Filmic Friday 307: Post Oscars Silliness

Ever Wonder What Brad Pitt's First Movie Was?
It Was This One.

So the Oscars are over, Parasite won a bunch (deservedly so), the cast of CATS ripped on the visual effects people (which was not deserved, they did their best and got fired because of overblown expectations), and Brad Pitt won an Oscar for Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood (also deserved).

But what did Mr Prettyboy do in his first movie?

I'll tell ya: not much.

Yes, this is his first roll.
In an 80s/90s slasher.

Cutting Class is a rock stupid movie that thinks it's clever, is full of actors who have better things to be doing with their lives, and is only really of importance because it's the film that launched Brad Pitt's career. The acting is either stilted and wooden or over the top, because apparently the director micromanaged the actors' performances - especially Jill Schoelen's.

Baby Brad in all his adorkable glory.

Jill Schoelen's character is being left alone for the week by her District Attorney father (Martin Mull) as he goes for a brief hunting trip to unwind. She is played hypersexualized but... comes off as a baby instead of a sex kitten. Her boyfriend, Brad Pitt (and boy, that must have been interesting when his career took off, do you think she told people she dated him in a movie once?), just wants to goof off and get drunk and have sex.

Get used to that facial expression, guys.

Really, the cast is what makes this movie. The principal of the school, Mr Dante (you'll notice that's the only name I remember!), is played by Roddy McDowell, who is played as a bizarre lech of a man, but is also one of the only adults to not be killed. Spoilers, someone's killing students and teachers at this disfunctional sex-starved school. It's not Roddy, though.

He's just creepy and weird, that's all.

No, the killings are all done by the Weird Kid (played by Donovan Leitch). They don't hide it, and even the brief moment we're supposed to believe Brad Pitt is the killer doesn't work.

He's a fairly effective killer, though.

Now, usually, in movies where there's killing in a high school, all of the kids look like adults, and that's a problem here, but Donovan? I buy him as a high schooler. He's that creepy intense kid everyone talks about but nobody talks to. It's hard to believe that this school would just... let him back in after he'd killed his dad, but boy, they don't do much to support him.

This could all have been prevented if he'd been given therapy instead of shock treatment...

Anyway, the worst part of this movie has to be Martin Mull, who spends the whole time trying to get help after he's shot with an arrow in the opening scene. It's played for laughs, but it's as unfunny as bad comedy can be.

This part was crap.

But if you're still interested in checking out Cutting Class, go for it! It's not the goriest movie you'll ever see, but it's one of those "European director tries to capture the American high school experience" movies that are so much fun. It's pretty fun to watch, actually.

Except for the Martin Mull bits. Meh.

That'll do it for me, guys!

Happy Violently Beheaded Catholic Saint Day!

Go Enjoy Something!
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Filmic Friday 238: The Shuttered Room

The Shuttered Room 1967

So we got together last week with the promise of "games and karate" attached to Movie Night at Film and Editing Friendo's place. Mom of FEF had prepared a bingo game with Swedish Fish as markers, and we were to watch this movie, one of her favorite's (in the same way that Arizona Werewolf is a favorite of mine), very closely to see who would win.

It was a blast!

Now, don't get me wrong, this is not what most might consider a "good" movie - it's not particularly beautifully lit or shot, the actors aren't at the peak of their careers, and the story is, frankly, silly - but it's a fun movie.

This is one of the more accurate posters I found for this movie.

Set off the coast of Maine (!), The Shuttered Room is the story of a beautiful woman who has been given her parents' old home (a defunct mill) and whose big-shot magazine editor husband insists on it being a vacation home, despite her misgivings. They arrive on the island and are, predictably, completely warned off from the house. Luckily, the husband is a New York guy, so common sense is a foreign concept for him.

"Oh wife, I don't know why you're so resistant to coming back to a place where you were so traumatized as a child that your entire childhood has been erased and you have no recollection of even your own parents. You're being unreasonable."

And since this is a small island supposedly off the coast of Maine, the locals are scumbags. Especially one guy who was promised the mill by his "ANT ARGATHAR" (Aunt Agatha). He's 100% awful.

Hello, I'll be your stalker for the duration of this movie.

This denim dude is the worst. That being said, there is nothing that can beat how... stupid the reveal is at the end. Seriously. It's something you'll both see coming a mile away and also never expect.

This is where the ending takes place.

All told, this is a really silly and fun movie that's somewhere between slasher and haunted house. There's a lady with a drugged up golden eagle, crazy island hillbillies, justifiably angry women, and a fetishization of stockings. There's also a hilariously huge 1960s vehicle that somehow made it across the bay on a tiny ferry, a comically huge dollhouse, and more cobwebs than a Spirit of Halloween.

As for the "karate", there was a hilarious fight scene of Pushy-Ineffectual Husband vs Denim Doofus and it was awesome.

Well worth the sugar high from a quarter pound of Swedish Fish lol.

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Filmic Friday 232: Strays 1991

Strays; MCA Television Entertainment; 1991

I love cats and suck at watching horror movies, so you might expect that the 1991 horror flick Strays would be a bridge too far for me.

And yet...

This movie is awesome. It's stupid, it's hokey, it's silly, and it's hilariously bad. I cannot even begin to describe how great this movie was!

Although this cover does a pretty good job of getting the greatness across...

Strays is the story of a family - I'll call them the McStupids because they're about as dumb as people can be - moving into a huge farmhouse that's way too big for the three of them and their dog. Mr McStupid is played by Timothy Busfield, Mrs McStupid is played by Kathleen Quinlan, and Little Ms McStupid is played twins Heather and Jessica Lilly. I feel bad for the child actors because they're doing their best but it looks like they're constantly being overwhelmed by the amount of things they're being asked to do.

Then there's sex-obsessed Sister Claire, played by Claudia Christian, who is Mrs McStupid's sister and also the realtor for the cat house. Rather than the cathouse, which is something completely unrelated. I like the actress but this role is garbage. She's going through a rough divorce and has her brother-in-law (Mr McStupid) as her lawyer, because apparently there were no such things as "ethics" in 1991.

Regardless, the family moves into a house where we've already seen an old lady get mauled by kitties, despite being kind to them. It's just as silly as it sounds, but it made me think we'd be getting a house-sized cat at some point. Spoilers, there's no Catzilla.

Here we see the McStupids adopting a random kitten they find in their attic,
despite Mr. McStupid being horribly allergic. What a great family.

So the McStupids move in with their dog and slowly begin to adjust to life in the middle of freakin' nowhere when the cats attack their dog. Don't worry, the pooch survives because they aren't completely garbage pet owners and have the vet keep the dog with him while he recovers. After all, they don't know about the cat problem yet.

Mr McStupid does try his best to do right by his dog, though.

It takes the movie a long time and some very boring plot twists involving Claire and the Mr, but when we get the bad, bad kitty in charge, it's so worth it!

He's like Salem's grumpy brother! Look how cute!

This thing goes full Facehugger on everyone it attacks. It's hilarious. The moment the cats take over, the movie truly transcends!

She can't find the kid, so she's throwing cats around until she can find her!

The Evil Gray Cat does its best to kill Mr McStupid, Mrs McStupid, and even Little Ms McStupid, but it only succeeds in killing: the old lady at the beginning (implied), the phone man (who they don't find until the end), and Claire. Poor Claire. She gets an epic death, at least.

And don't even get me started on the microwave pink herring.
It's pink, because it does pay off, just not quite the way we wanted :P

The last ten or fifteen minutes of the movie are the McStupids running, hiding, and throwing around cat puppets, and it's glorious.

I can't tell if she's getting her jugular ripped out or singing a power ballad about how the cat is the love of her life...

If you're looking for what may be the best made-for-tv horror movie of the 1990s, give Strays a watch. You will not regret it!

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Thursday Art Walk 230: Sketching is Hard

Welcome to Today's Art Blog

Today has been a long one - I started by trying to sketch out a pair of characters, but I hate how they're coming along, so I'll probably scrap it and start over. These characters are from a set of stories I refer to as the Scarlet Rose stories, though they're technically from the offshoot, Spook Patrol. These two are supposed to be scaredy-cat Spencer Jaziri-Wyrick and Executive Producer Sara Goldstellar. Unfortunately, I cannot draw people worth a damn, so I'm just going to have to work on that... a lot.  Like... a lot a lot.

I refuse to embiggen this.
Yikes. This is very very bad.
It looks like a child drew it :(

On the other hand, I also had some inspiration to draw the worst cat I've ever drawn, so when I finished it, I just had to add some snark.

He's so DERP DERP!

I feel I should also mention that I'm actually kind of looking forward to the new CATS movie. It's not because I think it'll be any good. I hope they don't change anything. I want to see this trainwreck in action with friends. I think it's going to be the 21st century equivalent of The Apple or the second coming of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark!

I cannot wait!

So that's been my day - struggling to make people look like people and drawing the derpiest cat on Earth. Sometimes that's just how it goes, lol!

That'll do it for me

Go Enjoy Something!
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Filmic Friday 229: Back In Action 1993

I love bad action movies. I love watching wrestlers try to have film careers. I love to see action stars who probably shouldn't have been given lines, much less starring roles. I love the 1990s.

This is all of my bad action movie loves!

Back In Action is a movie starring Billy Blanks, the Tae Bo guy. It also stars Mr Crazypants Rowdy Roddy Piper! If you're not familiar with Piper's wrestling oeuvre,  you may also know him as the main actor from They Live. Which means you probably know that I'm not exaggerating by calling him Mr Crazypants.

But what is the plot?

Such as it is...

Roddy Piper plays a cop named Frank, which is the most action-movie-cop name ever, who is going after an Evil McBadguy played by La Croix from Forever Knight. He and his partner are pulling a sting operation, but things go wrong and suddenly, a dude who looks like the evil twin of Dante from Clerks uses a very long knife to disembowel Frank's partner right in front of him.

Evil Edgy Dante is the Secondary Big Bad
And he's possibly the third worst actor in this flick.

Why does the sting go bad? Because Billy Blanks shows up to get his sister out of the hearse she's waiting in for her doofy "bad guy" boyfriend to come back from the deal. I have no pictures of the loser boyfriend, but he's a better actor than Billy Blanks or the lady who plays his sister. Billy, and yes, that's his character's name, too, is mad that his sister is dating a gang guy, so he goes to abduct her and force her to come home with him. For a "good guy", he's really messed up. I'd feel bad for his sister if she wasn't so dumb.

Yeah... this movie is full of dumb.
Also, Roddy looks pretty badass here!

Billy and Roddy are at odds throughout 90% of this movie, which is both funny and really frustrating. The box and descriptions make it sound like something like a buddy cop movie, but it's really just two completely separate stories that eventually get slammed together.

This character is garbage. Absolute garbage.
She's rock stupid, stubborn, and exists only to scream and flail.

The most upsetting scenes in this movie are when Frank's partner gets disemboweled (which isn't actually that bloody - it's just the way it's shot that's unpleasant) and when the sister almost gets a sex scene with her doofy bad guy boyfriend.

Everything else is hilarious.

Billy Blanks gently tilts this guy's head and the guy's neck supposedly breaks.
I've seen rougher chiropractors...

All in all, this movie is hilariously bad. The score is silly and fun, and when you realize that the composer has worked on video game adaptations in the past, the music makes much, much more sense. Actually, the whole movie is written like an adaptation of a bad beat-em-up game that never existed but was totally originally from Malaysia or something. It makes little to no sense, it's barely coherent, and everyone looks silly.

Grab your friends, settle in with some popcorn and other snacks, and get ready for a really weird action movie.

A weird action movie starring the guy from those Tae Bo tapes and the guy who
put himself in a cage with Hulk Hogan after hanging out on Alcatraz for more than a week. 

10/10, would watch again with friends and snacks.

Go Enjoy Something!
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Filmic Friday 228: Icebreaker (2000)

If ever there was a movie that deserved to be riffed, it's Icebreaker, a Die Hard-style movie set at an actual ski resort. Z and I watched the Rifftrax version, which is a riot, so if you have to watch this alone or just with one or two friends who like riffing but aren't riffers themselves, that's the way to go. If you're in a large crowd of people who like to make fun of movies, this is a prime candidate for getting yourself your own copy and just... hurling comedic abuse at it for 90 minutes.

Bask in its glory.

Have you ever wanted to watch Die Hard at a ski resort with Samwise Gamgee vs Ash from the Evil Dead fighting over Stacy Keach's daughter? No? Too bad. That's this movie. Sean Astin is a ski patrol guy whose girlfriend's dad hates him. Stacy Keach is that dad. But, oh no! While they're supposed to be having dinner and talking about how Astin wants to marry Keach's daughter, Bruce Campbell decides he's holding the whole mountain hostage. For reasons.

Reasons I can't tell you.

Because I couldn't pay attention.

Because I was laughing too hard.

I'll take that burden Mr. Frodo!
I'll take it out back and pump it full of lead!

Seriously, who looked at Sean Astin and thought "yeah, he'd make a great action hero"? He's a total creampuff. Even the "badass" stuff he tries to do in this movie has that kind of adorable edge to it. I mean, he's holding a freaking automatic rifle in this shot and I still think he's precious. I want to pinch his cheeks.

I buy him being a ski patrol guy. I buy him being a medic. I buy him having a difficult, sometimes bloody and/or dangerous job. I even buy him having a cute girlfriend whose daddy is annoyed that she won't date a banker.

I cannot buy him as a legit action hero. Sorry, Sean. You're a lover, not a fighter.

And no, there aren't really meany good pictures of the girlfriend on the internet.
She's a McGuffin. Keach, however, is an actor.

Stacy Keach plays a grumpy rich dad really well, here, even though he kind of looks like a tubby John Cleese and the actress playing his daughter looks nothing like him. He gives off the air of a man who's been to a thousand of these ski resorts and never set foot in the snow - he's there for the steak and whiskey, but you can hold the steak.

The actress playing the daughter is... pretty forgettable, to be honest. Yet another in a long line of short-haired blond babes from the 1990s-2000s. Still, she gets one of the most intentionally funny scenes in the movie, where she's listing Sean Astin's positive characteristics to her father over dinner while the movie cuts from what she says to what's happening to Astin and how he's doing the exact opposite of what she's saying.

But what's the big deal with this movie? It's not just some rom-com - it's an action flick! What's the action?

Well, some derpy bad guys are stealing... I think nuclear materials? And they've crashed the plane carrying said materials onto the mountain. I'm foggy on why Bruce Campbell's bad guy wants the nukes, but he says something about his parents selling their bodies to pharmaceutical companies at one point and never elaborates. There's a video tape, but I'm pretty sure that blows up, so we never find out. Like... this movie makes 0 sense. It's all about Bruce Campbell holding Stacy Keach and the girl hostage while Sean Astin tries to save the day. Badly.

Seriously, who looked at Bruce Campbell and said "bald bad guy with a black coat on a mountain"?
It's hilariously bad.

Bless him, Bruce is trying this whole movie. He's... kinnda mugging though. It's like he can't help but nibble that scenery and ham it up. I wouldn't be surprised if Astin was trying to salvage the movie but Bruce knew it was a stinker, so he just had fun.

There's one last character in this movie I have to tell you about, and that's the Park Ranger guy who finds the downed plane and its murdered pilot. He's... he's basically an Ernest P Worrell type of guy - bright as a black hole but kind and well-meaning. He's a single dad, and he really wants to help, but he's bumbling comic relief in a movie that's basically 100% bumbling comic relief.

via Gfycat


At only 90 minutes long, this ridiculous flick is perfect for a party or a fun night in. Bring the popcorn (and have your vacuum ready for the inevitably popcorn throwing that will occur) and hunker down for a bunch of morons on a mountain with a truly epic conclusion!

