Wednesday, September 29, 2010

The Thing With Two Heads (1972)


Best bad quote: "Honey, I was wondering... uh, do you have two of anything else?" 



The trailer for the film so succinctly sums up the major plot points with these two sentences: "It seemed like a good idea at the time. The white bigot was dying the black soul brother needed time to prove his innocence." With lines that ridiculous I bet you're thinking that The Thing with Two Heads is the epitome of camp, with its outrageousness culminating in the most awesome movie ever made. Well, you'd be wrong. Though, that's not to say that this film doesn't have any redeeming features.  

Of the hour and thirty minute run time, the first fifty minutes is a somewhat interesting drama concerned with racism that, unfortunately, seems such a distinct disconnect with what one was expecting based on the trailer. The disparity between what you are expecting and what you get makes it hard to enjoy the film. Well, that, and it's rather boring for most of that fifty minutes too. After that, we get two chase sequences that are fun at first, and more in line with what we are expecting. But, they are not fun enough to really sustain twenty-five minutes and become repetitive. The fifteen minute quick-fix finish ends with an unsatisfying, but hilariously abrupt ending.  

The white bigot, Dr. Kirshner (Ray Milland), is a surgeon who has been experimenting with a way to transplant a head from a dying body onto the body of another, allowing the new head to ultimately take control of the body. After a month or so, the old head is removed. Dr. Kirshner is comatose and dying of chest cancer, so his right hand man must make a quick decision: let the old man die or transplant his head onto the body of a black death row prisoner Jack Moss (played by Rosey Grier) who, at  the last minute, decided to donate his body to science in hope that he would gain more time to prove his innocence. What the "black soul brother" didn't count on was that he would wake up with the head of a racist old white man attached to him and sneering in his ear. 

As Dr. Kirshner doesn't have control of his new body yet, Jack escapes and takes along not only the reluctant head of the bigot, but also the brilliant Dr. Williams. In one of the more compelling scenes in the first part, Dr. Kirshner wrongs Dr. Williams in a confrontation that cements the fact that Dr. Kirshner is a bigot in a believable way- in a way that is unsettling in its unfairness and wrongness. Dr. Kirshner meets Dr. Williams for the first time after hiring him based on just his excellent credentials. However, after he discovers that the Dr. Williams is black, he tries to back out of their employment contract by saying that something unexpected has come up. Unfortunately for Dr. Kirshner, there is no "Void if the man you hire is black" clause and Dr. Williams is allowed to work out his time allotted in the contract after an uncomfortable confrontation.

After the confrontation Dr. Kirshner has an excellent line in defense of his actions that sums up his stupidity and bigotry perfectly. He says: "I just got carried away by some superficial accomplishments before interviewing the man." He doesn't say that Dr. Williams is only a brilliant doctor if he can't see the color of his skin, that the perceived wrongness of being black supersedes his excellent accomplishments. The wrongness of his dark skin now defines him, and thus relegates his accomplishments to a superficial, unimportant status. That it doesn't occur to Dr. Kirshner that he is making decisions based on the superficiality of skin color would be hilarious in its idiocy if it weren't so terrible and so true to life.

The rest of the film involves Jack and Dr. Williams running from the cops. Because this is the 1970's, the duo, along with the reluctant head of Dr. Kirshner, end up at a motocross rally where they steal a bike. The subsequent chase scene results in a couple of cops crashing their cars at multiple angles- I mean, fourteen doofy cops crashing their cars in wacky ways. The end of the film comes rather quick, as I've said. And, though it's rather unsatisfying, the sheer absurdity of the last two scenes will make you laugh. 

This film had its moments. At times it was intentionally and unintentionally funny. And, despite the ridiculous premise, the bigotry of the Dr. Kirshner was believably written. The problem is that the movie gets bogged down by, well, nothingness. There are so many long stretches of nothing, especially with the twenty-five minute chase scene, that watching becomes a test of patience. 

