Bad Transfer Reviews

I haven't forgotten you

2010-09-08T13:10:00.000-07:00

It's been over a month since my last update, sorry about that.

I've been kind of busy lately, playing video games, hiking, biking, the normal stuff. Haven't had a lot of times to watch movies and when I do I usually want to watch one of the new blu-rays I've bought in the past couple months.

Hopefully pretty soon I'll get some time and I'll be able to get back to watching some really awful movies.

Squid.

The Manipulator (1971)

2010-08-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

The Manipulator is a cheerful little story starring Mickey Rooney. Mickey stars as B.J. Lang, a down on his luck movie makeup artist who befriends a rising starlet. Together in his old studio lot they film B.J.'s movie and through this gain a friendship that will last a lifetime.

Kind of...

The Manipulator is actually about B.J. Lang a makeup artist who kidnaps a rising young starlet and forces her to make his movie, mostly while she's tied to a wheelchair.

Imagine being in an abandoned warehouse full of movie props with Mickey Rooney... also you've both just dropped enough acid to kill Timothy Leary. That's The Manipulator.

This movie is incredibly odd. This is certainly Mickey Rooney as you've never seen him before. I picture Mickey as a jovial fun to be around kind of guy, always laughing... that is when I don't picture him as his role on The Simpsons.

Now I picture him as this:

Mrs. Goritry?

The Manipulator is full of moments where you'll wonder to yourself "What exactly did I just see?" One moment Mickey may be on some sort of crazy tirade about God knows what and the next he might be in the middle of some sort of orgy with Mickey Rooney and hippies.

Did you think I was kidding?

This movie makes very little sense... shocking, I know. There's talky bits mixed in with the nonsensical bits but they all really make very little sense. I watched the movie and I couldn't tell you why Mickey kidnaps this girl... or frankly what any of the movie is about beside the basic plot.

It's a bad movie that makes very little sense... but not everything is bad about it. Mickey Rooney actually gives a very good performance, and despite it being completely out of character you find it hard to believe that this was once Andy Hardy. And while he gives a very good performance it totally doesn't make up for this acid trip of a movie.

The ten minute mark really sums up what you're in for. For about five minutes you're treated to a scene of insanity. It involves an elderly naked man and woman, painted white, dancing around in front of a strobe light while Mickey Rooney moves in front of the camera making crazy faces. Occasionally the man and woman are standing in front of a bush that Mickey prunes and sometimes they just standing in cobwebs. Sometimes they're dressed, sometimes they are not.

And sometimes this happens.

Instead of watching this movie save yourself some time and just drop acid and watch It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World.

5 Crazy Birthday Fish out of 5.

Davey and Goliath (1960)

2010-07-16T20:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know, Daavveeyy...

You know, I don't think I had ever actually seen Davey and Goliath, about my only experience with it is Simpson's references. Other than that the only thing I knew about it was that it was made by the guy who did Gumby. Oh, and that it was full of Jesus.

And boy is it full of Jesus! Every episode wraps up with a nice little message of hope! So if you're unsure whether you should be nice to other kids, keep things you find, or be nice to minorities, Davey and Goliath will help you out.

On the Volume 1 DVD I bought at Target a while back you get four 15 minute episodes, plus one 30 minute episode. That's right, you get an hour and thirty minutes of Christianly goodness all for the amazing price of $1.

Stranded on the Island doesn't have a real religious message per se, more it tells you about how wonderful God is. Davey and his family all take a boat out to an island for a picnic, unfortunately they had no idea what God had in store for them! And by that I mean the tides. You see, because of the tides the Hansen family all get marooned on the island. It then turns into a harrowing true life Swiss Family Robinson where they have to learn to live off the land, learn how to make a fire, shelter, catch food... oh wait, they just leave the next time ~~the moon~~ God makes the tide come in.

My favorite part of this episode is the section where they talk about gravity and how you always fall down. Then there's this weird, trippy dream sequence where they fall up and talk about ~~Newton's~~ God's Law of gravity.... okay, the first strikeout was just me being a dick. The second one? Nope, that's straight from the show. God's Law of Gravity. You may also remember God's law about how for every action there's an opposite and equal reaction. I suppose I should be happy they at least acknowledge science.

I'm on drugs, Daavveeyy.

The Kite is hilarious. So there's this new kid at school, he's kind of nerdy, redhead with glasses. Davey makes friends with him and invites him to play baseball with him and his friends. Instead of choosing the really good player, Davey chooses the new kid to make him feel included. Uh oh, you know where this is going. The new kid is going to screw up and everyone is going to be mad but we'll learn some lesson from it all. Winning isn't everything and you should always be nice to everyone or something along those lines. The good player that Davey didn't pick is up to bat and hits it into the outfield where Teddy (that's the new kid) is the only person to catch it! Here it comes, he's going to miss it... but he doesn't. Teddy catches it. Hilariously I might add. You see, with stop motion it's pretty difficult to do a kid running to catch a ball... so instead Teddy flies about 30 feet across the field and catches it.

It's witchcraft, Daavveeyy.

Well now I'm confused. What lesson are we supposed to learn from this? Then I realized there's still about ten minutes left.

Davey and Jimmy then invite Teddy to come over to Davey's house and help them finish building the kite that they're making. And that's when Teddy kind of turns into a dick.

So they're back at Davey's house and they're almost finished with the kite when Goliath accidentally breaks it. Teddy and Jimmy are mad, but Davey forgives him because he loves him and that's what you do with people you love. Also they have enough material to make another one. So they make another kite and Goliath start sniffing around at the kite tail so Timmy does the reasonable thing and starts kicking Goliath. That'll learn em.

So they start flying the kite and Timmy is taking way to long a turn. When Davey asks for a turn Timmy goes back to his dickish ways and runs off into the forest with the kite. The string of the kite gets stuck in a tree and snaps off, sending the kite into some power lines. Timmy then yells that he's glad he broke their stupid kite. Way to make friends there new kid.

Luckily Jimmy and Davey have enough materials to make a third kite. So Jimmy and Davey are flying their kite when they notice that Timmy is standing at the edge of the forest watching them... like some sort of troll. Except he sulking. He's all sad because he was a dick... I guess. Then Davey brings up the very valid point that God would forgive Timmy. You know, if Timmy was a dick and broke God's kite. God would totally forgive him. Maybe New Testament God. Old Testament God would rain fire down on his Ginger ass. Either way they all learn a lesson and they all learn to share the kite, even Timmy.

Finders Keepers. It's Goliath's Birthday! And all Goliath wants is a big ol' steak. Sadly Davey only has $1 and that's not enough to buy you a big juicy steak... even in 1960. Davey needs at least TWO dollars to buy a steak. So Davey decided to do some odd jobs for neighbors to earn that extra dollar. One of his neighbors pays him $.25 to run some errands in town, another will pay him a whole dollar to mow her lawn and weed her front planter. $1 was worth a lot more money back in 1960.

So Davey starts doing his days worth of work to earn that $1.25, and while in town running errands notices the new dog salon. They have a very nice collar in their window, and Goliath would much rather have that then a steak. Only problem being is that the collar costs $11.

Davey's prayers are answered when his neighbor accidentally drops $10 out of her purse. Now, Davey doesn't know it's hers. He just finds it. Finders keepers.

Well of course the neighbor calls Davey's mom telling her that she lost the money. $10 dollars was worth a lot more back then... enough to call your neighbor and tell them you lost it... apparently. Well Davey's mom informs him that the neighbor lost the money, so now Davey knows where the ill gotten $10 came from. Still, finders keepers. That collar is going to be Goliaths!

Well on the way to buy the collar God makes Davey feel guilty so they end up buying the steak instead and giving the money back to the neighbor. Awwww, good Christianly values. Then Davey makes Goliath a new collar out of his sisters old necklaces and his moms old earrings... and everyone is happy. Especially God.

Blind Man's Bluff is easily my favorite episode. You see, this very special episode deals with race relations. No, seriously. It starts off with Goliath growling at another dog because that dog has spots. Davey likens this racism. Davey then gets a call from Jonathan, his black friend, who wants him to come over and visit with his cousin. You see Jonathan's cousin Scotty is a racist. He hates white people. Fortunately for everyone Scotty is temporarily blinded. A science explosion. Jonathan feels that if Scotty gets to know Davey without knowing he's white it will break him of his racist past.

