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BAD MOVIE NIGHT ARCHIVE
2010
(that means you missed them.)

Sunday, August 22, 2010


(street fighter)

Remember Karateka?

I do. Played it on the Apple ][ all the time. (From a legally purchased disk, Mr. Mechner! I swear!) Tons of fun. Who doesn't like beating people up in a video game?

In fact, let's enjoy watching someone else enjoying it right now:



It's a shame nobody made more fighting games after that. I'll bet they would have been fun.

Your hosts are Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em and Mike Spiegelman
but not Ryu, Ken or Chun-Li.



August 22, 2010 Street Fighter (1994)
Jean-Claude Van Damme as a guy who fights streets. BAM! Take that, streets!
Paved pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em, Mike Spiegelman and other streetwalkers.


Sunday, August 15, 2010


(hitman)

I love emulators. There, I said it.

I grew up playing the Atari 2600, and while I eventually graduated (sorta kinda) to Nintendo—not to mention playing damn near every game ever made for the Apple ][, thanks to my older brother's network of copying confederates—I stopped playing video games after that. Stopped playing them as much as I once did, anyway.

Mind you, I was in college during the mid-nineties, which meant I played Doom on my computer, but I never had another console system. I would occasionally pick up a discount computer game in the bargain bin (usually anything Star Wars or preferably Star Trek-related), but otherwise, I fell off that wagon.

And then, in 1999, my brother turned me on to emulation—running old software on new systems. Specifically, MAME (for playing old arcade games), and Stella (for playing Atari 2600 games). Opened up a whole new world for me, by allowing my already deeply ingrained Gen-X nostalgia to calcify.

Now, I should point out that emulation across the board is considered a criminal act by the Entertainment Software Association. So, whatever you do, do not follow this tutorial about using MAME so you can enjoy games from years past that are otherwise dead and buried. It would make the ESA cry!



I've sort of moved forward in the meantime, having finally downloaded a Super Nintendo emulator, and discovered that Donkey Kong Country is a pretty fun game. (Who knew?) And I remember being at someone's house sometime in the late nineties and seeing this one Star Wars game on what I eventually deduced was a Nintendo 64. I thought about it occasionally, but even during that absurd dot-com period where I was making entirely too much money, buying one of the machines never seemed worth it. Still doesn't.

But, by gods, I can emulate it. (Probably. Haven't tried that system yet. Have I mentioned how much fun Donkey Kong Country is?)

Anyway, it's been getting me to thinking that in twenty years, someone is going to fire up an emulator on whatever brain-implant computer they're using (an iBrain, no doubt), and they're going to play the games that were popular today.

I just can't see Hitman being one of them, though. I just can't.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Ziad Ezzat, and Andy Wenger & Damien Chacona
know that copyright infringement is your best entertainment value.



August 15, 2010 Hitman
A movie based on a video game you've never heard of. There's a lot of those, huh?
Clean-shaven wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Ziad Ezzat, Andy Wenger & Damien Chacona and other shooters.


Sunday, August 8, 2010


(lara croft tomb raider)

Seriously though: Angelina Jolie's breasts.

Do you really think there's any other reason this movie was made?

boing boing boing.



Some people are also really into her lips. I don't get that, either. I just don't get the appeal of Angelina Jolie at all.

Your hosts Mikl-Em and Tristan Buckner totally get her,
but Sherilyn Connelly still prefers Samantha Mathis.



August 8, 2010 Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
Angelina Jolie, though? I don't get her. I really don't. It's the lips and the bad fake accent, I suppose.
Collagen-enhanced pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em, Tristan Buckner and other raiders.


Sunday, August 1, 2010


(super mario bros.)

I saw this movie in the theater.

I wasn't really a big fan of the games—I enjoyed them well enough, but they weren't my life or anything, and Nintendo never really shook my stubborn, doomed loyalty to the Atari 2600—and yet I was compelled to pay good money and plunk my ass down in a theater. (A theater which, for reasons I do not understand this day, showed the trailer for Wim Wenders's Until the End of the World beforehand. I was already a Wenders fan because of Wings of Desire and was going to see World anyway, but seeing its trailer before a video game movie was odd, to say the least.) The main reason I went to see it was—

Well, first, I have to ask: do you remember Max Headroom?

It's hard to believe, but some people don't. Or even saw him in the first place My girlfriend, for example, is twenty-nine and a half years old, seven years my junior—born in 1980, if that helps with the math—and when I showed her this video, she really wasn't at all sure what she was seeing:



(He's not wrong, you know. T is for Tommy.)

I tried explaining it to her, especially getting across how awesome it was at the time and the deep love it instilled in many of us for Matt Frewer (who else was thrilled to see him in Watchmen last year?) (oh, and keep an eye on our schedule for Watchmen next year), but I think it was a you kinda-had-to-be-there sorta thing.

Anyway, for me, the best part of the whole Max Headroom deal was the original British teevee movie, Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future. The American teevee series that followed was pretty great, too (and it comes out on DVD soon!), but you just can't beat the wonderfully weird, Gilliam-esque textures of the original, not to mention it's all prescient and cyberpunk and shit:



The show, and the character of Max, were created by Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel. I was a credit-watcher in those days (as I still am), and I also made a point of reading the credits of every movie poster (as I still do).

So, way back in 1993 I saw that this new movie based on a video game (!) was directed by the people who created Max Headroom, I figured, heck, it had to be good.

Yeah. Whoops.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman and Bryce Byerley
something something something Mushroom Kingdom something something.



August 1, 2010 Super Mario Bros.
Samanatha Mathis (not pictured here) is quite hot in this movie. That's all you need to know.
Powered-up wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman, Bryce Byerley and other Bowsers.




Sunday, July 25, 2010


(interview with the vampire)

It always cracks me up when fans get all worked up over casting in movies.

One of the most famous examples was the casting of Micheal Keaton in Tim Burton's Batman. Holy jeez, did people go batshit (geddit?) carzy about that one. "Beetlejuice as Batman? Mr. Mom as Batman? That one guy who wasn't Fonzie in Night Shift as Batman? MICHAEL KEATON WILL RUIN BATMAN!"

As they are wont to do, a letter-writing campaign was launched. Fifty-thousand letters were allegedly sent to Warner Bros., who gave not half a shit.

The movie of course went on to be the biggest hits of 1989 and more or less began the wave of superhero movies which we're still drowning under today. And Michael Keaton himself was unflappably cool about the whole thing:



There was slightly less vocal complaining about Prince doing the music. I remember at least one of my friends saying "I really liked the movie, except for the Prince music." Which I can only say now, twenty-one years later: oh, shut up. Besides, the "Batdance" video was awesome, even if Prince forced the music to come down because the internet is over:



Anyway, the next big collective panty-bunching was a few years later when this week's feature was being cast. Even the author of the original book was outraged, though to her credit (I guess), she admits she was wrong about the role of Lestat:



And the movie was a pretty big hit. Funny thing, though—where Michael Keaton was asked to reprise his role as Batman in Batman Returns, the sequel to this week's feature (Queen of the Damned, which we did last October) featured someone else entirely as Lestat.

Just sayin'.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em and Ira Emsig
still think that casting Mickey Rourke in anything at all will ruin it.



Sunday, July 18, 2010


(days of thunder)

As I've mentioned more than once, perhaps the greatest scourge of movie advertising is the Giant Floating Head.

It's a comparatively modern phenomenon. Once upon a time, how a big star someone was could be determined by the size of their name in relation to the name of the film. Sylvester Stallone's career is a classic example of this.

In more recent times, however, as the salaries of stars began to grow to match their egos, they began to demand not just their name be big, but their face. The earliest example I can find of this is the poster for this week's feature:



Though there's some streaky cars down below, it's quite obvious that the raison d'etre of this film is Tom Cruise's pretty, pretty face.

