Three laughs: The Barbarians

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of themselves, and it is an even better pleasure to find some trash that keeps surprising you than watching most quality films. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

The Barbarians (1987)
Director: Ruggero Deodato

In the 1980's, the once lucrative Italian film industry started to diminish, with directors turning to churning out cheap knockoffs of American hit genre movies for VHS markets. The barbarian picture seemed to be a particularly popular of them, since peplum movies had been big before, in the 50's. And to make one, you really didn't need any more than just a very muscled main actor, a sword, a desert and lots of muscle oil.

The Barbarians was co-produced by the legendary American B-movie company Cannon Films. The original director was the Serbian Slobodan Šijan, but he was replaced by the man behind Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato. For a Deodato movie, the end result isn't as dark as one would think, and the nihilism is kept strictly below the surface. The film's world sees hippie-like natural people getting easily brutalized by stronger hands, and gives little hope for any brainier activity to have much use in the world or there to be any non-violent way to solve conflicts. The Barbarian Brothers (Peter and David Paul) bumble their way through a fantasy landscape, with little agenda of their own and never, ever, giving any thought into anything.

It's a very casual movie for a genre that usually features a larger-than-life threat and some operatic melodrama. As it happens, it is probably the best Groo the Wanderer adaptation one could ever hope for. With twice the Groo!

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The first 20 minutes or so are pleyed relatively easy as far as Italian genre movies go. Michael Berryman from Hills Have Eyes is included in a group of nasty desert warriors who kidnap a woodland hippie queen and take her sons captive. They are seperated and raised to be barbarian gladiators, fighting against bigger and bigger opponents for sport. The first laugh of the film comes from when it is decided they should fight each other, and they are given the first pieces of dialogue. The Pauls really aren't much of actors, and it seems to take everything they have in their heads to try to pronounce words somewhat correctly. But the film is written as they argue with each other all the time. So, there is a contrast of two child-minded muscled barbarianmen arguing unconvincingly and fighting nonchalantly against horders, while Berryman throws more and more goons into finishing them off.

2. The film seems to recognize many of the other faults of the leading men, even making fun of them at points. I especially love the scene where during an espionage mission, they happen to peek into a tent which happens to feature a harem of beautiful ladies. The reaction the Brothers have for this is to do a noise, which is sort of a mixture of an excited yell of a bull in heat, and the wheezing laughing struggles of an asthmatic who has heard the most hilarious joke in the world.

3. The producers, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, were notoriously cheap, so in their pictures everything that was possible to do cheaper, often was. Case in point was the sets and the special effects. The film manages to have a halfway convincing dragon, which looks like a roasted pig, for about two seconds of screentime. The fun begins when it gulps down our heroes and we see how he looks on the inside. It looks like a tunnel with blue and red christmas lights and a fog machine. Who knew dragons had a techno club inside them!

Three Laughs: Surfer - Teen Confronts Fear

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of themselves, and it is an even better pleasure to find some trash that keeps surprising you than watching most quality films. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

Surfer: Teen Confronts Fear (USA, 2018)
Director: Douglas Burke

One might think once you have seen The Room, you have reached an absolute nadir of so-bad-its-hard-to-believe quality. You would be wrong. Tommy Wisesau might have been an auteur that sabotaged every part of the film he was involved in (ig. acting, directing, producing, writing), but at least his cameraman managed to shoot sharp shots. Another important thing is the self-importance and deluded belief in the film one is making. You can't copy the sort of enthusiasm.

Well, move over Tommy, since here comes Douglas Burke, auteur and physics professor at USC. He has directed, written, produced and stars in Surfer. As well as the soundtrack is based on tunes hummed by him. The film's main role is played by his son, Sage Burke, who doesn't seem to be quite as enthusiastic about the art they are creating. It would appear that the titular teen looks so antsy for the most of the movie as if would rather be surfing than listening to his old man's inane monologues throughout the movie.

The super-low budget movie is supposed to be a life-affirming lecture with overt Christian overtones. The titular teen has traumas from  surfing in too massive waves and now has a fear of the ocean. He confronts the spectre of his long-lost father (made, according to him, from squid ink and electricity), who gives him mystical advice on how to confront one's fears. The latter half sees the teen exploring what actually happened to his father, along with lots and lots of filler material about surfing, most of which seems to have been shot on a family vacation.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The main thing one gets from this movie is an idea of how much Douglas is trying to act as hard as he can. Never so much than in an endless monologue (10? 15? 20 minutes? Who can tell?) where he laments his own situation and how in the afterlife they didn't tell him how returning to life would also make him FEEL. Burke adapts a sort of Patrick Stewart imitation, I guess in order to appear Shakespearean. With lines like "I AM LIVING IN AN IRON MAIDEN OF PAIN, BOY!", laughter comes often and tears were rolling down my cheeks on both of my viewings of the movie.

2. The second half has an equally "interesting" take from Douglas, having him break the advice given in Tropic Thunder and attempts to act as a catatonic patient in a wheelchair. The astonishingly tone-deaf and ableist performance is made even sillier with the repetition, with a supervising doctor ordering Sage to repeat that he loves his father over and over again, which makes him go even further catatonic, falling from his wheelchair, and knocking open tha comically huge Coke bottle army underlings had just brought Sage, along with a huge purple plastic straw.

3. There would be plenty of good choices for the 3rd Laugh from Douglas's teachings (like the scene with a beached whale carcass, when he orders Sage to "look at it without me"), but I would like to showcase how brilliant the supporting cast are. Two regular bozos in from lunch are sent to check under cars for hidden bombs by the military, I guess in order to add to the runtime, and to show how secretive the military base really is. And Dr. Burke (Gerald James) meets an old skipper at the pier and gets a few answers out of him by presenting him "really good cognac", ie. Hennessy. The conspiracy thriller plotting went a little over my head since I was staring at the loop of a bird flying a circle across the camera or how the bad green screen effects makes the Skipper's (Mitch Feinstein) glasses disappear every time he turns his head.

Apparently there exists a black-and-white version of the film that tool the filmmakers 20 months to make. It reportedly slowly fades into color by the third act. Whichever version is possible, grab a few drinks and a few friends along and you will have a good time. Especially if you like watching footage of surfing.

Three Laughs: Tammy and the T-rex

 
So, I'm going to start detailing trashy films that would be hard to give stars to. Basically, these are the movies that would get ★ or ★★★★★ here. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these, has a special place in my heart.

Tammy and the T-rex (USA, 1994)
Director: Stewart Raffill

This is a really goofy teenaged romantic comedy where Denise Richards and Paul Walker (both before they really got famous) play lovebirds, where Romeo gets his brain fused into an animatronic Tyrannosaur. Just because. The film was reportedly scrambled together when the filmmakers got free access to a good dinosaur puppet that used to be a amusement park sideshow in Eastern Europe.

The film has been available for years as a VHS hacked to pieces. The original film had some really bloody gore parts, which were removed in order to market this to Jurassic Park -starved audiences. Vinegar Syndrome has since reinstated the missing bits. But it's still really weird to think, which audiences was this really aimed at? The director Stewart Raffill is also known from the horrendous E.T.-ripoff Mac and Me.

I think it has a sense of weirdness on the level of Troma, where it throws everything but the kitchen sink at you in order to get cheap laughs. The difference is that with a Troma film you know exactly what you get, whereas this film is all over the place, taste-wise, and thus more unpredictable (and funny!).

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Paul Walker's character is inexplicably killed by taking him to a safari park to be mauled by lions. As the entire film was shot within 25 minutes from Raffill's house, one has to wonder, is he living in a Roar-like house filled with man-eating lions?
2. The cheapest laugh of the film comes when The Mad Doctor Wachenstein (Terry Kiser) pokes around with Walker's dead body and his brain. He gets a visible rise (ahem) out of him. Shame to let such a well-endowed body go to waste.
3. The gore effects are always fun, with the T-rex getting rid of most of the villains in 10 minutes or so. But the real fun is with T-rex's tiny front legs. Thus, it's silly fun to see him talk on the telephone or filp the bird with those adorable hands. But yeah, the third laugh is for T-rex ripping someone's head off with guts galore.