Movie Monday: Zone Troopers

I was at Mechacon on Friday, so I didn't have time to do a post. Sorry. 

Zone Troopers is a straight-to-video science fiction film from the 1980's. This alone should tell you all you need to know about it's quality (hint: it's crappy) However, the saving grace of this movie is the plot.  It follows four American soldiers during WWII as they fight German soldier in Italy. Oh yeah, and there's space aliens.

The Americans have had their unit decimated by the Nazis and are fortunate enough to even be captured by their enemies along with a fuzzy space alien. The high point of the movie comes during their captivity when all-around bad-ass Corporal "Mittens" Mitinski punches none other than Adolph Hitler right in the face. It's pretty sweet and is generally the high point of the movie.

After this the movie basically consists of the alien and the American's evading and defeating the Nazis....big whoop and yawn. The movie's direct-to-videoness is very apparent and makes the whole movie kind of a snooze-fest.

Look, I know I'm being hard on this movie, but here's the bottom line. It's cheesy, it's interesting, and it managed to somewhat keep me interested.

So I'll give it 3 out of 5 cigarettes.

Movie Monday: Six-String Samurai

I'm not going to sugar-coat it: I watch a lot of shitty movies. Seriously, I do. Between, Spawn of the Slithis and Q: The Winged Serpent, I've had to indulge in quite a few drinking binges just to overcome the pain of some these films. However, every now and then I come across something refreshing. Something so extraordinarily mind stimulating that it just punches my brain into sheer bliss. Today's movie is one such movie.

Heavy with references to The Wizard of Oz, Six-String Samurai may be one of the greatest films I have ever seen.  It has easily replaced SLC Punk as my favorite music related movie. It may very well be the best post-apocalyptic movie I've ever seen, beating out The Road Warrior and Hardware.  

The plot of the movie follows a rock and roll guitarist/swordsman named Buddy (who is for all intents and purposes Buddy Holly) as he travels through the post-apocalyptic alternate timeline wasteland of America. He is trying to reach Lost Vegas where King Elvis has died and a new guitarist will take the throne. Buddy is joined in his travels by an orphaned child and together they meet cannibals, midgets, savages, bowling bounty hunters, Russians, windmill people, and many others. Among the competition for the crown of Lost Vegas is Death, a shrouded, heavy-metal favoring guitarist/swordsman who travels with a bunch of archers. Death is clearly very powerful and sets out to prove that heavy metal is superior to all by eliminating every other guitarist/musical genre in the land on his way to Lost Vegas. However, in the end Death knows that Buddy is his greatest foe and will stop at nothing to destroy him. This movie is far too good for me to spoil the ending, so you need to go and watch it. Do it. Do it now.

Seriously are you kidding me? 5 out of 5 ratchets.

Film Friday: Deadly Friend

Boy, when you stop and think about it, the 1980's were chock full of movie robots. I mean you had Short Circuit, Batteries Not Included, Chopping Mall, Terminator, Robocop,  I mean the list just goes on and on. Anyway, the robot trend in the 80's apparently got so big that horror movie juggernaut Wes Craven decided he needed to cash in on the craze and make himself a robot movie.

This brings us to Deadly Friend, Wes Craven's horror movie featuring a robot. More specifically it feature's a robot's brain fused with the brain of a dead girl. This of course leads to her having a split personality, superhuman strength, and various other robot powers.  She of course uses these powers to brutally murder people with basketballs and furnaces.

Essentially the plot follows a young robotics/human anatomy genius who has built his own robot and then later uses the remains of said robot to revive his dead friend. The friend then rampages and is eventually killed. The movie just gets more and more absurd as it goes, but why shouldn't it? It's an 80's horror movie.

Plot's not important here, what is important is the amazing deal the actress who played Sam(the revived robot girl) got out of this movie. I don't know what she was paid, but for most of the movie she has virtually no speaking part, walks around like a zombie doing the Vulcan salute, wears raccoon makeup, and kills people.

I guess what got me is that Paul, our protagonist, kidnapped Sam's body from the hospital, then performed an illegal and immoral surgery on her which turned her into a murderous monster, he then hid her from the police even after he knew she had committed murder. My point here is this: at the end of the film, Paul is not in jail, and we're supposed to just accept this.

Deadly Friend gets 4 out of 5 basketballs, probably for having a kick-ass ending.