But at least the poster has some style to it, what with the bluishness and the oranginess (well before that color scheme would be abused in posters and the movies themselves). The reigning champ of the Giant Floating Head has no such artsy-fartsy pretensions, of course. Before you blow him, lose yourself in Mel's big beautiful Jew-hating eyes:



Eventually, it stopped being reserved for just high-paid stars, and the Giant Floating Head became a common design even for movie starring people who don't make $20M a picture. The heads are just a little smaller, perhaps filling only three-eights of the vertical space, and they may not have the star's name in ginormous type, but they're still giant heads and they're still floating.

I used to think, hope, pray that this horrible design motif would fall out of favor, that eventually Hollywood would move away from its sterile, genetic mug-obsession. And the sameyness isn't always just Giant Floating Heads, either—just look at Jason Statham movie posters. But the floating heads are the worst, and I came to realize that the only way they'd go away is if people stopped going to the movies in question. Maybe if enough of them flopped, we'd finally get some more original posters, and the heads would float no more.

And then this happened:



Ah, fuck.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Tristan Buckner and Zeke Tyrus
have giant heads, but they do not float.



July 18, 2010 Days of Thunder
Tom Cruise is a handsome maverick race car driver who plays by his own rules.
Forumula 1 wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Zeke Tyrus and other Sunday drivers.


Sunday, July 11, 2010


(taps)

In 1986, Top Gun fundamentally changed the face of movie distribution, and how we think about movies.

Not just because it was a big hit and made Tom Cruise into a bankable movie star for the next twenty years. Heck, this was even pre-Scientology, if you can believe that. It has to do with home video, and the death of movies as events.

Though they weren't referring to this movie in particular, Robin Bougie and his wife Rebecca Dart summed up it nicely in the ninth issue of Bad Movie Night's favorite zine, Cinema Sewer:



Do you know that feeling? Home video kinda destroyed the concept of movies as something special. Sure, they still get all the money and attention for the most part, and in spite of the incursions made by teevee and Betamax and downloading and everything else which was supposed to kill off the industry it's still going strong, but the magic is gone. It's been gone for a long time.

Used to be, you could only see a movie either when it was originally in the theater, when it was teevee, or when it was re-released to theaters. Major theatrical re-releases have been largely unheard of since the early eighties, and only Disney really carried the torch into the nineties, though they've shifted that particular business model to DVDs.

And network teevee premieres were once a big deal. I still have fond memories of Superman being shown on ABC in 1982. I was nine, and the Atari logo appearing over the explosion of Krypton at 2:54 was the coolest thing ever:



I'm thirty-seven now, and I still think it's one of the the coolest things ever.

Anyway, in its first decade or so, home video was a rental industry. The movie companies sold the tapes to the video stores (often for a hundred dollars or more), and the stores turned around and rented them to customers. The stores would often sell used tapes, but except for a few crappy things like children's movies or concert videos, new and unwatched videotapes were not sold to customers. If they really wanted to they could special-order a new copy through the video store, but few movies garnered that kind of devotion in their fans. Mind you, several months after the movie had been out and the stores were sufficiently gouged the companies would often release them "Priced-to-own!" but if you wanted it as soon as it came out, you'd pay a hefty fee.

With Top Gun, however, they tried something new. They released it at what they called "sell-through" pricing right off the bat. To push it, they even distributed buttons for video store employees to wear: "Top Gun for $24.95? Ask me how!" (Yeah, I know what you're thinking. "A VHS tape for $24.95? Fuck that!" Hey, this was the eighties. We didn't know any better, alright?) The risk was partially subsidized by the presence of Diet Pepsi commercial at the beginning of the tape, another (sad, sad) first:



This was at a time when, say, twenty minutes of commercials before a theatrical movie was unthinkable. See what I mean? Everything changed.

Now the notion of collecting movies is commonplace, of building one's own video library. I'm no less guilty of it than anyone else. Hell, I'm more guilty of it. I'm a rabid media collector, and between the ability to copy DVDs and the advent of broadband and BitTorrent, I have more movies and teevee shows than I could ever reasonably expect to watch. Heck, I hardly ever go to movies anymore, both because of the cost (yay funemployment!) and because I know they'll be available soon to watch at home in super-high quality. And there's thousands to choose from, at the tip of my fingers. Movies just aren't special anymore, and it can all be traced back to Top Gun.

Mind you, none of this has anything to do with this week's feature, which came out five years earlier and features Tom Cruise is in a supporting role.

Still, though. Makes you think.

Or not.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em and Maura Sipila
would like to remind you that copyright infringement
is your best entertainment value.



July 11, 2010 Taps
Tom Cruise is a handsome maverick military cadet who plays by his own rules.
Staccato pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em, Maura Sipila and other grunts.


Sunday, July 4, 2010


(cocktail)

I'm a huge Beach Boys fan. There, I said it.

Most people today tend forget not only how popular they were in the mid-sixties, and how influential. Indeed, more and more band over the past decade have been open in acknowledging their debt to The Beach Boys, but at the time, they had a friendly rivalry going on with The Beatles, and the bands inspired each other's greatest work.

Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys heard The Beatles' Rubber Soul and realized The Beach Boys had to step up their game, and the result was Pet Sounds, misunderstood at the time but now rightfully considered their masterpiece. Paul McCartney heard Pet Sounds and realized that The Beatles had to step up their game in response, and the result was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, rightfully considered one of the best albums ever made. But Pepper wouldn't have happened without Pet Sounds. And when Brian (who was pretty much the driving force of The Beach Boys in the studio) tried to step up his game once again in response with an album called Smile, he accidentally broke his brain. It doesn't help that he had undiagnosed mental illness, admittedly. (Don't tell Tom I'm talking about mental illness. That makes him cranky.)

The Beach Boys certainly never recovered financially—unlike with The Beatles, their audience never really followed them when they attempted to mature—and while they never quite topped or replicated Pet Sounds on any level, they still managed to squeak out some great music now and then. The problem was that by the end of the seventies they were an unfashionable relic, and their name was a stigma they could not escape. I steadfastly believe that if "Slip on Through" from 1970's Sunflower or "Trader," "Big Sur" or "Steamboat" from 1973's Holland had been released by anyone else, they would have been big hits. Actually, on second thought, there's no way "Steamboat" could have been a hit, but that just makes it even better.

Holland was their last attempt at making a truly great album. It succeeded in being a great album, but failed in getting anyone to actually buy it, and after that, they accepted their fate as an oldies act. It was all downhill from there.

Except that somehow, they kept making money. And in the eighties, they surprised the entire universe by not only scoring their first Number #1 single since the sixties, but by having it eventually covered by The Muppets:



Suck it, Sgt. Pepper.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman and Ira Emsig
will get there fast and then take it slow.



July 4, 2010 Cocktail
Tom Cruise is a handsome maverick bartender who plays by his own rules.
Mixed wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman, Ira Emsig and other barflies.


Sunday, June 27, 2010


(planet of the apes)

I've gone on record more than once as saying that I don't mind remakes. Every time a remake is announced, there's always a great gnashing of teeth from the geekerati, and the same old tired lament: "Why can't Hollywood do something original for once?" They always think that they're the first ones to say so, even though (as usual) The Onion had the last word on the subject over a decade ago. These also tend to be the same people who actually go to see a Transformers movie in the theater, thus continuing to validate the whole economic system which thrives on sequels and remakes.

There are few better examples of the Hollwyood remake/sequel machine than the Planet of the Apes series.

It went like this. The original 1968 Planet of the Apes (which was based on a novel, I might add, and therefore not strictly "original") was a big hit, and followed in 1970 by Beneath the Planet of the Apes, one of those sequels which is more like a remake with a different cast. After that came Escape from the Planet of the Apes in 1971, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes in 1972, and closing out with Battle for the Planet of the Apes in 1973. Think about it: they shit out one of these movies per year for four years, a record which pretty much stood uncontested until the Saw movies (for which "shit" ceased to be a metaphor).

Of course, even though the film series ran out of gas there was always television. In 1974, there was a live-action Planet of the Apes teevee show:



It flopped because nobody cared, but that was okay, because in 1975 they tried again with a cartoon, this time called Return to the Planet of the Apes, since "return" was the only verb left:



It died after one season, but that was okay too, because what really mattered were the money-making toys:



And that was more or less it in terms of new productions, but the movies played forever on teevee, and the first film was firmly lodged in the public consciousness. A remake/reboot/relaunch was inevitable, though director Tim Burton (what happened to ya, Tim? Seriously, what the fuck?) called his 2001 mess a "re-imagining" rather than a remake. Because that makes a difference, somehow.

