IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Die Hard Dracula

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Die Hard Dracula

diehard

“Die Hard Dracula” is an incompetently made movie on every level. The editing is jerky and feels devoid of continuity, the writing is bizarrely inconsistent in tone, the costumes and makeup are ridiculous, the effects are garbage, and all of the acting is either cartoonishly over-the-top or non-existent.

An interesting thing I noticed from digging around on the web is that “Die Hard Dracula” is clearly one of those movies that no one knew how to market (and not just because it is horrible). If you look at any of the posters or covers for the movie, they all portray a typical vampire horror movie. However, the tone of the movie is oddly light-hearted, and at times is a full-on spoof of “Dracula” and vampire movies in general.

diehard9At the same time, it doesn’t go quite so far as to be a “comedy”, so it would be deceptive to market it as such without acknowledging the attempt at horror. I’ve noticed this same trend with other movies that mix styles (whether they are good or not). It is difficult to easily pitch or sell something that has both genuine horror and comedy elements. In this case it didn’t matter all too much, because the movie is astoundingly horrible all-around and fails to blend the genres successfully. However, this problem does affect good horror-comedy movies of recent years like “Cabin in the Woods” and “Drag Me to Hell”.

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Managed to drag both Joss Whedon and Sam Raimi into this.

I can’t say for sure, but some of the comedic moments in “Die Hard Dracula” seem forced enough that they might have been added in after the fact, perhaps once everyone realized how bad the final product was going to be. In particular, the ending feels very unnatural, jarring, and improvised. Then again, most of the movie feels oddly edited and confusing, so the ending almost blends in. I’m not sure if this is a case where the sudden, whiplash-inducing tone shifts between horror and comedy were intended from the original script, or if they are the results of a flubbed attempt to salvage/redirect the movie. In any case, the writing and editing crash together to turn the film into a complete cinematic wreck. Even if all other elements were average or better, this film would have been a failure due to those aspects alone. Fancy trim on a poorly constructed house isn’t going to make for a good home, after all. Unfortunately for the film, not even the trim-work looks good in this mess.

If you are going to make any kind of horror movie, you absolutely must be able to do makeup and practical effects (unless your name is Uli Lommel and you don’t have standards). “Die Hard Dracula” not only has horrible makeup on Dracula, but it fails to be even remotely consistent with his appearance. The closest thing I can liken Dracula’s ever-changing appearance to is how Jason changes his appearance under the hockey mask from one “Friday the 13th” movie to the next.

diehard1 diehard2 diehard3 diehard4As you should probably expect, the acting in this movie is generally horrible. There is one notable exception: Bruce Glover (“Diamonds Are Forever”) plays Dr. Van Helsing, and is the one saving grace of the movie. He chews the scenery like he is sucking life force out of the props, and actually makes the movie watchable while he is on screen. His performance is perhaps the only reason I might consider recommending this movie. He is at the very least a breath of fresh air next to the fellow playing Dracula. Ugh.

I have really only scratched the surface of the landfill of garbage that is this movie. There are flying special effects worthy of “Pumaman”, and a flying coffin sequence that will make you cringe. Dracula even shoots lightning out of his hands like Emperor Palpatine at one point for some reason.

You may notice that I have managed to avoid the plot of this movie so far. That was quite intentional. Honestly, there isn’t an easy way to sum it up sensibly. There is a young man who watches his girlfriend instantly drown in a water skiing accident, after which he goes backpacking in Europe to grieve. He makes a vague wish upon a star that resurrects a drowned woman in eastern Europe. Meanwhile, Dracula exists and starts creeping out the drowned woman’s town. Protagonist-man shows up in the town while back-packing, falls in love with the formerly drowned woman, and volunteers to help Van Helsing kill the local vampire menace. Shenanigans ensue as Van Helsing repeatedly fails to vanquish the vampire to comedic effect. Ultimately, Dracula turns everyone into vampires and they live happily ever after for eternity.

 

It is all pretty much nonsense.