I almost just want to recommend the trailer for this movie, as it really boils the film down to its best components. But, then you'd miss the magnificent last two scenes. So, I recommend that you watch the trailer and then watch the end of the movie. Five minutes of its best parts, without all the nothing, is really the only way you can enjoy the absurdity of The Thing with Two Heads

Rating: 2 1/2  out of 5 Two-Headed Gorillas
   

Here's the trailer for your veiwing pleasure.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Fantastic Fest Double Feature: Machete Maidens Unleashed! and Sharktopus

 Fantastic Fest is an Austin, Texas film festival that specializes in horror, fantasy, sci-fi. I was lucky enough to attend the screening of Mark Hartley's follow up to his 2008 documentary on Australia's exploitation scene, this time about the Filipino exploitation scene, and the premier of Syfy's new creature feature on a double bill that revolved around Roger Corman. 

In Mark Hartley's documentary, Machete Maidens Unleashed!, he explores the American B- movie, low budget film industry's use of the Philippines and its people as a vehicle for making cheap movies with the popular elements: beasts, blood and breasts. Pro-Americanism, a "Wild East" (an Asian Wild West) climate where everyone was packing heat, the fact that so many people would do anything for a little cash, and exotic jungle sets proved the perfect mix of elements for low budget film makers looking to capitalize on the popular genres of drive-in fare in order to turn a profit. The film featured insightful and funny interviews with directors, including Roger Corman, actors, and film critics. Of course, the film also featured hilarious trailers and clips from Filipino exploitation films such as Corman's The Big Dollhouse, a women in prison type film, and For Y'ur Height Only, a movie about a Filipino midget James Bond, as well as many others.

The director, in a Q and A beforehand, mentioned that unlike other documentaries, we wouldn't learn anything from this film. I'll have to disagree with him, as not only did I feel like I learned quite a bit about Filipino filmmaking but, also, a little bit about Filipino history in the '70's and '80's. And, even if I  hadn't learned anything substantial, I would have at least learned that there are a lot of really awesome movies I have to get my hands on. Overall, I found Machete Maidens Unleashed! to be a lot of fun and a superbly entertaining look into a genre of film that's often unfairly overlooked. 

Next up was a Q and A with Roger Corman himself. Also in attendance was his wife, Julie. In reference to a comment made in an interview from Machete Maidens Unleashed! someone asked if Corman was really in it for the money. He and his wife's answer was a hilarious (and I'm paraphrasing): "What? Are you fucking kidding me? Of course." Then he and his wife received a "Syfy Imagine Greater" Lifetime Achievement Award that was, for some reason, some sort of sword.  

The introduction to Sharktopus really set the mood for the film to come. It was going to be fun, it was going to be campy, and should not be taken too seriously. The director, Declan O'Brien, and the Cormans cheekily warned us that Sharktopus was under the impression that the movie was about his plight, but when he found out how evil he had been portrayed he became upset. It was an amusing segue into the film, and a hint  that even the filmmakers didn't take the film too seriously. And, really, how could you? It's a movie about a half-shark, half-octopus military experiment gone wrong presented on the Syfy channel. If you take something like that seriously, you're doing it wrong.

Like I said, this movie was fun. A lot of people like Mega Pirhana and Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, and yeah, those films have their moments. But, I've seen better. Sharktopus is better. It surprises me that those films get a lot of attention when Syfy and the Asylum have put out so many better films with more than just a few entertaining moments in films that are, overall, rather boring. Sharktopus is not boring. Everything about Sharktopus works, from the ridiculous premise to the campy death scenes to the slightly douchey characters. And, of course, it features Eric Roberts, who is always awesome.

One death scene I found particularly hilarious features the Sharktopus jumping up to grab a bungee jumping woman. The Sharktopus itself is particularly hilarious, as well. It has the head of a Great White Shark, with huge superfluous (read: awesome) spikes sticking out near the gills, with the tentacles of an octopus. And, it was created to fight pirates. Seriously. Apparently military scientists drop a lot of acid when brainstorming. 

Really, it's just a fun movie. As Declan O'Brien's previous ventures with Syfy show, he knows how to play to the B-movie genre and craft a film that's not only entertaining from start to finish, but hilarious too. 

Sharktopus premiers tonight on Syfy at 8:00 central time. I'm going to watch it again, and I hope you don't miss it.  


This article is also posted here and here at badmovienite.com

Friday, September 24, 2010

Solarbabies (1986)



Best bad quote: "Cut your breath before you betray your putrid thinking!"

