movie art films. There's a nifty mix of deranged ideas and the sort of filmmaking where you can sort of see an artistic vision that isn't quite allowed to surface due to the budget constraints or general ineptitude. With Sins, you get the longest title screen I've ever seen and some opening credits with drawings that look like they're straight from Napolean Dynamite's notebook. Then, the movie, and you quickly realize that this movie is going nowhere quickly. There's an enthusiastic narrator who makes the whole thing sound like it's a documentary, but the characters don't talk at all. Well, that's not true. They talk but not audibly. Instead, the Kuchars utilize (first I've ever seen this) talking bubbles! You know, those comic strip bubbles with wonderfully written gems like "Obey me or I'll wet you and make you rust!" Or, check out this great dialogue:

Guy Fleshapoid: We are robots yet we are in love.
Girl Fleshapoid: Let us now make love.

I know what you're thinking, and yes, that's pretty hot on its own. But the ensuing sex scene with finger lightning? Oh, my! The most beautiful bit of narration in this, so poetic that it'll make your heart melt: "Beings of nuts and bolds would feel the pangs of love in their aluminum hearts." The Kuchars sure are good with costumes. I really like the number that a character named Gianbela wore--a woman's bejeweled hat (he's a man, by the way), leather gloves, my grandmother's vest, a flower coming out the side of his head like he's a Dr. Seuss character. There's also a character (an astronaut, I believe) who is wearing a football uniform (an astronaut suit, I believe). There's a great scene with a fruit dump dance and a naked Fleshapoid with Adam and Eve-style giant leaves and paper flowers covering the naughty bits. But my favorite scenes involve Xar (played by the late Bob Cowan who also narrated), the Fleshapoid with helmet who makes these really jerky movements that made me wonder if he was supposed to be broken. I think it was just Cowan doing robot movements. If nothing else, Sins taught me about what paradise is--fruit and fish baskets, Clark bars, and guys eating ice cream without a shirt.

Wendel Samson's tale, after I watched the whole thing, was still a secret to me. The characters do talk in this one although it might be with the worst dubbing I've ever heard. It's like they added reverb for some reason. This has some of the worst dialogue ever, but the editing might be worse. You get a characters inviting each other to have coffee before an abrupt transition and a character saying "Boy, this coffee is great" before an abrupt transition to a scene where there's a guy without a shirt enjoying coffee in a bed. Kuchar's must like filming shirtless men enjoying desserts and beverages. But who doesn't? Speaking of abrupt, the soundtrack to all three of these films are very strange. There are dizzying changes from genre to genre. My favorite bit of music in this was this wildly trippy moog stuff with Superman television samples thrown in. And no, it didn't really match what was going on in the movie, a scene that led up to [Spoiler Alert!] a maddening scene with a firing squad and some cartoon laughter.

The Craven Sluck might be my favorite film title ever. I think I decided that the Kuchars were making a comedy, but I can't be sure. This one has a narrator (also Cowan) who introduces the cast over pictures of a pin-up. I like how he says marmoset. He even spells it for us and lets us it's just like the South American tree monkey. Sluck's got pooping dogs and people drinking out of toilets, and it ends with some bitchin' flying saucer effects that you would not have expected had I not spoiled the whole thing for you. My favorite scene: the main character (the Sluck? What's a sluck?) says, "It's been years since I've had someone I could talk intellitigently [sic] to" with the next shot being her on her hands and knees bouncing up and down and displaying some rather oppressively trembling udders.

Sherlock Holmes

2010 Sherlock Holmes movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: The famous titular detective and his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson embark on an adventure to solve the mystery behind a giant octopus and a Tyrannosaurus Rex that are attacking London. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as fun to watch as it sounds!

The Asylum is a film production company that attempts to capitalize on current blockbusters by filming their own direct-to-dvd low-budget versions. They've got a DaVinci mystery movie, a King Kong movie, a film unbelievably called Snakes on a Train, their version of Transformers which they call Transmorphers (with its own sequel), and even a movie based on High School Musical called Sunday School Musical. This has Sherlock Holmes fighting against robots and dinosaurs which is exactly what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the character to do. Don't let the excitement of the imagery on the poster fool you though. This movie is flat-out dull. None of the actors are right for their parts with the exception of the villain played by Dominic Keating who's like a much-cheaper Gary Oldman. The special effects are so bad that they distract. They're not even bad in a way that lets you laugh at them. And when Sherlock Holmes said, "The game is afoot," I wanted to punch out everybody associated with the movie. They could have saved a lot of time by just digging up Doyle's corpse and taking turns urinating on it while wearing deerstalker hats. It would have saved a lot of cash, too. Well, maybe not a lot of cash. Speaking of cash, I didn't have to spend any money to see this movie, yet I still feel ripped off. That's the kind of movie this is. That probably won't stop me from seeing The Day the Earth Stopped though. And Paranormal Entity! Or The Terminators!

Basket Case

1982 horror sleaze

Rating: 10/20

Plot: Duane travels to the big city with a basket containing the lumpy blob of a brother who was formerly attached to him. They're not there to sightsee though. Oh, no. They're on a mission of revenge to kill off all those responsible for separating them. But Duane finds love, and brother Belial isn't happy about it at all.

What percentage of female first-time viewers of Basket Case (to be honest, I can't imagine there are many female fans of this movie) watch and just pray that there will be a Bilial sex scene somewhere in the sleaze? They'll get their wish with what will undoubtedly win my annual "Sex Scene of the Year" award. As a guy who enjoys both puppets and stop-motion, there's no way that I'm not going to enjoy Bilial. This is one of the cheapest movies you'll ever see, but it's got this grimy style and filthy charm that, although not something that will appeal to everybody, puts this a notch above its landfill-dwelling brethren. The most obvious thing you have to overlook is some of the worst acting ever. Kevin Van Hentenryck, the guy who plays Duane, is like a poor man's Bud Cort, and the periphery characters (mannish prostitutes, hotel managers, shady doctors) are played by actors/actresses who are each worse than the one who preceded them. Bad acting can be entertaining, but the stuff in this crosses a line into a new level of bad. I really enjoyed some over-the-top sound effects and a really weird soundtrack. There's a funny "woo-woo-woo" thing during a scene when the camera reveals an empty basket (Woo woo woo!), and the exaggerated squishes, wickery creaks, and audible drooling give this a disgusting edge. Basket Case isn't played 100% straight, and I laughed most during some flashback scenes, including an operation scene with some hilarious dubbing. This has enough sticky violence, creative garbage cinematography, and fun for somebody in just the right mood.

I'm pretty sure most of the budget for this one was spent on the basket, by the way. It's a pretty nice basket.