Kill whitey, Daavveeyy.

So Davey become Scotty's nurse while his parents are away... because there's nothing safer than a young child caring for another blind, young child.

Well, the days pass and Scotty becomes more and more friendly with Davey and then the day comes when he's going to get his bandages off. It's the moment of truth. Scotty sees that he's been tricked into being friends with whitey and runs out of the doctor's office. Seriously.

The next day Scotty comes over to Davey's house and tells them that he has learned to love crackers and that it was wrong for him judge people based on the color of their skin. Even Goliath becomes friends with the spotted dog.

If only we could temporarily blind all racists the world would be a much better place.

To the Rescue. In this special half hour episode it's summer vacation time and that can mean only one thing... bible camp! Davey and his friends are off to bible camp and they're about to lean a very important lesson about working together.

You see, none of the kids can work together. The picnic tables aren't set, the cooks assistant oversleeps, the... well come to think about it as far as I can tell that's the only things that goes wrong. Plus that's not really kids not working together, that's just kids not helping. Either way all the kids go on a canoe trip to plant trees in a recently burned part of the forest... but there's a surprise waiting for them.

You see, while the kids are out in the forest there's a plane crash! And it's up to the kids to help out the father and daughter stuck and hurt in the plane... because if I'm ever in a plane crash I sure hope that the first responders are people from a bible camp.

We should probably wait for trained medical personnel, Daavveeyy.

It's okay though, because the father and daughter have relatively minor injuries... despite the daughter being ejected from the goddamn plane. Yep, the daughter receives a broken leg with the father receiving a broken arm. The marry band of youngsters are able patch them up and help them down the mountain. And they were able to do it because they worked together. Go them.

Davey and Goliath isn't a bad show. It's a little religious, sure, but it's produced by the United Lutheran Church... what did you expect? It's also oddly... nostalgic? I'm not sure if that's the right word. I think because there's been so many parodies of the show that even though I haven't seen it before, you feel as if you have. It's worth the $1 it cost and it's an interesting look into a type of TV show that really doesn't seem to exist any longer.

1 Birthday Fish out of 5

Lady Frankenstein (1971)

2010-06-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

I hate it when I run into a movie like Lady Frankenstein. A movie that may not be great, but wasn't horrible. Sure, you probably didn't notice it sweeping the '71 Academy Awards, but it wasn't a bad movie.

Lady Frankenstein gives a somewhat new twist on the whole Frankenstein story. This movie follows Tania Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein's daughter. She's just returned home after completing medical school and would like to work on her fathers experiments... though she isn't aware that her father has progressed from experiments on animals to humans.

The first part of the movie is your typical Frankenstein movie, Victor Frankenstein is paying a grave robber and his band of merry body thieves to bring him fresh corpses to experiment on. Well, long story short "It's alive!" and that's when things start going downhill.

And not just because it's ugly.

You see, The Creature kills Victor Frankenstein. Woops. It also escapes the lab to wreak havoc on the countryside. Double woops.

Well Victor's lab partner wants to go to the police, but Tania doesn't want to tarnish her father's good reputation. So of course they remain silent and allow The Creature to go on a killing spree.

And kill he does! Usually people having sex. Seriously, I think he kills at least three people mid-coitus. I'm pretty sure this is the movies attempt to throw in a little bit of boobies. Either way, he goes on killing people while Tania comes up with an ingenious plan to stop The Creature.

I'll admit, the plot gets a little muddled here. You see, Tania comes up with a plan to create her own Creature to kill the other one. Gee, nothing could go wrong there. And all while planning this out she falls in love with the lab assistant, Dr. Marshall... and then we go further down the rabbit hole.

You see, Tania needs a body for her Creature... so she talks Dr. Marshall into killing the grave robber. It doesn't work out, because the Creature kills him before Dr. Marshall can. A lot of killing going on. You see, all those people who were killed are actually people responsible for bringing the creature to life. So let this be a lesson, if you're a grave robber or just a mad scientist you most likely are having a lot of sex.

Then something happened that confused me. Tania starts hitting on the retarded manservant. I mean that he's literally retarded, not just dumb. I assumed she was doing this because they needed a new body since Tom the grave robber was killed. The box implies that it's because Dr. Marshall is an old man and she wants his smart brain in the body of the hot, but retarded, manservant. I'm not sure which it is, and frankly I'm not sure the movie does either... but I'd like to think it's a mixture of both.

The more you kill people the more I love you

So they kill off poor Tommy and transplant Dr. Marshall's brain into his body. They can now battle the original creature! Or perhaps live happily ever after! Either way there's a battle royale between The Creature and Dr. Marshall in Tommy's body. For some reason having your brain put in another body gives you incredible strength.

Dr. Marshall/Tommy win of course, which gives Tania and Dr. Marshall/Tommy just enough time to make sweet, sweet love by the fire. You see the townsfolk and police have finally figured out what's going on at the old Frankenstein place and of the course the only thing to do is march up that hill torch in hand.

And that's really how the movie ends, the townsfolk burning down the castle and Dr. Marshall/Tommy and Tania doing it while the castle burns down around them. I'll admit, it was an odd ending but I guess if you got to go might as well be that way.

Overall not a great movie, but it's a watchable movie. It just gets weird and convoluted in places.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5.

Squid.

The War Between Mushroom and Peas

2010-06-24T22:01:00.000-07:00

Usually I put the year up after the title as well as a picture of the DVD cover, but there's one problem... I can't find any information about this movie. None, zero. I looked it up on the IMDB as well as Googled it and couldn't find anything about it.

I wanted to go with something different today so I busted out one of the many, many dollar cartoon DVDs I have. I decided on The War Between Mushroom and Peas because... did you see it's name? Something tells me that's why I bought it in the first place. Also from now on I'm referring to it as TWBM&P because it's way to goddamn long to write out.

So I read the little blurb on the back and noticed it said:

This must have DVD features the following stories:
1) Little Red Riding Hood
2) Childrens Album
And Other Animated Classics

Color, English, Approx. 60 Minutes

Let me point some things out that are wrong about this.

1) This is not a must have DVD, seriously, no one is rushing out to add this to their collection.
2)Little Red Riding Hood is not on this DVD, in fact only two shows are: TWBM&P and something called Ilaya the Great. I assume those are under the category "Other Animated Classics".
3)60 Minutes... actually it's about 26 minutes. TWBM&P is about 17 and Ilya the Great is about 9 minutes.

We're off to great start!

So let's start off with TWBM&P. Imagine if Salvador Dali took a ton of acid and decided to write a fairy tale. That's pretty much what TWBM&P is.

Meet the King of the Peas

So the king of the Mushroom Kingdom... no, not Mario, decides he needs to husband up his daughter, Princess Whitey. That's right, Princess Whitey. She has many suitors but she's in love with... Browney. So if you're keeping score Princess Whitey is in love with Browney. Browney also spends his day doing manual labor in a field. Oddly enough that's where this story ends. I really figured we were in for some delightful racism... but nope, it really just ends with that.

So the suitors come from all across the land trying to woo the beautiful(?) Princess Whitey. You have the smartest man in all the land, the richest man in all the land and... well this is supposed to be the most beautiful man in all the land.

All man, baby...

Well apparently along with getting sweet, sweet Princess Whitey whoever marries her also gets a huge hunk of the Mushroom Kingdom. So of course the King of Peas wants in on this action... and by that I mean he declares war on the Mushroom Kingdom.

Well the King of the Mushroom Kingdom decided whoever can stop the King of Peas will be the right man for his daughter.

Yes, the King of the Mushrooms looks like a... you know

Well the most beautiful man, the richest man, and the smartest man all fail miserably. So it looks like the King of Peas has won... what's this? Browney swoops in and saves the day? Well who would have guessed.

So Browney saves the day and gets Princess Whitey in the end. It's uplifting. Really.

Then you have Ilaya the Great. It's about overcoming adversity.

Ilaya is born.
Ilaya gets sick.
Ilaya's town is attacked.
Ilaya is too sick to do anything.
3 wiseman call Ilaya a pussy.
Ilaya says "Nuh uh!"
Ilaya overcomes adversity.
So can you.

That's pretty much what I got from the 9 minutes of Ilaya the Great.

Cancer? Get out of bed you wuss.