The thing that really gets me about this movie is that I can’t decide if I hate it or love it. It is incompetent on every possible level, and fails miserably at everything it sets out to do. The pacing slows down quite a bit, and there isn’t much entertainment value to be had, but I can’t help but enjoy it in retrospect. I feel similar about this movie as I do about “Leonard Part 6” I suppose: it is a rare case where I enjoy a failed comedy, in just how miserably it fails to be comedic. I also just love Bruce Glover’s performance, which is probably the tipping point for me. I definitely recommend checking out the trailer above: if that seems like something you might enjoy, then check it out.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Zaat

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Zaat

zaat

“Zaat” is a movie about a mad scientist who turns himself into a human-catfish hybrid, and then terrorizes a town. He kidnaps and performs experiments on people until he is discovered and defeated. That premise sounds vastly much more interesting than this movie actually is. Generally, most of the movie is a man in a bad monster suit stumbling around blindly, occasionally carrying people around or fiddling with machinery . There’s also some lovely stock footage of fish with hilariously over-the-top voice over.

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This pretty much covers everything

One thing I will say is that watching a catfish-man walking around with a giant syringe and trying to do science is pretty enjoyable. Just watching him shamble about in general and kidnap people is delightfully ridiculous given the suit’s limited range of motion…for the first few minutes. After that, the movie gets pretty unbearably monotonous and repetitive. The pacing moves along about as quickly as a catfish on dry land.

zaat2Some people regard this as a titan of bad movies, but I just don’t see it. It has gained a cult following since being featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 as “Blood Waters of Dr. Z”, and to be fair, the riff is quite good. However, I just don’t think the movie itself has much entertainment value. There is some miserable acting, horrible props and effects, outstandingly boring cinematography, and plenty of general incompetence, but most of it doesn’t make for laughs. I did get some chuckles out of the generally clumsy suit, but that was about it. The folks at RedLetterMedia disagree, and seem to get a real kick out of this flick:

I can see why some people enjoy this film, so I can give it a very light recommendation. It doesn’t do much for me, but I think enough bad movie fans have enjoyed it that it is worth giving a shot. I can definitely recommend the MST3k riff, or at least the highlights. That way you will get all of the shambling monster and stock footage without all of the droning in between.

 

 

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IMDb Bottom 100: Friday the 13th (Parts V and VIII)

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Happy Friday the 13th everybody! To celebrate the occasion, I have a double feature of two IMDb Bottom 100 alumni from the infamous “Friday the 13th” franchise. There’s also a Stanley Cup Final game tonight, so you should dig out your hockey masks either way.

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Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning

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“Friday the 13th: Part V” is probably the most intensely reviled of all of the “Friday the 13th” movies. “Part V” has even been ignored in the continuity of the subsequent films in the franchise. There are a lot of reasons why this film ultimately failed so spectacularly, but the most famous reason is related to a key aspect of the previous movie, “Part IV: The Final Chapter”: Jason was killed in the end, and is actually still dead for once.

That’s right: Jason, the iconic hockey-masked star of the franchise, is not in “Part V”. Instead, the killings are being perpetrated by a copycat, whose identity is withheld until the end of the movie.

It plays out like a particularly dark episode of Scooby-Doo. In the end, the dude under the mask is “the one guy from earlier”

Most fans of the franchise felt quite cheated by the absence of Jason, particularly due to the heavy implications from the promotional materials that the super-zombie would be returning.

friday3The problems don’t end with just Jason’s absence and the deceptive marketing. Rumor has it that the MPAA ratings board was lax with their judgements on “The Final Chapter” due to their belief that it would, indeed, be the concluding movie in the franchise. When “A New Beginning” came up for review, evidently the ratings board was harsher than ever. In order to avoid a NC-17 (and the significant hindrance that brings to distribution and box office revenues), massive cuts had to be made to any graphic scenes. The results of this are a number of off-screen deaths, minimized gore effects, and an overall underwhelming “Friday the 13th” experience in the violence department, which did not go over well with franchise fans.

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This is as bloody as the movie gets

Alas, there are even more issues with “Part V”. The soundtrack elects to use “updated” 80s style pop music instead of the traditional horror music you might expect. The characters are mostly shallow caricatures and stereotypes (more-so than usual), and comic-relief comes in the form of unexpected and unnecessary poop jokes. There also isn’t a true protagonist, as Tommy (a character returning from “Part IV”) is absent from most of the movie, and acts as the primary red herring for the audience. Because of this lack of focus, the audience doesn’t get enough time with any characters to form emotional connections, and thus the story doesn’t have any sense of gravity. When a character dies, the audience needs to feel a sense of loss. In this movie, the lack of character depth means that effect doesn’t happen.