Solarbabies is a strange film that screams 1980's CHEESE so loudly you almost can't hear the whispers of the decent film that attempt to permeate its cheesy surface. The film is set in a post-apocalyptic future where some sort of fascist, Earth hating police force control the water supply. They also run a prison for children, called the Orphanage, where children they've captured are indoctrinated into their ways in order to become good members of their police force. 

For some reason, they also are indoctrinated into the way of roller skating. Our heroes,  the Solarbabies, are a team of Skateball players (Lacrosse on skates). This really has no bearing on the plot, except to maybe establish why the heroes are friends, and to give the heroes faster means of getting around rather than walking. I don't know. Was roller skating cool in the 1980's?

The adorable Lukas Haas, called Daniel, discovers a glowing, sentient extraterrestrial sphere that communicates telepathically and does magic things. The sphere heals Daniel's deafness and later creates a thunderstorm in the Solarbabies' club room that results in a cheery, awkward water fight. 

Don't ask why I'm dressed as Raiden.
 Unbeknownst to the Solarbabies, they have a stalker who witnesses this little display. He's Darstar, some sort of gorgeous not-quite Native American falconer who is one with his owl. He's also played by Adrian Pasdar, he who gives all those blessed with sight a serious boner. (Guys and girls.) He decides to steal the sphere -for some reason- and runs away.

Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you. 
The movie already feels like it is running at a fairly fast pace, though a lot of time is spend watching the characters fuck around, but it is here that the story telling becomes noticeably choppy. We the audience know that Darstar stole the sphere, and it is conceivable that Daniel will go after it as he has a connection with it. But, we never see the Solarbabies find out about the theft, nor do we see Daniel leaving. The girl, Terra, tells the leader, Jason, that Daniel has gone after the sphere and the Solarbabies decide to go skating after him. It feels very rushed, like a lot got left on the cutting room floor. I felt like I was being told to "MOVE MOVE MOVE" by a gruff Colonel Director who was really eager to get on with it. 

What follows is a montage of skating and running away from the police, complete with terrible '80's music and impossible stunts. The Solarbabies were standing in the danger zone, but love just wouldn't leave them to ever stand alone. How'd they end up in Danger Zone anyway? Doesn't that highway have signs? At one point, the kids launch themselves over a huge crevice, like twenty frikin' feet, with just the power of love and their sweet ass wheels.

The jump in Speed is more believable.
 We find out, through a couple of slaughters and scenes of horrific torture, that the bad guys want to destroy the sphere for some reason. The heroes just want to keep the sphere away from them because, well, I guess it wouldn't be cool if it was destroyed. I said "for some reason"  and "I guess" because, really, we never really find out what the sphere really does (besides magic things). 

At the end of the movie, it destroys the dam that holds in all the water, creates a thunderstorm and then goes back to space. The breaking of the dam gives everyone free water. But, really, an extraterrestrial being came from space to free water for some humans living in a specific region on Earth? Did it jumpstart Earth's natural processes in order to get things growing again? Is it from a race that just really hates evil monopolies of life sustaining substances? Is it Jesus? We never really find out. 
   
Solarbabies is an interesting, if flawed, ride through 1980's apocalyptic fiction. There are many things I found laudable, but also many things I found laughable to the point of being awful. The laudable? The sets are cool. Tiretown had this awesome Mad Max crossed with a carnival thing going on that I found appealing. I was compelled by the sentient, alien sphere and what it was. (Though, we disappointingly never really find out its purpose.) Also, the effects are rather well done for the time period.  
  
The back story was interesting, with the fascist police state fighting with people called Eco Warriors and then stealing their children to be indoctrinated in prison-schools. Unfortunately, a lot intriguing ideas (more than I can cover here) have been reduced to half-baked threads that don't go anywhere. The film seems to have been reduced to bare bones, and that's a shame. And, the roller skating. It's just awkwardly shoved in there, like they needed something to appeal to kids. The roller skating scenes could have been better spent filling out the more interesting plot points.