4 Birthday Fish out of 5.

Squid.

Horror of the Zombies (1974)

2010-06-15T20:36:00.000-07:00

I've done some scientific research and I've come to a conclusion: the more names a movie has the worse it is. Case in point, Horror of Zombies. Also known as The Ghost Galleon, El Buque Maldito, Ship of Zombies, The Blind Dead 3, and Zombie Flesh Eater. For those of you keeping score that six names. Six. You know what that means? Pretty bad movie.

About twenty minutes into this movie I realized that I had seen it before, and let me tell you it takes a pretty awful movie for me to completely forget about it. So after realizing this I remembered what I was in for. A really bad movie.

The first and last time this movie is actually good.

I remember this movie feeling very disjointed, like I was missing something. I could never really figure it out, but this time I realized what it was. Remember all of those names up there? The one you should really know about is The Blind Dead 3. That's right, this movie is part of a trilogy. A trilogy that I haven't seen the first two movies of. Imagine sitting down and watching Back to the Future for the first time, no not the first one, Back to the Future III. Sure you could probably piece together why Marty and Doc Brown are playing cowboys and Indians but you can bet you're going to be a little confused.

Horror of the Zombies starts out making little sense and then evolves into a weird train wreck.

You have a bunch of fashion models who go out on a boat for a publicity stunt, I'm not 100% sure what kind of publicity stunt, but one nonetheless.

Hello? Publicity?

Well they're out on a boat in the middle of the ocean but in contact with some kind of weird/evil rich dudes who are in charge of the "publicity stunt". Well of course shit goes south. The models hit a patch of fog that shouldn't be there and get lost... oh noes!

Well for some reason, I'm not sure why, the rich guys kidnap another model who is going to go to the cops and tell them that they managed to lose a boat full of models. I guess maybe not all publicity is good publicity?

So the models eventually find a boat in the fog, and of course the first thing you do when you come across a creepy ass boat in the middle of the foggy ocean... you board it!

So now the (stupid) models are on board the SS Cursed by Ghosts and need rescuing.. and who better to do it then the two rich guys, their hired hand, their kidnapped model, and some woman who I honestly forgot who she was.

And then the Knights Templar show up... as zombies.

Okay, stop right their. Seriously, that's the what we're working with here. That's the plot of this movie. I have three words for you Zombie Knights Templar.

The story is muddled and crappy, the acting is awful, the script appears to be non-existent, the...

Oh to hell with it.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Day of the Panther (1988)

2010-05-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you mix martial arts, the land down under, bad acting and an awesomely bad script? Day of the Panther. That's right our movie takes us to everyone's favorite island of convicts and gives us the harrowing tale of an undercover cop hellbent on revenge for the killing of his partner.

What do you get if you mix Crocodile Dundee and Bruce Lee? The killing machine that is Jason Blade. That's right his name is Jason friggen' Blade. How awesome is that? If I continue calling him by his full name instead of him, he, or just Jason it's because he has the greatest name in cinematic history.

Our movie starts out with Jason Blade and his partner doing an undercover operation, and by that I mean they're sneaking around in the kitchen of a restaurant where a drug deal is going down. Apparently they have a much different definition of undercover in Australia. Either way the drug deal goes to hell, the buyer kills the sellers, our two undercover detectives get caught in the middle and have to fight their way out of the restaurant. Luckily it's a Chinese restaurant so everyone in the joint knows karate; that way Jason Blade can really showcase his talent.

Up next you have the most mind blowingly awesome scene in Australian cinema. Linda, Jason Blade's partner, is watching a drug deal go down. He tells her to wait, but that's not how Linda rolls. She's going to go down and check it out... and Linda knows how to make an entrance.

Little known fact: everything in Australia is made of balsa wood.

Remember how I said that this was a mind blowingly awesome scene? Want to know why? Because these are the three guys that Linda ends up fighting:

That's right, it's old man mask man! Cower in fear when he looks like an old man but is actually a really bad ninja!

Skull mask man with bat that has spikes in it! Okay, I can see where he's going with this. Skull masks are kind of scary, and a good way to intimidate others. The third guy must be really scary!

Pig... mask... man? What happened to Rocksteady there Bebop? He late? Seriously, I know that Pig Mask Man has a machete but really? Were there three masks and skull guy got the only good one? Was there just not a costume store on the way to the drug deal and you had to use what costumes you could scrape together from your mom's basement?

Also, if you've ever participated in the candy giving holiday of Halloween you've probably worn a latex mask. Let me ask you something, how was your peripheral vision out of one of those things? There's a reason kids get hit by cars on Halloween and it's not just because they're stupid. It's because you can't see worth a goddamn out of those masks. No wonder they get the crap kicked out of them by Linda. Also, want to see the greatest thing? During her fight with Skull Mask Man Linda pulls off his mask and...

He has a friggen' skull painted on his face! Why in God's name does he need the mask at all!?

So are you wondering why she's fighting three guys in masks? Get in line buddy because I'm pretty sure so is everyone else who viewed this movie.

Long story short Linda manages to dispatch the three guys in the goofy masks and is killed by their boss, the only one not stupid enough to put on a mask and parade around like it's Halloween. Though he does look a lot like George Michaels.

So on to the meat and potatoes of the movie. So now Jason Blade has learned that his partner has been killed. Thankfully he was already going undercover into the group that killed her, and actually undercover this time, not spying on them from fifteen feet away.

The great thing is, the moment he shows up at the airport two bumbling detectives are assigned to follow him because they think he's a gangster hitman. Despite the fact about 20 minutes later he tells their boss that he's actually undercover... yet they follow him throughout the movie. I guess the captain just likes wasting manpower. On the other hand I don't know if there's a Mayberry in Australia that these two could be policing instead.

Basically the rest of the movie is bad karate fights with plot kind of sprinkled around it.

You have Jason Blade working for the local gangster in Australia, and his right hand man is George Michael looking bastard, the guy who killed the drug dealers at the first and Linda... this guy really gets around.

You also have Jason Blade's Sensei, William Anderson, who happens to be Linda's father and his other daughter Gemma... is also Jason's love interest in the movie. I would think after you lost one daughter you wouldn't let your other hang around with a guy who tends to get into kicking fights with the gang that killed said daughter... but that's just me.

You also have the greatest 80's/karate movie plot cliche ever... you see the gangster boss holds a great big karate championship each year and he wants Jason to fight in it. Do these kinds of things actually happen? I mean I know there's karate tournaments, but are there huge underground tournaments held by stereotypical mob bosses where the worlds best get together and fight perhaps to the death? You see it constantly in movies, but you never hear about these kinds of things being broken up by the police in real life.

Either way you bet your ass that Jason Blade and George Michael end up in the ring fighting against each other. Sure it's not during the tournament, you see they find out Jason Blade is a undercover cop before then... but oh, ho, ho you bet they duel it out in the ring. You also probably guessed that Jason Blade is getting the crap kicked out of him but makes a miraculous recovery and wins. Frankly I'm surprised this fight didn't take place at dusk with the Sydney Opera House in the background.

So of course Jason Blade saves the day with a little help from Sensei Anderson and Gemma... But don't worry, Jason Blade will be back for Strike of the Panther. And you can bet your ass I'll be watching it as soon as I find a copy.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Trauma (1978)

2010-05-21T23:11:00.001-07:00

So here we go again. A foreign movie dubbed into English. This time it's an on the edge of your seat, thrill ride of a roller coaster called Trauma, or Enigma Rosso, or Red Ring of Fear, or Virgin Killer, and the list keeps going... Frankly I'd go with Virgin Killer, mostly because it shares the name with a Scorpion's album with a very inappropriate album cover.

Trauma wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong it's still pretty bad, but I guess it could have been a lot worse. Mostly it's kind of an ordinary movie with weird subplots that seem to go nowhere. Like the main character is a detective, who happens to be dating a woman who's a kleptomaniac. Why is she a kleptomaniac? No real reason, she just likes to steal things... it adds absolutely nothing to the story. Though it doesn't really matter because about half way through the movie she leaves him for no real reason. He goes to leave and she says that when he gets back she wont be there, and that's that. What does that have to do with the story? Nothing at goddamn all. There's several little things like this throughout the movie... they don't do anything for the story, and in some places actually just seem to hurt it.