Movie Monday: Gozu

Takashi Miike is an...um... interesting director. That may be the understatement of the century. On the one hand he's fairly well known for his more disturbing films like Ichi the Killer, Audition, and Imprint. On the other hand he's fully capable of more family friendly fare such as Ninja Kids!!! and Zebraman (which is by the way my favorite superhero movie) The bottom line is this: Miike is a very versatile director with a penchant for making movies that are strange and weird. Gozu is no exception to this rule.

Brace yourself.

Gozu is the Japanese word for "cow-head" it follows the story of a yakuza named Minami as he travels to Nagoya to essentially execute his friend and comrade Ozaki. Ozaki has been chosen for execution because he's a little unstable, beating down cute little dogs because he believes them to be "trained yakuza attack dogs" and nearly shooting innocent motorists for driving "yakuza cars".

When they get to Nagoya, Minami promptly loses track of Ozaki and discovers that the inhabitants of the town are less than helpful, mostly because they are all extremely strange. Between the innkeeper who produces and bottles her breastmilk for the town's use, to the weather-obsessed patrons of the local coffee shop, all the way up to the American liquor store clerk who reads her responses off of cue cards. 

Also him.

Of course, the weirdness intensifies when Minami is finally handed a note by a cow-headed man saying that Ozaki will meet him at the town dump. Upon arriving he discovers that Ozaki is dead, already eliminated by the yakuza executioners.  He then meets up with woman claiming to be Ozaki in a new body. What happens after that...is just ...just really bizarre.

Ozaki and Minami travel back together. Ozaki seduces their boss (I'll spare you his sexual kinks, but trust me they're quite unique.) Minami busts up the affair and kills the boss, which leads to Ozaki and Minami having sex until the original Ozaki comes thundering out of the uterus mid-coitus. 

Just like this.

The movie ends shortly afterwards.

So what did I think? I thought it was a humorous film for sure and it was definitely what I expected from Takashi Miike. I knew what I was getting into when I watched this film, and even though I was hoping for something a bit more, I wasn't too terribly disappointed by the results. The characters are memorable and the plot unique. Really the biggest negative point to me was that the movie was over 2 hours long. I'm alright with a movie being lengthy as long as I don't feel like it's dragging, but there were times when I felt the story was stalled a bit.


All in all, 3 out of 5 cow-heads

 

Film Friday: The City of Lost Children

This post marks the glorius return of Ron Perlman to my blog.  If you'll recall, Mr. Perlman last graced us with his presence in my very first review for the movie Cronos. Let's see if he can beat his previous score.



The City of Lost of Children is a French film by the same guys who worked on Delicatessen and Amelie so already it's got some good street cred in its corner.  That being said, it is stylistically very similar to Amelie and shares a few of the same actors.

The story revolves around a mad scientist by the name of Krank who has set out to kidnap children in order to steal their dreams so he can feel emotions. He lives on his Oil Rig of Doom in the middle of a minefield with 4 cloned brothers, a disembodied brain in a fishtank, and his loving vertically challenged wife.

Krank makes his ultimate mistake when he kidnaps the little brother of sideshow strongman and all-around bad-ass One, appropriately portrayed by Mr. Ron Perlman looking a lot like Kuwabara from Yu-Yu Hakusho.  One sets out on a quest to get back his little brother and eventually teams up with a  young street urchin by the name of Miette.  The two of them travel together outwitting siamese twins, flea circus trainers, cults, and the like until eventually they find their way onto Krank's ocean fortress. Miette saves the boy and defeats Krank.

This movie was enjoyable if only for the fact that I was able to see the similarities between it and Amelie. Maybe it's the French, who knows?   Oh wait, I forgot: RON PERLMAN.  This movie is awesome because half the movie is just like "hey, you know who's really strong? Ron Perlman's really strong." Then he starts breaking chains, lifting safes, beating people up, or stuff like that. So is The City of Lost Children a superhero movie?  I mean, on the one hand the guy's name is One, the villain's name is Krank, and  the villain lives practically in the Legion of Doom's hideout complete with evil henchmen.  I mean it wouldn't be too much of stretch to say that it is.