The movie was a flop and nobody liked it, and that was more or less that.

Until now.



That's right, bitches: a prequel to a remake that nobody liked.

Don't ever change, Hollywood.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em and Phil Darnowsky
will not keep their stinking paws off this damn dirty movie.



June 27, 2010 Planet of the Apes (2001)
Remember when Tim Burton's movies were creative and interesting and usually didn't suck? This film is not from that time period.
Wackiness ensues in a madhouse—a madhouse!!!

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em, Phil Darnowsky and other damn dirty apes.


Sunday, June 20, 2010


(the chronicles of riddick)

Man, can you imagine cutting Rosario Dawson out of a movie?

I can't. I mean, jeez, why would I want to do that to my girlfriend? (Not that she knows she's my girlfriend, but someday...)

Rob Zombie did, though. He cut her out of The Devil's Rejects, his sequel to House of 1,000 Corpses. Her performance was fine, and of course, she was breathtakingly gorgeous as always, but the scene she was in just didn't work for the film. The tone was completely wrong, and he recognized that and did what had to be done.

House of 1,000 Corpses was a colorful, at times garish film, kind of a mash-up between the old DC Horror Comics and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and it devolved into full-on comic bookiness at the end with the final reveal of Dr. Satan.

The Devil's Rejects drained out all the color and garishness and went into straght-on Chainsaw territory, tone-wise. For my money it's ultimately the better film as a result, but in the long run, they're so different they almost can't be compared, even with the same characters.

Which is where Rosario's scene comes in, featuring the return of Dr. Satan:



Zombie said he cut the scene because "seeing Dr. Satan in this film would be like seeing Chewbacca in Bonnie and Clyde." Which pretty much nails it.

House of 1,000 Corpses was cartoony, and The Devil's Rejects was (for want of a better word) realistic.

It's kinda the opposite of what happened with this week's feature, the sequel to Pitch Black, which was (for want of a better word) realistic.

But this time, the director doesn't know better than to keep Chewbacca out of it. If you know what I mean.

Your hosts are Jim Fourniadis, Dan Foley and Tim Kay
and no wookiees. (Probably.)





June 20, 2010 The Chronicles of Riddick
Vin Diesel (again with the baldies!) makes a horrible career choice, making this sequel to Pitch Black instead of the sequel to xXx or The Fast and the Furious. (Then again, maybe he was screwed no matter what.)
Gleaming wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Tim Kay, Dan Foley and other chromedomes.


Sunday, June 13, 2010, 6pm



rhiannon and sherilyn's
star wars trilogy
birthday sleepover!

I had a horrible realization yesteday. It's been festering in the back of my mind for a while now, but I finally got to the point where I couldn't deny it.

I was leaving the Pharmacy at San Francisco General Hospital. They're good people doing a tough job, but holy jeez, there's so much red tape and miscommunication and just generally bad vibes there, and they manage to goof up something regarding my prescription every time.

I was in a tizzy as I left because I was going to have to return in a few days to get the prescription which should have been ready by now, and I tweeted thusly:



And that's when it hit me: I'm a Star Wars fan.

I've always claimed not to be. Part of it is my pride in being a lifelong Star Trek fan, what the the faux-rivalry between the two camps. But the simple fact is that I've always liked Trek better (in spite of their attempts to lose me as a fan, such as Nemesis and Enterprise). And while I certainly didn't dislike Star Wars, I was not fan.

But I know way, way too much. I have opinions about it. I can make esoteric references like the above tweet, and I can discuss at some length why the Bea Arthur scene in the Star Wars Holiday Special may well be the emotional backbone of the show, or why the contributions of Irving Kershner and Genndy Tartakovsky are easily the high-water mark for the entire franchise.

I have a stuffed bantha, for pete's sake. Rhiannon gave it to me for my birthday last year.

So, yeah. It's time to come clean.

My name is Sherilyn, and I'm a Star Wars fan.

And hey, speaking of Star Wars and birthdays—in honor of the birthdays of The Dark Room's favorite Geminis, Rhiannon (June 12) and myself (June 16), we're riffing on the first three Star Wars movies, the ones that weren't lousy. (Not as lousy as The Phantom Menace, anyway.) In a row. Back to back.

It's more Harrison Ford than you can shake a stick at. And why would you want to shake a stick at someone his age, you insensitive bastard? He's, like, eighty! And he starred in Firewall, so he's already traumatized! Damn, you suck.

But that's okay, because you're still our BFF, and we totally want you to come to our birthday party, okay? It's going to be a total blast, we swear. Our parents are out of town and you can stay over and we have the keys to the liquor cabinet (aka "the liquor store across the street") and it's just going to be a whole lot of fun and you don't have to stay for the whole time if you want to and just please show up, okay?

We know it's a schoolnight for a lot of you, so we're starting early: 6pm. That's when we're going to watch the original Star Wars, with Mikl-Em co-hosting. At 8pm we'll watch The Empire Strikes Back with Mike Spiegelman, and at 10pm Ziad Ezzat will help us close out the night with The Return of the Jedi.

By the way, we're going to be watching the original theatrical versions. No CGI, no Jabba or Boba Fett in Star Wars and no Hayden Christensen as a ghost at the end of Jedi, and you'd best believe Greedo doesn't shoot first.

Oh, and presents? Don't worry about it. Your presence is your present.

If you really wanna get us stuff, here's Rhiannon's Amazon wish list, and this is mine, though blank DVD-Rs always make me happy.

Though nothing would make me and Rhiannon happier than you joining us this Sunday, 'kay? 'kay.

(Be sure to get there at 6pm if you wanna see Han shoot first.)

June 13, 2010, 6pm Special Event (in a box!):

Rhiannon and Sherilyn's
Star Wars Trilogy
Birthday Sleepover!

To celebrate Rhiannon and Sherilyn's birthday(s), we're going to riff on the first three Star Wars movies, the ones that (mostly) didn't suck.

And we're riffing on the original theatrical versions, with no CGI, no Hayden Christensen, and you'd best believe Han shoots first.

Bring your jammies and blankets and get cozy.
Necking with the birthday girls encouraged.
Forceful wackiness will ensue. SHOW BEGINS AT 6PM, BITCHES.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Rhiannon Charisse and...

6pm: Star Wars - Mikl-Em
8pm: The Empire Strikes Back - Mike Speigelman
10pm: Return of the Jedi - Ziad Ezzat

Sunday, June 6, 2010


(star trek: nemesis)

Then there's the truism which, in spite of how it's spelled, is not true: the Star Trek moives which end in even numbers (or, at least, are even-numbered in order) are good, and the odd-numbered ones are bad. The "odd-numbered movie curse," it's often called. It's another example of humies looking for patterns in chaos, and as a result, at least one really good movie has gotten the bum's rush.

I first heard the theory after Star Trek Generations was released. I actually liked it quite a lot—John Alonzo's cinematography was wonderful, especially in the early scenes when the Enterprise-D was lit from the Amargosa star (seriously, mute the volume if you have to, but go back and watch those scenes again just for the lighting)—and it made a lot of money, but the general consensus was that it sucked.

Then First Contact came out, with lots of bang-bang action and shit blowing up, and everyone was all "Hey, this awesome! And if it had a number, it would be even, therefore the even-numbered Star Trek movies are great and the odd-numbered movie are awful! Because we're simple-minded fanboys who can only think in oversimplified dichotomies which don't allow for nuance or shades of gray!" It was as simple as that (minus that final sentence, which was the subtext).

Now, it's true that nobody but me and KrOB like Star Trek: The Motion Picture, as I explain in my Medialoper article on the subect, and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier was a disaster thanks to a weak script and a slashed budget and a bad director. Though I will say that in Star Trek V's defense, it's the classic so-bad-it's-good movie. There's something wrong with every frame of the movie. It's like a car wreck with bad special effects and worse toupees, and it's endlessly entertaining as a result. (If you want to commit a Leaving Las Vegas-style suicide via alcohol poisoning, play the "Take a shot every time you see something wrong in Star Trek V" drinking game. Your liver will crawl out of your esophagus and try to knock the bottle out of our hand.)



So everybody liked First Contact and nobody liked Insurrection (the ninth film), so once again everyone was all "Odd-numbered movie curse!" Funny thing was, when this week's feauture flopped hard while sucking bigger and hairier donkey balls than anything else in the franchise, I never heard anyone say "Oh, I guess that breaks the curse, and maybe there never was a freakin' curse to begin with, therefore perhaps certain of the odd-numbered movies have their strong points and should be considered on their own terms." Nope, nobody said that. For that matter, when last year's new Star Trek came out—the eleventh film in the series, even called Star Trek XI in preproduction—and all the fans gushed over it, nobody said "Hey, that odd-numbered movie was great! I guess that breaks the curse, and maybe—"...well, you get the idea.

Here's the thing: for as much fun as Star Trek II is (though I consider it a tad overrated, with flat direction, a dull color pallette which trades the gray of the previous film for beige, and horrible sound recording which renders much of the dialogue inaudible), and as popular as it's always been with the fans and the general public and how it's pretty well responsible for the dumbass "odd-numbered movie curse," what nobody remembers is that when Star Trek III: The Seach for Spock came out two years later, it was an ever bigger critical and financial hit. Indeed, it was considered better than Star Trek II. I still think it it's the superior film, but nooooo, conventional wisdom is that it sucks because the it's the third movie, rather than the second or fourth.

Even though, as previously stated, this tenth film is really, really bad.

Bleh. Fans are such big dumb stupidheads sometimes.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman and Ziad Ezzat
would like to point out that fans of Bad Movie Night are
exempted from the "big dumb stupidhead" comment above.



June 6, 2010 Star Trek: Nemesis
A bald guy fights his clone, who is also bald. Which makes them both like penises (like Swayze's sword!). What we're trying to say is, it's pretty gay.
Wackiness boldly ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman, Ziad Ezzat and other new lifeforms.


Sunday, May 30, 2010


(seven pounds)

It's a truism which happens be to true, which is why they call it's spelled that way. (Duh, people. Keep up!)

Movie comedians always want to play serious parts. Them clowns, they're always crying on the inside.

If their career is going well enough, they'll inevitably use their clout to finally make that financially risky heavy-drama movie.

One of the more notorious example of this is Woody Allen, who, after directing a string of wacky comedies which culminated in the the biggest hit of his career with the Oscar-winning (and really quite brilliant) romantic comedy Annie Hall, next made Interiors, a quiet drama in the vein of his hero, Ingmar Bergman.



When people complained about how we wasn't being funny anymore, he responded with the meta and gorgeous Stardust Memories, one of my most favoritest movies ever:



In more recent years, the most obvious examples of the Sad Cinematic Clown are Jim Carrey and Will Smith. Sometimes this results in excellent movies, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:



And sometimes...well, let's just say that sometimes, jellyfish are involved.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman and Dan Foley
are free-swimming members of the phylum Cnidaria.



May 30, 2010 Seven Pounds
Will Smith battles...um...well, we're not really sure. Existential ennui or jellyfish or something. But he does it with sass!
One hundred and twelve ounces of wackiness ensue.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman, Dan Foley and other stingers.


Sunday, May 23, 2010


(wild wild west)

Whooboy. Here we go.

We've been putting this one off for a long time.

One of the biggest flops of the nineties, and easily one of the worst Westerns ever made.

It could be worse, I suppose. It could have an all-midget cast.



On second thought, maybe that would have been an improvement.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Andy Wenger & Damien Chacona and Maura Sipila
apologize in advance.



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May 23, 2010 Wild Wild West
Will Smith and Kevin Kline battle a mad scientist and his giant metal spider—with sass!
Mild pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Andy Wenger & Damien Chacona, Maura Sipila and other westerners.


Sunday, May 16, 2010


(i, robot)

Again: books are not movies, and I'm okay with that. I get that.

And some books aren't cut out to be made into movies, at least not without some major reworking.

I, Robot is a classic example of this.

Isaac Asimov's work in general doesn't fare too well on screen—I'm looking at you, Nightfall—but I, Robot is a special case, because it's not a single narrative. It's a collection of short stories. There are some recurring elements, like (SPOILER!) robots, and it all takes place within the same universe and with at least one constant human character, Susan Calvin.

Some people tried, though, like the cranky old gasbag Harlan Ellison, who went ahead and published his unfilmed screenplay adaptation anyhow.

It also fared pretty well on teevee, oddly enough:



But there was never any real chance of a big-budget film getting it right (whatever "right" means), especially as the years went on and Asimov's fame dimmed.

Which is why I wasn't as bothered as some people about the release of the big-budget I, Robot in 2004, even though it was obvious from the get-go that it would use the name and little else. (Susan Calvin is in the movie, but, well, she's not the hero. Go figure.) Whatevs. No biggie. As they say, the movie didn't do anything to the book—it's still right there on the shelf at the public library.

Ultimately, the reason I can't hate on the movie too much (at least, not until I have a microphone in my hand) is because it saved me from a fate worse than death. Worse than death, I say!

I was in Hollywood on a spoken word tour in July of 2004, and my tour companion was all excited about seeing a movie at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. I was initially intrigued for historical reasons, what with how many famous movie premieres have taken place there, but my enthusiasm dropped sharply when I discovered that it had become a googolplex. That just hurts. That the tickets cost eleven dollars hurt even more. Bear in mind, this was 2004. For that matter, it was eleven 2004 dollars! That's like fifty dollars now!)

Still, I didn't want to let him down, so I said yes. My companion was also focused on one particular movie: White Girls. Did you ever wonder who actually goes to those fucking movies? It stings to discover it's someone you otherwise respect.)Thankfully, it had already been playing for twenty minutes, and I, Robot, so I was able to convince talk to him out of White Girls.

Thanks, I, Robot. I owe ya one.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman, Tim Kay
are boys, and they're bad. But they're not bad boys. It's weird.



May 16, 2010 I, Robot
Will Smith battles robots—with sass!
Positronic wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman, Tim Kay and other Uncanny Valley-dwellers.


Sunday, May 9, 2010


(bad boys ii)

Michael Bay. Fucking Michael Bay.

He's an occupational hazard, really. Michael Bay is certainly one of the reasons that I'm glad I'm not a movie critic, because then I'd be obligated to watch his movies.

Worse, I wouldn't be able to make fun of them, at least not while they're playing. And that's the only I can sit through one of his monstrosities.



What I'm trying to say is, I don't care for his movies.

In case you didn't pick up on that.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Tristan Buckner and Zeke Tyrus
are boys, and they're bad. But they're not bad boys. It's weird.



May 9, 2010 Bad Boys II
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence battle druglords—with sass!
Explodey pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Tristan Buckner, Zeke Tyrus and other not-so-good people.


Sunday, May 2, 2010


(i am legend)

Books are not movies, and movies are not books.

I know I just blew your mind with that one, so I'll give you a moment to recover.

See, even when they're telling the same story, they have to tell them differently, because each medium has its own demands, and what works in one format doesn't necessarily work in the other. Being strictly faithful doesn't always help, either—check out the first two Harry Potter films, for example, or the miniseries version of The Shining from the late nineties. Faithful to a fault, and pretty lousy as a result.

Godsdamnit, though, how come nobody can get Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend right?

It was filmed rather faithfully as the unsubtly titled The Last Man on Earth in 1964, in Italy starring Vincent Price:



There was a lot about it which didn't quite work, mostly owing to the difficulty in showing a city devoid of humans on a low-for-1964 budget, but the film has its charms, and feels like the only version that really gets it. Then there's the original Night of the Living Dead from 1968, which director George Romero fully admits was influenced by I Am Legend as well as The Last Man on Earth:



Of course, it narrows the story down to the core elements of being trapped in a house with the undead trying to get in. Which is plenty right there, and it does it fantastically. (Hey, did you know I starred as Barbara in a 2003 stage version of Night of the Living Dead? I sure did!)