While “Friday the 13th: Part V” has plenty of problems and is a long way from being good, I feel like it doesn’t deserve all of the ire that it gets. It seems to me that it spurned the fan base, but mostly in a way that was outside of the film-makers control (the ratings cuts and the deceptive marketing). I personally think that using a Jason copycat is a pretty interesting concept that could have panned out better. It played with the established mythos of the franchise, which is a cool way to mix things up in a formula that was on the verge of going stale.

Still, this is widely regarded as the worst movie in the franchise, and I agree that it is certainly a heavy contender for that title. The other most common candidate for that claim (outside of the semi-parody “Jason X”) is…

Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan

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Much like “Part V”, “Part VIII” drew an immense amount of ire from franchise fans and general audiences alike for its deceptive marketing. The movie known as “Jason Takes Manhattan” in fact mostly takes place on a cruise ship, and is primarily filmed in Canada. That wouldn’t be such a huge deal if the film’s marketing didn’t look like this:

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To say the least, the marketing didn’t do the movie any favors with audiences.

Personally, I like the idea of relocating Jason to mix the movies up a bit. And honestly, a cruise ship works splendidly for the “Friday the 13th” formula: you have a large group of people who are isolated from society, and prone to all sorts of youthful shenanigans. I’m actually quite curious if this setting clicked with the writer more-so than having Jason wander the streets of the Big Apple, which is pretty far outside of his usual style. My guess is that the script needed a reason for Jason to be in New York, and the ship was intended initially as just a story mechanism, maybe with just a kill or two. I’m willing to wager that the urban setting caused a lot of problems for the Jason formula, so the writer ultimately relegated the NYC portion of the story to what is essentially an extended chase scene.

friday14 friday19Once again, there are a lot of issues with “Part VIII” that go beyond the deceptive marketing. The protagonist has a number of hallucinations of Jason as a child, which are never fully explained. She is also afraid of water due to a traumatic experience at Crystal Lake as a young child, which is implied to have been Jason attempting to drown her, despite that not being Jason’s M.O. Further, the New York sewers are conveniently filled with a toxic waste that melts skin, which is used to defeat Jason at the end of the movie. During that death sequence, Jason’s under-mask makeup is absolutely miserable when compared to previous films, and worse yet, he somehow reverts to his child-form after being thoroughly melted by the toxic sludge. Even worse yet, the child-form of Jason looks almost nothing like the previous depictions of his younger self. These are all generally small things, but the missed details stack up eventually. Also, a character has a fist-fight with Jason. I still can’t decide whether that was dumb or amazing.

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“So…we’re going with that?”
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You can guess how well this goes

In general, “Jason Takes Manhattan” is primarily a victim of fan rage at the deceptive marketing for the movie. The film is technically better than “A New Beginning” in my opinion, but a long way off from being good. Yet, once again, I feel like it gets far more loathing than it really deserves. With both of these movies, the filmmakers took risks to mix up a formula that was wearing thin. They didn’t wind up panning out, but I can’t help but appreciate the creative efforts in both of these movies. Personally, I think I like both of them more than “Part VII”, which features a telekinetic psychic who battles Jason with her superpowers. That movie, while probably more competent than either of these, is just damn stupid.

Unless you are dedicated to watching the entire “Friday the 13th” franchise, both “Part V” and “Part VIII” are totally skippable. If you are curious, I recommend just looking up the highlights from each. “Part VII”, however, is a bizarre love-hate experience that i can definitely recommend to bad movie fans.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: The Hottie and The Nottie

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The Hottie and The Nottie

Hottie_and_the_nottie

“The Hottie and The Nottie” has been sitting at the bottom of the IMDb Bottom 100 for quite some time. If it weren’t for the current “Gunday” situation, it would still be holding the #1 spot. Given that this is a Paris Hilton movie, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect out of this thing content-wise. However, I was curious going in as to how this movie compares to her other (many) appearances in the list, such as “Pledge This” and “The Hillz”. Oddly, I didn’t find this movie to be dramatically worse than those in any way.

Of course, the message in this movie is abysmal. Essentially, it is an “Ugly Duckling” tale that reinforces the idea that a character/person does not have value until/unless they are attractive. It also presents the audience with one of the most unintentionally reprehensible protagonists I’ve seen in a movie: the writers don’t seem to realize that they have crafted a complete scumbag of a character, and assumes the audience is on board with him throughout the movie.

