Oct 21 2008
Best Worst Films, part 2
In the continuing adventure to find you the gems in that $1 bin at your local creepy video store, you know the one that can’t afford registers and just has a little bag behind the counter and writes down your driver’s ID instead of membership card, I have been watching some travesties of movies and have even found some so crappy the circle is complete and they are so bad they are enjoyable.
Like I had announced in my last post for The Best Worse Films, I would like to examine The Turkish Star Wars and Ghoulies, but for now I have watched others movies that I will be discussing first. And since it’s my blog, you have one of two choices:
1. Keep reading and disregard that you will not be reveling in Turkish Stat Wars goodness, or…
2. Keep reading anyway.
PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE
“I’m a big boy, Johnny.”
This movie is kind of a gimme, but all in all, you need to watch this movie. This is hailed to be Ed Wood’s masterpiece, if such a term as “master piece” and such a person as Ed Wood can be placed together in one sentence. If you are not familiar with Mr. The Ed Wood, please, school yourself on film history’s worst director. The man thought he was making the science fiction Citizen Kane, and that, my friends, is why this movie is so damn fun to watch. At some points the dialogue actually gets pretty interesting, and then Wood takes a dump of genius and fucks up the entire thing.
The film is the lat thing Bela Lugosi, of Dracula fame, would ever do before dying. Wood and Lugosi became friends and he shot Lugosi in random film snippets that were edited into Plan 9 and billed as “Almost starring Bela Lugosi.” This is funny in when the Lugosi segments seem so randomly placed in the film and the other actor that had to play the character has to hold a cloak over his face to hide from the camera, so upon first viewing you are so confused as to who these people are it’s bewildering. After the character Bela is playing dies, a space ship lands in the graveyard rising the dead into zombie-like vampires. Don’t ask.
The movie is so damn entertaining and cheese-filled that even the actors don’t take it seriously. My favorite part is the scene where the grave diggers are finishing up and they hear a noise, it’s in the first 10 minutes.
Great dialogue all around, and by great I stress how bad it is…
First Scientist: “And this is the solarmanite bomb.”
Second Scientist: “So, what does it do?”
First Scientist: “It causes sunlight to explode.”
Second Scientist: “All of it?”
First Scientist: “Well, yes.”
Second Scientist: “Wanna set it off?”
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Beast Master 2: Through the Portal of Time (1991)
Wow. I can’t believe more people don’t love this movie. This movie is the Vanilla Ice of action movies. The IMDB plot synopsis reads: “Mark Singer returns as Dar, the warrior who can talk to the beasts. Dar is forced to travel to earth to stop his evil brother from stealing an atomic bomb, and turning their native land from a desert into… well… a desert!” All that and add some post 80s hip fashion sense, awesomely flamboyant post 80s music, and colors so bright Ray Charles would slap you.
Armed with his weaponry of beasts, Dar is a bad mofo who looks like he stepped off the set of a Winger video and wants to save the world with his beloved furry critters. When steps through the time portal he is wisked away to mystical EL A. I’ll give you a second on that. Got it? Good.
Here’s the nut squeezer…the bad guy, his name is escaping me right now, is actually pretty bad ass. The actor plays his role like he is auditioning for the next Conan movie. While everyone else may be off this guys take his shit seriously and it comes off, mostly…until he goes shopping in a fancy clothing store in “EL A” and tries on some chick clothes.
Here are some of my favorite lines: (none of which are conjoined)
Jackie Trent: Way rad!
Jackie Trent: Tell Daddy I’m going to stop World War 3!
Caberly: Have somebody run a check on all loincloth freaks.
Lyranna: I know, you’ll cleave my black heart from my bosom. Why does everyone want to cleave my bosom? It cleaves just fine on its own.
While the first Beastmaster, still cheesy, was trying to be more serious, the second, and regrettably 3rd, installment were so low under the original expectations you can’t even find these on DVD, except for the first. Then again, Angus hasn’t come to DVD yet either, and that was a shame, I love that movie.