A few years later, I Am Legend was adapted a bit more faithfully during the early seventies wave of dystopian sci-fi films, this time called The Omega Man and starring Charlton Heston and his hairy chest, as a disproportionate number of dystopian sci-fi films did in the early seventies:


When advances in special effects began to make plausibly deserted cities a possibility, a new, keeping-the-name-and-everything version of I Am Legend went into production. Sorta. It took another ten years to actually get a director and actor for real, which is probably just as well, since CGI improved a great deal in the meantime. The heavily I Am Legend-inspired 28 Days Later showed how well it could be done. And that was fucking British movie, for pete's sake. If they could do it, we could do it, right?



Of course, play Brian Eno's "An Ending (Ascent)" in the background, I'll buy whatever you're trying to sell me.

So, anyway, I Am Legend finally came out in 2007, and...gah. It hurts. It burns, almost as bad as those horrible CGI vampire-zombie things (which are called "darkseekers" if you believe the dialogue and "hemocytes" if you trust the subtitles) burn in the sunlight.

They got it wrong, again. Will Smith is actually really good in the lead role, but they threw out so much of the plot and character motivation and reason for the title and...

Let's put it this way: if there were a menu item at Cafe Gratitude which summed up my feelings about this movie, you wanna know what it would be called?

I Am Disappointed.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman and Jason Weiner
are not legend. They are, however, Legion.



May 2, 2010 I am Legend
Will Smith battles vampires in post-apocalyptic New York—with sass!
Fabled wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman, Jason Weiner and other myths.




Sunday, April 25, 2010


(high school musical 3: senior year)

Did your high school have lockers?

Mine didn't.

I don't know, it's just weird. Every single movie and/or teevee show ever set in a high school has had lockers. Mine didn't have them. There wasn't a theater department, even.

The more I think about it, the more it kinda bothers me. Especially the part about not having a theater department. Seriously, what the fuck?

Maybe Mojo Nixon signing "High School is a Prison" from the Corey Feldman vehicle Rock and Roll High School Forever will cheer me up.



Nope, that didn't work at all.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis and The Cock-Ts
don't want you to know what's in their lockers.



April 25, 2010 High School Musical 3: Senior Year
Spoiler alert: Snape is actually a good guy. (Or is that a different series?)
Pubescent pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, The Cock-Ts and other dropouts.


Sunday, April 18, 2010


(michael jackson's moonwalker)

Before his career-resurrecting death last year, we tended to forget what a big deal Michael Jackson was in the eighties. The mid-eighties, to be precise.

I was ten and a half when his megastardom hit. I didn't listen to Top 40 radio and my mom couldn't afford cable, so the I first heard about the "Thriller" video the next day when all the kids were talking about it on the schoolbus. I'd never heard of Michael Jackson, nor was I aware of MTV, so all I knew was that I was missing out on something big.

Some months later, my mom started dating a guy who was a bit more culturally aware than the both of us combined, and, more importantly, he had a beautiful daughter upon whom I'd developed a crush. I'd actually met her, or at least seen her from afar, the previous summer at camp. Neither of us was more than twelve it and seems awfully weird now, but it felt real enough at the time. (Which sums up the eighties, now that I think about it.)

To bring us up to cultural speed, my mom purchased the Thriller album, inadvertantly helping it to become the best-selling album of all time. The guy and his daughter didn't stick around very long, though at least my mom and I started paying more attention to current pop culture.

Which was a good thing, I guess, at least until "Baby Love" by Regina came out a few years later.



God, that song is SO BAD. It drove me to the relative comfort of classic rock stations, where I'd hide for the better part of the next decade.

Anyway, Michael Jackson never came close to reaching the success of Thriller, which is understandable because it would have been impossible. But nobody bothered to tell him that, and worse, as the money and fame and ego-stroking hooha piled up, he began to self-aggrandize himself in increasingly broad and downright ways.

Which leads us to this movie.

This was intended to be a theatrical release, and it did play in theaters all over the world, except here in Ronald Reagan's America. The problem was, Michael could never get a domestic distrubtion deal to his liking, so it skipped theaters and went straight to video.

Yeah. Exactly.

Remember that part in The Matrix where Morpheus tells Neo that he can't be told what The Matrix is, he has to see it for himself, which turns out to be bullshit because twenty minutes later he sums up The Matrix in one line of dialogue?

In this case, it's true: you can't be told what Moonwalker is. You have to experience it for yourself. Though we will tell you right now that it features nightmarish claymation, Michael indulging in some seriously weird transformation fantasies, and far beyond the legal limit of Joe Pesci.

In the context-free words of Gwen Stefani, this shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S, it is.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Maura Sipila and Bryce Byerley
don't care if Annie is okay.



April 18, 2010 Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
Gwen Stefani was right—this shit is bananas. Sure, she was referring to something else entirely, but it doesn't change the fact that this movie is B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
Wackiness which is neither bad, dangerous nor invincible ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Maura Sipila, Bryce Byerley and other Neverlanders.



Sunday, April 11, 2010


(purple rain)

Man, Artists for Haiti came and went quick, didn't it?

That "Huh?" reaction you're feeling right now is exactly my point. After the earthquake in Haiti (backstory: there was an earthquake in Haiti), a bunch of people who pass for celebrities got together and recorded a benefit song. And since the earthquake was considerate enough to happen twenty-five years after USA for Africa's "We Are the World", they decide to rewrite that song and call it "We Are the World 25: For Haiti," by Artists for Haiti.

Now, I'm no patriot, but I'm actually kinda glad that they didn't call it USA for Haiti, because I'd hate for my country to be associated with that song. On the other hand, considering that the first singer is Justin Bieber, it's clear the word "Artist" has been greatly devalued.

Anyway, it came and went. It's on YouTube, but so are eight trillion other things (including my old public access show kittypr0n, plug plug plug!), and nobody seems to remember it just a few months later.

Part of this is because the collective memory is so shallow these days, and part of it's because these group celebrity wankoffs have been done so many times, it's kinda impossible to take them seriously. As with so many things, The Simpsons pretty much nailed the coffin shut:



That said, there have been a few benefits of interest. For example, I'm still fond of the "Give Peace a Chance" remake which Sean Lennon organized to protest the Gulf War:



It starts off with Peter Gabriel, so it can't be all bad. (Again: Justin Bieber? Really?) Not to mention Adam Ant, Randy Newman and Iggy Pop are also involved, so the cool points are undeniable. Since we all know that peace is unpatriotic, a counter-song was released called "Voices that Care," featuring such luminaries as Michael Bolton and Jean Claude Van Damme and starting off with some guy from New Edition:



Little Richard, it should be pointed out, is in both vidoes. Please make up your own joke about him going both ways.

Anyway, it started with USA for Africa. (Actually, that's not true. It started the with Band Aid's horribly imperialist "Do They Know It's Christmas?" from the year before. But for the purposes of this writeup, it started with USA for Africa.) And unlike every other benefit that followed, they really did get all the day's major stars, and a few people who weren't so big commercially but were still legendary and gave the project a gravitas it might have lacked otherwise. Especially Bob Dylan, seen here being taught how to sing like "Bob Dylan" by Stevie Wonder and Quincy Jones:



As a huge Dylan fan, I cannot even begin to express how much joy that clip gives me. I also love the footage starting at :45 of him rehearsing his solo line, which really gives a sense of his contempt for the whole process. Even though he has the lyrics right in front of him, he gets it wrong, singing "It's true we make a better day, for you and me" rather than "It's true we make a better day, just you and me." And ol' Zimmy knows that one word makes all the difference.

Or this clip of Ray Charles starting an impromptu singalong of "The Banana Boat Song." While it's actually sweet and touching in its own right, the fact that Dylan is a) almost always on camera because he's right behind Ray and B) so clearly just wants to go home makes it a slice of fried gold. He cracks a smile now and again, but otherwise, he's just there, and he's the same way in the official "We Are the World" video. In moden parlance, he's photobombing:



I'll bet I know what Dylan was thinking, too: Prince had the right idea.

Conspicuous in his absence from "We are the World"(then and now) was Prince, who, along with Springsteen and Michael Jackson, was one of the biggest stars in the world. And why wasn't he there?

Because he hated Michael Jackson.

Prince was not lured by the incredible free publicity, the allure of which had even ensnared Dylan, a man who was far beyond needing publicity. Nope, Prince didn't want anything to do with Michael Jackson, so he kept his fucking distance. He did contribute a song to the album itself, but otherwise, he stayed at home.

Advantage: Prince.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em and Dan Foley
do not make a better day for anyone.



April 11, 2010 Purple Rain
Animals strike curious poses, what with the heat between me and you.
Paisley pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em, Dan Foley and other glam slammers.

Sunday, April 4, 2010


screenshot ganked from retrospace

(sgt. pepper's lonely hearts club band)

What the hell was the deal with the Seventies?

Seriously. The Fifties: postwar propserity leading to a xenophobia-induced, stifling conformity. Sucked at the time, but it makes enough sense.

The Sixties: a time of social upheaval, rebellion against the societal repressiveness of the Fifties, aided by the advent of readily available contraception and a public outcry against a war. Gotcha.

Then, the Seventies. And this movie.

The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton as the band of the title, singing post-Revolver Beatles songs which have nothing to do with each other thematically or narratively, with George Burns (!) narrating the film as the Mayor of Heartland (!!), and even singing "Fixing a Hole" (the exclamation points have gone on strike).

Steve Martin singing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." Alice Cooper doing "Because." The detective from all the Halloween movies singing "I Want You." All of this and more in 1978, the most Seventies-ish year of the Seventies.

What the hell? Seriously, what the hell was going on back then?

Besides the cocaine.

Actually, that explains everything. Forget we asked.

NOTE: The DVD didn't work, so we watched Can't Stop The Music instead.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman and Andy Wenger
are not guaranteed a splendid time.





April 4, 2010 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton in a very, very seventies movie sorta kinda not really based on Abbey Road. Or maybe it was Pet Sounds? One of those Rolling Stones albums.
Bell-bottomed wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman and Andy Wenger, and other lovely meter maids.




Sunday, March 28, 2010


(red dawn)

Hot damn! It's our anniversary, you guys.

On March 27, 2005, Jim Fourniadis and Ty McKenzie unleashed Bad Movie Night on an unsuspecting world.

Damn. Five years of bad movies on Sunday nights. That's, like, two hundred and fifty weeks of copyright violation love.

No one thought it would last. Some of you were hoping it wouldn't. You know who you are.

One former Dark Room regular actively boycotts it, claiming Bad Movie Night "just makes us all that much more stupid." To that, we say...um...er...your mom!

Someone else allegedly said that we should burn down for making fun of It's a Wonderful Life, as we do every December.

But the scorn fueled us, like the blood of Christian babies. That fuels Sherilyn, anyway.

In honor of the haters (hello, haters!), and to help inaugurate the new era of Stalinist tyranny that is Obamacare, we're once again showing the flick that started things off in those sepia-toned days of the mid-Aughts: the 1984 paramilitary fantasy Red Dawn, in which multicultural Commies take over the US. Or at least a budget-friendly midwestern town.

Come on down and take over The Dark Room as we celebrate four years of Bad Movie Night making the world stupid for everyone. Especially your mom.

Your hosts will be Sherilyn Connelly, Jim Fourniadis, Tristan Buckner
and ZOMG Teh Wolverines!!!11!!1



Bad Movie Night's Fifth Anniversary!
March 28, 2010 Red Dawn
Patrick Swayze (not pictured here) plays a high-school football player leading a bunch of kids in a battle against multicultural commies.
Fun fact: being our anniversary show, this will be the sixth time we've done this movie.
Socialized wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Tristan Buckner, Jim Fourniadis and other Wolverines!!!11!!1


Sunday, March 21, 2010


(steel dawn)

Which brings us to the post-Mad Max apocalypse film.

Actually, they're technically the post-Road Warrior films, since that film (called Mad Max 2 internationally) spawned the imitators, not the original. Kinda like how Dawn of the Dead launched the zombie movie genre, not Night of the Living Dead. (The More You Know!) Sadly, there's no -ploitation word for this genre. Which is weird, because the choice is obvious: Maxploitiation!

Equally obvious is the appeal of this genre, at least to the filmmakers: it's dirt cheap. All you need for a location is a desert or other brown terrain, and the costuming doesn't have to be fancy, nor is there really any need for special effects. Just guys in makeshift armor and funky haircuts fighting each other. And cars, of course—the more pointlessly tricked out, the better.

Much like how the majority of the post-Dawn of the Dead zombie films came out of Italy (cf. Lucio Fulci), Maxploitation was also popular with the folks in The Boot. And the classic era of both genres was the early eighties, concurrent with the rise of video stores and the need for more and more product to fill shelves. People renting the movies knew that, if nothing else, the movie would be batshit crazy and therefore entertaining. A classic example of Italian Maxploitation is 1982's The New Barbarians, aka Warriors of the Wasteland:



Does that not look like the most awesomest movie ever? You know it does. That same glorious year, Italy also gave us 1990: The Bronx Warriors. It's not strictly post-apocalpytic, falling more into the Dystopia category—there's been no war or apocalypse to speak of, merely social collapse—but it's Maxploitation all the same, and besides, who's writing this? Me or you? Exactly. Anyway, the trailer:



Those movies at least tried. Some Maxploitation couldn't be bothered with French nonsense like mise-en-scène, and instead just shoot wherever they can, including lush green settings which don't appear to have gone anywhere near an apocalypse, such as the Mystery Science Theater 3000 classic Warrior of the Lost World:



If you've watched each clip all the way through (which you have, right? Right!), you've noticed a common actor: Fred Motherfuckin' Williamson. The ol' Hammer himself. He spent much of the seventies and eighties making movies in Italy, and producers loved him, because he was inexpensive, available, thoroughly awesome, and give the films an international marketing hook. (He was in the original Inglorious Bastards, which was recut and marketed in America as G.I. Bro) So, if a Maxploitation film was from Italy and/or featured Fred Williamson, you knew there would be some entertainment value.

This week's feature is not from Italy, and Fred Williamson is not in it. You do the math.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman and Dan Foley
will Hammer this movie themselves.



March 21, 2010 Steel Dawn
According to the movie poster, he is the desert warrior, carving the future with his sword. I'm pretty sure the sword is his penis.
Phallic wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman, Dan Foley and other road warriors.


Sunday, March 14, 2010


(next of kin)

American pop culture is in a weird place. On the one hand, it's more fractured than ever, with the internet and hundreds of cable/satellite channels and the means of production and distribution being affordable to the average schmoe. At the same time, it's also more homogenized—the same movies get shown everywhere at the same time.

Once upon a time, a movie would be opened in just a few cities, and if it did well and the buzz was positive, it would go into wider release. This still happens with much smaller films (one of my favorite movies from last year, Big Fan, didn't play theatrically much outside of San Francisco), but the majority of mainstream movies open everywhere at once.

Right now, you can go pretty much anywhere in the country and find a Best Buy, a Marshalls, a Starbucks or twelve, and a movie theater playing Tim Burton's new crappy-looking Alice in Wonderland. The first movie to open wide, in fact, was Steven Spielberg's Jaws.

Up until the seventies and Jaws and the birth of the modern blockbuster age, movie distribution was a much more regional affair. Movies were created and sold to specific markets, to exploit what those audiences wanted to see. Ah, the golden days of the exploitation film. Anyway, the first five minutes of this clip from Tim Burton's Ed Wood (his best film ever, thank you drive through) is a decent summary of the system:



"I already presold Alabama and Oklahoma. Those repressed oakies, they go for that twisted, perverted stuff."