What does this picture have to do with anything? Absolutely nothing, but it's awesome.

That guy up there? That's our detective friend. He's investigating the murder of a sixteen year old girl. You know, when he's not having to deal with his shoplifting girlfriend. So while looking into this girls murder he discovers two things:

1) The girl goes to an all girl boarding school, along with her and her friends they have a secret little club called The Inseparables. All the sudden this movie got a lot more sexy.

2) The dead girl has a sister who's creepy. I'm not sure if she's meant to be, but I'll be damned if she doesn't seem that way.

Either way the dead girl's sister (who by the way doesn't seem all the broken up over the death of her sister, though neither does her mother) pops in occasionally throughout the movie with little hints and help for the detective. Because I hope that if a detective is looking into my murder he's doing so with the help of a ten year old... I hope it's a lot like Cop and a Half.

But don't worry, our detective doesn't rely solely on the help of a ten year old to solve crimes... oh no! You see, the detective is a loose cannon with unorthodox interrogation techniques! And by that I mean he takes one of the people he's trying to get information out of on a roller coaster ride. That's not a metaphor or anything, he literally takes him on a roller coaster ride. That's what gets the guy to talk. Seriously, I've seen Jack Bauer do things that are banned by the Geneva Convention... and this guy takes his suspects to the carnival. Maybe if he doesn't talk he takes them on the tilt a whirl.

Dammit, I get results!

Either way the story is kind of crappy. The plot is confusing with way too many subplots and unexplained things to make it even somewhat decent and the characters seem to do things that defy explanation. Maybe I got an edited version, or maybe it just didn't translate well to English. All I know is I got done with the movie and I know who killed the girl... I think... but I'm not sure how or why, and those things are kind of important in a murder mystery. It's like it started out well and then about halfway through the writers decided to get lunch. From about halfway through till the end just seemed like a convoluted mess.

Is it worth wasting 84 minutes of your life on? Probably not, but what else are you going to do?

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid

Cindy and Donna (1970)

2010-05-11T19:32:00.000-07:00

Needed something new so I switched over to the Drive-In Cult Classic DVD pack. Basically every movie in this pack is a bad sexploitation movie from the '70s. Every movie on it generally has to deal with someone wanting to have sex with a mother, a stepmother, a nanny, a sister, two sisters... you get the point. And Cindy and Donna is no different.

I learned two things from Cindy and Donna:

1) The '70s was an awesome time when you could use the word "groovy" in all seriousness.

2) Pot turn women into nymphomaniacs.

I can tell you that number two is false, if it were true my high school life would have been a hell of a lot more interesting.

The tagline for Cindy and Donna says it all: A story of two sisters. Cindy... so anxious to grow up. Donna... who grew up too fast! That's basically it, you have the sweet, innocent Cindy who wants to be like her big sister Donna, who's basically a pot smoking whore. I would strive to achieve that as well.

Also it has the greatest opening theme ever.

That's it. That's pretty much the whole movie. Seriously. The movie is just an excuse to get Cindy, Donna, Cindy's friend Karen, and Alice the stripper naked... all while leading up to one of the most hilarious endings I've ever seen. And frankly I'm okay with that.

Sure there are other "plots" in the movie but mostly they go nowhere. The father in the movie likes to have sex with a stripper... and that's pretty much all there is to that subplot. As far as I can tell it's only there to show the stripper naked. I'm starting to see a trend. Then there's the mother. She's an alcoholic. That's her subplot. She also has an accent that seems to randomly change throughout sentences.

The funny thing about this movie is that it's all about nudity and sex and drugs. It's sexploitation at its finest... and yet if you take all of that away you have almost a morality tale. This film is basically about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.

You have Donna who will do anything for weed. Sex in a car for a joint? Oh yeah. Have two creepy guys take naked pictures of you and then have sex with you? Oh she'll do it all for some sweet, sweet mary jane. Pot will do this to you. It's evil.

Then you have sweet, innocent Cindy. She wants to go farther with her boyfriend but just isn't sure that she's ready. But the second that joint touches her young, virginal lips? Well all the sudden her and Karen are going at it like lesbianism is going out of style.

But you have this odd message seemingly hidden under tons and tons of titties. So imagine an after school special about the dangers of drugs but where everyone is naked and having sex with random people.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Spare Parts (1979)

2010-04-27T19:36:00.000-07:00

Going in to Spare Parts I expected something horrible. We're talking about a '70s made for TV move that was shot in German and then dubbed into English. That's pretty much a recipe for disaster right there.

But Spare Parts surprised me... no, not because it was a great movie. Hell it wasn't even all that good of a movie, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected it to be. It had its ups and downs but overall came out fairly well.

Spare Parts is about a man and woman, Bill and Monica, who stay at the Honeymoon Motel for their... Honeymoon. First off let me say that I wish there were still motels that cost $7.50 a night... or maybe I don't, I'm not sure. Back to the movie though. Despite the fact that the desk clerk is the creepiest woman ever, the newlyweds decide to stick around and do newlywed kind of stuff (sex) and watch the sun set in a field.

This was their first mistake.

You see, as they're sitting in the field watching the sun set an ambulance drives up to them. Now most people would quizzically wonder what the hell an ambulance is doing in the middle of a field, and in fact that's exactly what Bill does. Monica on the other hand has the complete opposite reaction, she runs away screaming like a mad woman.

Bill should have listened to her.

Bill is kidnapped by the two men in the ambulance and carted away to god knows where, all the while Monica continues running away screaming. Though I can't blame her, the two men in the ambulance did have comically large guns. Either way she takes her screaming all the way to highway where she's promptly picked up by a friendly trucker. I can never decide if that's a good idea. On the one hand she's a hot twenty something blond wearing nothing but a white tank top and short shorts. On the other hand she's disheveled and crazy looking. Kind of a toss up about what's going to happen.

So this is what cataracts are like.

Luckily Trucker Mike is a nice guy who decided to help out our poor, crazy Monica. And I don't mean just a little bit of helping out, I mean going far beyond the call of duty on this one. He's devising plans on how to help her get her fiance back.

The whole movie involves Trucker Mike and Monica devising a plan that would allow them to find out who kidnapped Bill and how they can stop these people. So they pretend to be newlyweds and go back to the same motel that this started in in hopes of having the exact same thing happen again. And luckily for them it does! They manage to extract the information from the ambulance drivers and find out what they want with the people they're kidnapping. Spare parts of course! You see, there's a group that kidnaps people so they can harvest their organs. Seems like it would be easier to target say, homeless people as opposed to normal everyday people off the street who may have families that will miss them... but I guess that doesn't make as compelling of a movie.

The last half of the movie is where it starts to somewhat go downhill for me. It's not that the movie gets bad it's just that it's when it seems to start dragging on. The first half of the movie was generally pretty good, but the last half just seemed kind of odd and a almost like a different movie. The first part was a pretty good horror/thriller movie but the last half just turned out weird. It involved Trucker Mike and Monica going undercover in the group to find out who is behind the whole body harvesting scheme... and then get help from a very unlikely source to bring it down. The last half isn't bad, it just feels kind of off to me.

Like I said, it's not bad and it's not good. The story isn't bad but tends to drag on in places. The characters tend to do things that I don't think normal people would do, but that tends to happen in a lot in movies. The acting isn't bad when, again, you consider it was a made for TV movie from the '70s.

Spare Parts falls into a weird category for Bad Transfer Reviews, because while it's not bad I certainly wouldn't sing it's praises. It's just kind of there. It's better than a lot of the things I've had to watch, but I wouldn't really suggest that everyone rush out and see it.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Slave of the Cannibal God (1978)

2010-04-17T08:19:00.000-07:00

Finally made it back to the Drive-In Movie Classics 50 Pack. Was in the mood for something bad and exploitative so I settled for Slave of the Cannibal God.

Slave of the Cannibal God stars Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach. First off, I didn't realize that it was Stacy Keach until about halfway through the movie. I think the first thing I remember seeing Stacy Keach in was Titus and that was in 2002, about 24 years after he made this movie. He had aged quite a bit. I also spent a good portion of the movie trying to decide if Ursula Andress was hot or not. On one hand she's pretty good looking, but on the other she's got kind of a weird facial structure and odd hairline. By the end of the movie I had settled on the fact that she was "odd hot", meaning even though she had some odd things about her look wise, she was still hot.