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Despite the fact that they are standing on a boat, I am very much not on board with either of these characters.

The plot follows a guy (Joel David Moore, the fellow on the right above) who is attempting to land the girl of his (primary school) dreams, who is played by Paris Hilton. He is hindered by the fact that she has a protective, unattractive best friend, and by the mostly unaddressed fact that he compulsively lies constantly about everything. The plot wants us to believe that only one of those is a real obstacle. In any case, he spends a significant portion of the movie being grossed out by the unrealistically enhanced ugly friend while trying to scheme ways to dispose of her, all while continuing to lie his way into a pseudo-relationship with the Paris Hilton character.

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They go pretty unnecessarily above and beyond with the practical effects

The plot takes the predictable “Ugly Duckling” turn when the ugly friend has cosmetic/dental surgery, after which the lead suddenly realizes he prefers her to Paris Hilton’s character. Instead of having to deal with a realistic comeuppance for the shit he pulls throughout the movie, he pretty much gets exactly what he wants. I basically finished the movie by declaring: “What a fuckhead”.

hottie_and_the_nottie2All of that said, this movie’s failings were mostly limited to the writing and the makeup. I don’t recall any massive technical errors, like the sound editing and cinematography wackiness of “Pledge This!”.  As I mention in the video review, if this movie is put on mute without subtitles, most of the problems disappear (outside of what story you can pull from the visuals). Then again, I’m also definitely not re-watching this. “Pledge This!” had a couple of pure “WTF is happening?” moments to make it bizarrely entertaining in bursts, but “The Hottie and The Nottie” is devoid of any of that. All of the “humor” falls flat (as you would expect), Paris Hilton can’t act (as you should know), and the story is as sick as it is cliche. All of the mild technical competence behind the scenes can’t make up for the atrocious writing here, so even though this is technically a better crafted movie than “Pledge This!”, I’m tempted to say that “Pledge This!” is more watchable overall.

Still, I don’t think this deserves the top slot in an accurate Bottom 100 movies list. It was hard to sit through, but no more difficult than any of the “Movie Movies”, and it is certainly not as incompetently made as “The Maize” or “Birdemic”. I’m honestly not sure how this movie specifically drew the ire of the IMDb voters: while the writing and the story are abysmal, nothing made this movie stand out to me among the other IMDb Bottom 100 comedies. It certainly isn’t anywhere near being good, and I am definitely not recommending it, but I can’t help but disagree with the IMDb voting herd on this one. In my opinion, there is another Paris Hilton movie that deserves that kind of ire, but I’ll get to “The Hillz” later.

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All of the incompetence of “Birdemic” combined with the loathesomeness of “The Hottie and The Nottie” and “Pledge This”
IMDb Bottom 100, Uncategorized

IMDb Bottom 100: Red Zone Cuba

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Red Zone Cuba

redzone

“Red Zone Cuba” (or “Night Train to Mundo Fine”) is a devastatingly boring movie. I have had a more pleasant and entertaining time waiting in line at the DMV. Coleman Francis, the star/writer/director of this fine mess, is lauded as one of the worst fim-makers in history. Aside from “Red Zone Cuba”, he is also responsible for fellow IMDb Bottom 100 movie “The Beast of Yucca Flats”. Francis’s work is often justifiably compared in quality to Ed Wood’s features, though Francis doesn’t have nearly the same cult following as the “Plan 9 From Outer Space” auteur. Personally, I find Wood’s films far easier to suffer through, which gives them the upper hand if you ask me.

redzone1“Red Zone Cuba” follows a band of criminals as they elude the law, get wrapped up in the Bay of Pigs invasion, and get up to general criminal shenanigans. Even that brief synopsis makes this movie sound more interesting than it actually is. The premise actually seems promising at first glance (and might have made for a good movie in other hands), but the execution of this film is beyond disappointing. This is one of those cases where there is no ambiguity as to who is at fault for the miserable end product, because Coleman Francis did damn near everything on screen and behind the scenes of this mess. Predictably, his writing, directing, and acting are all massive weak spots in the film, which doesn’t leave a whole lot to be decent. More than anything, the pacing of the film is truly abysmal. Plot points don’t come quick enough, and there isn’t much sense of motion or urgency for a movie that features a prison break, a shootout, and outlaws generally tearing their way across the country.

redzone2There is no reason at all to sit through “Red Zone Cuba”. Even the MST3k riff doesn’t liven up the experience much. Surprisingly, this movie has recently fallen out of the IMDb Bottom 100, despite it being one of the worst (quality-wise) movies I have watched so far. The will of the internet masses is perplexing and strange.

