A Bad Movies 2019 Retrospective (part 3 of 5)
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Before we start with part 3 of the retrospective, please let allow me to apologise for the delay. I should have posted this last week, but with Christmas, my birthday (Defector Edit: Happy Birthday!) and the new year upon us, I just couldn’t make it. This was made even more difficult thanks to the last minute urge to hit the 1150 movies for 2019, which kind of forced me to do sixty movies in the last two weeks, with 9 movies still to go on December 30th.
That’s why I’m happy to announce that despite my square eyes and swollen brain, that I actually made it to 1151 movies for 2019! (Defector edit: Congratulations you crazy bastard!)
And with all that out of the way, how about we continue where we left of and talk about the months July to September today? Yeah. Let’s do that.
Part one of the Bad Movies 2019 Retrospective can be found here, with part two being available here.
July
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The Best
July must have been a pretty bad month as the only movie rated with five stars was Possibly in Michigan, and while I totally adore that film, it’s only a short and it would be wrong giving a spot to a twelve minute movie. On the other hand, this weirdo-cannibalistic fairy tale is simply beautiful.
Looking a bit further into the depths of despair, I found two movies that would definitely deserve a place. First there is Devil’s Vendetta, a fantasy martial-arts movie that again features the fight between good and evil. Evil comes this time in the form of a witch queen called Twiggy, with our hero getting help from his master, his perverted best friend and their love interests, eventually finding out that there is only one way to defeat Twiggy…He has to impregnate his girlfriend.
But there was also a film that came around with one of my favourite ideas in movies: Finding a positive message in something, no matter how ridiculous the movie is. Wild Zero for example is one of my favourite zombie movies, not because it is over the top but because it also wants to offer you the message that love can beat everything. No matter if it is age, death, or finding out that your girlfriend is actually a guy. Another film in that vein is Cutie Honey, which again offers the message, that love can beat everything. I guess you know where this goes.
Dasepo Naughty Girls is pretty much that movie, though it goes a bit further. You have musical parts, yodelling, and characters like the cross-dressing Big Razor Sis. Yet at the core of it, there is a girl who hates to live in poverty and who is followed by a sock puppet. She’s in love with the cool new Canadian guy, but as she think, he’s too good for her, she instead contemplates suicide. On her journey in one of the weirdest schools on the planet, she realizes that money does not mean everything and that she is more than that. It’s a feel-good movie, that only ever could have been made in japan.
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The Worst
Looking at the low number of highly rated movies, I was already guessing that July might have been bad and that was absolutely true, with thirteen movies with the lowest possible rating. That’s horrible! And which of these could be considered the worst? Was it Sean Connery’s last movie, the animated garbage pile Sir Billi? Was it one of the many bad comedies? Stuff like Christmas Vacation 2 or Breaking Wind? Or what about the absolutely dreadful Baby Geniuses 2?
All of those movies were honestly much better than what follows. The Telephone was more like a stage-play and was only set in one room, and is just Whoopi Goldberg talking on her phone in the presence of an owl. Except Whoopi Goldberg turns out to be insane, because after she talks for 80 minutes on the phone we find out that her line was cut long ago. This shit was directed by Rip Torn, who I even liked in Freddy Got Fingered, but since he directed this garbage he can go right to hell and fuck himself, along with Whoopi Goldberg.
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The Oddity
I hope many of you readers have watched Love on a Leash. If not, then go and watch it as it should be available on those youtubes. It’s about a guy, who was turned into a dog and now has to find true love…with a woman, so he can turn back into a person. It’s a great bad movie, that not only contains attempted rape, but also bestiality and liberal colourisation.
But did you know that there’s a Chinese movie with pretty much the same plot which came out in 2001? Every Dog Has His Date is about a dog that switches bodies with a man and while the guy in the dog’s body is just happy with his dog life, the dog (in man-form) falls in love with his owner. He has to help her find his old body while he talks to other dogs and kinda sleeps with them too. It’s not as ridiculous as Love on a Leash, and puts a bit too much effort into fart jokes and comments about eating dogs, but it’s still a charming little movie.
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The Disappointment
For my disappointment, I have to go with a movie that just had way too much talent involved, and yet was sad to see how mediocre it turned out. Farce of the Penguins was written and directed by Bob Saget and had people involved like Samuel L. Jackson, Jason Alexander, Gilbert Gottfried, and the wonderful Norm MacDonald. I didn’t need this to be hilarious, but it’s a documentary overdubbed with comedians and I only laughed once, and that was when Gilbert Gottfried was shouting about freezing his balls off. As a penguin.
It’s actually a concept I really liked, but the execution was just so bland and boring that it disappointed the hell out of me.
August
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The Best
Talking about my favourite movie of August is actually a bit hard, since I don’t see it as a Bad Movie. So for everyone who needs a Good Bad Movie recommendation, you can go with Heroes For Hire. It’s your typical 80s action flick that starts out a bit slow, but the last thirty minutes are absolutely amazing. Following a mission briefing, our hired heroes make it to an island. Instead of going together everyone has their own means, so while one swims, another guy takes a boat, and another guy…windsurfs. Once on the island, they find ninjas digging underground, so then use exploding balloons to fight them.
