Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead

2006 horror comedy musical

Rating: 15/20 (Libby: 18/20; Fred: 17/20; Carrie: 19/20; Josh: didn't rate)

Plot: A fast-food chicken franchise builds on a Native American burial ground. Amidst protesters, those Indian souls take possession of the foodstuffs and eventually the workers and customers. Poultrygeist!

What a terrible punny title. The intention with our little bad movie club, obviously, is to watch a bad movie and make fun of it. Troma doesn't make unintentionally bad movies exactly. They understand their capabilities and the filmmakers are proud of what the disgusting and sometimes downright tasteless stuff they put on screen. And sometimes, as is the case here, they sneak in a movie that could actually be described as good. This accomplishes everything Lloyd Kaufman and his writers set out to do. Josh put it best: "Fun for the whole family: racism, sexism, fat people, geeks, lesbians, h[censored], [censored], handicaps [almost censored that one, too], white trash, rape, shit, vomit, and boobs." And, of course, a whole lot of cock. It's trashy, often looks stupid, and could possibly offend hippies, animal rights activists, Native Americans, liberals, black people, people with good diets, Middle Eastern peoples, women, and really anybody else. This pulls no punches, unapologetically and gloriously. And yes, there is the "choke the chicken" that you could have predicted before the movie even started. At the same time, there's some shrewd satire about our appetites as a society, both our literal appetites and our entertainment appetites, as well as some expected and bitter swipes at the (admittedly, fish-in-a-barrel-y) fast-food industry. The jokes are stuffed into this thing, and while a lot of them are terrible--some funny because they are terrible--a lot of this made me laugh the kinds of laughs that you almost hate yourself for. And did I mention that Poultrygeist is a musical? Because it is! With some standard musical choreography! The songs are good enough to sound like something from Rocky Horror and the lyrics are funny enough. The real fun begins when the mayhem does, and there are a few lengthy sequences where Kaufman and company are very obviously just seeing how many different ways they can think of for a zombie chicken to kill a human being. The violence is nearly orgasmic. Unfortunately for a lot of viewers, they'll miss out on the berserk zombie chicken mayhem because they'll turn the movie off during an extended scene where a bulbous man with gastrointestinal issues makes a mess of a bathroom. That's if they got past the creatively juvenile use of a Native American zombie finger in an opening scene featuring a guy with something other than an ax in his other hand. No, you don't want to know. This is a movie that surprises from its beginning to its end, and you might have as much fun watching it as it looks like the people who made it must have had. It's a real blast but definitely not for everybody. I wouldn't recommend it to my mother-in-law, for example.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Duel to the Death

1983 kung-fu flick

Rating: 15/20 (Fred: 17/20; Libby: 16/20; Bryan: dnf)

Plot: A Chinese guy and a Japanese guy travel to Holy Sword House to see who is the greatest swordsman. Ninjas attempt to stop them.

[Spoiler Alert!] In one of seven climactic scenes, the main bad guy has his head chopped off. It sails through the air and gets impaled on a tree limb. Then, it speaks: "You will die!" Then, it explodes!

That's right. We messed up and watched a movie that wasn't bad at all on Bad Movie Club night. Not only was it not bad--it's a borderline kung-fu classic! First, it's got ninjas galore. They're ninjas that pop out of the ground, throw bombs, fly into scenes via kites, spin webs, turn into women, and in one jism-inducing sequence, morph together a la Power Rangers into one menacing giant ninja. These are ninjas who fight dirty. There are some incredible, physics-defying fight sequences in this, and luckily for dumb kung-fu movie fans like me who get a little bored with verbosity and too much plot, this is almost wall-to-wall action funkiness. The two swordsmen are so quick, and with all those ninjas, a handful of monks, a pair of chicks, and a bunch of other underdeveloped characters, there's often a bunch of action stuffed into the screen at the same time. If you do require things like character development and plots that make sense, this might frustrate a little. The battle for swordplay supremacy is easy enough, but there are so many twists and turns in this and the confusing character motivations make things really confusing. Gender confusion, a dubbed bird, a legless guy, and puppet show foreshadowing gum up the works. But none of it matters because you don't watch kung-fu movies for things like plot and character development. You watch because you want to see people kill other people in poetic and beautiful ways, and Duel to the Death delivers the goods there. Highly recommended for fans of the genre.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark Redux

1981 adventure

Rating: 20/20 (Jen: 16/20; Dylan: 20/20; Emma: 16.5/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: The titular archeologist/professor globetrots in search for Noah's boat. He runs into some Nazis, a group of people who historically weren't very nice.