The only thing about this film I can recommend is the theme song. It has been stuck in my head ever since I watched the movie, and is gleefully one of the few things I can honestly recall about it. Listen if you dare.

 

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IMDb Bottom 100: Troll 2

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Troll 2

troll2

I don’t have to say anything about “Troll 2”. It is a stalwart of B-movie cinema, and an essential watch for anyone who considers themselves a bad movie aficionado. The culture and following around “Troll 2” is only perhaps rivaled in the b-movie world by “The Room”. I can’t recommend it highly enough, even to casual moviegoers. There is an astounding amount of entertainment to pull from this movie’s delightful incompetence.

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For those of you with Netflix and a healthy curiosity for the inner workings of incompetent film-making, check out “Best Worst Movie”. The child actor who starred in “Troll 2” decided to round up the central cast and crew, and fanned the flames of the movie’s cult status with a number of live events. “Best Worst Movie” follows up with all of the major players, and offers some insight into how “Troll 2” came to be. It also spends some time digging into the cult status of the film, and the passionate fans who have managed to raise the movie’s profile to near-classic status. It is a really well-crafted doc, and definitely worth a watch. It was touring the country with “Troll 2” at one point, which makes for a spectacular double feature I’m sure. Try to catch a live screening if you can, I bet the Q+A sessions are a blast.

troll21The “Best Worst Movie” documentary also brings up an interesting question, and one that looms over the IMDb Bottom 100. How does one rank “bad movies”? What actually makes a “Best Worst Movie”? There are some clear issues with the all-out democratic system of the IMDb Bottom 100, as is made clear with the current “Gunday” fiasco, and the Bad Movie Fiends Podcast team raised some good points about the ranking system’s other faults when I poked them about the list. As I have said before, I think what sets apart the upper echelon of B-movies from the rest of the pack are not just the over-the-top pieces of the puzzle (or else every Troma flick would be a treasure), but an honesty and earnestness on the part of the filmmakers.

troll24The common threads between “Troll 2”, “The Room”, “Manos”, “Birdemic”, and “Plan 9” don’t end at poor quality: Claudio Fragasso, Tommy Wiseau, Ed Wood, and James Nguyen all believed / believe that they made great movies. None of them set out to fail. Part of what makes their movies what they are is a precious mixture of genuine failure, the filmmakers’ often inflated egos, and collapsed aspirations all around added into the rest of the film’s concoction. The magic of good-bad movies is a sort of quantum intangible that can’t be replicated intentionally: Sharknados, Mega-Sharks, and Toxic Avengers be damned. Check out the excellent video below for more on this concept:

So, is “Troll 2” the Best Worst Movie? I’m not willing to go that far, but it makes a damn compelling case. It has contributed to setting a new bar for the next oblivious film-maker to limbo under. I think of “Troll 2” as part of the “new elite” of good-bad movies that has collectively set that bar: kind of like the new generation of X-Men introduced in Giant Size X-Men #1.

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I’d rather have the Colossus on my side than Claudio, personally

More importantly for this challenge, where does “Troll 2” belong on the IMDb Bottom 100? Should it just be locked in at the #1 spot to recognize all of the good-bad qualities we love? I don’t think so. “Troll 2” has been hovering towards the top of the Bottom 100, likely due to people giving it ironic 10/10 ratings. And honestly, that’s the nature of the list. Good or bad, the IMDb Bottom 100 ranking is unique. It is a chaotic wasteland of crappy movies that is ruled by the mindless internet mob, but that is what it is supposed to be. It evolves and changes with the will of the people, which makes it equally volatile and fascinating. It deserves consideration as a barometer of the zeitgeist of good-bad movies: there is a lot to glean from it, but it is certainly not sophisticated, just, or conclusive in its rankings. “Troll 2” is plenty incompetent enough for an authoritative list by almost any critic, but that isn’t the way the Bottom 100 works. I will be shocked if it drops out of the ranking, just because I am sure there are many fans who will contribute votes to keep it in for visibility’s sake (then again, “Plan 9” fell off the list), but I don’t see it rising to the forefront. There are other, more fitting lists for it to top out there.