Odd hot or hot hot. I still can't decide.

Why have I brought this up? Well how good do you think a movie is when I spent a good portion of the time trying to decide if the leading actress was hot or not instead of, you know, paying attention. Give you a hint: not very.

If you were Italian and made a movie in the '70s with the word cannibal in the title there was a good chance it had two things in it: excessive amounts of boobies and real animal killings for shock value. Slave of the Cannibal God had both of these... kind of.

You see, the version of Slave of the Cannibal God that I had was the "heavily cut" version. The uncut version is 102 minutes long, where as the one I saw was 82 minutes. That means that they cut a fifth of the movie (here's hoping my horrible math skills are correct). Apparently this movie is chock full of nudity... unless you saw the version I did where you briefly see a little bit of boobies. When you cut out a fifth of a movie, I'm guessing here and there you end up cutting little bits of important information pertaining to the plot... and that's how Slave of the Cannibal God felt. Like you were watching a movie that was missing parts of its plot.

No explanation is needed for this. It's just terrifying.

I'm not saying that the movie made no sense, I was able to piece together the information easily enough. Occasionally though, you would get to part of the movie that felt like it wasn't explained very well... it could just be incredibly bad writing, but it also may be that the explanation had been cut out, it's hard to say.

Overall Slave of the Cannibal God was just kind of a boring movie. It didn't offer me anything that I hadn't already seen before in these kind of exploitative cannibal movies... and once you get rid of all the nudity the only thing you're left with is the animal killings which really does nothing for me. And Birthday Fish doesn't like seeing his animal brethren die just for the purpose of a crappy movie with no boobies.

Birthday Fish Gives this a 5 out of 5 on No Boobies to Animal Killing Ratio

The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914)

2010-04-08T15:16:00.000-07:00

I would guess some people don't realize that The Wizard of Oz is based off of a novel by L. Frank Baum, but I would guess that most people don't realize it wasn't the first movie based off of those books. Hell, L. Frank Baum had his own production company called The Oz Film Manufacturing Company which cranked out quite a few of them. Including the little gem I watched called The Patchwork Girl of Oz, which as far as I can tell is the first feature full length movie based of of the books, though I may be wrong. Either way this movie is strange. How strange you ask? Imagine dropping acid while watching a Terry Gilliam movie where all of the audio has been replaced with intertitles and organ music.

Strange.

You won't find Dorthy or Toto or The Wicked Witch of the West in this version. You will however find The Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, as well as the Scarecrow. Though instead of the fun lovable characters you know some of them have been replaced by something straight out of your nightmares.

Not Ray Bolger.

So is the movie good? Well, kind of. It's a mix of odd, good, and terrifying. The movie is about Ojo, a young girl who travels out with her father? ,I'm not sure how he's related, to her to find food. Upon the way they follow a mule to a magician's house who's making a patchwork girl. Shortly after making the patchwork girl Ojo accidentally turns three people to stone and then has to find the ingredients to make a cure. Unfortunately for her some of the ingredients are illegal and procuring them manages to get her in trouble with the law in the land of Oz.

It's all very strange. I realize it's hard to tell a story when all you have are title cards that pop up every few minutes and the rest of the story has to rely on the actions of the actors to convey what is happening. So that being said The Patchwork Girl of Oz is a good movie, but holy hell is it occasionally like a bad acid trip.

Also it has more black face than the 1939 version.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

The Smallest Show on Earth (1957)

2010-04-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

So I deviated from my normal course. All of the previous movies I've reviewed are from the Drive-In Movie Classics 50 Pack so last night I decided to try something new and broke out the Comedy Classics 50 Pack. That's when I realized my problem.

The Drive-In Classics movies are generally pretty bad. They range from "so bad they're good" to "so bad they're almost unwatchable". I've seen 2 of 12 DVDs in the Comedy Classics pack in the past and I can say I thoroughly enjoyed both of them. I like old timey things, and I'm not exactly sure why. Early cinema fascinates me, but so does the early 19th century in general. You're talking to a guy whose favorite "attraction" at Disneyland is the Penny Arcade on Main Street, followed closely by the old time theater which shows old Disney shorts. Hell, you're talking to a guy whose last.fm is currently playing the Boswell Sisters.

Why am I telling you this? Mostly because I'm wondering if I can write an objective review on something I'm so enamored with. The answer is probably no, but I'm going to go ahead and give it a try. On with the show.

The Smallest Show on Earth is a good movie, and I'm not saying that just because of everything I said above. It truly is a good movie.

Jean and Matt Spenser receive a letter telling them that Matt's uncle has died and left Matt The Bijou, his movie theater. They head off on the first train to the city to claim their inheritance. Well the movie would be fairly boring if the theater was in pristine condition and everything was running well, thankfully for us it's not. The Bijou is nicknamed "The Flea Pit", and is currently being run by three very eccentric workers. One of them being Peter Sellers... how can you not love Peter Sellers?

So the movie theater is a bust, but they're hope is restored when they learn that the villainous man who owns the other theater in town once offered the uncle 5000 pounds for his theater. Except now he's only offering 500... so they hatch a plan. If they can pretend that they're going to reopen the The Bijou perhaps they can get him to sell at higher price rather than compete for customers. Unfortunately their plan is discovered before they can even get it off the ground. So they come up with a new plan... what if they actually open the theater?

I'm not going to spoil anymore of the movie because you might actually want to see this one. Sure, it's not the funniest movie I've ever seen and it's certainly not Peter Sellers greatest role, but it's a good movie. Everyone in it is very good, and overall it has some very funny parts. If you don't enjoy old comedies and their humor you probably won't enjoy the movie as much as I did, but if you do I think you'll enjoy this movie.

1 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

T.N.T. Jackson (1974)

2010-04-04T20:09:00.000-07:00

Blaxploitation? Check.
Karate? Check.
Funk music? Awwww yeah.
Bad plot? Check.
Topless karate scene? You bet your honkey ass.

I love cheesy movies. I think it's because of this that I love blaxploitation movies so much. I don't necessarily like what the stand for, but I do for the most part enjoy the genre as a whole.

T.N.T. Jackson is awesome. You have a woman seeking revenge, karate, nudity, bad '70s music all rolled into one awful and cheesy plot. Diane "T.N.T." Jackson is searching for the man who killed her brother in Hong Kong. Did I mention she knows karate? Oh yeah, she knows karate. EVERYONE knows karate. Teamed with Dynamite Wong (played by a dude named Chiquito... that's his full name, like Cher) they battle the underworld crime bosses... At least I think they do.

Of course Chiquito knows karate

To be honest the plot seems to jump all over the place. TNT Jackson seems to be working with, though possibly somewhat against the crime bosses. The whole issue of who killed her brother? I guess it was resolved, though I wasn't 100% sure who even did it in the first place. Also there's a whole subplot about heroin and undercover cops that seems to somewhat take center stage about halfway through the movie.

There's a problem with watching the Mill Creek Entertainment version of movies. They tend to not only have horrible transfers but also have a tendency to be edited versions. Maybe they cut out parts that made T.N.T. Jackson make sense. Maybe there's a scene that would have made me understand everything... but that's not what I saw, I saw the version that was completely batshit insane, but still somehow awesome.

The karate in this movie is hilarious. When the people who it appears actually know karate go to attack T.N.T. you can tell they slow down their movements so that she can block them. And occasionally her movements are super sped up, which is not only horribly noticeable it's also super hilarious. I unfortunately can't seem to put you at a certain time in embedded youtube video but skip to 1:00 into this video and watch about two and half minutes of the video for an amazing display of martial arts.

It's like when I first saw Citizen Kane

Even though its plot is confusing and garbled it still manages to be awesome to watch (though I will say I wish there was more action and less plot... not often I say that). Everything about this movie reeks of cheesiness, from the bad acting to the bad fight scenes. Sure it's not the best blaxploitation movie I've ever seen, but it's certainly worth a watch... even if it's just for the topless karate scene.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Death by Dialogue (1988)

2010-03-31T15:31:00.000-07:00

At some point in time a person sat down and wrote a movie, he decided that "Death by Dialogue" was a good title. At some other point in time he pitched that movie to some studio executives and they too decided that it was a good name. Somehow none of these people decided that "Death by Dialogue" might be the most boring name ever.

Death by Flames is a much more awesome name.

Have you ever thought the idea of a killer movie script sounded interesting? Yeah, me either. Though apparently someone did because that's what Death by Dialogue is about.

Our story starts out with a man reading said script, and not soon after he's lit on fire by a woman wearing garters and carrying a flamethrower. And yet somehow this movie makes that really kind of boring. I'm not sure how you manage that but it does. After that you're instantly cut to a scene with some bad 80's music where you meet the characters in the story who might actually matter: Lenny and his friends.

Lenny and his four friends decide to visit Lenny's uncle, though I'm not entirely sure why. I'm not even really sure if it's specified in the movie why they do this... I mean besides to advance the plot. It just strikes me as odd that a bunch of people in their mid-20s would decide to vacation at one of the dude's uncle's house. I would think the beach would be a lot more exciting... and rarely do you run into any demonic movie scripts at the beach.

Either way Lenny's friend Shelly stumbles across the movie script and that's when shit starts to hit the fan. Kind of. Mostly it's after that when it starts getting kind of confusing... and stupid.

While Shelly is reading the script what she's reading is actually happening, or at least there's little hints to that. And yet when she reads about her friends dying she doesn't seem all that concerned when they're missing the next day. I would like to think that if I found a script that oddly had my friend's names in it, described the location where you were at, and then when I read that they died in the script it just so happens that they're missing the next day I might at least mention it to someone else. Apparently not Shelly though.

Maybe I'm wrong about the movie though... maybe that's not what happened. I can't tell you because this movie has parts in it that make absolutely no sense. Like the two friends who go missing that I mentioned up above. It all starts off with a sex scene where at the end the woman gets blown out a window and disappears. The man runs off into the forest looking for her only to find... an '80s hair band rocking out in the middle of the forest. I have no idea why. I'm not sure it's ever really explained. This is a total Birthday Fish moment. There's several of these kinds of moments throughout the movie. It's very difficult to make sense of a movie that has a habit of making no sense.

There were roaming gangs of hair bands in the '80s

So after a few more deaths our characters finally figure out that it's the evil script. I can't remember if they figured it out or the uncle told them... because he knew about it all along. You know, I don't think if I had a problem with "killer manuscripts" running rampant I would let my nephew and his four friends come out to my house to hang out like lambs to the slaughter. Then again, I'm not a dick.

So after they figure out it's the script killing everyone they have figure out a way to stop it. Just writing that sentence I feel stupid. They wrote a movie about it. Either way the ending is... well horrible. It contains demons and fire and... dirt bikes. Also a whole lot of confusion. It's one of those things you kind of have to see for yourself, but I wouldn't suggest it. It's as bad as it sounds.

All and all the movie was pretty terrible, had a lot of rather confusing parts to it, and also had the worst name I could possibly think of. Also a movie about a killer script is pretty lame.

One thing I would like to point out though. Look up at the top, that's a poster for this movie. I'm not sure if you can read what it says so here it is "Ken Sagoes, the kid who survived Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is back!". That was their big selling point... now you know what you're getting yourself into.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Legacy of Blood (1971)

2010-03-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure I saw this plot on Scooby Doo. So a rich old man dies but instead of leaving money to each one of his kids he's a dick. According to his will his four kids must spend the night in his mansion and whoever is left in the morning will receive or split his fortune. Guess what! Things go wrong and people start dying! Seriously if the house had been haunted this would have been a Scooby Doo episode. I'm sure the cast of Gilligan's Island would have showed up at some point.

Hackneyed plot aside this movie is awesome, and by that I mean terrible. Sorry apparently watching this movie has made me just as retarded as the people who were in it.

Before I talk about the movie let me ask you something. If someone said that you would get millions of dollars if you could sleep in a house overnight wouldn't you be at all suspicious? I mean, I sleep in a house every night and I've yet receive any sort of payment for it. Yet no one seems to wonder what the catch is and seemed somewhat surprised when shit went bad.

Do you remember The Surreal Life on VH1? Basically they got a lot of D List stars who had tons of personal problems and threw them in a house together? Shockingly crazy people do crazy stuff. Legacy of Blood is kind of like The Surreal Life, but instead of booze and STDs you have incest and LSD.

Seriously, only one of this man's four kids turned out even sort of normal. Not a great batting average there. Let's see you have Laura, the normal one. She spends most her time doing boring things with her equally boring husband. Than you have Johnny, he's the brother who I'm pretty sure slept with his sister Leslie... the movie was a little vague in that department, also he's completely crazy in an overacting kind of way. Than you have Veronica, I guess she's kind of normal too but also somewhat manipulative and bitchy. And finally you have Leslie, I can't tell you if she's normal because she slept through about 90% of the movie. Either way she was hot, they should have fleshed out that part of her story more.

On top of that you also have the spouses and the help. The only one worth talking about is Leslie's husband. He was a psychiatrist and sleazebag. While he didn't sleep with everyone who was at the house I think given the opportunity he would have. Than there's the help. Apparently if you have a crazy family you have to hire crazy ass help. We'll start off with the driver Frank. I think if I hired a driver who's room looked like it was decorated by Hermann Göring I might consider getting a new one.

Now granted all of that is from Nazi's he killed during WWII not that he was one... still I like to think that when someone you employ has a lamp made of the skull and skin of a Nazi he killed he may not be the most stable of people. Moving on you have Elga, apparently she's the creepy nanny who raised the kids. Which would explain why none of them turned out. Finally you have Igor, yes Igor. I'm not really sure what his job is other than to look like a muscular Mel Brooks and have a creepy relationship with Elga.

I loved you in Spaceballs. Now please put your shirt back on.

There's one more character, Sheriff Dan Garcia. He's the first to die so he's not all that important. He comes over to the house, only to end up as a severed head in the fridge. I only bring this up because it seems weird to include it in the movie. Seriously, no one notices that the town sheriff goes on a call and than doesn't come back for hours? I didn't know this mansion was in Mayberry.

After the Sheriff's untimely death, members of the family start turning up dead. As they wonder who is killing them off one by one you're treated to a look into the family's lurid past via flashbacks or perhaps acid trips. Really, the flashbacks are like looking at the world through Hunter S. Thompson's eyes.

Makes sense to me.

So slowly over the course of the night more and more of the family members are killed in more and more gruesome ways... and yet no one just leaves. Maybe this is some sort of metaphor for our power and money hungry lives. That these people are willing to die or witness their family die all for the almighty dollar. On the other hand it could be that the entire family is just retarded. Yeah, I'm going with that one.

3 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Katie's Passion (1975)

2010-03-17T14:40:00.000-07:00

Katie's Passion. The title sounds kind of like a porn movie, hell even the plot sounds kind of like a porn movie. A young woman trying to find a better life moves to turn of the century Amsterdam with her family. Instead what they find is the same thing, bad working and living conditions. Eventually Katie's new life leads her to a job in prostitution. Also Rutger Hauer.

But it's not a porno! It's actually a period drama... brought to you by the director who gave the world Showgirls and Starship Troopers, two of the greatest comedies of the '90s.

I'm going to let you in a little writing secret. I've just spent the last 15 minutes staring at the screen wondering what to write about this movie. It's not great, but it certainly wasn't a bad movie. I'm just not sure what to say about a period drama that was good. I could make fun of the fact that Rutger Hauer is in it, but I already have. The fact that Paul Verhoeven directed this and some other awesomely bad movies? Check. So I've run out of cards.

Katie's Passion wasn't a bad movie, but if you're not interested in period pieces it's not going to bring something to the table that's going to make you want to watch it. It seems to be acted well, but since it's a foreign film that's dubbed it's kind of hard to gauge. Overall it was an okay movie that didn't really do anything to stand out, but certainly wasn't awful in any way.

I'm just not sure what to say about this movie, at the end of the day it was decent. Not necessarily my cup of tea, but generally better than anything else I've watched in the recent past. This movie isn't good because it falls into the "so bad it's good" category like some of the other movies I've watched, it's actually just a good. So if you're into period pieces go for it.

Sorry this review is kind of short and maybe light on chuckles, but I'm really at a loss for anyway to remedy that. So I'll just leave you with parting shot of Rutger Hauer:

You're Welcome.