I've already written poorly about this movie twice, but Abbey picked it for family movie night. It's not one that I'll complain about having to watch again. That's part of the beauty of the thing. It's more than likely the film that I've seen the most times with the possible exception of Toy Story. Anyway, I'm dividing my thoughts into three categories for this--questions, noticings, and things-I-freaking-love.

Questions:

How can this be rated PG? It's got face melting/exploding. Face exploding, by the way, would be a horrible way to go, wouldn't it?

What's the body count? Next time I watch this, I'm counting.

Where the hell did Belloq get that goofy outfit and that staff? The only thing I can think of is that there must be a Ark-Opening Clothes "R" Us on that creepy island.

Speaking of that creepy island, how's Indy ride on the outside of a submarine for the distance shown on the map? Dylan explained that submarines are faster when they surface, so they probably wouldn't have gone under. If not, then why would they even use a submarine in that situation?

Is that Ralph Macchio preparing dates?

Why don't the Germans wonder why there are people off digging in a different place from everybody else? Belloq eventually notices them, but you'd think somebody would walk up to them and ask, "What the heck are you digging here for?"

How do you get a monkey to Heil Hitler salute? Or are monkeys just naturally hateful creatures? I wouldn't put it past them.

How many extras were in this movie? The big dig, the streets of Cairo. There are so many people in this!

How can Indy fans have so much of a problem with aliens and refrigerators in the new movie but not have a problem with melting faces and burning crates in this one? And speaking of the swastika burning scene, what's up with that rat? He looks like he's about to boogie.

Was Shooby LaBoof conceived on a submarine? I'm going to have to check the date for that fourth movie! If he was, it explains a lot.

Noticings:

All these movies start with monoliths, don't they? Or maybe just a plain rock.

There's a lot of man screaming in this movie. 1) The guy with the stocking cap screams at the statue as they're trudging through the forest. 2) Alfred Molina screams like a woman at a skeleton. I also freaking love how that skeleton turns his head to glance at Molina. 3) Toht (a role turned down by Klaus Kinski if you believe a word that guy says) gives his first girly scream when he grabs the hot medallion. Hot Medallion would be a great band name, by the way. 4) Random guy with turban screams when the Well of Souls is opened. Then there's Sallah's "Eeahahahhaheh" which, at the very least, isn't all that feminine. 5) The cobwebby skeletons in the Well of Souls scream. That makes even less sense than all of those different kinds of snakes living in there. 6) Toht gives the best scene of the movie during once the spirits from the ark start wreaking havoc until 7) the guy who screams after him manages to top it!

Scream bonus: The Wilhelm Scream is used when a dude spills from the back of the truck in the big chase scene.

The natives with their spears and blowguns are as accurate as the stormtroopers in the Star Wars movies. And a bonus question. There were a lot of spears being thrown in that chase scene. Once you're an extra in that scene who has thrown his spear--you know, shot your wad--do you keep chasing? You were probably handed another spear, right?

The guy trying to outdrink Marion looks like George Wendt, Norm from Cheers. I don't think that's a coincidence. All guys who look like that are big drinkers.

Indy almost consumes that "bad date" several times. It's a neat little detail.

The map room has an obelisk. I'm too lazy to see if that is architecturally correct. I had Indiana Jones actions figures and a map room, by the way. That's a really cool scene in the movie with the beam of light and Indy brushing away sand, but it wasn't all that fun to reenact in your bedroom. Also, there's one building in the map room that looked like it had been tagged. Was a street gang down there at one point or did the Nazis mark it?

Things I Freaking Love about This Movie:

That first shot of Indy--absolutely iconic. Framed by waterfall and mist, quick edited shots of bullwhip frenzy, Jones stepping out from the shade. So awesome. To think that Indy was almost Tom Selleck makes me slightly ill.

Indy's shadow on the wall of Marion's bar. Also so awesome. And I love their dynamics in that scene with dialogue perfection. You find out just enough about their past without it seeming like it was written in a script just so the audience could catch up.

Sallah: "Why does the floor move?" At this point, by the way, Jennifer informed me that she had never seen this movie all the way through. What the hell?

Toph! Love his beady little eyes. His little giggle--once when he walks past Belloq after they seal Indy and Marion in the Well of Souls and later after the ark is opened. And his hanger is the most bad ass hanger in movie history. And yes, I'm including the hangers in Birdemic: Shock and Terror. And that bald head of Toph's? It's nefarious.