True then, and probably true now. At the time, however, the South was a major market for exploitation movies, and more than that, they liked seeing movies about the South. Movies made for these audiences seldom played in the rest of the country—who would want to see them—and are referred to as Hicksploitation. (I actually don't know if that's what they were called at the time. Probably not, because it feels kinda retconny, like something a modern writer coined to be clever. But it's an awesome word either way.)

The great explotation director Herschell Gordon Lewis ("great" in the sense of that he was prolific and groundbreaking, not in the sense that he was any good as a director, because he wasn't) knew this market well, and his followup to his groundbreaking gore film Blood Feast was a classic example of selling to that audience while still having a broader appeal. It also has the best theme song EVAR. I refer, of course, to his 1964 masterpiece Two Thousand Maniacs!:



Indeed, though he's mostly remembered today for his gore films, Lewis's very next movie Moonshine Mountain (also 1964, because why wait?) was pure Hicksploitation minus the blood:



(Quick poll: who else will always associate moonshine with The Dukes of Hazzard? Yeah, i knew I wasn't the only one.)

Hicksploitation continued on into the seventies, though the budgets got slightly bigger and some of the actors became movie stars, like ol' Burt:



He was also in what's probably the last great Hicksploitation film, and certainly the most in famous one, the mainstream Deliverance. Yeah, the one with the squealing.

Thanks to video and the end of regional film distribution and a general changing of the American cultural tide, the genre was pretty well dead as a genre by 1989, when this week's feature came out.

And if it hadn't been dead, this movie would have killed it.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Tristan Buckner and Wylie Herman
will make sure the South doesn't rise again.



March 14, 2010 Next of Kin
Patrick Swayze and Liam Neeson as avenging hillbillies who...wait, what?
Inbred pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Tristan Buckner, Wylie Herman and other moonshiners.


Sunday, March 7, 2010


(ghost)

During the early nineties, the Video Zone chain in Fresno prided itself on having one of the biggest selections in town. By gods, if it was ever out on VHS, one of our three stores carried it.

My store (at Shaw and Marks next to Target) didn't have the biggest selection of three, but it was still pretty great, with thousands of movies to choose from. Even better, we got to watch whatever we wanted on the row of teevee monitors above the counter, provided it was PG-13 or below. After 10pm we could watch music videos or R-rated movies. Miller's Crossing was a favorite late night selection, and before long we all knew the movie by heart. Still do.

With all the movies there were to choose from, we kept coming back to a pool of about a dozen or so. Kinda like how there are thousands of songs on your mp3 player, but, really, you only true like about a couple hundred of them, top. That's the thing about choice: it's nice to have, but we almost never use it.

Anyway, one of my favorite before-10pm selections was an obscure sci-fi/fantasy/comedy called The Wizard of Speed and Time, by one Mike Jittlov. The film is a low-budget, high-energy labor of love about a special effects wizard (Jittlov, playing himself) trying to make it in Hollywood:





Such a great movie. As I say, it's low-budget and as pre-CGI as it's possible to get, and that's part of its beauty. Its also prescient, as in the film Jittlov is screwed by producers and distributors, which is exactly what happened to the real-life Jittlov and his movie. It got quietly dumped onto VHS and laserdisc, and has been out of print since then. You can find it online if you know where to look, and I stongly suggest that you do. It's worth your time, and deserves your love.

Oh, and when it was (barely) released, the fact that a pre-Miami Vice Philip Michael Thomas had a bit part trumped up in the promotion. Those of us who've seen the film know that the truly magical cameo is from Stephen Stucker, Johnny from Airplane! None of his Wizard scenes are on YouTube, so Airplane! it is:



"There's a sale at Penney's!" Heh.

Sadly, Jittlov hasn't done a whole lot else in his career since then (then again, what have you done with your career since then?), though his website doggedly retains its awesome mid-nineties feel. Oh, yeah, and I read somewhere that he did the effects for the sort of demon ghosties that pull people down to Hell in this week's feature, but he didn't enjoy the gig because he doesn't like making evil things.

That, friend and neighbors, is integrity.

We miss you, Mike Jittlov.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Ziad Ezzat and Tristan Buckner
will bring their pottery wheels. You know, just in case.





March 7, 2010 Ghost
Admit it: this movie made you cry way back when. ADMIT IT!
Ectoplasmic wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Ziad Ezzat, Tristan Buckner and other psychic friends.




Sunday, February 28, 2010


(x-men origins: wolverine)

As you may remember, there was a big foofaraw last year when an early version of this film was leaked to the internet, and...

What, you don't remember?

That's okay. Neither did we, at first. Hell, we're having a hard time even remembering that this thing existed. If not for all the press about the pirated copy showing up online—or maybe it was just some footage, who knows or cares?—odds are nobody would have been aware the film existed in the first place.

Huh. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Didn't think so.

Anyway, after exhaustive research (about thirty seconds on YouTube, but we were really tired at the time), we've dug up the illicit footage and present it to you now:



And it makes Hugh Jackman so sad, he has to take off his clothes. Or something:



Uh-huh. Sucks to be him, I guess.

Almost as much as it'll be suck to be us when we watch this crappy movie.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em and Maura Sipila
will not say "Bub," because that's just stupid.



February 28, 2010 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The prequel to Red Dawn (which we'll get to next month).
Adamantium pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em, Maura Sipila and other mutants.


Sunday, February 21, 2010


(the taking of pelham 1 2 3)

There's something magical about movies made in New York in the seventies.

The best of them—you can pretty much start with Taxi Driver and circle outward from there—have a certain grit about them, a certain seediness and danger which pervades every frame. Pre-Giuliani New York itself was gritty and seedy and dangerous, and no amount of onscreen gloss could hide that. They have a genuine texture, and they're time capsules in a way that films shot in Los Angeles (as the majority of films are) never can be.

Even the most beautiful films shot in New York during the seventies, such as Woody Allen's Annie Hall and Manhattan (both lensed by the great cinematographer Gordon Willis, and the latter in breathtaking anamorphic black and white) have this quality about them, this texture. Hell, the Metropolis scenes in the big-budget fantasy Superman feel dangerous.

I was seven when Superman came out, but I knew that Metropolis was really New York. Remember that scene where Clark and Lois are walking down the street, and a mugger sticks a gun at them from out of an alley? That became my vision of New York: you could, nay, would be mugged just walking down the street. And unless you were Kryptonian and/or could stop a bullet with your bare hand, you were pretty much fucked.

I couldn't find the mugging scene on YouTube, so instead, let's enjoy the opening promo of the network teevee premiere of Superman on ABC in 1982. Tangent: I was nine, and the Atari logo appearing over the explosion of Krypton at 2:54 was the coolest thing ever:



I'm thirty-six, and I still think it's cool. And while we're at it, here's the trailer for Manhattan:



Such a great movie.

Also a great movie is a little heist caper called The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. It stars Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw (Quint from Jaws, yo) and Martin Balsam and Jerry freakin' Stiller. With the exception of Shaw, that's pretty goddamned New Yorkish. And it's from the director of the underrated (though not at all New York-related) Colossus: The Forbin Project.

This week's feature lacks any sort of grit or grime—it's all gloss, no texture, it stars John Travolta and Denzel Washington, and it's by the director of the overrated Top Gun.

Damn you, Rudy Giuliani. Damn you.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Jim Fourniadis and David Capurro
will take the 14 straight to Snarkham.



February 21, 2010 The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
John Travolta steals a subway car, which probably means Muni's going to increase the fares again. Fuck!
Wackiness ensues, but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Jim Fourniadis, David Capurro and other fare jumpers.


Sunday, February 14, 2010


(public enemies)

By all accounts, this is actually a really good movie.

Directed by Michael Mann, it's an accurate recreation of the life and death of the gangster John Dillinger.

Dillinger is played by Johnny Depp, who went to his usual lengths to insure his portrayal was as accurate as possible, that he truly inhabitied the real-life character.

In honor of his hard work and dedication, we present an interview about 21 Jump Street.



You're welcome, Johnny!

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em and Tristan Buckner
will be there when your back is to the wall.