Final score 4 out of 5 Perlmans

Whatever Wednesday: Ode to Underrated Movies

So, a buddy of mine is dying to get me to watch this movie Hot Rod.  I've personally never seen it but he's been talking it up for at least a month now. He claims that it is a very underrated movie and blah blah blah whatever. Anyway it got me thinking about other movies that maybe don't quite get the recognition they deserve. I'd like to talk to you about a few of those movies right now.


Death to Smoochy: Look this movie is a big deal to me. It's one of my favorite comedies and I just don't understand why it gets bashed all the time. To me it's one of the best Edward Norton movies out there as well as one of the best Robin Williams films.


What Dreams May Come: Not amazing, but not terrible. Give it a rest already.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Best movie of the series or best movie of all time?

Short Circuit 2: Truly the Kung-Fu Panda 2 of it's time. Better than the original

Robocop: In my opinion, the symbolism-heavy movies ever made. I don't understand why this movie isn't talked about more and why people aren't absolutely crazy about this movie. It is fantastic. It is amazing. I love it.  The End.

Movie Monday: The Dark Backward

*sigh* Wow, this movie was heavy.  I don't know what was up with Judd Nelson in 1991, but between this and New Jack City he made some really downer movies that year. (Except I really like New Jack City)


The Dark Backward is one of the most depressing movies I have ever seen. It follows the story of a comedian by the name of Marty (Judd Nelson) who is about as funny as Santa Claus's funeral.  His best friend is Gus(Bill Paxton), a fellow garbageman by day and also an accordion player by night. Gus is pretty much the most disgusting individual you've ever met. Necrophilia, sexual deviancy, avarice, etc. none of these are beyond Gus.  Marty on the other hand is loyal, innocent, and naive.

Oh also, Marty starts to grow a third arm out of his back. Did I not mention that earlier?  Yeah. That's pretty much the beginning of his problems. After that happens, his girlfriend leaves him, and then fools around with Gus. Marty's mother disowns him. He gets turned into a freak show. Gus gets to go to Hollywood instead of Marty when the arm disappears and noone will book him now that he's back to being a crappy comedian/garbageman.  So in the end, Gus leaves for Hollywood, Marty is left all alone with no family, no friends, no girlfriend, and no career. He goes back to telling his terrible comedy, but... SURPRISE!!! So much bad crap has happened to Marty that he can just make people laugh by telling them about the horrible stuff that happened to him.  THE END!

Moral of the movie: Things will work out if enough bad things happen to you.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Prozacs for being horribly depressing.
 

Film Friday: Chopping Mall

So after, Monday's ungodly viewing experience, I set out in search of some more obscure movies that would hopefully redeem my hope in B-movie cinema.  I didn't have to search long before I found a veritable cornucopia  of science-fiction and horror movies from the 1980's that were just smothered in cheese.  Of these, one title in particular caught my eye, Chopping Mall.  This is my review of that movie.

Let me just say that I have four very specific expectations for an 80's horror movie. They are as follows:

• Cheese
• MIDI
• Sexually deviant teenagers
• A fair amount of absurdity

Chopping Mall meets every single qualification without even flinching. It has the cheesy dialogue, it has the gripping MIDI soundtrack, the sexually deviant teenagers, and the absolutely absurd plot.

Hooray!

The story follows a shopping mall which has just installed three new state-of-the-art security robots that are designed and armed to deter crime. It also has installed futuristic reinforced steel doors that place the mall on total lockdown from midnight to dawn.  This creates the perfect scenario for some teenagers to sneak into the mall after hours and have a crazy party in a furniture store.   Everything is going great at first, the teenagers are drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and having sex, the robots aren't killing anyone, and the janitor is mopping up a mess, when suddenly a lightning storm strikes and technology just freaks right the hell out. The security robots immediately go on a killing spree that begins with a scientist and a janitor.

Electric Janitor. 

The teens are then slowly picked off, even though they try to defend themselves by pathetically arming themselves from a sporting goods store and trying to look cool. I mean let's face it guys, It's the 80's you're teenagers wearing fairly nice clothes, you don't look bad-ass. 

You just look like you need the directory...

One of the best lines in the movie comes up about now: "I'm sorry. I guess I'm not used to being chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots." This is not said jokingly or with a smile. 

All in all, I freaking loved this movie. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. I cannot praise it enough and I will definitely be whipping it out and parties in the very near future.

5 out of 5 PBR's