I love how Indy fights so dirty during the brawl with that big bald Nazi guy--dirt in the eyes, using a chunk of wood as a weapon, the old point-at-your-opponent's-shoe-to-divert-his-attention trick.

How Belloq says "idiot."

Head explosion!

"It's not the years. It's the mileage."

The way Indy saves Molina by grabbing his belt. Poor Molina, by the way. This was his first movie, I think, and he starts his career by having tarantulas all over him, screaming like a girl, and getting killed by a booby trap that he had already seen which makes him one of the dumbest characters ever.

That gunfight in Marion's place? The best ever, the type that can make me type in hyperbole! But that motley crew of thuggery, the "Whisky?" from Indy, a guy punching with an arm that is on fire? All sans music, just the crackling fire, the rat-a-tat gunfire, breaking bottles. What a terrific scene.

Another action sequence--the Cairo street brawling. It's lively and exciting in the midst of an adventure story, but there's such a personality with the fight scenes. There's humor mixed in with the mayhem, all while Harrison Ford's got the runs.

And that guy who Marion threatens with a pan only to watch him pull out a knife? The dude's teeth are even scarier than his blade!

I love the mystical guy with the high-pitched voice they visit. You know he's a mystic because he's wearing bright blue and has his own telescope.

Terry Bradshaw's "Waa-ehh" as he gets run over. And before that, the "Let's see how you like it!" toss out the front window. Indy's so pissed. Before that, there's a shot of a guy on the windshield and Indy and his passenger look at each other and laugh. That guy's expression and the shared laugh of enemies makes me smile just thinking about it.

Indy putting his hat on against a sunset backdrop--just beautiful. That is one evil-looking sky as they find the edges on top the Well of Souls.

Not everybody likes the music in this (I'm eyeing you here, Laurence), but I love it. It's the soundtrack for my childhood outside play. That's the music I heard when I ran around my backyard with a fake gun and an invisible whip, and it's the music I heard when I stepped up the plate in the last inning of a baseball game in college with a chance to drive home the winning runs. In this movie--the familiar music when Indy, fleeing from 15,000 natives while dust from the cave flies off him in that terrific scene, swings from a vine like Shooby LaBoof and dives into the water. Boom!

After the booby-trap-packed cave climaxing with a fiberglass boulder chase, I'm hooked forever. If you're not, you're a child without a heartbeat.

Top men. Endless boxes. Where was that shot? That place has to really exist. What's in all the boxes? Other than dead alien bodies, of course.

What did I miss? What do you love about this movie?

Tokyo Gore Police

2008 gore police movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Ruka, a witness to her father's head explosion, overcomes tragedy to become the main mutant-killing cop. Those mutants, known as "engineers," have the ability to turn their injuries into weapons, and Ruka and her po-po buddies have to find out who is behind their creation. Meanwhile, she tries to figure out who was responsible for her father's murder.

Well, this was hard to take seriously. You're five minutes in and you've already got an exploding head, a decapitation, a severed arm that grows back as a slimy chainsaw arm, a guy who gets a chainsaw arm to the mouth, a fight with chainsaws. You have to wonder: Did this movie shoot its proverbial wad too early? How can anything top this? Well, hold on to your scalps, motherfucker, because this is a wild ride down a bloody slip 'n' slide. I was unsure whether or not I was liking this movie and actually had to watch it in a few installments. Around the time a character I didn't recognize Michael-Jacksoned his crotch and ended up at a party where people are wearing inflatable costumes and gas masks and the entertainment is a urinating chair woman and a snail girl, I realized that this is my kind of movie. My kind of party, too! I sighed and realized that I would eventually, when my stomach could handle it, watch all of Yoshihiro Nishimura's movies. I figured that Meatball Machine was one of those, but apparently there are a bunch of people in Japan making movies like this which once again makes me wonder what is wrong with the Japanese. H-bomb dust is the only explanation that makes any sense to me. Since I watched this movie in fifteen installments, I found it almost completely incomprehensible. But its cheap style--lots of askew camera work, assaults on at least two of your senses, a rhythm inspired by shaken baby syndrome--keeps you enthralled, and the mathematical part of your brain has all kinds of fun trying to figure out what the budget for "red squirty stuff" might have been. There are some goofy satirical moments in this with some commercials that ironically seem to poke fun at the masses' need for violence--including a Wii-type game where you slice a guy up--and some commercial propaganda about how nice the police are, but this is either too silly or too completely insane to really make any kind of point. You really can't watch the scene where a guy [SPOILER ALERT] gets his penis bitten off by a woman whose legs later turns into a giant alligator (or crocodile) mouth and take things seriously for the same reason that somebody trying to film my honeymoon to release as a sex tape wouldn't have been able to take things seriously. I'm sure the actor who played the guy who gets his penis bitten off read all the way to the part of the script that said "And then the guy walks in with his new giant penis gun," stopped reading, and said, "OK, I don't need to see anymore. I'm in!"