This movie is much better than its title and premise suggest, but overall, disappointing. As a big fan of post apocalyptic movies and fiction, I think they often tend to try to do too much and end up having to skim off the basics in order to even have a viable movie. Solarbabies is certainly guilty of this. We are treated to too many interesting concepts that can never be fully explored within the time constraints. And, then, we waste time with fucking Lacrosse on skates.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Glowing Extraterrestrial Balls 
   

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Titanic II (2010)


Best bad quote: "Airplanes are big, babe. Trains are big. This? This is monumental."

The Asylum sometimes puts out some pretty good films. I mean, pretty good as long as you think of them in the context of what they are: direct to DVD, cheap schlock made solely for raking in cash. When The Asylum does good, sometimes their films are actually decent movies, sometimes their films are just mindless fun, and, sometimes, their films are just hilariously bad. And, a lot of the time, unfortunately, their lowest common denominator films are just plain boring.

"Titanic II" is less electric boogaloo and more a bland Saturday afternoon film perfect for filling up time slots on SyFy. I find it hard to believe that you could take this ludicrous premise and make it bland, but it happened.  In the film, someone with too much money and too little grey matter commissions a replica of the Titanic, calls it Titanic II, and has it set sail on the exact date the original Titanic did. That someone would tempt fate that casually is inherently hilarious. However, the rest of the film's mediocrity really overwhelms that hysterical nugget of idiocy.

This surely will not end in tragedy.

The first three minutes of the film consists of some guy preparing for and then surfing a wave caused by a glacier falling into the ocean. You might wonder, as I did, if this has anything to do with the story. Surprisingly, it does. You see, the Titanic II's downfall this time is not just caused  by one man's hubris and a glacier. It's global warming and two huge chunks of glacier that fall into the ocean. The first causes icebergs to smash into the ship, piercing the hull. And, just to add insult to injury,  the second wave wipes out all the passengers who managed to escape via lifeboat and turns the ship over. The Titanic II's maiden voyage was even more of a clusterfuck than its predecessor's.

The "love-story" in this film involves the young-ish playboy who commissioned the ship and his ex-girlfriend, a nurse that he hired to work on the ship. Once the four women he showed up with die (or are rescued via helicopter), he and his ex make amends while frantically attempting to escape the sinking ship. As seen in the titanic piece of shit that was 2012, imminent death plus conveniently dead current love interest equals reconciliation for ex lovers. Let's hope that the next time my heart is broken by some douchebag, a disaster will soon be on the horizon to bring us back together.  

I appreciate that though The Asylum just makes films just for the money, films that essentially rip off Hollywood, occasionally their films skew enough from Hollywood to make them worth watching. They skew from Hollywood not only in the sense that the films are lower budget, B to Z grade films, but also in the sense that they do take some risks that we don't usually see in the typical Blockbusters. 

I say usually, because in this case, the male love interest dies saving the female's life, just like in Titanic. In most insipid movies like Titanic II, though, your possession of a love interest means you'll likely live if they live. I mean, who wants to survive a disaster if you've got no one to bone afterward? So, in this case, the love interests' death is a bit of a surprise. This isn't the "What if the movie Titanic had a happier ending?" that is expected.   
     
And really, that's all there is to say about the film. It's just bland. The CGI is bad, the character's are unlikable and the story is uninspired. I really wish the "Titanic II" could have been better, but The Asylum really failed this time. Despite a great title that is just begging to become a classic piece of B movie trashy fun, Titanic II turns out to be one of The Asylum's more forgettable films.

Rating: 2 Sets of Arm Candy out of 5





Sunday, September 19, 2010

Skinned Deep (2004)


Best bad quote: "I didn't know if you were hungry, so I brought you some soup and money." 

A vacationing family get a flat tire and rely on the kindness of a weird old woman at a local rest stop. And, because the family have never seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, they find themselves brutally and hilariously murdered by a strange set of monstrous siblings and their grandma-mother, Granny, after being invited to a dinner of raw flesh served on cardboard. There's nothing really interesting about the human family except that they are ridiculously stupid and annoying. Oh, and their acting is atrocious, but in a hilarious way. The mother, father and brother are, as I've said, thankfully, brutally and deliciously slain very early on. However, the "better actress," moody teenaged Tina, is kept alive because the sensitive sibling, Brain, wants to keep her. He's called Brain because he has a huge, grotesque exposed brain, often covered by a disgusting burlap sack. Despite his absolute filthiness and the murderous tendencies that run in his family, Brain is very sweet and just wants Tina to love him. 