Now, Go Enjoy Something!
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Filmic Friday 227: Skyscraper

Die Hard is probably my second favorite Christmas movie after Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, so you may understand why I was kind of annoyed that there's a new movie trying to rip off Die Hard. Even more to my dismay, this movie stars Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, who... look. Everyone says he's a nice guy. He's charismatic. He's dynamic. He was a great wrestler. I just... his acting, though. Like, he's funny in Rampage, and I've seen him in other movies where he does an okay job, but... he's no Bruce Willis, is all I'm saying.

Boy oh boy do they want us to believe this will bee like Die Hard...

The Rock is playing a guy who started out as a SWAT dude, but after a horrible (yet morbidly hilarious) incident involving a baddie, some kids, and explosives, he's out of the game.

Also, missing his left leg.

He married the doctor who saved his life (played by  Neve Campbell, who I've missed seeing in movies!), had some kids, and has apparently become some kind of bigshot safety consultant? Regardless, he's in Hong Kong with the wife and kids, living in a ridiculous superstructure called "The Pearl", which he's keeping watch over and reporting on to its owner, a hotshot Chinese billionaire with shady ties to the evil mcbadguys of this movie.

It really is a hilariously ridiculous building.
Complete with holodeck and spinning blades of death...

So The Rock has to go and do some tech stuff, Neve gets basic IT mansplained to her because I guess ace Naval Surgeons don't know how to reboot things? and then he gets handed a McGuffin Tablet that scans his face and gives him way more access than anyone who isn't on the security team should have. Predictably, this is stolen from him because, guess what, one of his old SWAT pals turned on him because he was pretty pissed about getting blown up because The Rock made a bad call.

The stolen tablet is used to shut down the super high-tech fire retardant systems, the bad guys set the building on fire, and Neve and the kids get stuck halfway up the stupid tower of nonsense.

Also, The Rock is wanted by the police for reasons, so he communicates via cellphone.
This comes complete with awful shaky-cam footage of him yakking at them and trying to get them free.

There's a subplot with the Hong Kong police, but that's not important. There's a subplot with a scary Chinese Assassin lady who I can't help but think of as Ada Wong, but this is also unimportant. The only really important plot thread is that Bigshot Billionaire dude double-crossed some Very Bad People, so now a crazy Scandanavian is burning down his big weird building.

Also, the Rock gets captured. More than once.

The Rock has to use his fake leg and his wits to John McLain his way through the Pearl so that he can, initially, try to rescue his family, and then get the files the bad guys want so they won't kill his daughter. Neve and the son escape in a ridiculous elevator scene.

Remember when I mentioned the Holodeck? Yeah, predictably, that's where the thrilling climax occurs.

In this ridiculous baseball on the roof, there are a bunch of LED screens.
This is shown to either reflect you like dozens of bad funhouse mirrors
or to show you an unobstructed all-around view of Hong Kong.
How you make that kind of aerial view of Hong Kong visually uninteresting is a mystery to me, but they managed.

Now, I'm kind of crapping on this movie, but I actually really liked it. I thought Neve was great, and bless her, she's trying to work with The Rock, who is, of course, The Rock throughout. I thought the Chinese actors were great. The child actors were pretty great, too. I thought the focus on The Rock's prosthetic was pretty cool. As far as it being a big, dumb action movie, it's very successful.

That is the intense look of a man who cannot decide whether it's Poontang Pie time
or People's Elbow time.
It's neither. It's get the heck outta Dodge time.

If you're going to watch Skyscraper, definitely do so with company, so you can all look at each other and say "No... that's not what's going to happen, is it? OMG, it totally happened! Yes!" repeatedly while hooting and hollering. This is absolutely a pizza and sugary beverages kind of film, and I think I'd watch it again if it was with friends.

I am a sucker for physically impossible movies with silly premises, after all...

So if you're looking for your next Bad Film Night offering, maybe give Skyscraper a shot? I haven't given away the juicy bits, the hamminess of the actors, or the twists you'll see coming a mile away, so there will be a lot of virgin(ish) territory for you to cover!

Go Enjoy Something!
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