Three laughs: Birdemic - Shock and Terror

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. 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 just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. 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.  

★ or ★★★★★

 
Three Laughs Case File #40:
Birdemic: Shock and Terror (USA, 2010)
Director: James Nguyen

If you've noticed, I like to do a little something special every time this column reaches even tens. So, it was about time to get the other movie that gives The Room a run for its money for sheer ineptitude. The fun of Birdemic is that its director James Nguyen obviously had lofty standards. It's the sort of self-serious film that takes a major issue (in this case, global warming) and trying to hammer the audience in the head with it in the guise of an easy to watch thriller movie.

The movie has obvious reference points, the main one being Hitchcock's The Birds, which is given a shout-out several times. Nguyen goes so far as to bill Tippi Hedren third in the end credits for using a clip of her performance in Julie and Jack. It should be obvious, but Birdemic doesn't get anyone to change their minds about global warming, but the way it sets out to achieve this task makes for a bizarre and beffling journey.

Rod (Alan Bagh) is a software salesman, living his daily life albeit ominous news of melting glaciers, heat waves and forest fires. Rod meets his old flame Nathalie (Whitney Moore) and they begin dating. But one day, everything changes and angry eagles start attacking and killing people. It's up to our (pretty useless) heroes to get to the bottom of what's causing the birds to attack, save children and bring balance back to nature.

 Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. After the seemingly endless opening credits where the short main theme loops about three times, we get our first proper scene and it gives us a very good idea on what to expect. The sound mixing is terrible, making every line jump terribly and making it feel like you're watching a skipping record. About everything that's possible to be wrong about a quick scene of a man walking to a restaurant and being seated, is worng. The actors are hokey, the editing giving the scene odd emphasis and everything in general feeling awkward and weird. These kinds of bad movies are very good at revealing how odd our daily interactions may be, and as an entertainment it's something you don't get to see every day.

2. The dating scenes between Rod and Nathalie seem to go on and on, but there are occasional bright parts, like the one where they attend a R&B gig at a bar. The song "Hanging out with my Family" has hilariously bad lyrics, and it's cut to Rod and Nathalie doing the most hilariously awkward, white bread dancing. The next scene is the sex scene, so at least it worked for them.

3. The most famous terrible thing about the movie has got to be the special effects. The first scene of the birds attacking illustrates their hilarious ineptitude best. Shrieking GIF-animated birds fly up and about, with explosion GIFs added over the city (maybe the eagles are carrying TNT and kamikaze striking?). The high-pitched whine the birds keep making is also totally hilarious. Like everything else in the movie, it just keeps going, and going, and going...

Three laughs: A Talking Cat?!

 

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. 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 just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. 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.   

★ or ★★★★★

 

Three laughs case file #33:  
A Talking Cat?! (USA 2013)
Director: David DeCoteau 

A very cheap family movie about a magic cat helping out a family with their problems might sound innocent enough. But when you have a director like David DeCoteau make it, known from his trashy films, you might be onto something odd. Adding to the comedy is main star Eric Roberts, a veteran on hundreds of movies, most of them bad, cashing in a check with a vocal performance that sounds like it was recorded in his car while driving to get some coffee and donuts. Or maybe the trunk of the car. 

The film has some penny-squeezing qualities (many of which we come to in a minute), some of which is that the main house used in the movie looks suspiciously like a set from a porn movie. And in fact the film's set WAS used in a little film called Ass Worship 13. 

As you might know, cats aren't exactly known for being easy actors in movies, and the tabby Duffy with the physical side of the main part does look like he would have none of the bullshit the film keeps feeding us. He is replaced in the film's poster by a younger, cuter kitten. Other stars are made to be some wood-faced models, except the film's dad, played by Johnny Whitaker, who has some very unusual features for a leading man, which makes him of course all the more interesting to watch. One could only wish one of the cinematic Garfield movies was made with a similar who-the-fuck-cares attitude.

Three laughs (SPOILERS): 

1. The movie has two main houses where the action is set in, but it leaves even The Room behind in its obsessive use of establishing shots. Hilariously, also many of these don't seem to fit together. Is the film supposed to be set on a beach, or a forest, or maybe the desert? Is it some tropical country or California? Well, at least the movie crept just above the required 85 minute length.

2. Eric Roberts' lazy-ass dialogue is heard throughout the movie but in fact the titular cat can only talk to people once each. During the first 15 minutes it might be hard to recognize when people are hearing the cat, but once he really talks, you can't help but notice. The reason being that the cat's mouth has been animated by the cheapest possible MS Paint images put into a GIF animation possible.

3.Getting back to the gay porn qualities of the movie, although the film has the most white bread and milquetoast romantic comedy plot possible, we do have an extensive scene where Justin Cone and Daniel Dannas have a conversation by the pool. The film lingers very long on the wet, shirtless and fit young dudes' bodies. The question remains if there's a problem the cat didn't help the boys with or if this is just an obsession of director DeCoteau he couldn't shake even when making a kids' movie.

Three laughs: Don't Go Near The Park

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. 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 just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. 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.  

★ or ★★★★★

Three laughs case file #28:
Don't Go Near The Park (USA, 1979)
Director: Lawrence D. Foldes

We should all try to avoid public places there days, so to remind you, here's Don't Go Near The Park. And why shouldn't you go near? Well, since there are serial-murdering magic cavepeople in there, of course. The film has the gall to state that it's based on actual occurences throughout history.

In actuality, it is a cheap grindhouse flick that cashes in on similar 70's dreck such as The Hills Have Eyes. There is enough gore that it gained some notoriety when in the UK it was put on the Video Nasties list, but they shouldn't have. It's a childish movie that perhaps only open-minded kids could properly appreciate. The cavepeople seen in the movie are Gar (Robert Gribbin, as Crackers Phinn) and his sister Tra (Barbara Bain) some ancient native americans that were cursed by a witch to live forever near their home cave and only gain their youth by consuming human flesh.

But there is also confusingly an important, magical date of two stars coming to in line approaching when they should sacrifice a virgin in order to gain eternal youth. And for this, Gar concieved a baby girl with a woman and grew her to be 16 years old (played by Tammy Taylor). She also has a magic amulet from her caveman wizard daddy that kills would-be rapists and such scum that would do her harm before his dad and aunt can.

The film's inner mythology doesn't make much sense and the wooden actors won't even try to sell it. Most of the movie is spent on following airheaded but peppy kids straight outta 60's Disney movies that are drawn to the cave-vampire Some familiar B-movie stars such as drunken Aldo Ray and fresh-faced Linnea Quigley are top-billed, but in actuality, have only small roles.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The opening scene where a Halloween-masked witch puts a curse on the diabolic duo is pretty funny, because Bain chews the scenery incredibly hard. It also seems like she's cracking up listening to the bullshit. Why were they cursed? There's an incestual tone here, but it's probably due to them being cannibals even in ye olden days.

2. The first poper gore scene is one of many cases of Tra doing the Kali Ma and ripping live organs from people's stomachs with her bare hands. The effect is laughable, but even more laughable is her taking off her withered old crone face like a rubber mask. Underneath, she had an eye patch for some reason, perhaps to make her look similar to Christina Lindberg?

3. The climax is something to behold, as Gar and Tra suddensly start shooting white lasers from their eyes and kill much of the supporting cast, start a major fire and then bring the dead back to life in positively Turkish-grade -looking zombies that turn against them. Way to save the sugar to the bottom, movie.

Three laughs: Uninvited

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watch them. 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 just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. 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.