Just look at that face. What's not to love?
  
Of course, because all homicidal families consist of radically different personalities, Brain's two brothers are completely different from him. First, there is Surgeon General. He's the bad ass motherfucker you see on the box art with the huge metal jaws. He does most of the killing in the family, though, disappointingly, not with his jaws. He does have a small hand held blade that's good for slicing throats and dicing stupid people. He slices Tina's little brother completely in half, for fuck's sake. Then, there's the veteran of hilariously bad movies himself, Warwick Davis. In Skinned Deep he plays an albino (or flour covered, I'm not quite sure which) twitchy, insane imp called Plates. On his back he wears a spring loaded basket of, you guessed it, plates and throws them at his enemies while laughing manically. He only actually kills one person this way, but it's the murderous intent that counts!

No! Not the plates! Not the PLATES!

 If the wacky homicidal characters don't have you interested yet, then what the hell is wrong with you? Ahem, I mean, then just wait! It gets more ridiculous. With Tina imprisoned in a room plastered floor to ceiling with newspaper,  Granny gets back to running her rest stop diner, where a group of geriatric bikers called the Ancient Ones stop for coffee. The leader of the pack stays behind in order to get some sweet grandma lovin,' but is quickly slain when Tina, who has escaped, begs for help. When their leader doesn't show up, the Ancient Ones go back only to discover his blood soaked jacket. Of course, this means war. The battle comes later, though.

In the mean time, Tina and Brain go on date! Brain dons a Kindergartener's construction paper and plastic bead Indian headdress and takes Tina for a ride on his motorcycle. While on their picnic Brain and Tina have a serious conversation about Brain's daddy issues with his Creator and Brain fantasizes that he were normal. Everyone wants to run down the streets of New York completely naked with their penis flopping about, right?

Don't laugh. He takes Arts and Crafts very seriously.

The next day Tina and Brain are wed in beautiful ceremony where several fat rednecks are slaughtered by Surgeon General and Plates waxes poetic about his love of plates. The ceremony culminates with Surgeon General and Plates forcing Tina to feed one of the rednecks sand until he dies. Pitiful Brain begs them not to make her do it because she is innocent, but the redneck just dies too darn fast for them to have a good conversation about it.
Look, I said don't laugh.
Luckily for Tina, Brain is a sweet boy and he decides to let her trauma subside instead of consummating their marriage the same night. What Brain doesn't know, however, that Tina's first kill has awakened an angry beast inside her- a beast that is thirsty for blood and vengeance. Brain comes to apologize to Tina and she tries to convince him to run away with her. Because he is basically a dweeby, filthy human with a huge brain and a homicidal family, he understandably declines. So, in the saddest and most hilarious scene ever, she rips open his head and he dies horribly, writhing on the floor. As he dies, the contents of his brain, wooden children's blocks covered in green goo, spill out and spell "LOVE." Tina stomps the blocks and when she lifts her foot, they spell "HATE." Harsh, man.

As Tina escapes into the bowels of the house, the Ancient Ones show up to wreak some vengeance of their own. One by one each member of the family, including the mysterious Creator- a headless, oily body builder with a loincloth labeled "DYNO-MITE!!" - meet their well-deserved fates in horrible, horrific and hilarious ways. The film even has a twist ending in store for poor Tina, who escapes to the local Sherriff's office. Well, it's a twist for anyone who doesn't know anything about horror movies, but still.

I did say horrifying.

  
When I first saw this movie in 2005 I was just getting into B-movies. Back then, I had a lot of fun with it. But, five years and many viewings later, I can honestly say that this is my favorite "bad" movie. Everything about this movie is hilarious, from the acting that's so bad it almost seems intentional to the absolutely balls out absurdity of the story. Skinned Deep is the epitome of the hilariously bad movie, or so-bad-it's-good movie, that we, as bad movie lovers hope to be blessed with when we put a new film into our DVD player.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Strangled Cats
  

Bonus picture: