Mac and Me is now the greatest movie ever made by Man.
At the beginning of February, Mac and Me became the most-viewed film on Captain 69's Retro Movie Review, clocking in at over 3100 views and finally surpassing long-time view leader, The Princess Bride. It seemed unlikely that a movie starring both Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years and Andre the Giant would ever be surpassed, but their mighty reign at the top finally came to an end at the hands of a kid in a wheelchair and a shitty-looking puppet starring in what is essentially an hour-and-a-half commercial for McDonalds and Coke.
For those of you not familiar with Mac and Me, I can sum up the movie's greatness in two scenes.
The first is a scene where the writer, director, and everyone else involved thought it would be a good idea to have a kid in a wheelchair fall off a cliff and fall into a lake...and they were RIGHT! Check it out!
The other scene is the infamous dance scene that occurs in the middle of the movie where a random choreographed dance breaks out in the middle of a McDonalds. The best part is that only white people are allowed to dance inside. The blacks have to dance OUTSIDE the restaurant. Watch and try not to dance along!
In conclusion, Mac and Me > every other movie ever made.
When people talk about classic Christmas movies, they always mention film like Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Story, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I'd like to add another film to the conversation: the holiday classic, Jingle All the Way starring Aaaarnold Schwarzenegger and (sigh...) Sinbad.
Now, on the surface, this movie may just appear to be another holiday cash-in with a nonsensical plot, atrocious acting, horrendous slapstick humor, and the stupid kid who played Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I, but in actuality it's a deep allegory attacking the corrupt materialistic nature of our modern-day society. Don't believe me? Let's take a look.
Jingle All the Way is about a work-obsessed father (Arnold) who forgets to buy his son the must-have gift of the holiday season (Turbo Man). So Arnold has to venture out on Christmas Eve to battle the hordes of shoppers for the one toy that will cancel out an entire year of neglect and win his son's love. Standing between him and his son's affection is a psychotic mailman (the master thespian, Sinbad) who challenges Arnold at every opportunity.
A n00b may look at this film as just another Arnold comedy abortion (Junior, anyone?), but the goal was to critique society as much as it was to display Arnold and Sinbad's masterful acting chops. Arnold represents the modern father, more interested in working ("You're my number one customer!") than connecting with his child. He believes that buying his son a favorite toy will make his child believe he is a good father. Thus, things = love. Instead of spending Christmas Eve with his family, making memories and enjoying each other's company, Arnold spends the entire day doing battle in the coliseum of commercialism. This is what love has become in our modern society.
Phil Hartman, the creepy divorced neighbor who wants to bang Arnold's wife (which is ballsy) represents the protagonist's foil. Unlike Arnold, he is a stay-at-home dad type who bakes cookies, shares recipes, shops early, and rents reindeer (What?). But although it seems like this arch-type represents a better example of what it means to be a father, he is just as flawed as Arnold's workaholic stereotype. His motives are flawed. He only does these things as a means to banging the neighborhood women. He is a wolf in sheep's clothing. His "good dad" façade is a means to meet is most base desires. For him, pussy = love.
Thus, Jingle All the Way is not just another holiday slapstick comedy but a critique of what it means to be a father in a society where things = love and we weigh our self-value based on the things we own or the women we've conquered. All this and Sinbad! What more could someone want for the holidays?
Why It's Better Than You Thought:
An existential critique of what it means to be a father in a society that continues to symbolically castrate males as gender roles continue to blur. Arnold and Sinbad hold up a mirror to society and reflect our foibles and weaknesses right back at us. That's deep...
Best Quote:
Sinbad: They sit there and use subliminal messages to suck your children's minds out! And I know what I'm talking about because I went to junior college for a semester and I studied psychology so I'm right in there, I know what's going on. They make the kids feel like garbage and you, the father, who's working 24/7 delivering mail so you can make an alimony payment to a woman that slept with everybody at the post office but me! And then when you get the toy, it breaks and you can't fix it because it's little cheap plastic!
Sometimes two ideas come together to create the perfect storm...or in this case, a SHARKNADO!
Sharks + Tornado = SHARKNADO!!!
I don't have cable and I rarely miss it, but one channel I do miss having is the wonderfully cheesy SyFy channel (What the hell is with that spelling, by the way?). And the main reason for my regret are movies like Sharknado. I'm not sure why people don't understand this, but Sharknado is not meant to be a "good" movie. It's a purposely "bad" movie. It's supposed to be an entertaining bad movie where viewers enjoy how horrible it is (about 75% of bad movies involve sharks in some way, shape, or form). So saying things like "It was horrible" is actually a compliment.
Now Sharknado has gotten the most press of any "bad" movie in the history of bad movies. It actually made the mainstream news. But, as a bad movie aficionado (I would rather watch a great bad movie than a great good movie) I will be the judge of whether or not it's worth the attention. So...is it? The answer...is no. It's a good bad movie, but it's not bad enough to be a great bad movie.
As far as casting goes, they nailed it. The movie stars Ian Ziering who was a B-squad member of the original 90210 cast and Tara Reid (who used to be in legitimate movies) and then a bunch of horrible actors. By the way, Tara Reid does NOTHING in this movie...nothing. They could replace her with a blow-up doll and it would make absolutely NO difference. Tara's acting is as realistic as the sharks...which look god-awful!
The plot is perfect, too. Hurricanes off the coast of LA are forming tornadoes that are picking up man-eating sharks and throwing them all over the city. The key to a good bad movie is to have a ridiculous concept but then play it completely straight. The plot of Sharknado makes sense...until it doesn't. During the Sharknado, Ian ventures through the shark-infested streets to save his estranged children. That part makes sense.
The part that doesn't make sense is after he saves his children, they then feel obligated to STOP THE SHARKNADOES...which crosses the line from stupid to retarded. If a tornado breaks out, no one feels compelled to stop it. You just hunker down and wait it out. Not so here. In this case, Ian's son and his hot slut bartender (who transitions from liking him to liking his son by the end of the movie...what?) decide to stop the sharknados by...(wait for it)...dropping bombs into the funnels. That's right, they BLOW UP THE SHARNADOS! That's bad movie logic for you.
The ending does produce an epic bad movie moment, however, one that will live in infamy in the annals of bad movie history. After blowing up the final sharknado, a giant shark flies through the air at Ian Zeiring (who is conveniently holding a chainsaw). It swallows him whole and then Ian cuts his way out with the chainsaw...EPIC!
So it sounds like a good bad movie, but here's the catch-22 of bad movies. Bad movies are like insane people. Truly insane people don't know that they're insane. Likewise, you can't set out to make a bad movie; the best bad movies are movies made that are meant to be good. As much press as Sharknado received, it isn't even close to being in the bottom five of worst bad movies. It's not even in the same league as classics like Troll 2, Birdemic, or The Room. Hell, I think Sharktopus was a better bad movie.
Still, I'll be looking forward to the sequel: Sharknado 2: The Second One. Maybe it will be worse...which would make it much better.
Why It's Awful:
First of all, why are only sharks in the tornados? If the tornados are strong enough to pick up marine life, shouldn't there be other sea creatures in the funnels? And why are the sharks so aggressive? Wouldn't they be scared or confused? And does Tara Reid have a soul? Or was that removed when she had her breasts done?
Best Quote:
Baz [looking at a pool of water red with blood]: Looks like it's that time of the month!
Hollywood remake commandment #1: Thou shall not remake a Schwartzenegger film!
How many times must Hollywood break this commandment before everyone realizes it is LAW?! Why even try? He is such a one-of-a-kind, irreplaceable actor that no one can ever...EVER...replace him. It's just that simple. Go ahead and try to justify remaking these films by saying you're going to make them "more similar to the source material," it really doesn't matter. It's just a bomb in the making.
Take last summer's Conan the Barbarian for example. It showed up on my Netflix streaming service and since new movies only appear once every six months, I thought I'd give it a look-see. I watched the emo barbarian take on impossible odds in a classic revenge tale (I'd be pissed if Ron Perlman was my father and someone killed him, too) and everything seemed to be in place. There were some awesome fight scenes (the sand monster fight stood out) and some interesting bad guys (Rose McGowan's balding sorceress stole the show) and in the end Conan stood victorious with some hot virgin slut.
And ten minutes later it was as if someone took the Men in Black mind eraser stick and flashed it in front of my eyes because I couldn't remember a thing about the whole damn movie.
And there lies the problem. The main issue I have with modern popcorn movies is they're so damn forgettable. They're so by-the-numbers they turn into nothing but clones of every movie we've already seen a thousand times already. Who could forget The Goonies or Back to the Future or E.T.? These are popcorn movie masterpieces and they've survived the test of time.
And this takes us right back to the Arnold dilemma. You remember Arnold. You see a roided up wall of muscle with a weird accent, you're gonna remember that guy. He was all that was man in the 80s and early 90s. This guy playing Conan now wears guy liner. Let's compare:
In conclusion, movies now are terrible. Stop trying to remake movies that were good. Remake shitty movies instead. That way no one will care when you ruin them.
Why It's Dog Shit: The worst sin for a movie is to be forgettable. Conan The Barbarian...is a sinner.
Best Quote (Nuts to this new movie. There's only ONE best Conan quote):
Mongol: What is best in life?
Conan: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
If there's one thing Hollywood has proven time and time again it's that you can't purposely make a bad movie.
Take Piranha 3D (or 2D if you're not lucky enough to see all the boobs in 3D) for example. It's a contemporary tribute to the B horror movies of the past, but, unfortunately, it lacks all the charm of those movies that attempt to make a decent movie and just fail...in epic fashion. This movie just fails.
An earthquake opens up a cave housing a species of prehistoric piranhas during Spring Break. Perfect story for a B horror movie. Sounds like an alley-oop for an easy slam dunk, right? WRONG!
This movie contains all the elements of a great bad movie: cheesy special effects + scary creatures eating stupid kids + boobs. It even sports the greatest cast of any B horror movie ever with the likes of Richard Dreyfuss (in a tribute to Jaws), Christopher Lloyd (in full Doc Brown mode), Ving Rhames, Adam Scott, Jerry O'Connell (Sliders is still one of my favorite TV shows ever), and a plethora of porn stars. With all these arrows in its quiver, how could this movie not be good, right?
The only problem is it's not...not even close. I feel like this movie was made for teenage boys to whack off to, and that's its only purpose. It has all the elements of a bad movie, but it has too much of them. The cheesy piranhas look almost too good. The dump of decent actors makes me think the acting should be better. There are plenty of creative, gory deaths, but there are so many creative, gory deaths that eventually they just stop having any kind of effect at all. There's like a 20 minute massacre of spring breakers that I actually left in the middle of to go to the bathroom and get a snack and when I came back it was STILL going on and I STILL didn't care.
The truly perplexing part of Pirahna 3D's failure is that (and I can't believe I'm actually going to write this) there are too many (seriously, I NEVER thought I'd write this)...sigh...boobs. There are too many boobs in this movie! How could that be possible?! But strangely, impossibly, it is! I remember watching the old Friday the 13th movies where there would often be a topless young woman skinny-dipping or having sex with some guy with a perm and there'd be a few seconds of bare booby. And I remember my breath catching in my throat and my hand instinctively rubbing the inside of my thigh, and that image would stay with me for weeks. Piranha shovels boob after boob after boob onto the screen without any discretion or shame, and, like the gory deaths, there just came a point where I didn't care anymore and for that, I can never, ever forgive this film. It made me indifferent to boobs.
Of course, I can't mention this film without mentioning the underwater lesbian nude scene set to opera music. The scene is the movie's only salvation and indifferent is the last word I would use to describe my feelings toward it. So for that, Piranha 3D, and that alone I salute you...from the waist down!
Why It's Not So Awesome: It tries to be a good bad movie and just ends up being a bad bad movie...which is as bad as it gets. And too many boobs! Boobs should be shown with discretion to maximize their impact. Think Fast Times at Ridgemont Hight, which uses boobs better than any movie in cinematic history.
Best Quote:
Andrew: It's never cheating when it's with another chick.
Here it is in all its awful glory…THE BEST WORST MOVIE OF ALL TIME!
And this isn’t just my opinion. This is science! Troll 2 (which doesn’t have a single troll in it) was ranked as the #1 worst movie ever made for quite a while on IMDB and there’s even a documentary about the movie called Best Worst Movie (check it out on Netflix).
This movie has all the best worst movie elements. Atrocious special effects (the goblins are retarded midgets wearing paper mache masks), absolutely diarrhea-inducing acting by people literally pulled off the streets (the dad was a dentist by trade and some of the extras were legit mental patients), and a story that makes so little sense your head will implode if you think about it too much.
Troll 2 is about a family from the city who participates in a home exchange program (there’s no such thing) with a country family who lives in a town called NILBOG (Goblin spelled backwards!). The town is actually the kingdom of a clan of vegetarian goblins who feed people green shit that transforms people into half plant/half human puddles that the goblins can eat. Nope…not a lick of sense…
It’s one of those movies that truly must be seen to be believed. Here’s just a sample of the craptacular acting. The scene is considered in most movie circles to be the worst line ever delivered in any movie…ever (notice the fly on the kid's head at the climax, too):
Here are some things you’ll learn from watching Troll 2:
- If you have crappy costumes and masks, the best thing to do is shoot all the scenes involving those things in broad daylight to truly highlight how awful they are.
- Ghosts can freeze time, transform into hobos, and provide small children with Molotov cocktails.
- Coffee is the devil’s drink.
- The best way to hide your obvious homosexuality is to sleep naked in a camper with three other dudes while incessantly talking about “getting laid.”
- The sexiest food…is corn on the cob.
- Fuck a gun! The ultimate weapon is a double decker bologna sandwich!
- You don’t piss on hospitality!
Why It's Awesomely Terrible:
Anyone who loves movies must watch this movie to see what it looks like when everything goes wrong…in all the right ways possible!
Best Quote:
Michael: Do you see this writing? Do you know what it means? HOSPITALITY! And you can't piss on hospitality!
The sequel to one of the most shocktastic movies ever made (The Human Centipede) showed up on Netflix's instant watch so I forced myself to watch it. I didn't want to. I really had to psych myself up to watch it - like psyching oneself up for a colonoscopy. It was bad but not I-have-someone-else's-lips-stapled-to-my-asshole bad. No wait! It was that bad.
The story for the sequel is basically a fan letter to the original. A psychotic and retarded midget (not joking) named Martin is so obsessed with the original movie that he decides to make his own human centipede but instead of three people, he's going to make a 12-person centipede! The only problem is he has no medical background so instead he uses everyday tools like a hammer, pliars, and a staple gun to make his creation. Yeah, it's gross...
After watching the sequel, I actually enjoy the first flick more than I originally did (which was not at all). At least that one tried to have a plot. This one had none at all. The first half of the movie was Martin collecting people to make the centipede (he manages to collect associates who had wronged him, total strangers, a pregnant chick, and even one of the girls who starred in the first movie!) and the second half is him actually making the centipede (which is surprisingly not difficult at all).
As expected there are some truly disgusting moments here:
- Martin caving in his own mother's skull with a crowbar and then eating breakfast with her corpse
- Martin knocking out a dude's teeth with a hammer
- Martin stapling people's mouths to others' assholes with a staple gun
- A dozen people having explosive diarrhea into each other's mouths in the worst conga line ever
But the most detestable scene involves a pregnant woman waking up in labor pains who manages to escape Martin's warehouse. She gets into a car, farts out the baby onto the floor, the baby's head slides under the gas pedal, and, in her hurry to escape, she slams on the gas pedal and squishes the baby's skull. C'mon...
There's NOTHING redeemable about this sequel. Martin isn't as fun as Dr. Heiter, there's no attempt at a plot, and, for some reason, 12 people just seems like overkill. Why didn't they just jack it up to a respectable five or six-person centipede? Where could they possibly go from here?
Why It's Dog Shit:
The worst part of the movie is that it's almost cartoonish at times. No one ever tries to escape the warehouse or wiggle away. Martin goes around bonking people on the head with his crowbar, which instantly knocks them out. I almost expected there to be birds circling their heads at times. And the shit splattering the camera during the diarrhea conga line was just plain silly.
Best Quote:
Me: They couldn't possibly make another one...could they?
July is dogshit movie month here at Captain 69's Retro Movie Review.
We're starting with a little Christmas in July with Jack Frost (the horror/comedy, not the Michael Keaton shitstorm). In this classic horror/comedy mash-up, a serial killer is tranformed into a snowman after he's sprayed with genetic-altering acid and then goes around killing people...that's right, a snowman.
This is one of those movies that knows how terrible it is and revels in it (see also: Dead Snow). The acting is atrocious, the special effects laughable, and it's full of cheesy one-liners ("Is it cold in here or is it just me?"). At no point is it trying to be anything but cheesy fun...and for the most part it succeeds.
You'd think the characters in the movie would start to get suspicious about a snowman with evil eyebrows and arms...yes, that's right, he has arms. As a general rule, if you ever see a snowman with arms, get the hell out of there as most children aren't too worried about making their snowmen anatomically correct. The picture on the front cover of the DVD shows a scary demonic snowman, but Jack doesn't look anything like that in the movie. He looks like a poorly-constructed Styrofoam snowman...that kills people.
The deaths are always the best part of any cheesy horror flick and Jack Frost is no different. Some of his Christmas-themed kills include him smashing a woman's face into broken Christmas tree bulbs and decorating her with tinsel and a star, impaling some kid with icicles, and pushing a kid over and decapitating him with the runner of a toboggan.
The best death, however, belongs to a young Shannon Elizabeth. Most people know Shannon Elizabeth from her boner-inducing topless scene in the original American Pie, but most don't know that she made her film debut in Jack Frost, and she's naked in this one, too! (Not that you really get to see anything good). Not only is she in the film but she's the star of one of the greatest scenes ever filmed: the infamous snowman rape scene! I've included the clip below. Basically Shannon Elizabeth is taking a bath and Jack transforms into the bath water and then bangs her using his carrot nose as a dick. Just watch it...
In conclusion, they just don't make cheesy horror movies that are so bad they're good quite like this anymore. They peaked in the 80s and began to trail off in the 90s to the point they're almost nonexistent anymore. Now movies are just so bad they're bad.
Why It's Awesomely Terrible: A snowman runs around killing people, driving cars, and he totally rapes a hot chick with his carrot dick. C'mon! Do I really have to explain why that's awesomely terrible?
Best Quote:
Jack (after raping Shannon Elizabeth): Looks like Christmas came a little early this year.
The cover of this movie says that it’s the best college comedy since Animal House. One word: FALSE! That honor would go to Old School. Is this the best college comedy you can watch on television on a rainy Sunday afternoon? No, probably not, but it’s still worth watching if there’s nothing better on for one reason…ZACK MORRIS!
In this movie Zack Morris and some other douche are roommates in college who spend their days drinking and smoking and generally not studying. When they discover they’re on the verge of getting kicked out of school, they plan on taking advantage of a loophole in the college charter that states that anyone whose roommate commits suicide gets straight A’s. So they venture out to find the most suicidal student on campus to move in with them and boost their GPAs.
The humor is something most people might find hilarious only if they’re really, really high, but some of it is actually pretty funny. Lochlyn Munro steals the show with his insane frat boy, Cliff (“Do you ever get horny?”) with his couch humping and weird interior mouth licking. Actually, all the roommates are pretty funny. In addition to Cliff, there’s also the paranoid roommate who thinks Bill Gates is trying to steal his brain and the suicidal rocker and lead singer of Kiss My Ass who turns out not only to be NOT suicidal but not even British!
The supporting cast definitely outshines Zack Morris and that other dude. My favorite part about watching this movie in 2K12 is that Marshall and Lilly of How I Met Your Mother fame round out the supporting cast. Actually, if you replace Zack Morris’ s roommate, Josh, with Barney and Poppy “I never forget anything” Montgomery with Kelly Kapowski, this might actually be a pretty decent flick. My words are my sperm/spewing forth my tragic germ…
Why It's Not so Awesome: If I had to choose a subject to NOT make a comedy about, suicide would be in the top three. I hope there's a sequel where Josh and Cooper sponsor a girl who wants to get an abortion or where they pretend to have AIDS for some kind of scholarship because those are also awesome subjects for a comedy.
Best Quote:
Cliff: Do you guys ever get really horny?
Cooper: Depends where you're going with this.
I don't usually venture as far back as the 70s, but when someone introduces you to one of the greatest dogshit movies of all-time, you don't shy away just 'cause it lives in a shady neighborhood. No, you lace up your skates, grow an Afro, and disco your ass back to 1972!
The Thing with Two Heads is about a racist scientist, stricken with some sort of vague chest cancer, who has his head transferred onto the body of a death row inmate...who happens to be a jive-talkin' black dude, creating a...thing! With two heads!
What makes this movie so epically terrible is that the movie puts absolutely ZERO effort into the special effects. All they did was sew a giant suit, shove both actors inside, and that was it for certain shots. Then for 70% of the movie they have the black dude lying down and the white dude's head sticking up through the floor. But the absolute best special effect are the action shots where they just stuck a paper mache head next to the black guy's head and it wobbles around while he walks around. Classic...
The racist banter really provides the icing on the racist Cinnabon that is this flick. It's basically a buddy flick where the buddies share the same body. Unfortunately, besides the basic concept, this movie doesn't have much of a plot. There's a motorcycle chase scene that literally lasts half an hour. It's 1/3 of the fucking movie! The black dude (and his paper mache sidekick) rides around on this motorcycle being chased by the cops for 30 minutes...it's excruciating.
The back-and-forth banter reaches a peak when the black guy FINALLY escapes the cops and hides out at his girlfriend's apartment. He tries to convince her to have sex with him, but she turns him down and says, "Maybe when I get used to it" (it being the extra head). I do feel like they missed an opportunity for some classic material so I've written some of my own. In my take on the scene, the black guys says, "Hey, momma, how 'bout you give me some head" and the sassy black sister says, "Looks like you already gots more than you can handle!" Oh no you didn't!
Anyways, just watch the trailer I've provided and you'll understand why you must watch this film (it's an instant watch on Netflix). I'm dying for a remake...but instead of the tired race commentary I'd rather see a different approach. I suggest taking Mel Gibson's head and attaching it to the body of a rabbi. Let the witty banter begin!
Why It's Awesomely Terrible: A racist bigot has his head attached to a black guy. How can you not wanna watch that movie?! And if you enjoy watching a motorcycle evade police vehicles in an open field for extended periods of time, this movie is for you!
Best Quote:
Black Dude (trying to force the white head to eat black people food): Don't you dig soul food?
White Head: What have you got for dessert? Watermelon?
Note: This is seriously a line from the movie. The 70s were great because everyone was cool about racism. They weren't all uptight and lame about it like today's lame PC society.
In honor of Leap Day, I'm reviewing a movie that should only be witnessed once every four...lifetimes. This is it. The worst movie of all time. I present to you the tour-de-force that is BIRDEMIC: SHOCK AND TERROR!
This movie makes The Room look like Citizen Kane. If Troll 2 is the best worst movie, then Birdemic is the worst worst movie.
So what makes this movie so horrendous? Where to begin...
Let's start with the nonsensical plot. The first 40 minutes of the film focus on some douche who makes million-dollar sales for some computer company (with stock options!) and a slutty model who lands a job with Victoria's Secret after taking a couple photos at a convenience store. They speak nonsense to one another, dance like white people at a restaurant where they're the only people there, and then after the chick tells the douche she likes him for respecting her, he takes her to a cheap motel and bangs her like a common whore.
And then...IT HAPPENS!
Because they're pissed about global warming, eagles start crashing into gas stations and BLOWING UP (since everyone knows eagles are 80% pure gasoline) and slitting people's throats...with their wings. And yes, all this does actually happen in the film.
Not only is the plot THE WORST but everything about this film makes The Wicker Man seem watchable.
The dialogue is THE WORST! The jibba jab coming out of these people's mouths sounds like someone took a movie originally written in Mandarin Chinese and just translated it straight to English.
The acting is THE WORST! All the actors come across as pod people doing their best impersonation of what they think people act and speak like.
The sound editing is THE WORST! There's feedback throughout the entire movie almost to the point it drowns out the dialogue (not a bad thing) and when the actors are near the ocean you can't even hear what they're saying over the waves.
But the worst of the worst are the special effects...which are THE WORST! Instead of calling them special effects they should just straight up call them what they are, which is retarded effects. The birds are superimposed on the screen and are capable of floating without flapping their wings. The same shot of the birds approaching and a single bird getting shot are used over and over and over again.
A truly great bad movie should make the viewer feel as if his or her soul has been raped upon watching it and there's no amount of showering that will ever rid you of the stink of...BIRDEMIC!
Why It Sucks Dick: This sums up this movie's stupidity. After the birds attack for NO REASON, the two main characters join up with this army dude and a hooker. The army dude arms the quartet with clothes hangers...yes hangers...to fight off the birds. Then when he gets to his shitty van he's got an AK-47 (no joke). So he chose to fight with hangers rather than a machine gun. And thus is the greatness that is...BIRDEMIC!
Best Quote:
Ramsey: Where's Becky?
Rod: She's taking a shit. Nathalie is watching her back.
There are horror classics like the original Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and Saw...pretty much anything that spawned 37 sequels was probably good in its original incarnation. In honor of Halloween, I decided to review the complete opposite of those movies - that is, a complete crapfest.
And on that note, let's discuss DEAD SNOW, a Norwegian film that gives us not only zombies and not only Nazis but NAZI ZOMBIES! Who could ask for anything more?
Here's the ridiculous premise: A couple of the dumbest medical students on the planet spend their Easter weekend in an isolated cabin in the mountains...little do they know that the mountain is infested with NAZI ZOMBIES who pretty much straight up murder anyone who steals their stolen Jew gold (it's kind of like Pirates of the Caribbean but instead of pirates you have Nazis and instead of Johnny Depp you have some Norwegian janitor who wandered onto a movie set).
Let's do the totally awesome cheesy horror flick check list:
- At least three scenes of people taking a dump...CHECK!
- Absolutely no explanation as to why the Nazis are zombies...CHECK!
- At least five examples of unnecessary and logic defying decisions to "split up"...CHECK!
- Some girl swinging from a mountain by a Nazi zombie's intestines...CHECK!
- A chick having sex with a fat guy WHILE he takes a dump in an outhouse during which she LICKS THE GUY'S FINGERS that he just used to WIPE HIS ASS...that's a big CHECK!
This movie directly lifts scenes from much better movies such as Friday the 13th, Evil Dead, The Descent, and even Shaun of the Dead. And forget about following standard zombie rules. These zombies make use of cheetah speed, binoculars, and camouflage. I guess Nazi zombies are different from your non-fascist zombie varieties.
On a final note, this movie contains the greatest Molotov cocktail FAIL in cinematic history. Watch below and enjoy your craptacular Halloween!
Why it's Awesome: The only movie ever to marry two of the greatest villains in cinema...Nazis and zombies. Really the movie should have just been called Nazi Zombies. Dead Snow tells me nothing and it's stupid. How can snow be dead? Hell, I don't even know what I'm getting with a title like that, but Nazi Zombies...I know exactly what I'm getting and I'm into it...hard!
Best Quote:
Roy: Where the fuck did you get a machine gun? (after seeing his friend show up with a machine gun strapped to the front of his snowmobile).
For those of you who thought that Vanilla Ice's pure awesomeness was only reserved for the early 90s rap scene, I present to you a film that answers that burning question that philosophers have been asking themselves for centuries: How cool is Vanilla Ice?
Answer: COOL AS ICE, MOTHA FUCKA!
That's right, someone thought it would be a good idea to put Vanilla Ice in a movie, and, not just put him in the movie like in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze ("Ninja! Ninja! Rap!) but to have him STAR in his own movie. Now, imagine how awesome a movie starring Vanilla Ice would be, multiply that by 400 million, and that's how epically sweet COOL AS ICE truly is.
The thing that most people don't understand about this movie is that VI's character "Johnny Van Owen" isn't supposed to be considered an average mortal man. No, he exemplifies the qualities of a mythical man of legend, what Nietzsche called the ubermensch. VI's character is similar to what a modern Jesus would be if Jesus could lay down some sick beats and shave random crop circles into the back of his hair and eyebrow.
Among his many legendary deeds, VI accomplishes the following in epic fashion:
1) Jumps a motorcycle over a fence without the aid of any sort of incline, ramp, or adherence to the laws of physics. He jumps the fence through SHEER FORCE OF WILL. That's COOL AS ICE! Check it out:
2) Woos a female Republican with a 4.0 grade point average by nearly paralyzing her in a horrible horseback riding accident, stealing her black book that contains her "scholorship information," breaking into her house and shoving an ice cube down her throat (yes, this literally happens in the film) and taking her to an active construction site on their first date. How could VI possibly win the heart of any female by committing all these horrible acts? Because he's COOL AS ICE!
3) Changes clothes 40 times a day despite the fact he's on a road trip driving a motorcycle without any luggage of any kind. And I shouldn't have to say this but every outfit he wears, from the jacket that has over 70 phrases printed on it ranging from "Sex me up" to "Yep Yep" to his neon yellow parachute pants and suspenders combo, is COOL AS ICE!
4) Drives his motorcycle through the second story wall of a building. Yep...COOL AS ICE...
Now the reason I haven't described the plot yet is that it's irrelevant because really everything that happens is just an excuse for VI to be awesome. Here's the plot anyway: Vanilla Ice and his crew of black slaves drives their motorcycles into a town of white people who have never seen blacks before where he meets a stuck-up bitch whose father is hiding in the witness protection program from two corrupt cops. You can imagine what happens from there and, rest assured, everything that happens is...well...you can probably guess...
This movie is also infamous for having the greatest tag line of any movie EVER. The tag line is "When a girl has a heart of stone, there's only one way to melt it. Just add Ice."
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense because everyone knows that if you want to melt a stone, the best way to do that is to use ice...er, wait...does that make sense? Oh well. COOL AS ICE!
Why it's Awesome: I'm serious, Vanilla breaks into this slut's house, literally climbs in through the window, and shoves an ice cube down her throat...it happens! Where the fuck did he even get an ice cube?! Then she wakes up and finds him, a person she just met the previous day, lying in the bed next to her half-naked body. And she's totally into it! Now that's a pimp, my friends!
Best Quote (the infamous):
Ice: Here's some words of wisdom: Drop dat zero. Git wit da hero!
Nick Cage is a GOD...of terrible, bat-shit crazy acting performances. And this is his masterpiece.
Wicker Man is one of the all-time best worst movies of all time. Cage deserves every Oscar ever presented to anyone for his performance as a female-beating, bear-suit wearing, totally clueless cop who wants to know HOW'D IT GET BURNED?! HOW'D IT GET BURNED? HOW'DITGETBURNED?!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So here's the movie's attempt at a plot: after experiencing a traumatic and never-fully explained event, Nick Cage receives a letter from an ex-girlfriend who left him at the altar claiming her daughter has been kidnapped on a strange island ruled by man-hating dykes. So even though he has no motivation to go, he travels to the island, where everyone (including the woman he's there to help) refuses to answer ANY of his questions...I mean, these bitches literally won't answer ANYTHING. Every time he asks a question all they do is snort or cough or make some sort of unrecognizable sound...and that's pretty much the entire movie.
During his quest to have someone...ANYONE..answer one of his questions, Cage goes on a rampage of awesomeness that includes the following EPIC acts:
- Pulls a gun on an unarmed woman in order to steal her bike
- Dresses up as a bear and talks on his cell phone
- Roundhouse kicks a woman for being too vague
- Calls an entire classroom of little girls "Little Liars!"
- Delivers an uppercut to a woman just for smiling at him
- Straight up delivers a haymaker to an unsuspecting woman's jaw while dressed up as a bear
- Calls pretty much everyone on the island a bitch
Cage absolutely acts up as storm in this movie as only Nick Cage can. There's a reason why this man owns a dinosaur skull, ladies and gentlemen. His entire performance can be summed up in the scene where these crazy sluts break his leg, and, in order to inform the audience that his leg has just been broken, he screams, "Ow! My leg!" thus indicating that his leg has, in fact, been broken. Now that's acting!
It's pointless to try to describe the absolute whirlwind of acting Cage hurls through the screen so I'm including a Youtube clip of some of his best moments. Enjoy:
Why It's God-Awful: Really this is an allegory of what would happen if women were in charge of our government. There'd be human sacrifices and non-stop Halloween and our only hope would be people like Nick Cage who are willing to uppercut women with no shame and steal their bikes.
Best Quote:
Nick Cage: OH NO! NOT THE BEES! NOT THE BEES! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EYES! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! BLH!
I really wanted to like this movie...I really did. When I first saw the title and the cast I thought, "Yes, sign my ass up." Obviously with the ridiculous title I assumed it would be a fun movie. What I really wanted was for it to be really stupid like Snakes on a Plane or at least fun in the same way Men in Black approached its subject matter, but what I got was a flaming turd on a hot plate.
This movie is not tongue-in-cheek, it is not satire, it is just DUMB! It offended me on a very personal level due to its constant attacks on common sense. They took a ridiculous concept and played it completely straight-laced like a typical POS formulaic modern blockbuster.
This movie suffered from the same problem that many modern alien movies suffer. Here's the logic: If extraterrestrial beings are advanced enough to master intergalactic space travel, that means everything they do has to be on that level. All their technology, their intellect, has to be vastly superior to ours. It's the reason you can't TRAP THEM IN A CLOSET or have their weakness be WATER and send them to a planet that is 70% of their weakness ala Signs which is the worst offender of this principal of all time.
Here are some of the worst "Fuck you, common sense!" moments of the CaA:
1) In the dramatic battle at the end, the aliens go out into the daylight (which they can't see well in by the way) and fight the cowboys and indians in HAND-TO-HAND combat when they have cool lasers and photon guns and shit. Why wouldn't they just unload with their vastly superior firepower and massacre the humans with as little effort as possible? DUMB!
2) Ella claims the aliens can't be allowed to leave the planet or else they'll bring back more of their kind. Uh...don't they have radios or some kind of communication device? You mean to tell me that these creatures have invented intergalactic space travel but they haven't mastered the walkie-talkie? As soon as they found the gold they were looking for, wouldn't they just phone home and let their home planet know they found a shitload of it? RETARDED!
3) Near the end of the film when Jake is trying to escape the alien spacecraft, a dozen aliens descend on him and this is their strategy: Run down an extremely narrow pipe in single file and allow Jake to pick them off one-by-one. Really? That was their plan of attack? Are these the aliens who ride the short spacecraft to school? Why would they do that unless they were stupid but they CAN'T be stupid because THEY'RE ALIENS CAPABLE OF SPACE TRAVEL!
4) Next, (this one just pissed me off) after Ella is injured by the river, she lets Jake carry her fat ass 15 miles across the desert. Then afterwards, she's like "Oh, by the way, I'm an alien and I can heal myself but thanks for hauling me across the desert, bitch." If I was Jake, I would have punched her pretty little eyes through the back of her pretty little skull. TAKE THAT, EXTRATERRESTRIAL HO-BAG!
5) Ella informs Jake that all he has to do to remove the bracelet is clear his mind or some shit. Uh...wouldn't it have fallen off while he was sleeping then or while he was unconscious or while he whacked off (which I assume he did at some point during the events of the movie)? It falls off when he kisses Ella but you can't tell me his mind wasn't racing with the fear of getting alien AIDS at that moment. STUPID!
This movie is the reason I don't review modern movies. By the way, there were a massive amount of SPOILERS in this review so if you didn't want to read them then you shouldn't have read this review. Who cares? It's rubbish anyways. DON'T WATCH IT!
Eventually Fate was going to reach out and bitch slap me across the face, and it finally happened. I reached into the Bag of Fate and pulled the one movie I took a blood oath never to watch again: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Anyone who reads this blog knows that Indiana Jones was my idol growing up. He was so badass fighting Nazis and rocking a five o'clock shadow and pulling hot chicks on all his adventures. Plus his dad was James Bond so that's just icing on the cake, bitch.
So I had mixed feelings when a fourth Indiana Jones was released back in 2008 because I didn't want George Lucas to rape another profitable franchise from my youth, but I gave the movie the benefit of the doubt and attended the midnight showing rocking my fedora and five o'clock shadow. And then I watched a CGI-infested shitfest complete with Shia Ladouche and Russians instead of Nazis...and I was APPALLED!
Here are the top three reasons why this movie sucks ass:
- First of all, Spielberg betrayed his earlier statements and filled the movie with crappy looking CGI effects. Those scorpians weren't really there, but those snakes, bugs, and rats were in the first movie and that's what made them awesome! CGI ruined the new Star Wars trilogy and it took a liquid dump all over Indy, too. I knew I was in trouble the second the movie opened with a CGI praerie dog.
- Next, say what you will about the infamous "Nuking the Fridge" moment, it still wasn't the most ridiculous part of the movie. That distinction goes to the "Shia LaDouche swinging from jungle vines with CGI monkeys" moment, a moment that, even if the rest of the movie had been decent (it wasn't) would have been enough to fart all over the legacy of Indiana Jones.
- Finally, Lucas INSISTING on using aliens...wait, I'm sorry, INTERDIMENSIONAL BEINGS THAT LOOK EXACTLY LIKE ALIENS AND FLY AROUND IN ALIEN SPACESHIPS as the central plot point doomed this movie to EPIC FAIL status. I'm sorry, but Indiana Jones and aliens should not mix. Send him after the Fountain of Youth or Noah's Ark or ANYTHING but aliens was just the wrong way to go here. It made the whole thing a cheese-fest instead of an archaelogist adventure.
I thought I might hate this movie less the second go around, but I hated it equally as much as when my heart was originally broken upon viewing the rapedown of my boyhood idol. Fuck you, Steven and George, fuck you hard up your CGI-enhanced asses.
Why I Hate It: CGI everywhere, as far as the eye can see...
Worst Quote:
Indiana : Knowledge was their treasure...their treasure...was knowledge.
Ask Paul Rudd what the cheesiest movie of the 80's is and he'll tell you, emphatically, it's easily Mac and Me, an hour and forty minute commercial more so than a feature film.
If you haven't seen this 80's shit stain and you're in to terrible movies, you must. This one is a classic...of awfulness. Basically they take E.T. and copy the script scene-for-scene and just make everything stupid.
Their movie equation is as follows:
Single parent + kid in wheelchair + alien puppet = EPIC FAIL!
This movie is infamous for its blatant product placement and its reputation is well earned. Both the human characters and aliens drink a dozen Cokes throughout the course of the movie and the most mind-blowingly retarded scene takes place at a McDonalds where black people gather and dance in the parking lot (as blacks are wont to do) and then the whites perform perfectly choreographed dances inside with Ronald McDonald...not to mention that the alien's name is MAC (Mysterious Alien Creature, my ass!).
The best part of the movie is the end where the father alien actually murders the kid in the wheelchair after blowing up a grocery store with his gat (I swear I'm not making any of this up). That's right; the alien disarms a security gun, takes his gun, and holds the people in the store hostage until he's supplied with a lifetime supply of Coca-Cola (All right, that's made up). And even though you know the aliens will bring the kid back to life, it's still pretty awesome that the creators actually thought it was a good idea to kill a kid in a wheelchair.
"We'll be back!" No alien puppet family, you won't.
Why It's God-Awful: Take everything you loved about E.T. (which for me was nothing) and replace it with cheap puppets, Coca-Cola, and Ronald McDonald...then take a liquid dump on that and serve it on two slices of dogshit. Tada! Mac and Me a la mode.
Best Quote:
Michael: You know what I feel like?
Eric: A Big Mac?
Michael: The man's psychic!
I've decided that I'm just going to review crap all month - total and utter crap. Cinematic diarrhea, if you will. The Room has really set the tone for January and 2011 in general, and, even though it's unlikely anything can top (or bottom?) that rancid sack of buffalo vomit, I'll still hit some major low notes along the way.
Let's head on over to the sci-fi (horror?) section for our next sample of movies gone wrong, Killer Klowns from Outer Space. If this movie has any redeeming quality, it's the fact that it knows that it's crap. It's not trying to be anything but crap. And, at times, it even revels in its own craptitude.
The plot is simple and pretty stupid: Aliens who look like clowns terrorize a small town, kidnapping the locals and placing them in cotton candy cocoons in order to suck their blood through crazy straws. The motivation for the clowns' invasion is never made clear and really, do we even care? They're fucking alien clowns, for Christ's sake! When you've got popcorn guns, balloon dog bloodhounds, and acidic pies, who needs petty things like a plot or character development?
Speaking of the characters, they're awful. The main cast includes a girl who's sole purpose is to fall down and get captured, two guys who want to bang that girl, and then two homosexual brothers (The Terenzi Brothers!) who drive around in an ice cream truck and try to sell ice cream to teenagers having sex in their cars. The alien clowns have deeper characters than most of the humans.
The best (or worst) part of the movie is the end where the cop and the Terenzi Brothers survive the clowns' spaceship exploding by hiding in a clown car that falls hundreds of feet to the earth and then the cop gets out and starts feeling up the chick while the other guy (who is still technically on a date with this girl) just kind of ignores it and you're left to wonder who this girl is going home with or if these two guys are just going to give 'ole Debbie the Chinese finger trap treatment and stuff her harder than a Thanksgiving turkey.
Oh, and just a common sense alert, if the only way to kill the clowns is to blow up their noses, wouldn't the clowns wear some kind of armor or something over their noses to make murdering them more difficult? Maybe I'm thinking too hard for a movie that spells "clowns" with a "k."
Why It's Awful: The Chiodo Brothers (the creators of this hack job) literally just sat in a room and said, "Let's throw together two things people are scared of and make a movie about them. Let's see...how about aliens and...hmm...clowns?" It's the same way Snakes on a Plane got made.
Worst Quote:
Mike Tobacco: (opening a door in the spaceship to reveal another smaller door) Another door! (opens the door to reveal a smaller door) Another door! (Opens the door to reveal a smaller door) Another door! (Opens the door to reveal an even smaller door) Another door!
Let's start 2011 with the best worst movie of the past decade. I'm speaking of course of Tommy Wisaeu's masterpiece of garbage, THE ROOM.
Ever wonder what would happen if one of the Geico cavemen decided to write, star, direct, and produce his own movie even though he had no business doing any of those things? You'd get the most insane, illogical piece of flaming turd of a movie mankind has ever seen. This movie is proof that there is a God and He hates us.
Oh, hi Denny!
This movie is so bad that there are actually midnight screenings of this flick throughout the country (similar to the midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the past) where the audience throws plastic spoons at the screen and tosses a football around to commemorate the craptitude of the movie. Why's the movie so bad? Well, in addition to the acting, writing, dialogue, character development, directing, special effects, and lighting being just absolutely THE WORST, the plot makes absolutely zero sense. Here are some highlights that actually need to be seen to understand just how illogical this movie truly is:
- There's a greeting every two minutes, sometimes in the middle of other, more important lines ("I did not hit her. It's bullshit. I did not hit her - oh, hi Mark!").
- In the first ten minutes of the movie, there are two sex scenes before any semblance of a plot are even hinted at.
- The set includes framed pictures of spoons, which are never explained or even acknowledged.
- There's a random scene where four guys put on tuxedos and throw a football around while they stand three feet away from one another. It has no significance or meaning.
- At one point one character tries to murder another by throwing the guy off the roof. Afterwards, neither one seems to care that this just happened, not even the intended victim.
- Near the end of the movie, one of the major characters simply disappears and his lines are given to a random person we've never seen before.
- Multiple subplots are introduced and then forgotten immediately. These include Denny, a strange man-child, being threatened by a drug dealer who loaned drugs to Denny (Who the hell loans out drugs on credit?), Lisa's mother being diagnosed with breast cancer, and Lisa telling Johney she's pregnant "just to make things interesting" (whatever the fuck THAT is supposed to mean).
- Juliette Daniel's nipples actually spend more time on the screen than most of the main characters.
My head hurts just remembering all the stupidity this movie introduced to the world. This movie makes The Human Centipede look like Citizen Kane. The Room stands as proof that anybody - and I mean any fucking brain dead retard who can't even speak English - can make a movie. In the words of Biff Tannen..."I just wanna say one thing...God bless America."
Oh, hi Mark!
Why It's Awful: It does everything WRONG in the most wrong ways possible. It sits alongside Troll 2 and Surf Nazis Must Die as the absolute worst movies I've ever seen in my entire life. Well done, Tommy Wiseau. You're in wonderful company.
Worst Quote:
Let's stick with the now infamous, "YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISA!!!"
There are some movies that should not be viewed by anyone, not because it's disgusting or violent but because the entire movie is based off an idea thought up by a guy who was drunk and stumbled out of a bar and just blurted out some random bullshit and then made an hour and a half movie based off that stupid bullshit.
In this case, Tom Six stepped out of a bar and said, "Yo, man, wouldn't - wouldn't it be fucked up if three people were connected mouth to anus and had to walk around like - fuck I don't even know what...I guess like - like a human centipede? Wouldn't that be fucked up?"
That's what this movie is about. I was told I "had to see it" so I saw it and it was fucking terrible. The acting is awful, the story is nonexistent, and the characters are stupid cliches. The one thing it does have going for it, however, is three people connected mouth-to-anus and crawling around like a human centipede. If that's something you're interested in seeing, then, yes, this movie is for you. If you enjoy things like character development, a coherent storyline, or any sense of medical realism.
The opening of the movie pretty much sums up the intelligence level of the entire movie. Two stupid American bitches go to Europe, drive around in the country without a GPS, get lost, suffer a flat tire, run through the dark woods to "safety" and the one house they finally come upon is owned by a mad scientist obsessed with creating a human centipede...and it never gets better from there.
The only bright spot is the creepy performance by Dieter Laser. For a movie about an operation involving mouth-to-anus connections, he plays the part straight-faced and comes across as a real psycho.
But seriously, this movie is just shocktastic bullshit in the same vein as Saw and Hostel. Save some time and stick your hand in the blender. It's pretty much the same damn thing.
One Bright Spot: The title tells you exactly what you're going to get: a human centipede. It's not like you can claim you don't know what you're getting yourself into.
Best Quote:
Me: What the fuck was that?! (Me after watching it.)