That penis gun puts us all to shame.

If you're ever in the right mood for something like this, I'm kind of worried about you. But this will definitely be your cup of whatever that red squirty stuff is if you are.

The Catechism Cataclysm

2011 comedy

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Father William is not a very good priest. His parishioners don't get his stories, and he spends more time watching viral videos on Youtube than with the Word. He's encouraged to take a break by an older priest, and he meets up with an old acquaintance who used to date his sister and convinces him to go on a day-long canoe trip with him. The adventure starts with Father William accidentally dropping his Bible in the toilet, and things go downhill from there.

I had to give a bonus point or two for that title, the only reason I watched this movie. It never really feels like a real movie to me, and I'm not sure there's much of a point--at least I missed it--but this made me laugh a few times. His defense of an old-lady-with-a-gun-story with an "It's in the book of Job" made me giggle, but almost immediately, I wondered if this is the type of character who can carry an entire movie. Steve Little's weird looking and has an even weirder voice, and his Father William seems more like an auxiliary character than a protagonist, somebody who should be in a film even less than that bald guy from Airplane! And who wears a helmet for a canoe trip? You get used to this guy's oddness, and since comedy involves surprises, I think that hurts a bit. I liked the friend, this cool loser played by Robert Longstreet. I'm not sure it's a chemistry between the two as much as it is a complete clash of characters, but the dynamic was good enough to carry a movie that is largely made up of scenes where they're just talking. Well, until Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn come along and wacky things up a lot. I liked Robbie's stories, especially the love story between Miquel and Maria and a lollipop. Touching stuff, even when Robbie ends the scene by snapping at William that "it's not an amazing boner story." I will say this about The Catechism Cataclysm: I think I'll remember it. And I'm curious to see what else director Todd Rohal does even though I don't generally like people named Todd. This is the sort of movie I think I could probably make. No, I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing. I'd have a lot less music though. The ironic heavy metal music didn't bother me in this as much as the big dramatic movie music. Music in contemporary movies has really been bugging me lately. It seems like it's only there because somebody thought it was supposed to be there.

The Evil Dead (+ bonus short)

1981 horror film

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Like The Social Network, this is based on Mark Zuckerberg's story. Five punks retreat to a cabin in the woods and unleash evil demons when they read from (here's the joke's explanation in case you didn't get it) a book with a face on it. They fight to survive!

This isn't the goofy cinematic masterpiece that its sequel is, but it's a quality low-budget horror film. The tone's a lot different in this one although there are hints of the inventive camera work, wild creativity, and sick humor that makes Evil Dead II so memorable and fun. There's lots of squelchy body parts sloshing around in the blood and guts and milk, and there's one scene where a woman is violated by foliage that will either arouse or horrify you. Or horrouse you, maybe give you a horrection. Bruce Campbell takes a lot of punishment here, and it would be hard for somebody seeing these for the first time to believe that he takes even more in the second installment. I believe he's attacked by shelving more in this one than he is the zombie demons. I love a shot in the cellar where the camera leaves Campbell and circles all the way around the setting before settling back on the character again, a shot that is reused in Evil Dead II. I also like how the demons here don't just try to kill Ash and his pals. No, they taunt him first, like demon zombie trash talk. Joe LoDuca's clacky junkyard score is the perfect companion for the foreboding tone of the early scenes and the frantic ack-there's-a-zombie nutsiness later that follow. Once those start rolling, this is so fast paced that it's impossible to get bored. It all ends in some lovely stop-motion demon decay following by a "Join us" or three and a terrific abrupt ending. That Raimi is able to create something so memorable and chilling with almost no budget is a small little miracle.

Speaking of fun gory movies, I was moved recently to watch this short German film, a parody of those goofy job safety videos. This one is called "Forklift Driver Klaus: First Day on the Job" and is really funnier if you go into it without any prior knowledge. It's terrific! Find it here at Youtube.

Drive

2011 driving movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A Driver with No Name is a stuntman by day and a getaway driver by night. Mystery surrounds him. He works at a garage, purchases groceries, and doesn't talk a lot. That is until he befriends his cute neighbor and her young son. Well, actually he still doesn't talk a lot even then. When the patriarch of that little family gets out of jail, our protagonist is sucked into some criminal activity that forces him into a sticky situation. Oh, snap! Shit's about to get real!

With a slightly different feel, this movie would have been a major disappointment for me. Other than some of that terrible modern electronic music we're hearing in every other movie these days and a few quick shots of exploding heads or stomped-on heads that seemed to appear on the screen for nothing but cheap shock value, I really dug the style of this one. Gosling hits the quiet,-too-quiet existential anti-hero perfectly, and like most movies featuring this type of characters, what isn't explained about his character manages to be just as interesting as what is happening on the screen. Ron Perlman and the always-hilarious Albert Brooks are both sufficiently nasty here. The latter, only minimally funny here actually, was especially good, his nastiness rivaling his work in Finding Nemo. While watching this, I couldn't figure out if I was actually liking it very much, but now I kind of want to watch it again to see if it's much closer to being a neo-noir masterpiece than I'm thinking it is. I really like what this director, the Danish Nicholas Winding Refn (What kind of dopey name is that?), does with violence. It's visceral, tough on both of the senses you use to enjoy movies, appallingly beautiful, exciting, disgusting, and usually so quick that it's almost shocking. It's movie violence but somehow manages to transcend normal tough guy fist-pumping movie violence and retain an artsiness that I like. It's hard to explain, but he did the same thing in the equally-engaging Bronson.

I think fans of The Help would probably really like this one.

Deathsport

1978 futuristic action masterpiece

Rating: 4/20 (Mark: 4/20)

Plot: Some evil people kidnap a couple "guides" and prep them for. . .wait for it. . .the titular Deatsport! That's an arena-style competition involving glass swords, motorcycles, and inexplicable explosions.

Corman needed another "death" movie and this is what happened. David Carradine is the Carradine in this one, and I'm willing to bet it's the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to him. Not that he would remember a thing since he was apparently stoned throughout the filming. This movie isn't good for the right reasons, but it does have just the right ineptitude to provide a few laughs. The action scenes are repetitive, and my brother and I speculated that this might have the record for most things exploding in one movie. Most of those are random explosions, by the way, as these motorcycle death machines (destructocycles, natch) seem to blow up at the slightest touch. A climactic sword fight scene is also repetitive and dull with choreography that doesn't even show the swords, presumably because they are made out of glass and would shatter if they actually connected. Richard Lynch is a lame bad guy with an even lamer script, and he's got something wrong with his neck that perhaps distracted me from discovering the smaller bits of genius hidden within Deathsport. You also get some bug-eyed cannibals that look like they waltzed straight out of Killers from Space. My favorite scene, by far, was one with a naked Claudia Jennings in a disco torture chamber. I could just imagine this conversation taking place between the directors:

Director 1: Hey, I was watching what we shot yesterday.
Director 2: Yeah? What did you think?
Director 1: I hate to tell you this, but Deathsport is really going to suck.
Director 2: Oh, man. That's a shame because we've already shot fourteen hours of motorcycles with silver cardboard boxes taped to them driving around the desert. And this is really going to hurt David Carradine because he's really putting his soul into this performance.
Director 1: What are we going to do now?
Director 2: Well, I do have some Christmas lights.
Director 1: You do? Fantastic! Let's go see if Claudia Jennings will take off her clothes!
Director 2: Bingo! You took the words right from my mouth, Director 1!

To continue the thread of decapitation, this movie does have a rather exciting one. And the lovely Claudia Jennings, it seems, was also decapitated in an automobile accident. Apparently, it ended her acting career.

Also recommended for fans of The Help.

From Dusk till Dawn

1996 George Clooney movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A pair of brothers kidnap a faithless preacher and his two children, drive to Mexico, and meet up with some vampires and Fred Williamson.

A tale of two movies, the first a very written tale of criminal activity and possible neurosis and the second a balls-to-the-grindstone (is that a phrase?) vibrant and chaotic and squelchy erupted bloodbath with decapitations and stake piercings. And Salma Hayek, a woman who makes Juliette Lewis look like a little boy. The brothers are interesting even if they're a bit cardboardish, and even though you've already seen this movie, it's still got a way to keep you guessing. There's a solid ten minutes in this, right after Salma's little dance, that is about as exhiliratingly bitchin' as cheapo gross-out mayhem can get. But my favorite part is how John Hawkes' Pete pronounces "microwave" or maybe his magazine selection. That and the words "Hey, Monkeyman."

Recommended for people who really liked The Help.