People become startled by a parrot while carrying spears and wearing grass skirts in this indescribable film. The parrot gets A LOT of screentime. There's 6 pages of infantile script, a woman dressed as a crocodile who does a bit of interpretive dance, underwater alligator wrestling, and an epic battle where people gently tap pointy sticks together and by "epic" I really mean "lousy". Recommended if you like stuff that sucks. Here's a clip. WARNING! Do not watch if you're offended by frisky girl-on-alligator action.
A doctor accidentally takes bat medicine and becomes a monster in this boring vampire film where people talk on phones and enter rooms and not much else happens. It sort of reminded me of a cross between Dracula and Leave It To Beaver, except without the horror, Bela Lugosi, Beaver, or anything interesting. I watched it on Youtube.
I was convinced The Amazing Mr. X was going to be cruddy, and I was pleasantly surprised. It features great noir cinematography and lighting (Well, what there is of it. Couldn't anyone in the '40s turn on a light every once in a while?), I enjoyed the screenwriter's take on spiritualism and the long grift. I don't have much to complain about. I watched it on Youtube.
A jolly old hypocrite with a white beard and a gaudy red and white outfit tries to lay down a bum rap on a guy with horns (and I'm not talking about Miles Davis) in this slightly offensive, creepy and disturbing film, and by "slightly", I really mean "thoroughly". Santa Claus commits a little breaking and entering, droplifts, enslaves children to make toys violating many child labor laws, gives a kid a machine gun and an atomic laboratory, and assaults someone with a cannon. Now don't get me wrong, The Guy With The Horns isn't exactly a role-model because he gives children access to rocks, moves a chimney and lights a fire under Santa's butt, but Santa had it coming. It's about time someone lit a fire under Santa's ass because he only works one day a year. Anyway, this movie is just awful. It consists of 90% voiceover narration, a newspaper-based continuity error, and hideous tone-deaf Xmas music. You'll also be frightened by a mechanical Santa, a mechanical eyeball on a stalk, a telescope with lips, several eerie puppets, a rag-doll can-can dream sequence, and wind-up giggling robot reindeer with dead yellow eyes. Yikes. I watched it on Youtube because there still isn't anything to watch on Netflix. Here it is:
This film might actually bump Birdemic out of the top spot as The Worst Movie I've Ever Seen. Bikini-clad girls jiggle and recite poetry on the beach, and they appear to be truth-serum daylight beach vampires for almost 5 minutes of a 75 minute film. There's 5 minutes of terrible credits and the soundtrack awkwardly plays over dialogue. You'll see bad vampire teeth, tap-dancing, hideous acting, and videotape timecode in the bottom left corner in several scenes. You'll hear pitchy acoustic guitar playing, many awful musical numbers, and overhear someone giving muffled direction during dialogue. Scenes seem to begin and end at random, and scenes are replayed because someone seems to like them. Large chunks of movie might be missing. It all seems first take, and flubs are left in. It's astonishing. I assume this is a completed film as there are end credits. Who knows? Don't tell me. I watched it on Youtube through a facepalm. I'm not posting a clip, and you can't make me. Highly recommended if you like ham-fisted political statements, Body Glove, dance studios subbing for television studios, money being clothes-pinned to sheets, being bored and confused, or stuff that sucks.
As a documentary, She-Freak does a fine job showing the raising of the big top and the tear-down of the show, but it does a lousy job as a movie. Here's the plot: Upwardly mobile gold-digging former waitress becomes a carny and gets her comeuppance. The film features interesting footage of a carnival in the late '60s; there's the Tilt-a-Whirl, the Scrambler, a little burlesque, and the Sideshow. Sadly, there's also a dragging plot, 13 pages of script, bad acting, jazz instead of dialogue, and looped carnival sounds. Then it ends after blatantly ripping off Tod Browning. It's both fascinating and dreadful. I watched it on Youtube. Here's a trailer:
Capitalist kids ruthlessly berate and ridicule a non-conformist treehugger and rightfully give him what-for in this maudlin Yuletide special, and man, it's depressing. Seriously, why can't Ol' Chuck get with the program? Buy stuff. Buy lots and lots of stuff because that's how people know you love them. And you should buy your many soulless holiday items from a huge soulless multi-national corporation because the selection at the local stores sucks because they're all going out of business. Don't you know there's a War On Xmas? Oh good grief! The poor beleaguered holiday only lasts from the middle of October through February 1st, and almost no one knows about it. If only the world's retailers could get behind it and give it a push, but sadly, there's hardly any marketing or advertisements for it at all. It's like it's not even there. But I digress. Anyway, the Peanuts Gang tries to get down and get funky to the jazzy piano stylings of Vince Guaraldi, and Chuck is being a huge drag, so they all bully him but he had it coming because he is trying to convince everyone that "less is more", but clearly More Is More. They prove More Is More when the kids start "cooperating" and turn the tiny Xmas twig into a blinged out tree, but I could be wrong. In conclusion, it's a classic holiday program blah-blah-blah, and they show it once a year so you should probably watch it, but It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown is superior for obvious reasons. I watched it on local television programming because I think there's some sort of law requiring it, and I promise never to do that again. Here's a clip:
Oops, someone replaced my clip with a commercial for Zingers Snack Cakes. Buy Zingers.