February 14, 2010 Public Enemies
Johnny Depp (boy, is there anything he can't do?) stars as Chuck D in the story of the controversial hip-hop group's rise and fall.
Prohibitive pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em, Tristan Buckner and other gangsters.


Sunday, February 7, 2010


(transformers: revenge of the fallen)

I've said it before, but I'll say it again: Fuck Hollywood.

No, seriously. We here at Bad Movie Night love movies (we wouldn't do this every week otherwise), but it never doesn't bear repeating: Fuck Hollywood.

Here's the deal.

Transformers 3 is being produced at this very moment, and will be shat upon us sometime in 2011.

Think about that for a moment.

Originally, The Transformers was a cartoon teevee show which existed solely to sell toys. Refer to our writeup on Masters of the Universe for more on this particular phenomemon, plzkthx.

In 1986, The Transformers: The Movie came out while the series was on the air. It wasn't great, but it was better than one might expect for an animated movie based on an animated teevee series which existed solely to sell toys.

It got a PG rating, the hero died, and Orson Welles did a voice. Oh, remember that "You Got the Power" song from Boogie Nights? That's from The Transformers: The Movie.

We kid you not:





Twenty years later, the director of Pearl Harbor and Bad Boys II (coming to Bad Movie Night this May) makes a live-action version, simply calling it Transformers, in keeping with our post-literate times.

It was a big hit. (Which is not so much the fault of Hollywood so much as it is everyone who paid ten bucks to see it, but pick pick.) So he makes a sequel, this week's feature.

It's also a big hit, grossing $400M. If not for James Cameron's 3-D smurf movie, it would be the highest grossing movie of 2010. Also a big hit in 2010 was Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. USA! USA! USA!

Anyway, Michael bay is now making the third live-action movie based on a twenty year-old animated teevee series which had already spawned one animated movie.

The third one.

Fuck Hollywood. Fuck Hollywood so hard.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Jim Fourniadis and Maura Sipila
don't actually hate Hollywood. They just want to see it burn.



February 7, 2010 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Stuff blows up. Megan Fox pouts. We all retch.
Wackiness ensues, but batteries are not included.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Jim Fourniadis, Maura Sipila and other snarkbots.


Sunday, January 31, 2010


(terminator salvation)

Man oh man, it was fun to watch this movie flop, wasn't it?

Okay, it technically made its $200M budget back with a worldwide gross of $372M, but these things are ultimately measured by domestic gross, and it was so very satisfying to see it stall out at $125M. Couldn't have happened to a douchier movie.

I mean, even by summer blockbuster standards, this movie had no reason to exist, none at all. Original Terminator director James Cameron is, at best, ambivalent about it. Though let's face it: we all know he wishes it wasn't made, and would have stopped it if he could. hell, you gotta figure that with that phat Avatar cash he's rolling in now, he could easily buy the rights to the series, if not every fucking copy of every single Terminator movie ever.

Anyway, then there's the fact that it was directed by the guy who did the Charlie's Angels movies, and worse, he goes by the douchey name of McG, which he actually makes people call him.

And then there's Christian Bale. Oh, Chrissy, what the hell happened to you? You were so great in Velvet Goldmine and American Psycho, and...yeah, we're gonna have to go there. You were great in Newsie. Fucking NEWSIES, Baley:



You were so young and sweet and pretty back then. (Not as pretty as you were in Velvet Goldmine, but hey.) And then you became a big action movie star, and then...then...this:



With this much positive energy going into it, how could the movie not succeed, huh?



You should come with your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Tim Kay and Dan Foley
if you want to live. Or not. It's up to you, really.



January 31, 2010 Terminator Salvation
Batman vs. The Terminator! Sadly, it's nowhere near as awesome as it sounds.
Fucking distracting pandemonium will reign. (What the fuck is it with you?)

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Tim Kay, Dan Foley and other tantrummers.


Sunday, January 24, 2010


(angels and demons)

I still have not read a Dan Brown book. Have you? Do you know anyone who has?

He's one of those big phenomenons which somehow manages to slip under my radar until, like, movies start getting made from his books. But evidently he's a big deal out there in Flyover Land, the same place that's made Jeff Dunham and Thomas Kinkade such big deals, the same place that somehow made Susan Boyle's debut the top-selling album of 2009.

(You'll tell me if I start getting classist, right? Okay, good.)

Anyway, he's a big enough deal that the movies based on his books get released during summer blockbuster territory, and are made by such high-profile Hollywood talent as Opie and the guy from Bosom Buddies. Which is what passes for "prestige" these days.

Seriously, though? I have no fucking clue. What this movie is about. I've read some of the reviews, and I still can't figure it out. The word "antimatter" has popped up a few times, and it even has "demons" in the title, and yet I strongly suspect it's nowhere near as awesome involving demons and antimatter should be.

Maybe this will clear it up:



Yeah, not so much.

Let's just keep our fingers crossed for killer albinos. Those are always awesome.

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman and Tristan Buckner
know that snark is more powerful than antimatter.



January 24, 2010 Angels and Demons
Remember how cute that one French chick was in Amelie? Yeah. She sure was something.
Apocryphal wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Mike Spiegelman, Tristan Buckner and other killer albinos.


Sunday, January 11, 2010


(g.i. joe: the rise of cobra)

Fuck you, Michael Bay.

Not that Michael Bay directed this movie—we'll be getting to his work in a few weeks—but he's responsible for this movie getting made.

See, his first Transformers movie demonstrated that big dumb action movies based on toys from eighties could be big hits. Which led to this movie being made.

Though I should also point out that Michael Bay is not wholly to blame. The people who actually went to see it in the theaters should bear the brunt of the guilt. He just knows what a vast segment of the moviegoing public wants to see, because a vast segment of the moviegoing public is really, really stupid.

Anyway, did you know that G.I. Joe has actually been around since well before the eighties? It was a term often used to refer to soldiers (I'm pretty sure it was mentioned a few times in M*A*S*H), and the first line of toys was introduced in the sixties:



Like the guy says at the end of the commerical: "Remember...only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe!"

I have no idea what those words mean, but they're words to live by all the same.

And I'm pretty sure this movie ain't G.I. Joe.

Your hosts Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em and Ziad Ezzat
are not real American heroes. Hell, one of them is Iraqi.



January 17, 2010 G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
The origin story of the loveable comic character from the bubblegum wrappers. Find out how he got his bazooka and eyepatch!
One-eyed pandemonium reigns.

Hosts: Jim Fourniadis, Mikl-Em, Ziad Ezzat and other merchandisers.


Sunday, January 10, 2010


(star trek)

Look, it's Star Trek.

What else can we really say about it than that?

Except that it's pronounced "trek," with a short E, not "trak."

Man, I hate that.

The mission of your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Jim Fourniadis and Tristan Buckner
is to boldly split infinitives.



January 10, 2010 Star Trek (2009)
A reboot of George Lucas's venerable franchise. This time, Spock has pouty lips, Kirk has a Southern accent, and there are no lightsabers. What the hell?
Transwarp wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Jim Fourniadis, Tristan Buckner and other blobs of red matter.


Sunday, January 3, 2010



(snakes on a plane)

You heard about it. You laughed about it.

You probably even blogged about it, you motherfuckin' nerd.

But you didn't actually pay ten bucks to see it, did you?

Didn't think so. You probably barely even remember that it existed.

But that's okay. We here at Bad Movie Night exist to make sure you get a chance to see internet-famous financial flops which you'll probably never get around to putting in your NetFlix queue.

You probably shouldn't watch it on teevee, though. It won't be quite what you expect:



Anyway, it's our tradition here. It's how we started 2009, after all.

And that year turned out great, huh?

2010 will be better. We promise.*

*promise not valid

Your hosts Sherilyn Connelly, Jim Fourniadis and Maura Sipila
have not yet had enough of the motherfucking snakes.



Annual Kickoff Movie!
January 3, 2010 Snakes on a Plane
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by motherfucking snakes.
Slithery wackiness ensues.

Hosts: Sherilyn Connelly, Jim Fourniadis, Maura Sipila and other bad motherfuckers.