Three laughs case #17:
Uninvited (1987)
Director: Creydon Clark

We've had killer rats, now let's try killer pussy. Pussy cat, that is. For this straight-to-video clunker features the ingenious high concept: what if some gangsters, some horny teenagers and a runaway mutant cat were stuck on a yacht together? It's probably much of a spoiler to tell that the cat starts to kill people. For from within its mouth emergers a smaller, more vicious cat or similar critter. The cat looks in parts like a plush toy, in parts like a wet rat. And also the cat's bite is poisonous.

It's probably safe to say that this film borrowed a lot from Alien, but as far as aliensploitations go, this has got to be among the most bizarre ones. Much of the film's budget went to the casting of some B-name actors such as Alex Cord, Clu Gulager and of course George Kennedy, who I have trouble seeing every time and not think of police chief Ed from the Naked Gun movies. Some more money could have been used here and there, the film's miniature boats are quite funny as they look like toys in a bath tub. Cash should have been shed also on gore scenes, since the film pussies out of them pretty fast. But even so, for a gorehound this is quite fun to watch.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. Good monster movies take their time to reveal their monster. Here, it's shown in the very first scene in a laboratory setting, where a sinister corporation has created the mutant for some reason. Whenever it's seen walking around, it's just an ordinary orange cat, not unlike Garfield. But when it's cornered by some scientists in hazard suits, it opens its mouth where a smaller kitten emerges, and apparently kills everyone. Whenever it's shown a bit more it appears to be more like a cute muppet-like little monster, like they have in the Critters series. The cheesy synthetisizer music seems to belong more to a comedy, but in these scenes it at leat tries its hardest to create something resembling suspense. It fails, of course.

2. After the cat runs away from the scientists, he is being fed by a kindly stranger at a gas station. Who then gets immidiately mobbed. Luckily, the cat is familiar with the concept of revenge and attacks the attackers on their pickup truck. Which is then ran off the road into a river. In slow motion!

3. I did mention how George Kennedy makes me crack up. Most of the movie, his gangster character is a bit lackluster and uneasy while talking to his fellow mobsters about their ideas of taking spring break kids along for their cruise in order to distract authorities. But he gets slowly madder and madder and the scene where he finally boils over is a hoot. He comes out blasting, trying to kill the teen boys, but is stopped when the cat again protects his favorites and bites off his achilles heel. Too bad he doesn't get a proper death scene, here he's screaming his mouth off, but the cat's poisonous bite gets the best of him off-sceen and he's soon buried at sea.

I got to add, as far as it's-not-dead moments in horror movies go, this one has a really funny one.

Three laughs: Street Trash

 
It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watvh them. 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 just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. 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.

Three laughs case #13:
Street Trash (USA, 1987)
Dir. Jim Muro

Some trash films are meant to be funny, but are so nasty and unapogetic in their approach that most people just think of them being vile. I don't really believe in "guilty pleasures" as such, but there certainly are some movies that might give a bit of a bad impression of you if you go around proclaiming your love for them. Especially today.

Well, I believe thet you can recognize something has problematic ideas and still enjoy it for its other aspects, especially when it comes to humor. Just try to not apply that dirty worldview to your own everyday life. Case in point is 80's trash classic Street Trash, which is certainly dark enough for my sense of humor. But I would never mistake that it is in any way a fair and reasonable portrayal of the homeless and underpriveleged and neither should anyone.

Maybe you could go deeper and see that it carnevalizes some stereotypes and general tropes attached to the lowest of the low. I wouldn't call the film a very fine satire, but it certainly takes some of the 80's ideas about poor people being trash to its extremes. The film depicts a bum's life as a struggle to live on a postapocalyptic sense in a very 80's trash movie style. There are hierarchies and power struggles even when living in a city dump and they are even more dog-eat-dog than you would find in the rest of the society. It is cartoonish and gory and totally ridiculous and that is enough for me to really enjoy watching it.

TRIGGER WARNING That being said, there's some sexual violence against women in the movie that is not funny in the slightest and that I can't condone.

Three laughs:

1. A lot of the beginning of the movie sees a new batch of Viper bottles arrive at a suburban liquor store and a stolen bottle switch owners from bum to bum. Finally when one of them takes a swig at a port-a-potty, we get the  money shot of him melting into a screaming pile of blue goo.

2. A really culturally insensitive, yet a funny scene comes when a psychotic Vietnam veteran dreams of vampiric Southeast Asian monsters stalk him in the night. The hysteria of the overplaying is a good fit for the genuine creepiness, both of the scene itself and of the mindset of one of the movie's many very unlikable characters.

3. The most immature laugh of the movie comes when an overweight wino gets his johnson cut off and it gets thrown around from bum to bum in a game of keep-away. The best part is when the film cuts to the shots of the dick flying through a clear blue sky.

Three laughs: ETV - Extraterrestrial Visitors

 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 just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. 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.


Three laughs Case #11:
ETV - Extraterrestrial Visitors (Los nuevos extraterrestres, 1983)
Director: Juan Piquer Simón

One of my favorite trashy directors is the incredible Spanish hack Juan Piquer Simón. He started out by making an actually pretty good and creepy Exorcist rip-off Escalofrío, which opened doors for him to copy out whatever films were popular at the time and put his own twist to them. I've talked about the Dick Randall -produced slasher classic Pieces before. Coming hot off its heels is the ET-copying Extraterrestrial Visitors.

I think Simón started out by trying to do a horror version of Alien and Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind. Too bad an even bigger Spielberg film came out in the middle of the shoot and the producers demanded that Simón switch out his plans and make a family movie that cashes in on the lovable little alien, ET, and his friendship with a suburban little boy.

That's why this film is such a mishmash of two different flavours. It's pretty hilarious that the aliens are at the same time judo-chopping ALFs and magic-powered slumberland friends for every boy of a certain age. The film has two sub-plots, and the other features a group of teenagers in the woods getting killed one by one. The budget has got to be minimal, they didn't even have the dough to pay for blue lenses for night-time scenes, or sound effects to point out it's supposed to be stormy outside. Mostly there's just smog. Lots and lots of smoke.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. As an apparent meteor falls into a forest, we have three dumb-as-rocks hunters examining the wreckage. One of them finds a batch of glowing pink eggs in a cave. He proceeds to smash them with a big stick for no reason. But then he hears the soft growl of an off-sceen creature that apparently kills him. Rather than being a blood-curdling roar, the sound is more akin the Nurse Bear from BoJack Horseman waking from a nap. The weak sounds these aliens make never ceases to be hilarious to me during the movie.

2. Once we see the creatures about 40 minutes into the slow-as-glacier movie, they are basically midgets in fur suits with ridiculous dickfaced and pinheaded masks. One of them wanders to a campfire with the burly poachers, who try to capture the creature first by luring it closer with a charred rabbit's leg and then throwing a net over it and shooting it with a crossbow. It turns out that such mortal instruments have no effect on these Extraterrestrial Visitors. The hunters are done for.

3. But of course only the adult aliens are vicious. One hatches from a child's egg and turns out to be a deadeyed wannabe-ALF, and is named Trumpy by the ridiculously naive kid. To project its friendship, the alien proceeds to show off its magic powers by solving a puzzle in stop motion, making shoes dance in an astonishingly inane display and enhancing the kid's spyglass to show archive footage of African lions.

Three laughs: Miami Connection

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 just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. 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.

Miami Connection (1987)
Director: Park Woo-sang

Lost for decades, the cheap 80's VHS movie Miami Connection was the first real gem discovered by the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema and restored for an audience hungry for some prime cheese and turkey action. Miami Connection mashes together a story of a teen rock band and a crime thriller about about drug-dealing ninjas. It's exactly as bonkers as it sounds. But really, the film is funniest when attempting to be "just another movie". Everyone on screen is extremely awkward, their lines don't sound like anything anyone has actually said in real life, and the basically very clichéd plot becomes more and more bizarre the more elements are thrown into the pot.

The star and producer Y.K. Kim later became some sort of inspirational speaker, and it can perhaps be seen from his script, since such wisdoms are seen in the film such as "Only through the elimination of violence can we achieve world peace". As an actor, he's something to see. It's a bit cheap to make fun of his thick accent, but it is really hard to understand what he's saying, even when it's over-the-top action movie clichés such as "You don't scare me at all. Goodbye!"

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. A lot of the film's fun hangs on how cheesily 80's the entire thing is. So I hope you like mullets, synth-music and godawful clothing. The biggest laugh comes from the great reveal of all of this - after a fight scene where a gang of ninjas have killed some drug dealers and split the loot we see the band Dragon Sound in all their glory. Playing shirtlessly their hit song "Friends Forever" at a smoky, blue-tinted club to some really white-bread audience having trouble clapping along.

2. It's always hilarious when Kim is showing off his tae kwon do skills with ridiculous Bruce Lee -poses and grunts. My favorite is the practice scene where he takes his friends to school by showing a fist to Jack's mouth and humiliating John by grabbing his nose by his toes.

3. The real star of the film is Maurice Smith's keyboard player Jim, who has the most soap opera -like arc which sees him being teased of sending out some mysterious letters. It turns out he's just trying to find his father, probably by mailing to every candidate he can think of. When he finally finds him, he lets out an incredible high-pitched yelp. But alas, fate has a real ironic twist in mind for him, which motivates the surprisingly brutal final fight, which sees Kim brandishing a machete, among other things. Against the Ninja!

Three laughs: 3 Dev Adam

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.

3 Dev Adam (1973)
Director: T. Fikret Uçak

Turkish exploitation films could be a genre on their own. They are some of the weirdest trash movies one could hope to see, yet I feel like many conisseurs of bad movies don't tend to know too much of them. Turkish Star Wars of course is a cult classic, but there are plenty of other good ones as well. What makes Turkish films special is the total disregard for copyright, good taste or any kind of grown-up logic, which makes many of the movies seem like children playing as portrayed by adults.

Case in point is the film known as Three Mighty Men, which I usually just call 3 Dev Adam. The grubby VHS-ripped film sees a Turkish version of Spider-Man start a brutal takeover of Istanbul's crime syndicates, and who gets sent to stop this lunatic but Captain America and the Mexican luchadore Santo themselves! The Turkish knockoff versions have little to do with their original counterparts, especially Spider-Man (called The Spider), whose costume is red and green, and likes to stab mafiosos with knives and put people in elaborate death traps. I think he was the model for the portrayal of Joker in The Dark Knight.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The very first scene introduces us to the brutality of Spider-Man. His goons capture a pretty girl on a beach and they bury her neck-deep in the sand. Soon, The Spider brings out a motor boat, and proceeds to shove the spinning propeller into the face of the girl. This violence is intercut with the smiling face of Spider's girlfriend, apparently telephatically surveying the scene from a completely different setting.

2. Another insane way for The Spider to execute his victims is to tie a gangster onto a pole and attaching two tennis ball tubes to his eyes. He then unleashes two vicious guinea pigs to the other side of the tube. The critters run up to the tube and apparently eat his eyes, killing him. Adios mafia.

3. The film, which is basically a game of tag with people in Halloween costumes, goes out its way to appear "mature". And by that I mean that besides the violence, there are also sex scenes and footage of strippers. It is really hard to figure out what the filmmakers were going for. During one sex scene the film cuts to some fugly puppets taking a glance at each other and cackling. And then to another, puppet, now a policeman, before cutting back to the sex. This is never explained, and the next scene is the first big fight scene between Santo, Captain America and The Spider, in which it is revealed that whenever The Spider is beaten, it is somehow a clone or some other replica and the real villain is somewhere entirily else making his getaway. Goodnight, Americanos!

Three laughs: Maximum Overdrive

 
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.

Maximum Overdrive (1986)
Director: Stephen King

Stephen King on cocaine is much like any 13-year-old. A massive dork. Nothing else could explain how such an immature movie as Maximum Overdrive could be created. Of course in the 80's, King could do anything and moneymen would be ready with their checkbooks. I'm glad he made this. Much of the movie seems to play like an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, even though somehow this was supposed to be scary in some way.

Basically it's the most clichéd cowboys vs. indians story, with self-driving trucks (lead by a toy store novelty truck with the face of The Green Goblin) serving as the Indians, and Emilio Estevez (straight outta Repo Man) as the straigh-faced cowboy. This film seems to be a major influence on M. Night Shyamalan and his film The Happening, another film which attempted to modernize an old-timey sci-fi B-movie about the tables getting turned on humanity. The both movies had too few genuinely scary ideas and too many campy laugh-out moments and bad acting for anyone to be able to take them seriously. Nevertheless, as cult comedies, these are unbeatable.

Three laughs (SPOILERS!):

1. The first laugh comes in the first scene. This spot is usually used to create an athmosphere of dread and fear in competent horror films. King, however uses first the opening text to explain some mumbo-jumbo about a passing meteor. And then, he himself is seen walking to an ATM under a big banner that says FUCK. The machine doesn't dispense cash, it just tells him he's an asshole. Self-deprecation of the highest order.

2. The next scene is just as funny, as a draw bridge raises unexpectedly and ruins many a people's day. Watermelons get squashed, some guy falls into water and of course cars are crashed in some prime Blues Brothers -like stunts. The funniest thing, however, is seeing the AC/DC truck go, since they are the fellows blasting WHO MADE WHO on the soundtrack.

3. The laughs keep coming when a junior-league coach is killed by a Coke machine shooting cans at his junk and a little kid gets flattened by a self-driving steam roller. I would give it to one stock racial hustler losing at an arcade and letting out an exhausted SHIIIT before the machines first give him a lot of money, then hypnotize him for a bit and then zap him dead. Overly convoluted, don't you think?

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.

Worst of the Worst II: The Worsening

Let's do this.

LIVE - from the beautiful Villa Ihalainen in Eastern Helsinki. It is a Dark and Stormy Night and celebrities flock to the huge gala celebrating the 200th blog post of The Last Movieblog. I've already spotted David Hasselhoff on a T-shirt and Marilyn Monroe on a painting. And isn't that a cartoon image of Michael Caine? Oh - and this just in: There's double the reason to celebrate tonight, since the blog's visitor number has just passed 150,000! Over to blogkeeper Paavo Ihalainen for comments:

"Well, it's been a patchy year and I haven't been able to update as much as I've liked to. Oh, I've written plenty about movies to other places, but this live blogging is a means to show the world that this blog is still alive and kicking."

So, what's going to be the programme tonight?

"I wrote a rather popular text for my 100th blog post, that celebrated some silly and cheesy exploitation movies that had found newfound fame in YouTube and other media streaming sites. Since then I myself have subscribed to Netflix and get an incresingly big number of bad movies from there. The site has an impressive arsenal of famously terrible movies - many of which I have wanted to see but haven't dared to actually sit down and watch. So, as making fun of these universally loathed films is something akin to shooting fish in a barrel, and what better way to celebrate than to make me miserable, why not do both - and live."

What are we going to watch today?

"Well, I figured we could start out with the notorious Catwoman, and go on there to some other atrocities. Some possibilities include Rollerball, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever and Green Lantern. You can also suggest your own pieces of cinematic shit on Twitter (handle @LastMB or hashtag #TheWorsening ) and if it makes me fear and shudder, I might get into it. This will go on until I pass out or die."

That sounds like quite an evening. I've just gotten word that we are ready to go live on to Netflix and start to view Catwoman, so get your popcorn ready and Tweets fired up and we'll go.

Catwoman (USA, 2004)
Director: Pitof

I'm guessing the Catwoman in this one isn't the first one. At least judging by the opening credits. There's been Catwomen before. And thus the one in this isn't that special.

Halle Berry starts out narrating dead in a pool. A Sunset Blvd. reference? Bad movies shouldn't acknowledge classics.

Sharon Stone had something of a comeback at this point. She did this and Basic Instinct 2, so it didn't go as well as it could've.

Eugh, I have to go through Halle Berry trying to act mousy and timid. Why can't superheroes ever start the movies already powerful?

Halle got saved by falling off a roof by a police officer. She went there to get a cat. That's this movie's strong female role model for you.

I think they picked the actor playng the love interest cop because he looks a little like Michael Keaton. He can't act worth shit.

Oh, the actor is called Benjamin Bratt and his character is, get this, Tom Lone. Han Solo's more boring cousin?

These aerial CGI shots look horrible. Like a cutscene from a PS1 game. Then again, this film IS 9 years old. Makes you think about your life.

Yeah, make the female protagonist have an opponent her own caliber. An evil cosmetics manufacturer. That's not sexist at all!

Halle died, then a group of cats wagged their tails at her and then her own cat (with serious halitosis issues) burped green radioactive gas on her. Thus, the iris in her eye changed and Catwoman was reborn! This is a terrible movie, in case you didn't know.

Was this Warner Brothers' first attempt of getting into the new wave of superheros (started by Fox & Sony's Marvel movies)? This became before Batman Begins, but after X-Men 2 and Spider-Man. It does not compare well to any of them.

Oh. Halle's still timid. Step up your game, girl!

Now she's showing her mad basketball kids to Lone Starr and a group of freaky chanting kids. They chant the "One of us" thing from Freaks, which is baffling.

Now for some faint praise. I think visually, the film isn't too shabby. It's bright, colorful and staged like comic book panels. I see they attempt the same unreal style that worked in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man. Too bad the script is horrendous and the actors either bad or poorly directed.

So Halle becomes Catwoman only by night, steals jewelry and can't remember anything in the morning. Then she's back to being timid. The Mask was done already! Give us a good female character that can stand on her own and has no regrets!

Catwoman's powers are explained to us in detail. Silly me to think she was just an expert burglar and jewel thief without any supernatural powers. Goes to shows how wrong everything is that comics teach you.

Man, that bondage gear is a horrible superhero costume. Sexy only to S&M freaks, a pain to look at for others.

Catwoman's beau is dumber than a sack of bricks, if he can't tell the woman he took out earlier and the half-nude woman in a dumb cat mask are the same person.

Have I complained about the dreadful R&B soundtrack already? Cheap and as lazy as this movie's script.

What's this movie's theme? You shouldn't attempt to stop aging and rather go through life acting like a cat? You shouldn't be mousy, but rather go and hit and hit on your boyfriend at nighttime masked? Being schizophrenic makes you more attractive? This is all over the place.

Sharon Stone has a superpower of her own! She's had so many botox shots, she's impervious to any pain. She's unconvincingly pounding Catsy around in an ad studio.

Final thoughts: The movie had potential to be an emancipating female action movie, but they saw fit to overcomplicate Catwoman's character, had a terrible script and no style whatsoever. The film is mostly by-the-numbers boring rather than truly atrocious, thus resembling the similarly forgettable Elektra. Ugh.

★ 1/2

Dungeons & Dragons (USA/Czech Republic, 2000)
Director: Courtney Solomon

The film seems to have a Dune -like quality in that I didn't understand the strange concepts in the prologue text, and have a feeling you should know the source material to get anything out of this.

Jeremy Irons, what have you wrought? He plays a wizard that obtained a cheap-looking toy wand with an odd machine.

Now here's a (bad CGI) dragon. He obeys Irons' orders since he has a green-glowing candy cane.

Already this presents a more entertaining brand of bad moviemaking. Irons chews the scenery here and the horrible effects seem to be borrowed from Hercules: the Legendary Journeys.

Oh great, here's some Star Wars: Episode I -inspired political "intrigue", where a child queen is concerned about the well-being of her subjects, while politicians play their own hand. How interesting.

There certainly are also a lot of scenes of Marlon Wayans screeching. He's the Jar Jar of this picture.

Some thieves, the princess and a dwarf who likes to break the 4th wall and address the camera directly have formed a band. They met some brightly colored aliens and now the protagonist fought for his life inside various death traps for like 20 minutes. He then found a big red ruby.

They are pursued by Jeremy Irons' blue-lipped henchman and his guards. If he doesn't succeed, Irons will take out the tentacle monster he enchanted there before.

If the acting was bad in Catwoman, it was at least uniformly bad. All the characters in this one act as if they are in different movies. Sometimes that, and the horrible dialogue produce interesting results. The guild leader shouting "I never joke, when mages invade MY GUILD!" is pronounced in an odd mixture of Christopher Walken's extra punctuations, Nicolas Cage's mania and John Malkovich's disdain (plus baldness).

The director has an odd fixation on ears. Now, a girl is interrogated by a baddie growing tentacles from his ears that connect to her ears. Ears!

A lot of fantasy cliches in this one (duh). Dwarves hate elves, fear horses, and are generally a pain in the ass. Still, better than The Hobbit II.

Although the soundtrack sounds ripped straight from The Mummy, there's a surprising lack of Avatar-chanting.

The make up budget of this movie must've been smaller than most Halloween parties. The beards and other facial hair all look clearly glued on, the ears and whatnot plastic.

Jeremy Irons needed another plastic toy sword all along. This film isn't that clear about its MacGuffins. With that he can summon some evil dragons.

Of course the CGI effects are really bad, but with this epic battle raging around and dragons flying all around, one does not get the impression of that, you know, really happening. It seems all the actors just sort of pretend they're there.

Fantasy is a genre where phallic objects come to the spotlight, and they make good use of various wands and swords banging against each other here.

Final thoughts: They went for too much epic here. Since they hadn't the budget, it's foolish to attempt to do epic dragon battles, skeletal monsters and such. With a more low key approach, this could have been a Princess Bride -style modern swashbuckler or at the very least a Hercules: The Series: The Movie. But this was ruined by casting Marlon Wayans to scream around. I'm glad he's only around for half of the movie.

★★

Highlander II: The Quickening (USA/France, 1991)
Director: Russel Mulcahy

Topical troubles: The Earth's Ozone layer is collapsing. The one Connor McLeod (Christopher Lambert and his impressive hair) helps around the main scientists to build a shield to protect the Earth.

In a surprising twist, we jump forward 25 years, where an elderly McLeod is still worried about shields and ozone.

He also watches a lot of Opera.

Here we go. He's not an ancient Highlander, but... an alien from planet Zeist! Sean Connery reminds this (entirely contradictory) "fact" to us in voiceover. He was also a zeistian, fighting against the evil General Katana (ha!).

The orchestral music makes this all seem like a Popeye cartoon.

Michael Ironside plays General Katana. Maybe he can bring an ounce of class to this.

I can't stand these references to Queen songs, when they are not playing on the soundtrack. The replacements are uniformly pretty terrible.

So these aliens were exiled on earth where they were immortal and apparently lost their memory, but now the elder McLeod remembers he could go back to space since he won "The Prize" of being the last Highlander left standing. What a load of gibberish.

Eurotrash aliens! They are Katana's thugs, of course.

Since new zeistians have arrived on Earth, McLeod is no longer "the One". They, of course attempt to behead him while giggling annoyingly.

But then one dies in the battle and McLeod gets stronger again.

I haven't liked any of Mulcahy's feature films, but I got to say, he's got a unique style in staging action scenes. It's an 80's music video type of style, which is one of the reasons his career went down the toilet. This movie is another.

It's funny to hear Sean Connery say "shithead". It's the word he was born to say!

Not limited to just flashbacks, Connery's gotten better from his beheading in the first film. He has to adjust to a brave new world and you know what that means: a montage of him trying on modern clothes with a bad synthesizer version of the Wilhelm Tell Overture in the background.

This is really idiotic: An airline video demonstrating safety procedures has a plane going down and the passengers screaming in terror. I'd like to see them try to put such a film to be shown in any real air travels. That's some Fight Club shit right there.

I've got to be honest, I haven't paid much attention on what's happening. They are attempting to destroy Katana's shield or something. There's little interest in any of he characters and their thrives on doing something or other. I like the bleak dystopian athmosphere, though, so it's not all a waste.

Mulcahy does get some extra mileage out of the fact that only beheading can kill these characters. So they're able to go through gruesome ordeals ans bounce right back.

Final thoughts: This was clearly a lot more carefully constructed film than the two previous ones. In fact, I think it's bad reputation is caused mostly by it shitting down its predecessor in a way very few sequels do. It's a shame, really, because all that stupid alien crap wouldn't be that hard to write around. Except of course, then you'd have to explain how all of a sudden McLeod isn't the only "One" out there. Plenty of Highlander sequels have since done just that.

Other than that, it has plenty of good old fashioned high concept action and a nice dystopian angle on it all. It's just sad thare aren't any stakes going on the viewer would care about.

★★

Ghosts of Mars (USA, 2001)
Director: John Carpenter

Carpenter's idea of a future dystopia is a matriarchy? Or why is it so much emphasized?

This has a flashback structure too, we are solving what happened to a freight train on Mars that returned empty.

This is probably the only movie out there that has both Pam Grier and Jason Statham.

The blue-collar drones on a strange planet gives a definite Alien vibe. Carpenter has already stooped low since he has to copy oter people's ideas instead of making his own.

Mars doesn't look otherwordly and there really isn't a sense of presence. All the sets look like sound stages. Must be the lighting...

Also Carpenters use of special effects hasn't improved much since Escape from New York.

And also he can't use music like he used to. The cheap soundtrack that sounds it's from public domain is far fetched from JC's own athmosphere heavy synthesizer tracks from his classics.

They've wondered whether Ice Cube has gone around killing them, but they now found out there are a lot of Martian cultists that look like Marilyn Manson fans out there who like to behead their enemies.

Oh, okay, they are actually possessed people. Possessed by the Slipknot virus.

This wasn't really like Alien at all. In fact this is actually a pretty nifty twist on a basic trope, with the berserker virus carriers and all. Too bad so much on how it is presented has failed so badly.

With deputizing ordinary citizens, the movie's turning into a western, fast. Figures, this is the guy who did Assault on Precinct 13. Still, I kind of wish Carpenter would have managed to do a better space-western than Avatar. Also, couldn't Carpenter try to do a real western? With Kurt Russell?

They just went out guns blazing. It doesn't look that exciting, more like a company's weekend retreat at a paintball range. Odd that Carpenter didn't even direct the actors on how to hold the guns.

In the end it actually seems that this was a remake of Assault on Precinct 13. Wow. Loses to Carpenter's previous effort with considerable numbers.

Final thoughts: I may be a sentimental fool, but I've seen the potential in all of the films I've watched today. None of the other movies' failures pains me as much as this one's. It just appears that Carpenter hasn't been trying, from every which angle you try to look at it. It is a shame, I don't know what burned him out but it took a long while to get him to direct again and even then the result was the ho-hum The Ward.

★★

Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (USA/Canada 2004)
Director: Raja Gosnell

They wiped he soundtrack from Beetlejuice, I hear.

Written by James Gunn. WHY?!?

This begins as the Mystery Machine twerps being super-popular, walking on a red carpet. Speaking of carpet, the fact that Velma has enthusiastic fan girls (shown right after Daphne's over-enthusiastic fan boys) does little to repel the lesbian undertones associated with the character. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Matthew Lillard is creepily similar to the cartoon Shaggy, right down to the voice.

Velma has spotted and immediately fallen for Seth Green. He'd be a beard if he could grow one.

Wow, after Dungeons & Dragons I didn't think there would be as terrible CGI effects on a big-budget movie. I was mistaken.

So a pterodactyl monster spooked everyone in a museum, and everyone blames the Mystery Inc. for that. We've got ourselves a mystery. Enh.

What would be a modern children's movie without "Baby Got Back" on the soundtrack? I shudder to think.

Another Dungeons & Dragons flashback: The black knight ghost is banging his sword at Daphne's crotch.

Scooby fakes he has rabies in oder to get out for "fresh air". Dog, if you really got rabies, you would be put down.

Peter Boyle! Why oh why does every bad movie includes someone genuinely awesome?

You know, I like Joe Dante -like cartoon buffoonery. The scene where Shaggy and Scooby try out various colorful science formulas is reminiscent of Gremlins 2 or Looney Tunes: Back In Action. Perhaps James Gunn's influence does shine through.

Then again, Scooby Doo rapping was not something I ever needed to hear.

I've always wondered, what age are these characters supposed to be? They say they haven't visited their high school clubhouse "in years".

The diver's ghost is a great visual. One of the most memorable creatures from the original cartoon.

Far be it from me to speak against fart jokes, but the ones in this are just shameful.

I laughed unironically at the cotton candy glob.

And of course the unmasking scene is always fun. How long did the villain have to wait in two rubber masks for the police to see who was under all that?

The pop music in this movie is kind of godawful.

Final thoughts: Y'know. For kids. It's a children's film, even though fussy, noisy and running all over the place. But it all doesn't have to appeal to adults anyway. There are a few genuinely funny cartoonish moments, which is more than I expected from this. But James Gunn's script would need a better director, that would keep the tone consistent (and perhaps the monsters a little more creepy). Raja Gosnell isn't perhaps the best choice for this, but certainly not the worst, either.

★★ 1/2

P.S. There's an additional scene after the credits with a secret code to a Gameboy game. Huh. Multimedia advertising.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (USA/Germany, 2002)
Director: Wych Kaosayananda

This was still surfing on the tidal waves of The Matrix when long leather trenchcoats were considered cool.

I'm not keeping up with the plot. Antonio Banderas is a secret agent, whose wife has been misplaced. And he has amnesia? Something like that.

So far there hasn't been a single new idea in the film. I think this is so badly rated because it's so generic to the point of tears. It's hard to believe anyone remembering anything about the movie after a week.

Surprising technical troubles: The voice sync stopped working at about 20 minutes in. I'd say we call it a day. I'll try to finish watching this another time.

Your Sister was a Werewolf and your Father Smelled of Elderberries!

Don't ask why, but I felt like writing about something and that something happened to be a variety of werewolf movie sequels from the 80's. And why not, it's not as if this blog's format wouldn't allow for me to fulfill such urges.

The Howling 2: Stirba the Werewold Bitch (USA/UK, 1985)
Director: Philippe Mora

There are several names for the sequel for Joe Dante's tongue-in-cheek cult film, and I of course use the one which I prefer. This film is also known as The Howling II: Return and The Howling II: Your sister is a Werewolf, which, while an actual quote from the film, doesn't quite have the same catchiness to it.

