Shane's Christmas Extravaganza: We're No Angels

1955 Christmas movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: Three cons escape from Devil's Island and take refuge in a shop operated by a trio of Ducotels. They intend to rob the place, but they wind up doing nothing but helping the family out.

Bogart, Ray, and Ustinov are perfect for this script stuffed with irony. I'd almost describe their adventure and rapport with all the straight characters in this thing as Marx-esque, and I thought it was very very funny. It's the sort of black humor that I love in the Ealing movies--Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers, etc. The leads sparkle with a chemistry I didn't quite expect, but the supporting players, especially the great Basil Rathbone and Lea Penman, fill in the gaps perfectly. This floats along, often unpredictably, and takes its time getting to any points it has to get to. There's plenty of space to enjoy what's going on, and it's all perfectly charming. I'm not sure about the ending for these characters, the kind of tacked-on thing that I imagine must have been a requirement in 1955, but it doesn't take away from the overall story. I would have preferred something indeterminate though, like a Coen ending. Great performances, some sneaky heart, hilarious dialogue and madcappery, and a whimsical flow make this the kind of Christmas classic that you don't have to watch during the holiday season.

I'm thinking that one of my goals for 2014 should be to see ever Peter Ustinov movie. What do you think?

Shane's Christmas Extravaganza: An American Christmas Carol

1979 television movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A Great Depression era retelling of the Charles Dickens classic.

With Henry Winkler, just two years after he infamously jumped that shark in those little blue shorts and his leather jacket, as the wonderfully-named Benedict Slade, the Scrooge character. And it might seem like this television adaptation is proverbially jumping the shark by having Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli playing the iconic character, like a bad joke caked in forty-three years of make-up, but the Fonz pulls it off, only tempted to slap one jukebox with the bottom of his fist in this whole production. He's solid as grumpy, misanthropic Slade, a role that requires an actor to nearly carry the whole movie. He's not as convincing, oddly enough, as the young Slade, but I may have been too focused on whether or not his mustache was real. However, he was excellent as a twelve-year-old, and I'm not sure how the makers of this pulled off that wizardry. It must be the same people who magically make those Hobbit actors tiny. This suffers, as a version of A Christmas Carol, from the viewer being far too familiar with the story and character arc, the latter always just a little too swift and unconvincing for me. The basic story works, packing in the same emotion you'd expect as the Fonz revisits his past, has an epiphany or two while stalking folks in the present, and then feels threatened in the future. And he gets to ask a child what day it is from a second-story window which seems to be a must in versions of this story. I did really like the changes to the story, the transformation to America during the Great Depression seeming like a natural move. This also suffers from being a television production with the budget allowed for those sorts of things. There's far too much music during some scenes, and even though it shouldn't matter, I could have used a special effect or two during the scenes with the ghosts. Actually, I'm not even sure they were ghosts. The movie seems cheap, but it makes up for it by getting all the dust and antique stoves right to nail the Great Depression setting. Like I would even know. I also liked the philosophies underlying this timeless story. The simple idea of Hell as nothing more than being forced to relieve your past and the definition of evil being what a person does not do are strong themes, and as cheesy as the whole object lesson with the stick that winds up framing Slade's story might be, it's an effective way to capture what the whole Dickens story is really about. This isn't the best version of A Christmas Carol because it doesn't have a single puppet in it, but it is an above-average retelling that fans of the story should check out. 

Just checked my spelling--How is "Fonzarelli" not a word?

Pacific Rim

2013 action movie

Rating: 8/20 (Dylan: 6/20)

Plot: Giant monsters are threatening all life on earth. Pairs of humans maneuver giant robots to battle them.

I'm going to need somebody to explain to me how a movie about giant robots fighting giants monsters ended up this boring. Seems like you had all the ingredients needed to make a big dumb action movie guaranteed to entertain. Giant monsters? Check. Giant robot-lookin' things? Check. But then they added a bunch of other ingredients--a dead brother, a love interest (I think--I dozed off more than a few times), some robot driver pissing contests, unnecessary science--as some attempt to say, "See, this is more than just giant monsters fighting giant robots. This is a movie with real story and real characters in that real story." But all that managed to do was make the whole thing about twice as long as it needed to be. It all looked impressive enough, the special effects pretty dazzling, the whole thing grander than grand. Unfortunately, it just felt so bland and lifeless.

Shane's Blog Christmas Extravaganza: Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

1972 holiday favorite

Rating: 1/20

Plot: Santa gets himself and his sleigh--sans reindeer for some reason--stuck in Florida sands, and no animal that random children summoned by apparent telepathic powers bring to him can help him get unstuck. So Santa tells a story about a woman going to a defunct amusement park called Pirate Island and listening to a story about Thumbelina. Then, the titular Ice Cream Bunny.

Holy Ice Cream Bunnies! This was an excruciating way to spend an hour and a half, and I'm really glad I didn't subject my Bad Movie Club friends to this one. It probably would have swallowed Bad Movie Club whole and left me friendless and alone.

I don't know what I'm complaining about. You get two movies for the price of one here. The Thumbelina story is about the creepiest children's story you're likely to see, a few notches more terrifying than Eraserhead. There are motionless papier-mache birds and people in mole and crow costumes in sets that looked like they might have been constructed for a performance on a middle school stage. The Santa story bookends that and manages to be creepy itself. The sound-so-obviously-recorded-elsewhere gives this a weird, otherworldly feel, disconcerting and the very antithesis of Christmas. I was at the 6 minute and 22 second mark when I started to wonder if I had found a movie that was so weirdly bad that even I--a bad movie connoisseur--would be unable to finish it. We start with child elves singing, almost together, while admiring and/or stroking dog stuffed animals. Then, we move to Santa who confirms that this is indeed a Worst Musical Ever candidate with a lonely solo explaining that he's stuck in Florida. He waves his hands, conducting absolutely nobody, shots of his hand interrupted with random dizzying shots of palm trees, dog tricks, a kid playing with a giant umbrella, jump ropers, etc. Turns out that it's Santa's echoing voice summoning them because kids start to drop what they're doing to run in slow motion, the kind of slow motion where you're not sure if it's intentional or if the film is messing up. And then, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer show up to watch the proceedings, really for no good reason unless the producers of this wanted to see if they could cause Mark Twain to roll in his grave. Kazoos play "Old Man River," and I start to wonder what the hell is happening to me.

So the kids start bringing animals to help out. First, a little girl runs home to get her pet (I assume it's a pet) guy in a gorilla suit, a scene that wouldn't feel complete without what I can only assume are gorilla orgasm sound effects. A kid drags in a donkey. Then, a pig, because that would somehow have more success than a donkey or a gorilla? Then, a sheep, a cow, a horse. Animals may not have been harmed in the making of this film, at least physically. You know they're in emotional distress just being a part of this mess. The sheep looks particularly disturbed. "What did I sign up for?" he seems to ask as he looks at us from 50 years ago.

Oh, it's not fifty years ago? This movie was made in the early 70's? It doesn't seem possible. This was the only movie R. Winer directed, and it seems like it comes from another time and maybe even another planet. It's two stories patched together, as clumsily as you can patch any two things together. Hans Christian Andersen is given writing credits, and I'm surprised he didn't come back from the dead just to sue to have his name removed from the credits. I believe Pirate Land put together this little Thumbelina movie, probably a long time before the release date, as a way to advertise their shitty amusement park.The tone's considerably different than the frame story with Santa Claus. Santa telling the story about a woman hearing a story on a scratchy speaker that the makers decide to show over and over again makes this an almost avant-garde story-within-a-story-within-a-story. Both chunks get their own opening and closing credits, the middle chunk with shots of people having a gay old time at Pirate World, an amusement park made antiquated with the arrival of Disney World. The songs in the Thumbelina portion of this are superfluous, nearly endless. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that people have committed suicide during the screeching, deafening "If I Were Thumbelina" that plays after Santa starts telling his story about faith. Thumbelina's played by Shay Garner. I can't find a birthdate for her to decide whether or not I can write about her legs, but she did use this as a launching pad to a career that would get her an appearance in a Keanu Reeves/Olivia D'Abo movie that I've never heard of. She has an extended dance thing in this that was one of the worst things I've ever seen, something that made me more embarrassed for another human being than I think I've ever been. The frog in the Thumbelina story? He's amazing; unfortunately, I don't see a frog in the credits, so I can't find out if this guy graced the screen in animal costumes in any other movies. "Skateboard Donkey Boy" is played by "Mike" though, uncredited. The rest of the animals in the Thumbelina story range from creepy to disturbing, especially the old mole man who wants to marry the titular hero and singlepawedly brings pedophilia and bestiality into our story. It made me feel a little better about checking out those legs though. Mrs. Mole, played by Pat Morrell in her lone screen appearance, proves that it is possible to act badly while wearing an animal costume. An effect that shows Thumbelina riding on a bird is as cheap as effects get, but my God, it sure is arousing.

And let's talk about that Ice Cream Bunny. He eventually arrives, following the end credits for Thumbelina's story, on a firetruck. He arrives and arrives and arrives in a ten-minute sequence that is about as excruciating as an arrival of a person in a bunny suit can be. Ten minutes doesn't seem like a long time when compared to all of human history or even the average human life span, but this ten minutes, you feel, has, if not a profound negative impact on the universe, the ability to make one human being watching this thing a profoundly more-depressed individual. It's what happens when whimsical fails, epically, and I'll never shake the combination of a broken siren and dog sound effects out of my nightmares. Loads of talking happen during the sequence when the bunny reaches Santa, but you only hear Santa and that dog. And again, things get otherworldly, surreal. And then, the inexplicably-named Ice Cream Bunny winks, and you just want it all to end. Mercifully, it does.

I'll challenge anybody to find a worse Christmas movie than this one.

Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus

2013 drug dramedy

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Michael Cera, a triad of Chilean brothers, and the titular hippie go in search of the titular cactus.

According to imdb.com, this movie is called Crystal Fairy and the Magical Cactus and 2012, but that doesn't seem right at all. I know some people aren't keen on Michael Cera, but I really like him in general and love him here. He sort of plays the character he always plays, but contorts a bit and plays a really unlikable and jerky awkward guy instead of a likable awkward guy. And let me tell you--if you've ever wanted to see a shirtless Michael Cera running in slow motion, this is the movie for you. Gaby Hoffmann gives a performance that a lot of people will call "brave" because she's naked for extended periods of time during two scenes and let her armpit hair grow out for the role. Her armpits are method acting. She's good though, and she absolutely nails her big climactic emotional moment which is a scene that could have turned into a disaster. And three actual brothers--the Silva brothers--play the brothers (at least I think they were supposed to be brothers), and their inability to fully communicate with the two American characters is funny at times. This floats along--or maybe it crawls, sort of in a haze--and has an improvised feel, and although that sort of thing is done quite a bit in independent movies, it still manages to feel fresh here. Cool little movie, one that almost made me want to drink a boiled cactus with a naked hippie.

Shane's Blog Christmas Extravaganza: Black Christmas

1974 Christmas slasher movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A killer prank calls sorority sisters before killing them off one-by-one.

Here's a nifty little Christmas surprise. I should get out of the way that this is directed by A Christmas Story director Bob Clark which, although they're on completely different ends of the spectrum, makes two Christmas classics for the guy. This movie builds this incredible atmosphere, and perhaps because it's an early slasher movie--predating a slightly-similar Halloween--it doesn't reek of cliches or cheap tricks to bring the chills. But it certainly brings the chills. I watched this one late into the night, and it got to me a few times. At the same time, there's a little submerged humor in the thing although it's not quite a black comedy. There's a lot of killer-cam used, again similar to what happens at the beginning of Halloween, and a lot of those perspective shots are really creepy. And you know what else is creepy? Christmas music used in a horror movie. I'm not sure if the same songs would have seemed creepy in a different context, but the carolers in this and the record the sisters were playing at a party early in the morning just added to the creepster vibe of this thing. I'm impressed with how subtle Clark was with the violence in this. It really seems that the violence is part of a story more than there for just shock value, and although there's a little blood in the thing, it's never tacky or even all that gross. Maybe Silent Night, Deadly Night desensitized me though. Olivia Hussey plays the last-sorority-sister-standing, and even though her accent didn't seem to fit, there wasn't something alluring about her. Margot Kidder also shines as a sex-obsessed sorority sister who alludes to fellatio with a naive policeman and discusses turtles doing the deed which, I can tell you from personal experience, is stunning. Watching two turtles in the act of love-making, I mean. I have never had a sexual encounter with a turtle or anything else with a shell for that matter. My favorite thing about this movie is easily the obscene phone calls, something that might turn off a few viewers. The serial killer snorts and giggles, says things like "Let me lick it" while "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" plays in the background, and even sounds a little like Beavis. Unrealistically, it sounds like at least three people at times, but for whatever reason, that makes it even more awesome. Oh, and the ending is fantastic! This is a movie that I didn't really know about, but I'm glad I made it part of my Christmas Extravaganza.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: Mac and Me

1988 extraterrestrial movie

Rating: 3/20 (Josh: 7/20; Ryan: 6/20; Abbey: fell asleep; Buster: no rating)

Plot: A family of aliens are vacuumed into a space device and brought back to earth accidentally. One of the kid aliens escapes and befriends a handicapped child who later tries to reunite him with his family. It's not like E.T. at all!

See that expression on Mac's face? That's the only expression he's got! Try watching that for an hour and forty minutes. And that's not the most disturbing thing about this piece of crap. No, that would have to be either the decision made by writer/director Stewart Raffill to just rip off an 80's blockbuster. Or maybe it's the most blatant and sickening display of product placement you're ever likely to see in your entire life. Or maybe it's the bizarre and ludicrous feel-good ending in which [Spoiler Alert!] a handicapped child is brought back to life (but does not walk as I predicted) and the aliens are sworn in as American citizens. No, I am not joking. But back to that product placement. Coca Cola, which actually helped keep the aliens alive (No, I'm not joking about that either); Sears; McDonalds, which gets what I can only describe as a five-minute commercial during which the alien dances on a counter while wearing a bear costume while four McDonalds employees look embarrassed behind him in a scene that just might be the greatest thing that has happened in film; Skittles, which characters snack on at times when tasting the rainbow might not seem all that appropriate; and even Volkswagon all get their products in here. Frankly, it made me a little sick to my stomach. Need proof about the obviousness of the product placement? Four-year-old Buster actually said, "The aliens drink Coke when they're thirsty," completely unprovoked by me. And she was even up way past her bedtime. This movie is packed with wrongs that go beyond the product placement and plagiarism, two things as American as apple pie and jazz music. There are numerous what-the-hell-were-they-thinking scenes involving plummeting wheelchairs, house destruction, aliens stuck in trees, cars chasing wheelchairs, and vacuuming. Although the puppet work suffices, the aliens look stupid. Whoever did the Mac and family concept art probably shouldn't have been allowed to work in Hollywood again. They've got that perpetual O-face you see on the poster up there, lack genitalia if you're into that sort of thing, and move with this swagger that made me a little uncomfortable. I don't think this was a huge hit or anything in the late-80's, and that's probably a good thing. It's entirely possible that it could have turned an entire generation of children into morons.

Computer Chess

2013 chess movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Computer nerds gather to have their programs face off in a chess tournament.

Note: This movie lost a full point because a knight was moved from D3 to D2. That's not possible. The rest of the chess looked fine, so it surprises me that they would have such an obvious blunder in the final cut.

I was led astray by this one. I thought it was going to be a mockumentary about chess. I figured that it would be kind of stupid but funny and chessy enough to be worth a watch. It ended up not being all that funny and about a lot more than chess, but it also wasn't stupid at all. In fact, it went a little over my head. It's also not a mockumentary although it does have a style that makes it seem like it was actually filmed during the early 80s, the time when it was supposed to take place. Maybe the black and white fools people into thinking it's a mockumentary. I enjoyed the movie. It's a quiet one, more peppered with humorous moments and some quirky characters more than it is flat-out funny. There are the chess guys or programmers and a group meeting for some kind of sex therapy or self-help thing, and I was never sure what the point was by having these two groups clash. I thought the acting was fantastic, and along with the dialogue and raw style, this did manage to feel very real even though director Andrew Bujalski added a few more experimental moments and ended the story with a moment of raunchy surrealism. I'd really have to see this again to get a better grasp on what it's about.

Shane's Christmas Extravaganza: Silent Night, Deadly Night

1984 Christmas ho-ho-horror movie

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Poor Billy. First, he watches a guy dressed up as Santa Claus murder his parents. Then, he's got to spend his formative years surrounded by nuns. And then they wonder why he grows up wanting to impale women on the antlers of a mounted deer head or hit somebody with the claw end of a hammer. And it's all still a little funnier than Jingle All the Way. Also, if the writing in Jingle All the Way can be butchered, what Arnold does in that movie is probably a little more violent. But I digress.

This created quite a bit of controversy, enough to spawn a few sequels anyway. I'm not sure why anybody would think that a guy dressed as Santa Claus going nuts and killing a bunch of people after seeing a nipple would be a bad idea though. I like the movie's tone. It always threatens to be a little funny, but it never gets there, and there's some great music, especially during the credits as cartoonish blood splash over the title wreath and during the scene where his parents are murdered. Of course, they might deserve it anyway since Mom is riding in a car with a baby on her lap. A lot of this movie takes place in a toy store, and as I've mentioned, I played with toys until I was far too old to play with toys. 1984 was still my prime toy-playing years, and it was fun seeing a lot of this stuff in the background. There's some Star Wars stuff and Masters of the Universe stuff, and even the Muppets make an appearance in this one. This all has a pretty cheap and gritty look although there's almost a little style in a shot with a nun's scream and some wide-mouthed nutcrackers. And there's a great scene featuring box cutters, a first attempt at some humor in an otherwise humorless production. The violence is, for better or worse, grisly and varied. This serial killer doesn't stick to one weapon. No, you get the aforementioned hammers and antlers, Christmas lights, an ax, and some other things. No, it doesn't all look real. In fact, you'll see some of the fakest-looking stabbings you'll ever see, one of them featuring a bare-breasted woman shown in flashbacks at least a dozen times. And the film almost grinds to a halt during a scene where high school kids are stealing sleds from other high school kids, but there's a cool payoff to that with a nifty death scene that might have been more gruesome than Sonny Bono's and a hilarious freak-out. There's also a really weird montage that seems out of place with this "Warm Side of the Door" song and an older, studly Billy starting his work at the toy store. Of course, the problems with this movie are numerous. Billy's growling of "Punish!" or "Naughty!" gets tiresome and takes away a little of the fun at seeing a raging Santa Claus going after people. The acting is especially terrible. Will Hare, the guy who played Farmer Peabody in Back to the Future, is awesomely bad, managing to out-bad-act the little kid who played Young Billy. But man, that Billy can punch! Lilyan Chauvin is pretty good as the head nun though she's playing a stereotype in a habit. Best of all are Britt Leach (a guy who played three different characters on Three's Company) and Nancy Borgenicht who play Mr. Sims and Helen respectively, the toy store manager and a worker who get slightly inebriated at the lamest company Christmas party you're every likely to see--drinking around cash registers at closing and singing half of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" basically. Their drunken duet right before their deaths is a magical movie moment. This isn't a complete waste of time, and it might even get you thinking. For example, at one point, Billy has a sex dream featuring his own hairy ass. My question: Do people really know what their own asses look like or would his subconscious have to come up with that. And if it's the latter, what would a psychologist say about that? And how is a psychologist going to talk to those poor orphans after watching two Santas get gunned down in one day, the second one while he was about to swing an ax at Mother Superior? My favorite scene not involving Mr. Sims or Helen: an uncomfortable scene with Billy as Santa with some children. Also, I was fond of a picture that young Billy drew of a knife-filled Santa and a decapitated reindeer. And they let this kid work in a toy store?

The sequel to this is supposed to be one of the worst movies ever made. I'm thinking of squeezing it in before the end of the holiday season.

Cobra

1986 Sylvester Stallone movie

Rating: 5/20

Plot: An ax cult is on the loose in a city that is probably L.A., and they're axing women left and right. It's up to the titular anti-hero to take care of business the only way he knows how--preposterously! Throw out the rule book. Cobra's got crime to fight!

There should have come a moment when Stallone was no longer allowed to write movies. My question: Do you think Stallone walked on the set, think "How can I make my character even more badass?" and stick a matchstick in his mouth spontaneously or was that written into the script. If Stallone has an editing process--I completely doubt he's got an editing process--I'd like to think it evolved a little like this:

"The camera pans to Cobra who is wearing sunglasses and chewing on a paperclip."
Stallone: No, a paperclip isn't good for the teeth.
"The camera pans to Cobra who is clutching a gun and chewing on a pencil."
Stallone: No, too nerdy. I do like the idea of wood though.
"The camera pans to Cobra who rides up on his motorcycle and chews on a leg broken off a kitchen table."
Stallone: Hmm. I like it, but it might be too distracting.
"The camera pans to Cobra who has giant pectoral muscles. He's chewing on a toothpick."
Stallone: Damn it, Sly! Think! Think!
"The camera pans to Cobra who has unbelievably tight pants. He's chewing on a popsicle stick."
Stallone: That won't work either.
"The camera pans to Cobra who scowls and chews on a matchstick."
Stallone: Good enough! If I'm going to get this entire script finished like I did Rocky, I've got to move on!

I didn't realize that I was accidentally watching a Christmas movie here, but sure enough, this is as Christmasy as Die Hard. This starts with Stallone sounding a little like Bale's Batman voice and goes downhill from there. The first bad guy's "I'll keeeeeeel you!" made me laugh when I probably wasn't supposed to. Stallone's tagline--"You're the disease, and I'm the cure."--sounds like something I could have made up back in the mid-80s when I was twelve and playing with He-Man action figures well past the age that I was supposed to. "Do you want to go to hell?", a line heard later in the movie, doesn't improve things. Stallone says these behind sunglasses always threatening to pick up cameramen. Every time a character with the exception of Brigitte Nielson speaks in this movie, it feels like the movie is flexing its muscles, muscles molded with the help of illegal supplements. There's one of the strangest montages you'll ever see with Sly and his partner running around talking to lowlifes with jump cuts to a modeling shoot with Brigitte and a bunch of robots and then those people rhythmically slapping axes together again. It's bizarre, but at least we're spared dialogue. Stallone's practically a robot himself, but he does get a nice moment where he mimics a bobblehead. Even if this movie had a story, it would be pretty terrible. Actually, it does have a story, but the antagonists' motivation of societal cleansing or some kind of "New World" never makes any sense. It makes more sense than all the product placement though. Man, what a badass poster though! That's a movie poster I wouldn't want to mess with.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: Can't Stop the Music

1980 musical biopic

Rating: 6/20 (Josh: 2/20; Fred: -1/20; Jeremy: did not rate; Jennifer: 2/20; Libby: only watched a little after returning home from a sex toy party)

Plot: A somewhat-fictionalized look at how the Indian, the cowboy, the construction worker, the cop, and the biker guy formed the Village People.

At a bit over two hours, this is the longest Bad Movie Club film we've watched, and afterward, I felt bludgeoned by the thing. A week later, however, I still can't get this thing out of my head. "Can't Stop the Music" and a song about milkshakes have worked themselves into my soul like infections. I find myself stopping strangers in grocery stores so that I can tell them that "Leather men don't get nervous!" I've scoured Ebay and the rest of the Internet for Bruce Jenner Wheaties boxes to start a collection. And, perhaps most importantly, I am now a homosexual.

There's a lot wrong with this movie, but here's what it all boils down to--the makers try to pull off this balancing act where they simultaneously appeal to the huge throbbing homosexual following the Village People have while at the same time staying appropriate for families and other squares. And that probably explains why this is the rare movie that has a PG rating but somehow manages to slip in a dick shot during the what-I-assume-is-infamous "YMCA" montage. My guess is that the ratings people watched an hour of this, decided they couldn't take it anymore, and gave it a PG rating before the dick showed up. Of course, any movie that starts with the amount of a white-pantsed Steve Guttenberg rollerskating through the streets of New York that this does probably deserves an R rating anyway. Steve Guttenberg throws 120% of his being into this role, almost threatening to burst and spew little pieces of Steve Guttenberg all over the set and the Village People and Bruce Jenner. He twitches and thrusts and somehow manages to draw attention to himself in a movie where a gay biker guy--a leather man if you will, and I think you probably will--jumps on a piano and sings "Danny Boy" or a scantily-clad Native American named Felipe repeatedly gives this war-whooping howl that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck or a scene with Jenner in a half-shirt and cut-off jean shorts that might be the sexiest thing I've every seen in my entire life. Watching Jenner, it's obvious why his acting career failed to take off after this. The lovely Valerie Perrine plays Sa-sa-sa-sa-sa-samantha and provides a little eye candy for the one or two straight viewers to this thing. Honestly, the musical interludes are little (and by little, I mean lengthy) pre-MTV music videos that work very well even though they've got the stench of the late-70s all over them. They help stretch what they're calling a story into something that seems to take an eternity. Still, this is a bad movie that is a lot of fun, and I'd recommend it to any of my bi-curious readers.

Shane's Christmas Extravaganza: Jingle All the Way

1996 Christmas comedy

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

Plot: A guy with a thick Eastern European accent and a mailman search Minnesota for a popular action figure.

I first watched this movie on an airplane, and I've always claimed that it's one of the most painful movie-watching experiences of my entire life. I haven't revisited the film since, partially because I suspected a second viewing would reveal it to be not quite awful enough to be in a "most awful movie ever" discussion, and I sort of like listing it among the worst movies I've ever seen when I approach strangers and share my list of worst movies I've ever seen with them. And there's a part of me that wonders if I'm being a little harsh with my 3/20 rating. Then again, I'm one point higher than my wife who listens to contemporary country music and therefore has to have a higher tolerance for crap than me. Also, this movie really is every bit as bad as I remember it.

I've written about Arnold Schwarzennegger's acting outside action films before. He's as bad here, not only completely unbelievable as the businessman and family guy or consumer of plastic superheroes that he's supposed to be but completely unbelievable as a human being. Arnold's idea of comedy seems to be making ridiculous faces and saying all his lines loudly and bemusedly. And I honestly don't see much difference in his performance and Tommy Wiseau's performance in The Room, and if you've seen that performance, you know I'm talking about some upper-echelon bad acting with a thick Eastern European accent. To make matters worse, he gets some stupid things to say. A repeated line to his mattress (I think?) customers shows a complete lack of comic timing and made me wonder if Arnold was even in on the joke. Actually, it made me question if there was even a joke to be gotten. My favorites:

"Put that cookie down. . .NOW!"
"He maced me!"
"He got two! He got two!"
"This is my ball."
"I'm not a pervert. I was looking for Turbo Man doll."
"Nice doggy."

And yeah, none of those lines look bad on paper (or screen), but Arnold doesn't seem to have any idea how to deliver them. Context disappears when Arnold's character speaks. Actually, I was having trouble figuring out a way to describe his delivery, but that's it. It's almost like he's reading all his lines phonetically or something, and it's just bizarre. And I think I invented a new game to go along with this movie, sort of like a drinking game except we're replacing drinking with stabs to the eye. Every time Arnold says "Turbo Man," stab yourself in the eye.

Nobody else is any good either. Jake "Anakin Skywalker" Lloyd might be the best actor in the thing, a few years before Episode One, and if that doesn't tell you everything you need to know, there's nothing else I can say. Sinbad snarls every single one of his lines, and Phil Hartman spends the movie looking like he is regretting his decision to play such an unlikable character. They're all unlikable characters actually. Arnold's wife, played by Rita Wilson, and the son are impossible to like after you see them fail to recognize that it's the paterfamilias of their household in that Turbo Man costume at the end. Arnold himself commits enough crimes to get on Santa's naughty list for the rest of his life, punches a reindeer, belches, fights elves. You name it. And he's a terrible father and an even worse driver. Sinbad flips people off. And that might be the thing I dislike most about this movie. Arnold is unlikable, but I think I'm supposed to root for him. Sinbad is unlikable, and I'm not supposed to root for him because he's the bad guy. However, is there really any difference with the two characters? They both act inappropriately, and you could make the argument that Arnold's character is even worse. Why are we ok with either of them winning?

A quick aside: The MacGuffin--completely unbelievable. You're telling me the kid's got Turbo Man (stab in the eye) pajamas and Turbo Man (stab in the eye) cereal but doesn't have an action figure? Turbo, please.

There's my other main problem with this movie--it's just so mean-spirited. There's no way I would be happy with my children watching this. It reeks of capitalistic greed, and although they try their best to squeeze this father/son relationship in there, it's pretty thin. It all clashes so violently with what Christmas is supposed to be about. If it was as funny as something like Bad Santa or The Ref, we could forgive it, but the comedy is clumsy and the fun is almost profoundly absent. The funniest part of the movie might have been where Hartman says "Balthazar" in a sad way, and when that's the funniest part of your movie, your movie isn't funny at all. Laughable reindeer effects during a chase scene through a house and a lengthy chasing-after-a-ball scene in the Mall of America were both not funny in ways that should be considered crimes, but they didn't know when to end.

Well, I'll confess something: The funniest part of the movie was when an elf was punched and flew far across a room into a wall. No, what happened on the screen wasn't funny at all, but my wife's reaction--"Oh, my."--was hilarious. She sounded so defeated. I've seen my wife unhappy a lot of times in the twenty years we've been together. In fact, I've made her unhappy a lot of times. I don't know if I've ever heard more unhappiness in her voice than I did when she responded to that elf flying across the room.

One thing I noticed: There are a ton of shots of extras reaching to Arnold and Sinbad's shenanigans. It made me uncomfortable for some reason. I'm wondering what percentage of them got excited and said, "That's me!" or tell people that they're in this movie opposed to the percentage who are a little too embarrassed by the whole thing.

At one point, a character refers to the "end of civilization." I wouldn't go far enough to call this the end of civilization. But this is bad enough that I would still tell people that it's in my top-ten most painful movies of all time. And you can trust me because I watch a lot of really bad movies.

Shane Watches a Bad Movie with Friends on Facebook: Legion of Iron

1990 silliness

Rating: 6/20 (Libby: 12/20; Fred: 9/20; Dylan: 5/20; Ryan: 11/20; Josh: 10/20; Ozzy: dnf)

Plot: A high school football quarterback, along with his girlfriend, is kidnapped and helicoptered to the middle of the desert where he is forced to compete in gladiator games to the death in a facility run by a sadistic woman who later, it is revealed, owns a motorized hang glider.

There's a frustrating amount of suggested sex in this kinky little action movie and not nearly enough violence to satisfy the bloodthirsty. Sure, the lustful Queen Diana and her terrifying flirtations or threatening sexual advances with an underaged scrawny football star are enough to give this an edge. But overall, the embarrassing fight choreography, the lulls in the "action," and the terrible dialogue make this a pretty boring experience. The music's lively and the costumes and decor--with silks and sequins that make this all about as gay as you're going to get--try their best to keep things going, but they're up against such a stupid script and a lack of acting talent that there's not a lot that can be done. It all builds to an absolutely ridiculous climax that has an illogical gunfight, a liberal use of a pair of Wilhelm Screams, a chaotic race through the compound, a chase through desert sounds with trucks painted like cows that could have resembled the one in Raiders if everybody involved wasn't mentally challenged, pyrotechnics, and the queen shooting a machine gun from her flying machine. It's maximum wackiness. I wonder what the message for teenagers in the late-80's is supposed to be. A lusty teen boy's attempts to round first base and head toward second are thwarted by his girlfriend in his car on Lover's Lane, and they're both kidnapped. Then, the girl becomes a complete whore, and they escape. Seriously, what's the message there? I doubt it matters since nobody saw this one.

Shane's Blog Christmas Movie Extravaganza: Scrooged

1988 adaptation of A Christmas Carol

Rating: 11/20

Plot: Television executive Frank Cross is a greedy son of a bitch who has alienated his lover, co-workers, and family. He's visited by four ghosts around Christmas time and [Spoiler Alert!] changes his ways.