1 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Dont Open Till Christmas (1984)

2010-03-09T21:11:00.000-08:00

How good can a movie be when it forgets the apostrophe in the title card? The answer? Not very. Don't Open Till Christmas isn't exactly a bad movie, but it's certainly not a good movie. It's just there.

It's nearing Christmas and a lunatic is killing everyone in a Santa suit! Okay, I'll give you that there's going to be people who have to wear Santa suits for jobs and what not, but here's a simple way to not get killed: stop wearing it after your job is done, and don't walk down a dark alley while wearing one. Apparently no one in this movie is smart enough to realize this so you're treated to many badly dressed Santas being butchered over and over again.

Like this poor bastard

Have no fear there's a crack team of detectives from Scotland Yard on the case... and by crack team I mean they seem to kind of just be there in the background and instead the movie decides to focus on two people. Kate, her dad was the second person killed by the Santa Clause Killer and... Sherry? Cheryl? I didn't catch her name and in the credits I believe she's only credited as Experience Girl. She's a stripper* who is kidnapped by the Santa Clause Killer.

*I say stripper because I have no idea what to call her job. She sits behind glass and men pay to see her do things like get naked. I'm not really sure what that's called... but I doubt there's a job fair for that sort of thing

Neither of their stories are very compelling and are actually kind of jumbled and boring. I found Kate kind of annoying and her part seemed kind of forced and the story seemed to focus a lot on her boyfriend for no real apparent reason. While Experience Girl's part just seemed rather unneeded, it didn't really add anything to the movie. And when the detectives showed up in the movie they felt like they were just kind of there. They had a fairly big part in the movie, but most of it just felt kind of like filler.

There's nothing really wrong with this movie other than it's just kind of there. It's forgettable. I had no interest in it, and at the end of the day I don't have a lot of say about it because it was just kind of "meh".

Don't Open Till Christmas probably isn't worth your time. I went into it hoping for some kind of cheesy Christmas themed slasher that would fall into that "so bad it's good category" and would be a fun/funny movie to watch at Christmas time. Instead I got a really boring movie with a really average/boring plot. While I think that it could have been a decent slasher movie, in the end it falls flat and instead you get something that feels like it could have been better.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Treasure of Tayopa (1974)

2010-03-04T14:27:00.000-08:00

Treasure of Tayopa. I'm not sure exactly what to say about this movie other than it's awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. That's four awfuls just in case you weren't clear on how I truly felt.

Treasure of Tayopa starts off with a cock fight. When I say starts off with a cock fight I mean that the first frame you see in this movie is about halfway through a cock fight. No fade in from black, no title, no credits. Cock fight. That's four cock fights just because it's a funny word. Finally we meet three of the four people you'll be seeing in this movie, all on horses talking about the treasure and the boss that they're going to meet. Finally the boss arrives by plane and... get ready for this... it's a woman! Oh ho ho that will throw a monkey wrench in the plans! I guess.

After the title you're than treated to about two minutes of various scenes overlayed over each other but all showing very uninteresting things.

See that? Actually three different shots going on there. One of just a landscape, one of the four stars riding on horses and one of... lens flare. Hopefully you enjoy watching that kind of scene because you're going to see it a lot. Especially the lens flare.

Let's talk about the six people you'll be seeing in this movie:

Kathryn Delgadillo: She's the boss. Her father told her where to find the treasure of Tayopa (I'm not sure if it's explained why he never went and got it, but I wouldn't be surprised if it never was). She's a tough woman working in a man's world of (badly) treasure hunting.

Sally: He's the crazy one. That's right, he. Maybe it's a boy named Sue kind of thing. All you need to know is that he's crazy... for no real reason. Also if I'm planning on finding hidden treasure that would be worth millions you know the first guy I bring along? The mentally unstable guy. The kind of guy who brings a crossbow along for no reason. Yeah, I want him on my team.

Tom Stoddard: He's some guy. Really, he has very little purpose and you learn almost nothing about him. Good times.

Felipe Estrada: He's the translator. He has very little purpose and you learn almost nothing about him.

Then there's some mexican dude who follows them around for the entire movie (more on him in a moment). I'm sure they might have given his name, but I sure didn't hear it.

And then there's the banditos. The banditos are only there for (bad) plot reasons. Also all of them appear to have taken fashion advice from Speedy Gonzales.

Also there's a narrator. One you see. He comes in twice and explains about the history of Tayopa a bit and that's pretty much his two scenes.

So Kathryn, Sally, Tom and Felipe are on their way to Tayopa when they come across the banditos and our mystery mexican dude. The banditos proceed to hassle the bunch... and by hassle I mean they kind of ride around them yipping and yelping before letting them pass about 15 seconds later. But that's enough to put Sally in a whiny rage. He's complains to Tom that he wants to go back and see what they're up to because of three reasons:

1) Because of what they did to Kathryn.
2) They pulled his hair.
3) They pushed his horse.

What they did to Kathryn is... well nothing. Mostly got in her way and yipped and yelped. And you never actually see 2 or 3 happen. I suppose it all happened off screen or something.

Anyway Sally and Felipe head back to check out the banditos and their leader, the mystery mexican dude(or MMD as he'll be known from now on). The MMD leaves just before Sally and Felipe arrive so the banditos think this is a good time to drink tequila and shoot a rifle into the air. While they're doing this Sally kills them all. Because he's crazy. Also they pushed his horse and pulled his hair. I would kill six people because of this as well. So Sally and Felipe head back to camp (Felipe doesn't tell anyone what happens because... I don't know) and the MMD finds his whole bandit camp slain and decides to follow the four stars for the rest of the movie. At about the midpoint in the movie he cuts the ropes and lets their horses free. They walk and buy new horses. So he follows them some more. This guy is horrible at revenge.

So eventually they get to where Tayopa supposedly is and you learn more about our four stars... and by learn about them I mean you find that the reason they brought Sally is because he's really good at working a metal detector. Apparently they couldn't find a non-psychopath who could also work a metal detector.

All the while Sally is going more and more crazy for no real reason. From here on in this review there's major spoilers. Trust me, it doesn't matter. You don't want to see this movie anyway.

So Sally finds the treasure and proceeds to try and rape Kathryn but I guess midway decides it's better to hit her with his belt a couple times which leaves her close to death. He then proceeds to shoot Tom with a crossbow and Felipe with a real gun. That's another thing, at the first of this movie they gave Sally a gun. Again, you're just asking for trouble when you give the crazy crossbow dude a gun.

Kathryn isn't dead from her five belt lashes and proceeds to smash Sally's head in with a rock. Then she wanders around the desert, kills a rattle snake and eats it raw, finds a dry well and appears to die. Then a priest comes by and gives her water. Cut directly to a narrator who talks a little bit about Tayopa some more. Fin. That's it. The priest is never explained. Frankly I was just happy it was over.

This movie is absolutely awful. Don't watch it. It's not worth the 90 minutes of your life. It doesn't even fall into the "so bad it's good" category. It falls into the "so bad it's awful" category.

5 Birthday Fish out of 5. It's awful.

Squid.

Great news!

2010-02-28T22:03:00.001-08:00

Been dying to see Mama Dracula? How about Night Train to Terror? Now you can! Thanks to the wonders of YouTube Movies!

Mama Dracula

Night Train to Terror

All perfectly legit and on the up and up. I'll check back occasionally to see if any of the other movies I watched get uploaded.

Squid.

Night Train to Terror (1985)

2010-02-28T20:53:00.000-08:00

If I had to describe Night Train to Terror in one word it would be confusing. If I had to describe it in three words it would be awesome and confusing. Night Train to Terror starts off with a great '80s song, with singing and dancing and trains.

Man the '80s sucked

Anyway after their done singing their awful yet catchy song you get to meet God and Satan who apparently travel by train. From what I gather they meet up occasionally to divvy up random souls, and with each soul you get to watch a story of how these people died. Starts off well enough, I mean all except for that godawful '80s song... but when you start to watch the three stories that's when it all goes to hell.

The three stories of the people's death? They make absolutely no sense. With a little bit of research you'll find out why. You see, most movies would film their own stories if they were going to put them in a movie... but not Night Train to Terror, it's different. You see the three stories you're seeing are actually just other movies edited down to around 20 minutes to make these stories.