As amazing as this all was, my favourite movie of the month was still Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. The first shot for shot remake ever made, done by kids who adored the original movie. Every frame shows so much love for the original and recreates it in such charming ways, it is just incredible. This is a masterpiece and should be seen by everyone.
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The Worst
Then there were the Bad Bad Movies. Like that Madonna film. No, not the one by Guy Ritchie, but the other one…A Certain Sacrifice. That’s a real shit movie. Or the one with the sex guru. It’s called Barney’s Great Adventure.
But the worst is a movie that shouldn’t even be called a movie. O.C. Babes and the Slasher of Zombietown is about a group of people hanging out in a bar and apparently there are zombies. Yet the only times we see these zombies is when the movie decides to show us scenes from Night of the Living Dead. And whoever they hired to do the music is hopefully deaf, because otherwise I wouldn’t understand how he could have made this shit. At points it’s literally just beeping in the background and most of the time it is so loud that you can’t even hear the dialogue. It’s a 55 minute movie with 15 minutes of credits and ten minutes of NotLD material, but even with just thirty minutes of actual material this feels way too long.
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The Oddity
I feel like I’m saying this way too often but Asian movies, and especially Japanese movies, can be really weird. Be-Bop High School is just one of those, but that doesn’t mean it is bad. This time it is about a Japanese high school gang who fights another gang for honour and girls.
It’s quirky and funny and got some pretty decent action, including a train fight. And since a fight inside a train is not enough, people get defenestrated so that they fly out of the train from a bridge and into a river. Now that’s stunt-work! Plus this actually has five sequels, so there is more than enough to watch.
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The Disappointment
God damn Lorenzo Lamas. I honestly believe that Lorenzo doesn’t have any screen presence and he’s one of the shittiest action stars of his time. So of course I had to watch Body Rock, a movie in which he is part of a break-dancing group. Sadly it’s just a mediocre movie, further hurt by Lorenzo. He’s a dick and the worst dancer, so much so that even the child in the film is a way better dancer than him.
I like my dance movies, but Lorenzo can even destroy those. John Travolta’s asshole had more screen presence in Grease. Maybe someone else might be into this, but if it’s the Lamas, then I just gotta say no thanks.
September
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The Best
Let’s pretend for a moment that there is a movie about Dracula in which Dracula doesn’t even play a role. Instead it’s more of a Frankenstein thing. Except Frankenstein wants to create a band, so he steals the body parts of dead musicians, and as he revives them he forces them to listen to modern pop so they can turn into the best band ever.
Now pretend that Frankenstein has a servant called Stoneheaden, who actually is an asshole. Stoneheaden doesn’t like pop, so he forces the band to listen to folk instead. As the band is revived, Frankenstein hates their music, so they go on a tour through Greece, play concerts, have sex on graveyards and prank people. And Stoneheaden lays on a beach in a mermaid costume.
You guys still with me? This movie actually exists. It’s called Dracula of Exarcheia and is abso-fucking-lutely wonderful. If you somehow can find it, then I absolutely recommend a watch.
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The Worst
I’m pretty sure that I talked before about how I actually love zombie movies, yet there are so many terrible ones. Beyond the Call of Duty is just another one of those movies that are 80% padding. Why do we have a mission briefing in the first 15 minutes and introduce the fucking zombie plot, yet we still do character introductions for the next 40 minutes? After one hour, the movie expects you to be so bored that it offers you the zombie introduction again, as some super big twist, but you already know about that shit and you really don’t care any more.
There are even more shitty twists and bad action, but nothing is slightly interesting. O.C. Babes was at least short, but this is a hundred minutes of boring bullshit.
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The Oddity
I’m going to sound like some wannabe edgelord who just wants to be offensive, but my oddity of September is a Bollywood movie about Bin Laden, and it’s called Tere Bin Laden. Our hero is a reporter for a shitty tv channel who would love to go to the USA for a better life, but his visa always gets refused.
One day he is supposed to interview a man and his prize-winning chicken, when he realizes that the man looks just like Osama. Out of desperation, he comes up with the plan to make a new Osama terrorist tape and sell it, so he can get a false identity. Things go mighty wrong of course.
What could turn into a bad and offensive movie, actually offers well written comedy, great characters and some absolutely hilarious moments. At times it feels like a live action South Park as it shits on political correctness while never going over the top. Even the songs are wonderful parodies of the typical Bollywood stuff. Plus it got a sequel.
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The Disappointment
Ninja Cheerleaders is a movie about female cheerleading-ninjas, who also work as go-go dancers at night. It’s basically the raunchy version of Totally Spies if anyone remembers that show. The girls are cute, but there isn’t much of a story and both action and cheerleading are pretty bad.
My biggest problem with it is that it was forced into an r-rating. They had a pretty normal teen movie, as it isn’t violent in any way and has some inoffensive comedic moments, and even though our ladies are cheerleaders and go-go dancers, they barely get any fan-service moments besides one dance in lingerie. But the director apparently really wanted that rating, so he included titty-transitions, which seem to just contain some actual strippers showing their tits. That’s an absolute dick-move if you ask me.
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The End
So that’s it for part 3. Next week we continue normally with the months October to December. Stay tuned!
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