This is one of those cheapo films where they somehow had tricked Christopher Lee himself to act in, of which the legendary actor has felt nothing but regret since. Lee is one of my very favorite actors of all time, since there isn't a title so lowly that he couldn't liven it up with his undeniable charisma, grace and style. The film returns the favor by having him go to a punk rock club incognito and dressing him up in silly new wave sunglasses. The film is perhaps even a bit more clearer a comedy than its predecessor.

The film begins with the funeral of Karen White, the main character from Dante's film. Karen's brother Ben (Reb Brown) hears the truth from an attending werewolf hunter, Stefan Crosscoe (Lee). He convinces Ben to travel to Transylvania, along with his new girlfriend Jenny (Annie McEnroe) to kill the werewolf pack alpha bitch, the 10,000-year-old Stirba. She (in the form of Sybil Danning) hosts occult bisexual orgies at her castle and spreads werewolfism around the globe. Unless she's destroyed, she'll take over the world!

There's no denying this film's cheesiness, but there's a lot of an endearing quality to it. The film views all of the Balkans as a backwater area, where people still live like in Mediaval times and have an ethnic festival going all year. There's a good Euro-sleaze athmosphere going on in the scenes taking place in Stirba's castle.

There's lesbian undertones, dwarves, spanking, a horrible giant bat effect and other craziness going on all around. It's all in good fun and one can't help being entertained by all these horror tropes done suitably well and rolling along in a fast enough pace. The actors (sans Lee) are of course atrocious. Just as you think the film has ended and ran out of ideas, they have a final one in their bag: As the post-punk band Babel reprises their song The Howling during the end credits, footage of Sybil Danning revealing her massive breasts, cut next to various characters in the film reacting in humorous ways. Incredible.

★ or ★★★★★

The Howling III: The Marsupials (Australia, 1987)
Director: Philippe Mora

It seems Philippe Mora still had plenty of more ideas on where to take his werewolf franchise. It also seems he may have had too many ideas about the matter. The third Howling is shot entirely in good ole Australia, and in the patented ozploitation style.

While the werewolf population of Earth suffered a massive blow in the previous installment, some still survive. Case in point is Australia, which has evolved a wholly seperate population of werewolves that have pouches. The anthropologist Professor Harry Breckmeyer (Barry Otto) sees odd wolf-like creatures in old-time footage of aborigine rituals. So he naturally goes to The President Of United States to tell his suspicions of a weird, wolf-like tribe living in the bush.

Meanwhile, among the real wolf tribe, a young girl named Jerboa (Imogen Annesley) flees to Sydney. She catches the eye of a movie producer Donny (Lee Biolos) and is soon picked as a lead for a cheap horror movie. Jerboa and Donny fall in love. But she has to flee again as he realizes she's a bit hairier than he originally saw.

All sorts of crazy bullshit goes on. The film has poor grasp of a central story and there's ever-more left-wing twists to take the film to unsuspected territories. It gives an expression of a formless blob of a movie rather than a quirky comedy with surprises. While there are many fun parts early on (like the movie shoot and wrap-up party), sadly the film's additional scenes are often boring, such as the extended time jump of a werewolves raising a family in the woods. The final scenes bring the film full circle, but it's a bit too little, too late.

The film is admirably crazy, though and at least it's closer to Dante's original than either the first or second sequel in the same series.

★★


The Howling IV: The Original Nightmare (USA, 1988)
Director: John Hough

Let's not even go there. Attempts to be a more serious werewolf affair, fails in almost every aspect. Save for a puddle-based transformation scene, a total waste of time.


★

Teen Wolf Too (USA, 1987)
Director: Christopher Leitch

Rather, let's talk about the sequel to Michael J. Fox's on-the-nose puberty metaphor movie, shall we? It is considered to be one of the worst sequels of all time, and it's not hard to see why. For a comedy, it sure is an unfunny affair, and often doesn't seem to be trying that much.

The movie follows the cousin of Fox's Scott, Todd Howard (Jason Bateman). Everyone is aware that the Howards are werewolves, his uncle Harold (James Hampton) for instance being rather open about it. Rather than fearing the undead, unholy bloodthirsty beasts, this awakens curiosity and enthusiasm in normal people. Todd has gotten a college scholarship in order to bring the Hamilton University's boxing team some fame and glory. But Todd would rather just focus on his studies to become a veterinarian.

Yeah, the puberty undertones aren't that under in this one, either.

For one, the film forgot to add any jokes into its supposedly funny set-up. Scenes have incredibly poor comic timing. Often times it seems that the set up is going towards a punchline, but since the writers couldn't come up with anything humorous, the cast members just react a while and the scene moves on to the next one. It is a bit silly seeing Jason Bateman as a teen heart-throb and a lot of space is given shooting his cute smile spreading to his face. Less funny are the rubberfaced antics of his buddy Chubby (Mark Holton) that soon grow tiresome. John Astin as the cruddy old dean comes across as creepy as he can for no proper reason.

Boxing is an odd choice for the sport to be featured in a college comedy. Here it functions basically the same as in the Rocky movies: all punches, little moving around or blocking. The matches themselves feel like re-hashes of Karate Kid movies with their snooty rivals and whatnot, and not even the good ones. The most memorable thing about the movie is the godawful female mullett on Kim Darby, playing Todd's professor.

★★

The Arnold Project, Part X: Mas

I haven't done anything to advance the Arnold Project for more than a year now. As a penance (gift-hungry children must do penance to get out of the Naughty list by Christmas, right?), it's more than fitting to take a look at the one movie often held as the very worst Arnold ever did: 1996's holiday classic Jingle All The Way!



Jingle All The Way, directed by Brian Levant, comes from the notorious period in Arnold Schwarzenegger's career when he tried his hand in playing the everyman in several family movies and comedies. And since Arnold isn't as much an actor as a presence, this was a horrible idea to begin with. He is as ordinary as a purple hippo dressed as Batman using the subway.

In this one, Arnold "plays" Howard Langston, a career dad who's never there for his son Jamie (Jake Lloyd, the worst actor ever to play Darth Vader). When Howard misses his son's important karate practice, he has to resort to making thin promises to win him back. In this case, he promises to get Jamie an action figure based on his favorite television super hero, Turbo Man, for Christmas.

The Finnish title for this film translates as "My Father is Turbo Man". FYI.

But as it happens, he doesn't remember the whole thing until Christmas Eve. He rushes to get the doll, even though he had promised his family to take them to the annual Christmas Parade. While Howard is gone, his sleazy next-door neighbor Ted (Phil Hartman) moves in to woo his wife Liz (Rita Wilson). Howard finds almost every departement store cleared out, since the action figure has been a major hit. Along with another desperate dad, Myron Larabee (Sinbad), they find a drastic measure after another to get their claws on the figure. But their quarreling and fighting over it foils the plan for the both of them again and again.

This is a very zaccharine-coated, plastic Hollywood dreck at its worse. But even though it's constantly annoying, it is also quite entertaining. Phil Hartman (RIP) could do funny in his sleep, and his considerable talents keep any scenes with Ted afloat, even if he hams it up. At least hartman seems like he's having fun. Arnold grunts and moans his way through. It is always fun to see Arnold in pain, and there's plenty of comical violence to go around here.

This is a film where there's two scenes where Arnold punches a midget so hard he flies all across the room. Arnold also fights mall santas, super villains, and punches Sinbad plenty of times. If he'd also kick Jake Lloyd's ass in some point then this parade of Arnold vs. considerably weaker opponents would be perfect. (He also fights a giant Super Santa played by WWE wrestler Big Show) The money shot is when he knocks out a reindeer. In the next scene he's feeding his neighbor's hot-tempered, certainly dangerous reindeer some beer. Y'know, because alcohol certainly soothes the wild soul.

At some point during the writing process of the movie the point must have been satirizing the commercialization of Christmas. The most astonishing thing, and simultaneously the most interesting thing about the film in general, is how the final product totally dismisses this idea. So while the film features adults fighting tooth-and-nail over the possession of a mass-produced, branded toy, the film doesn't give any alternative as to why they shouldn't be doing this. Instead, Howard feels remorse as to not have been a well enough father to spend his money on corporate Christmas presents earlier.

The measure of a good father in the movie is how good one keeps his promise. So, when one promises to give a certain branded, mass-produced action figure for Christmas, nothing else will suffice. So, in other words, if the child doesn't get exactly what he wants, it's the fault of the parents and they should feel guilty. I have a feeling Howard's kid will grow up to be kind of an asshole.

I detest many American Christmas movies, because they give such a plastic, saccharine, disgustingly commercial coating to a holiday that should be about love. The message of love is always ham-fistedly put to the film in the most obvious way possible, when it's clear that the shiny lights and wacky, easily sellable hijinks are what's the emphasis.

The oddity of the film makes it certainly watchable, and ironically funny as well. I'm not sure if I'd recommend it for anyone, but it's certainly in the same league as Batman & Robin as Arnold movies so terrible you have to see them to understand how tasteless film entertainment can be.

★ or ★★★★★

Merry Christmas from The Last Movieblog! Stay Classy!

Finnish Cult Movies III

Today is the Finnish Independence Day, and as promised, here is another installment of our ongoing look into Finnish films. The word "cult" on use here, is highly problematic, as most of native films have no following of any kind quite. But this time, there are at least fewer films that are obscure to us natives as well. This installment deals mostly with Finnish comedies, funny or not, and how they reflect our national identity. Happy Independence Day!

Numbskull Emptybrook (Uuno Turhapuro, 1973)
Director: Ere Kokkonen

The longest-running and perhaps the best-loved comedy characterin Finland's history is the loitering Numbskull Emptybrook (henceforth referred to in this text with his original name of Uuno Turhapuro), played by the legendary Vesa-Matti Loiri. The character debuted in the TV programme Spede Show in 1971, and proved to be so popular that co-creator Spede Pasanen as well as his go-to director Ere Kokkonen soon transformed the best sketches into a full-scale movie.

As with James Bond, the still-quite-tame first adventure tends to be forgotten when contrasted with flashier bigger adventures (such as (unofficial titles) Uuno in Psain, Uuno gets a job in the Army or Uuno as the President of Finland) steal the spotlight in people's minds. Uuno represents everything every spineless finnish male dominated by his stronger wife dreams to be: a master in his own rights, a man who survives in any situation and is pleased with little. The first Uuno movie was a massive hit of it's time, gathering over 600 000 viewers.

The formula of the movie is easily explained. Uuno (Loiri) is superbly lazy, greedy and hungry. His wife Elisabeth (Marjatta Raita) is cold, grumpy and bossy, the complete contrast. So, in order to get to eat, have some fun, or to get some loving, Uuno resorts to long-winded explanations and speeches that work within their own internal logic. We see Uuno try to survive through a diet, try to get out to go drinking with his pal Härski (Spede), and to go to his summer cottage.

The old sketches are repeated through two first acts. The last act deals with another of Uuno's main attributes: despite his piggish manners and ghastly appearance, he can be the master in anything when he so chooses. So, in this one it turns out Uuno is a master-class violinist, which is something his greedy neighbor Kotkala-Hammaslärvänen (Juhani Kumpulainen) attempts to exploit.

The early sketches feature some of the funniest Uuno material out there, but there's no hiding the fact that this is cut-and-paste filmmaking. The focus is also lost completely in the final act, which turns out to be quite dull. But the main actors are perfectly cast, even if the Turhapuro family hadn't yet cast some of its best players (such as Uuno's father-in-law, usually played by Tapio Hämäläinen). The scale of the film is refreshingly down-to-earth, mostly dealing with the relationship between one stereotypical married couple. Plus, there are several actually smart visual gags, such as Elisabeth piling up a pyramid of empty beer bottles during her introduction scene, which tells heaps on the conditions she lives in.

Sadly, the success of the first Uuno also changed the course of the careers of Spede and Ere. Where previously they had created quite inventive, unexpected and well-crafted comedy together, from there on out they relied in repeating gags and bits that people already knew. It also didn't help that they started to get less and less money for their projects. Uuno would go on to have 18 more cinematic adventures until the last one debuted in 2004.

★★★

Ripa ruostuu (1993)
Director: Christian Lindblad

The 80's and early 90's in Finnish cinema history were notorious times for two reasons. First and foremost, the country suffered from the tightest cencorship board in the whole Europe, which was notoriously bad for getting any movies featuring sex and violence released. For the finnish filmmakers, the National Film Foundation was a bigger problem, since it adamantly refused to give money to any project it deemed unworthwhile. All in all, it was a time when officials and authorities decided what was suitable as art and what wasn't. This Aki Kaurismäki-produced film stems from these problems.

Christian Lindbland's brainchild takes its form from the artiest of films. It is shot on grainy black-and-white tape and at times uses fast-cut collages or montages to advance its plot. Yet the film also ingrates within itself the shunned sex and violence, and a pulp fiction-styled story in a quite clever way. And also a year before Tarantino's big break! At the same time it is a film about filmmaking, which is balancing between the line of art and entertainment anyway.

The sleazy deadbeat Ripa (Sam Huber) wants to be a film director. Yet all his scripts are turned down for having too much sex and violence. He owes a large sum of money to his ex-wife, who pesters him about it constantly. But he also has no other source of income, so he's growing more and more desperate. But at the same time he's quite the ladies' man. A beautiful young bank clerk (Mari Vainio)
falls for him, but he is more interested in solving his monetary problems than to constantly have sex with her.

The film acknowledges it's debt to old film-noir classics when in reality it is more akin to being a Neo-New Wave film. But it manages not to fall into the pit of being too analytical or fancy-pants. It's first and foremost a tale of decadence, a bohemian life that destroys all artistic ambitions one may have. The sleaziness of Depression-era Finland, and common pulp archetypes are brought to life with a confident hand. The prize for the most hilarious character goes to Vesa-Matti Loiri, cameoing as Ripa's businessman father.

Telling anything more about him would be spoiling the film, so seek it out!

★★★ 1/2

Olympian Holiday (Loma, 1976)
Director: Risto Jarva

Of the final three of Jarva's comedies, Loma has been my least favorite. There's actually nothing wrong with the film itself, in fact I find it fairly accuratelly depicts what happens when you have a group of regular finnish folks on a vacation. And that disgust me at some extent. In the 70's mass tourism became more affordable for all finns, and thus Torremolinos, The Canary Islands and Madeira in particular had to suffer through hoardes of backwards finnish folk, warts and all.

The bank clerk Aimo Niemi (Antti Litja) plans to head off to the Innsbruck Winter Olympics on his holiday. But there's a mix-up at the airport and he flies to the Greek Island of Rhodes. He finds out he's been mixed with a woman that shares his surname and thus has been booked to share a hotel room with the cranky woman reporter Marjukka (Tuula Nyman). She rejects Aimo at the get-go, figuring he's up to some tricks to bed him. Aimo hower attempts to enjoy his accidental vacation, even though his suitcase is filled with winter clothes. He just needs to rely on some scissors and a lot of creativity.

Jarva as a filmmaker relies on not telling everything but leaving certain key points somewhere between the images. He trusts the audience to grasp what's going on fairly quickly, and spends more time on the holiday imagery and build-up to embarrassing situations. Litja is great as the quiet, timid and a little spineless archetype of a finnish man, who can't bring himself to complain even when others fumble and mix up things for him. He also gets caught in a triangle drama, since he starts to pine for a Greek woman he sees as a Goddess. At the same time his recluctant roommate slowly starts to warm to him.

But as I said, the main thing that I get from this is how being abroad can really bring up how much the Finns can be jerks. They sing in choir nationalistic Finnish songs all the time, insist on eating Finnish foods and demand to do things the Finnish way. The hard-drinking, partying way isn't depicted here so strongly, the viewpoint is decidedly middle-aged. I had to double-check the film takes place in Rhodes, since the tourist village featured in the film could have been shot anywhere in the world.

★★★

Sixpack Movie (Pussikaljaelokuva, 2011)
Director: Ville Jankeri

Only a year old, but since this film is based on the cult novel by Mikko Rimminen, about loitering 20-somethings, it has already gained a following. Rimminen's novel makes it a point to be mostly about nothing, just three buddies nearing 30 drifting along one day in Helsinki's Bronx, Kallio. The book's biggest problem is that every character in it sounds more or less like Mikko Rimminen. There's not a lot of diversity in speech patterns or anything. The book also relies much on long strains-of-thought which could be problematic in another medium. But the film adaptation manages to fix many flaws and work around the problems caused by the flimsy source material.

The tired Marsalkka (Jussi Nikkilä) would just want to sleep in his shoddy apartement, seething in self-pity. Yet his friends Lihi (Ylermi Rajamaa) and Henninen (Eero Milonoff) insist him to venture outside with them, have a few beers and perhaps shoot some dice. Something has also occured in the apartement above Marsalkka's which doesn't make him want to stay home. The trio goes around drinking, talking about this and that, trying to pick up some girls, looking for shoes and earning the anger of a pair of assholish police officers.

The film does reach at times the feeling of the early Seinfeld seasons, where it's about nothing, yet feels comfrotably familiar and is funny at the same time. The motivation for the dudes drifting around is given at certain points the search for an environment to shoot dice, sometimes the need to get away from Kallio. In both cases it does seem like the main characters aren't really trying. The questions on whether these unemployed men have it all right in their lives, is wisely not undelined that much and mostly left to the watcher's imagination.

The three main characters are perfectly cast, and all three make Rimminen's text sound like it could be actually spoken aloud by living persons. Not all the characters are as well-acted and particularly the young girls in the film give at times cringe-worthy performances. The real star of the film is however the neighborhood of Kaillio, a place where a lot of young folks live in seedy apartements and go to pubs in search for cheap beer. The milieu is lovingly shot, even if the geography doesn't make a lick of sense at times. The film can be seen to be a true experience for certain members of the same generation,

★★★ 1/2

Lapland Odyssey (Napapiirin sankarit, 2010)
Director: Dome Karukoski

Two years ago, this comedy was the most watched film in Finnish theatres so it might be too mainstream to warrant a "cult" status. But since somehow this has generated some interest abroad as well (it just received a release in Russian cinemas), it pays to deal with it anyway. At the film's core there is a want to bring a message abroad on how Finns are like, and how Lapland is like, anyway.

Janne (Jussi Vatanen) is a bit dim, jobless young man living in a small town in Lapland. His girlfriend Inari (Pamela Tola) demands that he goes to buy them a digital TV box to view television transmissions. As he just uses the money he's received on beer, Inari tells that she's had enough of his spinelessness and moves out of their home. Jussi promises that he will get a digibox before the night is over. He sets off with his friends Kapu (Jasper Pääkkönen) and Räihönen (Timo Lavikainen) to get such a gizmo from her father in Rovaniemi. But the night is long and the men face various incidents before they can get their hands on the box.

The film's biggest problem which it can't overcome is the fact that the film's central romance doesn't work. Janne is a dumb asshole, with a mean streak (like peeing in his rival's wine bottle) that no one in their right mind would want to succeed. Inari is no more symphathetic, as she's dumb enough to put her whole future and her relationship on such a trivial thing as whether she gets something or not. She harbors a certain secret which would be a lot more comfrotable to talk about face-to-face than to make up quests and send his man there. The film's gender views are aggressively conservative.

Karukoski shoots Lapland and the whole film in particular like ist's a plastic snow-globe, all back lit, colorful and fake-snowy. The rivalry between the main characters and "the wankers" from Kittilä seems to be stolen from The Wedding Waltz, yet is not even the tenth of as funny.

There are still various bits in the film that somewhat work, and are even funny. The momma's boy Räihönen tends to play a show-yer-tits arcade game at a local pub, and later happens to meet the model posing in the pictures at a bar. Marjukka (Miia Nuutila) is desperate enough to agree to have sex with a 20-something virgin creeper, but the pair is seperated because of Jussi's own needs. This sub-plot is quite funny, and would have made a good short film. It's too bad one has to take a lot of wannabe-O Brother Where Art Thou crap before that thing can comfrotably continue.

★★

Makkarakalakeittoa, sano Tympee Huttunen (1988)
Director: Kaarlo Kortelainen

On the most obscure part of this article is this straight-to-VHS sketch comedy that has seen by very few, and can't be said to really have a following, "cult" or otherwise. But dang if it isn't one of the strangest Finnish films, comedies or otherwise, I've ever come across.

The film stars Leo Lastumäki, best known from Sheep Eaters, dealt within this blog's last Cult Movies post. His major role here is "Tympee" Huttunen, a grumpy old man living in an almost desterted village in the middle of nowhere. Whatever happens to him, he describes it to be "Dreary" ("Tympeetä"). The movie's sketches showcase him and the other eccentric occupants of his village (played by such names as Aake Kalliala, Tuija Piepponen and Martti-Mikael Järvinen).

The film seems like it was shot by a number of friends during one drunken weekend at a summer cottage. It does have more professional people involved than that, but the whole thing is as badly scripted, acted and cut. The musical scenes take long, but the music is godawful. Many times the narrator's speak is put over characters talking, and the mumbling by itself is so quaint, one can't often tell what anyone is saying. That's probably for the best since the film's skits are horrible if you get them. When you can't tell what's going on, the film becomes almost surreal.

Huttunen watches his wife's butt as she's kneeling to pick some berries from a bush. The man sees bikini-clad ladies waving for him instead of his old lady. The next shot is the wife being tied and gagged on the back of a mini-tractor Huttunen uses to drive around the field. End skit. There's a musical number about rushing over to say hi to one's neigbors which as a looooong take of an actor saying hi to the camera by lifting each of his arms at times. End skit. Three different scenes of Leo Lastumäki berating a waitress in various ways at the local pub, back-to-back. End skit. Aake Kalliala playing a doctor who harrasses his secretary. Cut these along with very odd reaction shots about various characters that had nothing to do with the sketch, and you have the kind of disgusting sausage-fish-soup the film is named after.

These odd goings-on have nothing to do with each other, so when not understanding the sketch, this becomes an almost lynchian nightmare on how the deserting countryside breaks the last occupants' minds and spirits. That's why they become to act in feverish, odd ways. It may be just a Finnish country comedy at its worst, but it is so poorly made, it makes for all kinds of new interpretations.

★ or ★★★★★