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Prince of Space

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Prince of Space

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“Prince of Space” was a nice change of pace for these IMDb Bottom 100 movies. Instead of Paris Hilton vehicles and “Movie Movies”, “Prince of Space” is something far more familiar and pleasant to me: a poorly translated, lazily dubbed, low budget Japanese sci-fi movie. I grew up on VHS tapes of Toho Showa Godzilla movies, so “Prince of Space” felt like pure nostalgia.

This is my shit.

All of that said, “Prince of Space” doesn’t quite have the same charm of those old Toho features. There is plenty of cheesy dialogue and an outstanding over-the-top villain, but I’ve never been able to suffer child protagonists very well, and there is a hefty dose of those in “Prince of Space”. Also, the plot certainly takes it time getting where it is going, and bad pacing is capable of killing far better movies than this. There is also a fair amount of repetitiveness in this feature, particularly in the encounters between the villain (The Phantom) and the mysterious hero (the titular Prince of Space). Prince of Space makes it clear early on that the weapons used by The Phantom and his minions can not harm him (and repeats this fact numerous times), yet The Phantom attempts to shoot him at every turn. At first it is pretty entertaining, but it gets old very fast.

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The Phantom also looks ridiculous

“Prince of Space” has a fair share of issues, but I’m not so sure it necessarily belongs in the Bottom 100. Not unlike “The Starfighters”, I feel like this movie is a single selection of a massive, forgotten collection of near-identical movies. In fact, there is another Bottom 100 movie that is nearly a carbon copy of “Prince of Space”: “Invasion of the Neptune Men”. Both of these movies I feel are only exceptional due to their inclusion in Mystery Science Theater 3000, and that otherwise they would just be two of the legion of poorly dubbed, goofy Japanese sci-fi movies out there. They are certainly low enough in quality for consideration here, and there is an argument that they are representatives of their genre, but it is hard to shake the fact that these two movies aren’t particularly unique. I even had to re-watch both “Prince of Space” and “Invasion of the Neptune Men” separately to keep from confusing the two: the movies are that similar to each other. The MST3k guys even re-use gags from one riff in the other.

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The Phantom shows up in the MST3k episode on “Invasion of the Neptune Men”

So, do I recommend “Prince of Space” to bad movie aficionados? I’m not so sure. I think that some old Showa Godzilla movies like “Godzilla vs Megalon”, “Godzilla vs Gigan”, and “Invasion of Astro Monster” are far more entertainingly bad than this, but “Prince of Space” isn’t devoid of fun. It might be a delightful/confusing double feature with “Invasion of the Neptune Men”, especially if you dig up the MST3k riffs for both of them.

 

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IMDb Bottom 100: The Album!

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After reviewing “Night Train to Mundo Fine”/”Red Zone Cuba” recently (it’ll be up this week), it occurred to me that there are a lot of fantastic (read: awful) musical numbers in the IMDb Bottom 100 movies. So, here is a collection of a dozen songs from 11 IMDb Bottom 100 films. It is by no means an exhaustive list, but this should be a good sampling of what you can expect out of these movies as far as songs go.

Pod People

Girl in Gold Boots

Night Train to Mundo Fine

The Creeping Terror

The Starfighters

Titanic: And The Legend Continues…

Mitchell

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-up Zombies

Puma Man

Manos: The Hands of Fate

Birdemic: Shock and Terror

IMDb Bottom 100

IMDb Bottom 100: Disaster Movie

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Disaster Movie

disaster

I would like to say that “Disaster Movie” is exactly what you would expect it to be. For the most part, it is. However, it manages to set itself apart from the typical pack of “Movie Movies” that has flooded theaters since the success of “Scary Movie” in 2000. Even compared to fellow Bottom 100 parody “Epic Movie”, “Disaster Movie” is abysmal. In the case of “Epic Movie”, the over-arching plot lampooning “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” at least more-or-less tied the lazy jokes and sequences together, however loosely.

In “Disaster Movie”, in contrast, the connecting plot isn’t itself a parody of anything at all. In a movie so bloated with dated and unnecessary references, the plot of the movie itself fails to lampoon any specific film, instead opting for a dull and generic apocalyptic scenario. Worse yet, the framing just barely manages to move the action along from joke to joke. Essentially, “Disaster Movie” just follows a group of characters as they aimlessly run from location to location. They have a final destination in mind, but the audience has no sense of how close/far from it the characters are at any given time. It drags down the pacing, and sucks all sense of urgency out of the story. Not that anyone actually cared about the story in “Disaster Movie” anyway, though.

Everything else about the movie is generally exactly what you should expect from a “Movie Movie”. Lazy, crass humor is as rampant as the (dated) pop cultural references as they intertwine and mingle throughout the film. Yet, even the references are lazier than you might expect: the central MacGuffin of the plot is a crystal skull from that “Indiana Jones” movie everyone has tried to forget about. At one point, a man clad in a cheap Iron Man Halloween costume suddenly appears on screen, and is subsequently crushed by a falling cow. As best as I can tell, this is a reference to 1996’s “Twister”, a blockbuster that was released well over a decade before this film. The target audience of “Disaster Movie” may not have even remembered “Twister” when this movie came out.

disaster3Perhaps worst of all, towards the end of the film there is a sequence that references the animated movie “Kung-Fu Panda”. In lieu of awkwardly integrating an animated character into the film, there is instead a man dressed in a panda costume who engages in a martial arts fight. Not only is it an unnecessary reference to a children’s movie in an “adult” comedy, but the lazy costume just looks bad (not unlike the previously mentioned Iron Man gag).

disaster2This sort of low quality is basically even across the board in this movie, but most notably in the effects and the writing. The one instance where the movie tries to actually criticize one of its targets winds up being massively hypocritical and jarring. One of the central characters is a very thinly veiled caricature of Juno, the pregnant teenage lead character in the hit movie of the same name. While she is mostly used to make jokes about pregnancy, the writers also attempt to skewer “Juno” by pointing out the laziness of the movie’s humor and pop culture laden dialogue. It should be pretty clear at this point how that criticism is massively hypocritical for a film that consists entirely of pop culture references.

disaster1It should go without saying that I do not recommend that anyone see this movie. There aren’t any laughs to be had here. The most that you can possibly get out of the experience of watching this movie is the feeling of traveling back in time to 2008, and you will immediately realize that it wasn’t worth the trip.

 

(God)Awful Movies, Uncategorized

S.O.S.

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Welcome to yet another installment of (God)Awful Movies! This time around, I’m checking out the baffling Christian music video compilation “S.O.S.”, which was brought to my attention through the most recent episode of RedLetterMedia’s “Best of the Worst”. You can check out the whole video below (and you should, it is a great episode).

Something that you may note from the episode is that the RLM gang’s copy of “S.O.S.” is completely in Japanese, so they do their best to piece together the themes from the visuals alone. They also weren’t able to do much research on the video, given the language barrier. Lucky for me, I found an english copy of “S.O.S.” on YouTube, and was able to learn about the video’s background…sort of.

“S.O.S.” was produced by “The Family International”, which is a sort of peculiar hippie cult version of Evangelical Christianity. I highly recommend reading the wikipedia page on the group, as their theology is nothing short of baffling. Here is an excerpt for you:

“[Loving Jesus] is a term that TFI members use to describe their intimate, sexual relationship with Jesus. TFI describes the “Loving Jesus” teachings as a radical form of bridal theology.[18] It is their understanding of the Bible that the followers of Christ are his bride, called to love and serve him with the fervor of a wife. They took bridal theology further than mainstream Christians by encouraging members to imagine that Jesus is having sex with them during sexual intercourse and masturbation. Male members were encouraged to visualize themselves as women, in order to avoid a homosexual relationship with Jesus.”

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That’s sure something, isn’t it? The only thing I knew about TFI prior to reading that entry was that River and Joaquin Phoenix were both raised as part of the organization for a time, and that it was a bit out of left field. It looks like there is a deep, dark hole to dig into in regards to some shady practices by the organization, but I’m not going to go any deeper into it here. I’d much rather ridicule some ridiculous music videos.

The first segment doesn’t dig explicitly into Christianity, but does give us a ton of goofy robots and early CGI. Watching it in English, it is clearly a luddite/anti-technology song, which comes back in a big way later on. To my dismay, the title song “S.O.S.” in this segment is ridiculously catchy, so I suppose the people behind this have to get kudos for that. It is definitely interesting that without the context of the later videos, it is easy to think that the “angels” in this section are either aliens, greek god-creatures, or sprites of some sort. Given how heavy-handed the segments get later on, this part definitely feels like a “wedge” or “hook” to get general audiences into the fold.