The problem with any version of A Christmas Carol is that the audience already knows the story so well and knows how it's all going to end. It's hard to get emotional about anything that's going on with a Scrooge movie although the mute black kid almost got me. Almost. As a modern comedic retelling of the classic story, this should have had a lot of surprises to make up for the lack of surprises in the borrowed structure for the story, but it really didn't. In fact, I didn't laugh a single time during this, and other than the lively Danny Elfman score--you can always tell when Danny Elfman is happening, can't you?--and some creative and fun special effects and sight gags with John Forsythe's Marley character, I didn't have a good time at all with this. Well, I take that back. I did like the line about how Charles Dickens would want to see a woman's nipples. Truth is, I don't know if I care for the Scrooge character arc anyway. I've always felt that the character's transformation into an old guy giving away turkeys and hoisting crippled children on his shoulders was a little unrealistic and more the result of feeling threatened than actually wanting to make any changes or seeing any real light. Murray's character almost feels more contrived. He's ludicrously terrible throughout the entire movie, every ounce of him except for his eyes in a couple scenes where the ghosts show him his past or present and there appears to be a little bit of soul in there somewhere. Bill Murray's performance is all over the place. He ranges from really overdoing things, grotesquely shouting lines in some attempt to squeeze out some funny that just isn't there, to just phoning it in. Half the time, he seems bored by what's going on. Walking Pet Peeve Bobcat Goldthwait gives a spirited performance as one of the two Bob Cratchetts in this thing. There are scenes when he's shooting large holes in the set with a shotgun, and that kind of feels like what he's doing to the whole movie. There are some good performances though. Buster Poindexter's OK as the Cabbie Ghost of Christmas Past, and Robert Goulet and Buddy Hackett both class things up a bit. But then again, there's Carol Kane as the abusive Ghost of Christmas Present who brings this dark slapstick into the movie, alternating between kicking Murray's character in the crotch and blowing raspberries. Add in references to Chinese restaurants serving cats and weird Tab soft drink product placement and you really have a pretty unpleasant experience. The last twenty minutes or so, where Murray and Goldthwait drunkenly disrupt his station's own adaptation of the Dickens' story so that Frank Cross can stretch the "Hey, Boy. What day is this?" moment from every other retelling of this story into an endless hollering monologue are a major letdown. When you hijack a live television performance with a firearm, I seriously doubt it matters what you say. You're probably going to jail for a very long time. What a stupid ending to a movie that was struggling to work in the first place.

Next up in our Christmas Movie Extravaganza is the even more unpleasant Jingle All the Way.

Supervixens

1975 Russ Meyer's mammalicious extravaganza

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A sadistic and impotent cop kills the busty (naturally) wife of a gas station employee who has to skip town when he finds out that he's the prime suspect. A series of busty misadventures take place before he settles down, only to have a blast (Note: This pun will make sense if you see the movie.) from his past show up.

Man, I love this movie. I'm still trying to decide if Russ Meyer has made a work of art here or a B-grade work of trash or some kind of art/trash hybrid. Here, Meyer paints predictably with broad breaststrokes. Shari Eubank plays duel roles as SuperAngel and SuperVixen (see, the "Super" thing is the big gag here) and nails both domineering and distressing damsel well, screaming and gyrating and handling abuse and being stunned and, whenever possible, bouncing spectacularly. Oh, that bouncing--makes me wonder if there's a warm-blooded male out there who wouldn't appreciate what's going on here. Uschi Digard, Christ Hartburg, and Colleen Brennan play the other "Super" girls. Oh, and Haji as Super Haji who might be my favorite, the operator of a bar that I'd definitely frequent. Charles Napier is aided by a fake schlong and makes for a disturbing and disturbed antagonist, driven by nothing more than impotence which makes me wish I would have watched this one with either Freud or my Uncle Barry. Napier gets some wacky lines, and he's able to take something as simple as "Get your funky ass out of here" and make it sound like he's evil incarnate but heavily caffeinated. This is a movie that obviously takes place in Russ Meyer's subconscious as it doesn't make a lick of sense in any real world I know of. The sleazy style creates this world that can only exist in a Russ Meyer's movie, the sort of thing that David Lynch or Jodorowsky do with their movies. Rapid fire jump-cuts and often wildly inappropriate music, including some hoe-down music and an instrumental version of "In the Sweet By and By," give this one of those they-don't-make-'em-like-this-anymore feels that I think is pretty easy to fall in love with if you don't think too much, or maybe even at all, about what is going on with whatever story this might have. The climax of that story, by the way, is one of the wackiest things you'll ever see.