The Case of Harry Billings? Actually a movie called Marilyn Alive and Behind Bars. The Case of Gretta Connors? Carnival of Fools. The Case of Claire Hansen? Cataclysm. If you add up the length of all these movies they're about 270 minutes long. Night Train to Terror is 93 minutes long. Think something might get lost in translation?

You bet ya! Night Train to Terror is like giving someone a 350 page book... except 179 pages are ripped out... and what is left isn't necessarily in order... also every 60 pages there's a bad '80s music video.

That's right, they even managed to screw up editing these movies correctly. Occasionally it's very noticeable that the scene you just watched happened after the scene you're watching now. In the second story the couple goes from hating each other and the girl having short hair to the couple being madly in love and the girl having long hair. I'm pretty sure you can't miss something like that so it tells me they just didn't care.

So here you have three 90 or so minute movies that you have to edit down to about 20 or so minutes each and try to make it at least somewhat coherent. If you were going to do that do you think you would pick two movies that didn't have THE SAME ACTOR IN THEM? Night Train to Terror didn't.

Richard "Bull" Moll

That's right, the first and third story both star Richard Moll. Seriously though of all the confusing things int his movie I don't think that even ranks in the top ten. There are so many things in this movie that confused me that I think I spent about 85 of the 90 minutes laughing and saying out lout "What the hell just happened!?"

This movie is bad. Really, really bad. So bad it's good. Hilariously good. You can't watch this movie without laughing. Confusing as hell, but so bad it's good.

2 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

The Firing Line (1988)

2010-02-22T15:41:00.000-08:00

War is hell. There's nothing funny about war. Unless it's portrayed in the 1988 Shannon Tweed/Reb Brown film The Firing Line. Then it's the most unintentionally hilarious thing you've ever seen.

The movie starts off with six minutes of what appear to be the same 10 guerrilla rebels getting killed/blown up over and over again. Finally the plot got bored of this and figured it needed to advance itself, so instead of getting blown up one of the rebel fighters gets captured... but not just any rebel fighter, no this is Rodriguez. The man fighting the good fight and leading the revolution in this unnamed South American country. Also he's the whitest rebel fighter since Luke Skywalker.

Enter Captain Mark Hardin, the hero of our movie. All those rebel soldiers that were being blown up? That was Mark doing it. Now I know you're wondering "How can he be the hero if he was the one blowing up the rag tag group of rebels in his helicopter?" That amazing plot element will be explained later on. For now Rodriguez and Mark Hardin just have an awkward, uninteresting conversation before Mark hands him over to the true bad guys in this film, the evil government official and his equally evil United States government official counterpart.

Mark then heads back to a hotel bar where he proceeds to meet and awkwardly romance Shannon Tweed... I'm going to go off topic a little bit here, but I just want to say you might hear the words awkward and hilarious a lot in this review. Why? Well because every bit of dialogue in this movie was not only written poorly, but poorly delivered. It all seems to come off as awkward and hilariously bad.

After Mark's done putting the moves on Shannon Tweed, he learns that Rodriguez was killed! I can only assume he thought that handing over a rebel guerrilla leader to the government would end well. But Mark's on the case! He's going to find out what happened! He does so by confronting the government officials, which ends about as well as you would suspect. One hilariously bad conversation and fight scene later and our illustrious hero Mark is captured, imprisoned, and tortured. Fear not good reader, because this prison is run by the world's most inept guards meaning even someone who fights as badly as Mark Hardin can easily escape.

He then has to rescue Shannon Tweed, because despite the fact they only just met the enemy thinks she may know his whereabouts. The hilariously bad scene shown above is the rescue. I'm still unsure how he knew that they'd be taking her prisoner, maybe he just happened to be passing by and noticed them about to execute her in front of her hotel. I don't think it's ever really explained, but that about par for the course with this movie. Either way she's rescued and it's hilarious.

Hi-larious.

After rescuing her they're then promptly caught by the guerrilla rebels. Apparently Mark's not very good at this whole evading capture thing. But that's okay! Because Mark's going to help the rebels fight against the evil government now! You know, the one that he was a part of up until yesterday? Because killing unknown guerrillas from the safety of your helicopter is okay, but the second you kill the guerrilla leader you've gone too far.

Since you've started reading this he's been captured twelve times

The next thirty minutes of the movie are pretty much Mark showing the rebel soldiers how to fight... and by that I mean they go from a group who look like they've never heard of a gun let alone touched one to a group who looks like they might be able to hit a target if it accidentally got in front of their gun. Pretty soon though, they're taking over bases and kicking ass because the people they're fighting are slightly more inept then they are. Seriously, I think if you gave me a baseball bat and a switchblade I could take over this country.

Eventually the movie decides that it's had enough and needs to end itself, so Mark and the rebels decide to take over some radio tower and broadcast their message to the people or something along those lines. Unfortunately they have a traitor in their group and the government knows that the radio tower is their next target. I could go into detail about how this all ends but I'll just tell you that it's the most hilarious thirty minute battle scene I've ever seen in my entire life. All ending in our hero getting shot about fifteen times, jumping off of an exploding bridge, and somehow managing to come out no worse for wear.

Buy this movie. Not because it's a good movie, but for the exact opposite. This movie is absolutely horrible, but because of this it's absolutely hilarious. I spent more time laughing during this movie than I did while watching Prime Time, and that was a comedy. You can find this movie in dollar bins and trust me, it is so worth the money.

Watch this and tell me you don't want to see this movie.

1 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

How the Rating System Works

2010-02-20T11:59:00.001-08:00

I thought I should specify how the rating system works, just in case you don't read the Mama Dracula review. Most of these movies that I will end up watching are going to be terrible. Not just terrible because of the bad acting, lousy productions, awful scripts, and horrible directing... those are all part of what makes them bad. What I've found generally with these types of movies is that you have all of those things, but you also have a movie that in the end is incoherent and confusing. Plot points not explained, new characters popping in with little to no explanation, horrible continuity issues, etc. It's things like that which take a movie from being bad to a movie being incomprehensible. A lot of those things popped up in Mama Dracula, like the Birthday Fish. I don't know why it's there, where it came from, or its purpose... but here it is. So instead of a lot of one star reviews I've decided to essentially rate there WTF?ness.

WTF?

If a movie is descent and watchable you're going to get one birthday fishes. If the movie is an awful mess that's probably not going to be enjoyed because it can't even be comprehended, then you're looking at a five birthday fishes kind of movie.

Hopefully this kind of clears up the rating system here at Bad Transfer Reviews. Just remember that here, one birthday fish is better than five birthday fish.

Squid.

Prime Time (1977)

2010-02-20T11:32:00.000-08:00

FYI this movie is also know as American Raspberry.

Could it be? Could all the movies in this 50 pack not be as absolutely awful as Mama Dracula? Or have I just found the diamond in the rough?

I was pleasantly surprised with Prime Time, and it allows me to say something I never thought I would say in these reviews: not only did I enjoy this movie, I would actually recommend this movie. This is a vastly different from say Mama Dracula which I wouldn't even recommend to my enemies.

Prime Time is in the same vein as The Kentucky Fried Movie or Amazon Women on the Moon where it's essentially a movie, but with mostly a lot of skits. In Prime Time TV is taken over by... someone, I don't think they ever really say who and instead of your regularly scheduled programming you have some pretty hilarious, yet generally tasteless skits. Everything from the Supreme Court declaring that you can now abort children up to the age five or the pretty damn funny "Charles Whitman Invitational"

Like any of these movies the skits are hit and miss, but generally they're worth a chuckle. Also a lot of them are somewhat dated due to this being released thirty-three years ago. I would guess that a lot of kids nowadays don't even know who Charles Whitman is. Overall though it was pretty damn funny and had quite a few laugh out loud moments for me.

Normally while watching these movies I jot down notes here and there so I remember things for these reviews, with Prime Time I only wrote down about three things because I was actually enjoying the movie, it was actually funny and kept my attention. Prime time gets a 1 Birthday Fish out of 5 from me. It's actually worth seeing.

1 Birthday Fish out of 5

Squid.

Twitter

2010-02-19T11:50:00.000-08:00

Tired of waiting for updates or just so bored with your own life that you want to see what I'm up to? Now you can! Follow me on Twitter to see what movies I'm watching, what games I'm playing, little mini reviews and other thoughts about this and my other blog.

Squid.