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Surely this technology will save us from the technology
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Worshiping a trash compacter makes about as much sense as cult that produced this mess.
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The cupid/angel/overlords of love. I was a little disappointed that they didn’t fight the robots.

The second segment is probably the most forgettable of all of them. The first couple of minutes show a band repeating the same two lines of a song about a billion times while a “party” commences in front of them. This bit segues immediately into a romantic song (via some of the worst transitions you will ever see) in which two partygoers leer at each other across a room and fantasize about each other. It is astoundingly uncomfortable to watch.

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It holds on this shot for way too long. Try not to make eye contact.

The third segment is nothing short of a beautiful treasure of nonsense. You could basically boil it down to being a “God’s Not Dead” musical comedy. There are a lot of monkey suits (and monkeys in suits?) involved, and you will be left wondering just how our education system managed to fail so many so completely. They even cap it off with a reference to Charles Darwin’s “deathbed conversion”. Oh joy!

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So, we have a guy in a suit being a monkey, and a guy in a suit AND a monkey suit just being a guy. Got it.
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Cronenberg’s Theory of Evolution by Nightmare Selection

The fourth segment is pretty straight-forward anti-abortion propaganda. All subtleties have long been jettisoned by the time this portion gears up, so this song is written from the perspective of the fetus singing to the would-be mother, featuring such lyrics as “Mother keep me, I’m your baby! / Oh Mother let me live, don’t take away my life”. I was completely unprepared for the lyrics to this one, as I initially just saw clips of the Japanese version on RedLetterMedia. With the translations, this segment is by far the most abysmal. Not only is there nothing to laugh at in it, but the damn thing is just disgustingly predatory.

I'm not a doctor or anything, but I'm pretty sure that is just an x-acto knife.
I’m not a doctor or anything, but I’m pretty sure that is just an x-acto knife.

The fifth segment enlightens the audience to the inherent evils of grocery stores, and encourages everyone to abandon technology entirely in favor of living in the woods to count down to the rapture. Yeah, that’s where this is all going. This may be the best segment, just due to the creepy makeup and baffling premise. Once again, the song is undeservedly catchy for a tune about the evil of grocery store scanners.

angels11 angels9Segment six follows up with the same grocery-phobic commune that concludes segment five, and we get to go full-on rapture. There are some lovely interpretive drawings of the rapture featured for some reason, a handy rapture calendar is shown, a lot of vague pointing happens, and Jesus himself makes a fly-by cameo! It all finishes up with the green-screened rapture of the central characters, where they narrowly escape the satanic grocery stormtroopers. It is all quite good fun if you can distance yourself from the fact that people took/take this seriously.

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“awww yisss, rapture!”
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Do rapture calendars involve candy or something, like those advent calendars?
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Vaguely pointing upward. I assume at the flying, crucified Jesus.
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A smiling, crucified Jesus flies overhead. Kind of like a kite I guess.
Google image search hasn’t failed me yet.

For the record, after a green-screened rapture, anything else is going to be an anticlimax. There’s just nowhere to go from there. Nevertheless, there is a segment seven. Outside of some excellent Rick Astley dancing, there isn’t a whole lot to see in this one. The way this segment is shot is really jarring and unpleasant to watch (odd effects mostly), and it doesn’t have any kind of plot within itself. We get some visual recaps from each section over a song about rebirth and the aforementioned Astley-dancing, and then the YouTube video bluescreens for about five minutes. That was my favorite part.

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I’ve never been so happy to see this

So, is “S.O.S.” worth watching? Abso-fucking-lutely, yes. This is a mind-boggling experience to sit through. It had me laughing at cheesy effects and dated fashions, creeped-out by the cultishness of it all, furious at the bullshit propagated by it, and confused beyond any measure. This is a golden find. I don’t know how RedLetterMedia came by this thing, but somebody knew perfectly well what they were passing on. I can only hope for something this gloriously awful when I rummage through bargain bins. Knowing more about the organization behind this video makes it all the creepier and more perplexing to watch, so I’m a little sad that the RLM people didn’t try to dig up more info ahead of time. On the plus side, they get completely blind-sided by the content, which is damn entertaining.

If you are interested in watching the full English version of “S.O.S.”, you can find it below: