Tag: comedy

Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards (1980) – A Movie A Day 2021 #52

A copy of the DVD I now own for $1.

After being forced to stay indoors for the better part of a week because of terrible weather, I got out over the weekend and visited one of my favorite places: a used DVD store. I browsed for a while as usual, but I ended up mostly just raiding the $1 table. Apparently someone off-loaded a bunch of cheap kung fu DVDs recently, and some of them ended up on the dollar table. So, of course, I grabbed them, and the first one I chose to watch is titled Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards. The title immediately brought to mind Jackie Chan’s Drunken Master from 1978, and even though Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards isn’t as polished as Jackie Chan’s film, I quite enjoyed it.

Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards follows a young man named Chang Fung who works with his cousin and uncle at a noodle shop. Chang Fung goes away for a month to learn drunken kung fu from a master, Wu Sing, but when Chang Fung returns home, he discovers that his teacher has many dangerous enemies. When Chang Fung uses his newly-learned skills in public, his style is recognized, and he becomes a target for the many people who want to kill Wu Sing. Chang Fung’s life and family are in danger, and he has to fight his way through a series of deadly encounters before he can find peace.

The movie isn’t necessarily a comedy, but it is a fairly silly and funny movie. I think the nature of drunken kung fu makes it nearly impossible to make a movie featuring it without being at least partially a comedy. Kung Fu of 8 Drunkards may not be especially noteworthy when compared to countless other kung fu movies that came out around the same time, but it’s a lot of fun. The story meanders from scene to scene with the plot lurching in different direction just to get to the next action sequence or comedy bit, but that’s one of the reasons I love these kinds of movies. The characters and fights are fun, and that’s all I really need.

I started watching lots of cheap kung fu movies in my teens, and I definitely have a certain aesthetic I enjoy which is based on some of those movies I saw during that time. This was back in the days of VHS, and tons of kung fu movies were available on poorly produced tapes. That’s what I love. Poorly dubbed, full frame, grainy pictures and all. If I can get the movie on VHS now, that’s even better, but the handful of movies I picked up the other day are clearly just dumped onto a DVD from a bad VHS copy. You can even see a few tracking problems when the movie is starting up. I love it.

Of course I’ll watch kung fu movies in full widescreen with nice picture clarity and subtitles, and I prefer that for a lot of the better kung fu movies out there, but for late-night movie to relax to, cheesy and poorly distributed kung fu movies are a go-to choice for me. I have four more movies I picked up, so don’t be surprised if you see them pop up in some future write-ups sooner rather than later.

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No Holds Barred (1989) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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No Holds Barred (1989) – A Movie A Day 2021 #30

No Holds Barred poster

Today’s movie is something that I had to watch. If you don’t already know, I do a podcast about pro wrestling with my best friend Joey. It’s called The Wrestling House Show, and we’ve been covering a lot of retro wrestling events for an ongoing series we’re doing. We’re watching all these shows in order starting back in the early 1980s, and to enhance the experience we’ll sometimes look out for other media from the era to indulge in. We might play a video game that came out around the same time as the shows we’re watching, we might read a pro-wrestling magazine from the time, or in this case we watched a movie that had been heavily promoted during many of the World Wrestling Federation shows we’ve been reviewing. The movie was promoted so hard on WWF’s (now WWE’s) shows that they even took a character straight out of the movie and had him wrestling the champ at the time, Hulk Hogan. That character was Zeus, and that movie is No Holds Barred. 

No Holds Barred is not a good movie, but it can be a fun movie at times for fans of pro wrestling and for fans of bad action movies. I like to make the best of things, so I’ll try to look at the positives for this journal entry. I’ll also try to keep this brief because Joey and I did a nearly hour-long review of the movie (plus a couple of related pro-wrestling matches) earlier today, and I’m kind of done talking about No Holds Barred for a while. If you want to check out that review, it will be posted on The Wrestling House Show sometime in the future (though it will probably be a while). 

No Holds Barred stars Terry Bollea as Hulk Hogan as Rip, the WWF Champ. It’s a big stretch for Hogan as an actor because in No Holds Barred he’s wearing blue and white ring gear instead of yellow and red. Also, his name is Rip instead of Hulk, so yeah, totally different character. Rip is a kind-hearted, charitable guy who beats people up on TV for a living. The cartoonishly evil head of a rival TV network, Mr. Brell (played by Kurt Fuller), wants Rip to work for him because Rip equals ratings. Brell tries to buy Rip’s loyalty, but Rip won’t break his current contract. Brell gets angry, and that begins a vendetta for Brell to either get Rip to work for him or destroy Rip in the process. Brell ends up coming up with an idea to air no-rules bar fights on live TV, and that draws the interest of an ex-con named Zeus (played by Tiny Lister). Brell orchestrates a plan to pit Zeus and Rip against each other, and yeah, you get the idea.

The movie plays out like like a cartoon with lots of poop jokes and violence. Coming from an era where mainstream pro-wrestling (i.e. WWF) was getting more and more cartoonish, you can see where the over-the-top nature of the movie comes from. Plus, Vince McMahon (the owner of WWE) apparently had a hand in changing the script along with Hulk Hogan, and if you’re a wrestling fan and are familiar with Vince’s sense of humor, you’ll know what to expect from No Holds Barred. 

With as not-great as the movie can be, I will say that it has a very good cast. Aside from Hogan who is fine playing himself, Kurt Fuller is great as the main villain Brell. He’s slimy and smarmy, and he has just enough menace to make him feel dangerous. Tiny Lister is also great in everything he does. Like Hogan, this movie wasn’t a big stretch for Lister either, but Zeus does look convincing as he flexes and yells a lot (a lot more convincing than he looks in an actual wrestling ring). Plus, Joan Severance plays Rip’s love interest, Sam. I can’t say I’m very happy with the way the script treats Severance’s character, and in fact, the attacks on Sam are some of my least favorite parts of the movie, but Joan Severance always does great with whatever she’s given. 

The plot of the movie is predictable and formulaic, but it works fine for a goofy movie like this. Does it always make sense realistically. No, absolutely not, but does that really matter when it comes to fun? I don’t think so. In general, people who went to see No Holds Barred when it came out were probably fans of pro-wrestling already, so the biggest fun to be had was seeing Hogan/Rip beat people up and to watch out for all of the cameos and references to pro-wrestling scattered throughout the movie. The audience who would enjoy No Holds Barred today is probably the same group, though it definitely skews more towards long-time and/or retro wrestling fans rather than modern fans. That is, unless you just want to watch it to complain and make fun of it which seems to be a popular activity these days.

The movie is an interesting part of pro-wrestling history if nothing else because it literally became part of the show for about half a year. It also helped usher Hogan back into movies which he would do a lot more of going into the 1990s. Hogan still had some memorable feuds in WWF after No Holds Barred came out, but newer stars were starting to rise, and Hogan’s many, many years on top of the WWF felt like they were beginning to wind down. So even though Hogan made his film debut in Rocky III in 1982, No Holds Barred is really what kicked off his movie career, such as it was. So… that’s good? I don’t know. It’s something, that’s for sure. 

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Bill & Ted Face the Music A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Bill & Ted Face the Music (2020) – A Movie A Day 2021 #23

Bill & Ted Face the Music poster

One of the movies released last year that I was very disappointed I didn’t get to see in the theater was Bill & Ted Face the Music. I love the original two movies, I watched the Bill & Ted cartoon when I was a kid, I bought the comic books, and I even really tried to love the NES game (which I still play every once in a while). But with the lack of open movie theaters last year, Face the Music is one of those movies I never got a chance to see on a big screen. But I’ve now seen it on a relatively small screen, and even though it’s not the same experience it would have been, I still thoroughly enjoyed the movie. 

So here’s a quick recap of the series for those unaware. The first movie, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, came out in 1989 and stars Alex Winter as Bill and Keanu Reeves as Ted. Bill and Ted travel through time in a phone booth to collect historical figures so they can pass their history class in order to continue their band, Wyld Stallyns, so they can write a song that will usher in an age of peace and prosperity across the world. The second movie, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, has evil robot versions of Bill and Ted from the future travel back in time to kill the real Bill and Ted before they can win a battle of the bands. Bill and Ted have to find a way back from the afterlife and win the battle of the bands so they can continue improving as musicians and create the music that will create a utopian society. 

In Bill & Ted Face the Music, we join the eponymous duo in 2020, and they are still struggling to create the music that will unite the world. Bill and Ted are both married to the medieval princesses that they fell for in the first movie, but Bill and Ted’s abnormally close friendship is putting a strain on their marriages. With their home life in jeopardy and with their musical career going nowhere, Ted is beginning to lose faith in their own abilities to create the music they’re expected to. When things seem like they can’t get any worse, a visit from the future warns Bill and Ted of the imminent collapse of all of space and time if they don’t play the song that unites the world in just over an hour’s time. That sends Bill and Ted on a trip into their own futures to try to take the reality-saving song from their future selves since they don’t think they can write it themselves. Meanwhile, Bill and Ted’s daughters, Thea (Samara Weaving) and Billie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) respectively, travel backward in time to collect a group of iconic historical musicians to perform as their fathers’ backing band. Hijinks ensue, and danger lurks as a confidence-lacking robot from the future is sent through time to kill Bill and Ted before they can complete their mission. 

It’s a goofy concept, and I think it’s great. The stakes in the movie are increased from the previous two films with the entirety of life, the universe, and everything on the line, and the traveling through space and time is increased with journeys to the future, past, and even the afterlife all taking place, sometimes simultaneously. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter seem like they’re having a blast revisiting these characters after nearly three decades, and everyone else in the cast looks like they’re having just as much fun. The cast, by the way, is great. I loved seeing Reeves and Winter reunited with William Sadler (and with Hal Landon Jr. as Ted’s father), and everyone new to the series plays their roles fantastically. I especially enjoyed Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine as Bill and Ted’s daughters, and I quite enjoyed Anthony Carrigan (who I know best as Zsasz from the TV show Gotham) as the killer robot. Carrigan’s robot character caught me off-guard with some of his funny bits, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying his performance. Really though, the movie is an ensemble with Reeves and Winter leading a large group of very funny people. 

I very much enjoyed the story as well. It’s silly like it’s supposed to be, and there’s a heart to it that I didn’t quite expect. Maybe because the main goal of the movie is to unite the world through music and I’m a sucker for musical performances in movies, but I was more moved than I thought I would be by the time the credits started to roll. Bill & Ted Face the Music is just has a joy about it in every single scene, and I loved every minute of it. I don’t think it’s my favorite of the series, that honor is still with the Excellent Adventure, but Face the Music is a smart continuation of the series that hits all the right notes. Reviving a series after nearly three decades can be tricky, but I think Face the Music did it right. It brought out enough new characters and new ideas for it to feel fresh, but there were loads of references to the first two movies to satisfy huge nerds like me who adore Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey. It’s campy, silly, funny, and fun. I’ll definitely be watching it again and again.

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Beast from Haunted Cave (Elvira’s Movie Macabre) A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Beast from Haunted Cave: Elvira’s Movie Macabre Edition (1959/2011) – A Movie A Day 2021 #21

Elvira’s Movie Macabre DVD double feature (the one I watched).

Cheesy monster movies are great, but what makes a cheesy monster movie even better? Elvira! I’ve been watching Elvira host bad horror movies for as long as I can remember, and the original Movie Macabre theme music from the 1980s is forever imprinted in my brain. The original run of Movie Macabre ended in 1986, but I still regularly watch the show on VHS, DVD, and online. The show was revived in 2010 but lasted for just under a year before going away again. Episodes from the revival of Movie Macabre, including a few unaired episodes, have been released on DVD, and I, of course, have a few of those discs. So when I was looking for my daily movie to watch, picking an Elvira episode I hadn’t seen yet was an easy decision.

The movie I chose was Beast from Haunted Cave. The film is a Roger Corman produced monster movie about a gang of thieves who concoct a seemingly unnecessarily complicated plan to steal a few gold bars. The gang consists of Alex, the leader of the group, Gypsy, who is (sort of) Alex’s woman, Byron, the comic relief, and Marty, the uh… other guy. Alex wants to rob a bank near a busy ski resort, and he has Marty set off a bomb in a local mine to draw attention (and police) away from the city while they go to work. After robbing the bank, the whole group will take a multiple-day cross-country ski trip with the ski resort’s instructor, Gil. The goal is to avoid local police by travelling into the snowy wilderness with Gil and waiting at his solitary cabin in the woods until a plane arrives to pick them up. Things don’t go according to plan though. The plane is delayed because of a snow storm, the almost-always drunk Gypsy has the hots for Gil, and the bombing of the mine has woken a spider-like beast that is following the group as they trek towards the cabin.

What ensues is a cheaply-made crime thriller with some monster horror tossed in from time to time. The filmmakers did the best they could with a low budget, which means that the beast is rarely seen, and when it is on camera, it’s usually too dark to make anything out. We’ll see a leg come into frame and grab someone, or we’ll see what might be the web-covered head of the beast bobbing around for a second, but until the finale, we don’t see much of the monster at all. So what we’re left with instead is a movie about a bunch of bank robbers who are basically holding a guy hostage even though he’s unaware of it. There is more drama than there are scares, but I still had fun with the movie.

The dialogue is campy, the acting will often make you smirk, and the writing is just cheesy enough keep you interested enough to stick around until the beast finally starts to do stuff. The only thing I really didn’t care for was the comic relief guy, Bryon. I didn’t even realize he was supposed to be funny until later in the movie, and when I did realize he was trying to be funny, he just made me a little sad. Byron does have an unusually good story arc though, one that’s bigger than a lot of the other characters, so I suppose I don’t dislike Byron. I just wish he hadn’t been so annoying in the first hour.

Beast from Haunted Cave is fun though. It’s fun to joke about, but I also just enjoy it for what it is. I will say that having Elvira pop up every once in a while with her skits and comments made the experience much more enjoyable, but I’d probably watch Beast from Haunted Cave even if I didn’t have the DVD of the Movie Macabre version.

Elvira’s bit for this movie is that she’s cutting costs for her show. After all, if Roger Corman can produce a movie like Beast from Haunted Cave for like $100, then surely Elvira can do some skits on the cheap, right? So Elvira fires nearly all of her staff and ends up having to do everything herself. Insert some bad puns and a few boob jokes, and you have another great episode of Movie Macabre. Watching this definitely made me want to build up my collection of Elvira movies.

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Jennifer’s Body A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Jennifer’s Body (2009) – A Movie A Day 2021 #13

Jennifer’s Body poster

For the first time this year, I just watched a movie I’d seen before. I vaguely remember seeing Jennifer’s Body around the time it came out (probably in the theater), but all these years later I could not remember anything about it. I had a sense that I didn’t care much for it at the time, but I couldn’t articulate any reason why that might be. I’ve since grown to enjoy other movies by director Karyn Kusama and stars Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox, so when I came across a poster for Jennifer’s Body the other day it made me want to revisit the film. Then, when I was looking for something to watch last night, I stumbled across the extended version of the DVD that I must’ve picked up on one of my used-DVD buying trips and forgotten about. So my decision was made, and I watched the extended version of Jennifer’s Body. And I have to say, I really enjoyed it. 

Jennifer’s Body stars Amanda Seyfried as Anita (or Needy as everyone calls her), a nerdy and reserved high school girl. Needy’s best friend since childhood is Jennifer (Megan Fox) who is popular and beautiful and, from an outsider’s perspective, the exact opposite of Needy. Jennifer drags Needy to a concert at a local bar in their small town, but after getting separated when a tragic event takes place at the bar, Jennifer begins acting strangely. As more deaths continue to rock the small town of Devil’s Kettle, Needy begins to suspect that Jennifer might be involved. 

I’m deliberately leaving the specifics of the plot somewhat vague, but you can tell even from the trailer that Jennifer’s Body is something of a black humor, monster/supernatural horror movie. There is quite a bit of comedy mixed in with the blood and horror, and for the most part I think it all comes together very well. The comedy serves to enhance the horror rather than dilute it, and that’s something I appreciate in any movie like this. I can be pretty picky when it comes to horror comedies that I enjoy, and Jennifer’s Body has the tonal mixture that I like. The horror is treated seriously even when there might be jokey lines or situations surrounding it. That can be a fine line to tread, but when it works it can make for some great moments. And yeah, I think there are some great moments in Jennifer’s Body.

Another aspect of the movie really helps sell some of the more ridiculous situations are the lead actors. Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox play their roles extremely well, and I was buying into all the nuances their performances conveyed. Like, does Needy like Jennifer as more than a friend, and does Needy realize she likes Jennifer more than a friend? Is Jennifer jealous of Needy’s boyfriend Chip or is she just annoyed by him? Is Jennifer acting like she is because of what’s happened to her, or did her traumatic experience just bring up a lot of suppressed emotions so Needy is seeing her best friend’s true nature for the first time? These are some of the things that are unstated or often understated that I was thinking about in the earlier parts of the movie. A lot of that is explored to some degree before the final credits, but Seyfried and Fox do a great job of raising those questions with a few looks and gestures. 

Plus, the movie’s writing is solid (it was written by Diablo Cody), and the direction is great. Karyn Kusama directed Jennifer’s Body, and even though I haven’t seen a ton of her work (probably because she’s been doing a lot of TV over the past five years and I don’t watch a ton of television), watching this movie again has solidified me as a Karyn Kusama fan. I first noticed her when I saw and loved The Invitation a few years ago, and now I need to see some of her other movies. 

As for Jennifer’s Body, I think it has an undeservedly bad reputation. I think it got a decent following on home video after its not-so-great theatrical run, but it’s barely above five stars on IMDB. That’s too low. It’s a fun horror movie with some decently bloody scenes and a lot of good, dark humor. If you, like me, haven’t seen it in years and have a hard time explaining why you might feel not-great about it, give Jennifer’s Body another shot. And watch the extended version if you can. I couldn’t tell you what’s different about it since I haven’t watched the theatrical cut again, but I can tell you that I enjoyed it. 

P.S. This trailer makes Jennifer’s Body look a lot more jokey than I felt the extended version of the movie actually was while watching it. So, take the trailer with a grain of salt (like you should with most trailers anyway).

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Devil’s Den A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Devil’s Den (2006) – A Movie A Day 2021 #6

Devil’s Den DVD cover

Have you ever wanted to watch From Dusk till Dawn, but didn’t really want to watch From Dusk till Dawn? Then Devil’s Den might be just the movie for you!

Devil’s Den is a fun little horror comedy heavily inspired by From Dusk till Dawn. It’s so inspired by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’ masterful mashup of crime and vampires, that Devil’s Den has to go out of its way to explain how the not-vampire strippers in its movie are different from the totally-vampire strippers that inhabit the Titty Twister. But let me back up a bit. 

Devil’s Den stars Kelly Hu, Ken Foree, and Devon Sawa. We first meet Sawa’s character, Quinn, as he’s driving back from Mexico with a suitcase full of Spanish Fly in the back set and his best friend, Nick, in the passenger seat. After a semi-lengthy yet entertaining conversation where Nick doubts the effectiveness of their cache of drugs, Quinn decides the best course of action is to prove the Spanish Fly’s effectiveness by drugging some strippers with the pills and reaping the rewards. This, my friends, is our hero of the story. Well, sort of. Quinn’s role as main character is taken over by two much more likable characters we meet in shortly after this opening scene. 

Quinn and Nick pull into a strip club named Devil’s Den, and as they scope out the place for two victims, two other people are scoping out the place for reasons that remain a mystery until later in the movie. One of those people is Leonard, played by Ken Foree, and the other is Caitlin, played by Kelly Hu. Both Leonard and Caitlin are sitting alone at separate tables, and they’re not there for the beers or the breasts. They’re both looking for something or someone, but they don’t begin to reveal their true intentions until Quinn’s plan goes awry. 

Quinn slips a pill into one of the dancer’s drinks, and at first the Spanish Fly seems to be working. The drugged dancer, Jezebel, played by Dawn Olivieri, becomes aggressive in her requests to take Quinn to a secluded area for a “private dance.” Quinn, of course, is thrilled, and he’s led down a hallway and out the back door of the building. Quinn starts to get nervous, and rightfully so, because Jezebel has gotten so worked up by the Spanish Fly that she can’t control herself anymore. Jezebel reveals her true monstrous face as she claws at Quinn and bites at his neck. Luckily for Quinn, Caitlin was following him and Jezebel, and even luckier for Quinn, Caitlin has two pistols that she unloads into Jezebel.

When Caitlin and Quinn make it back into the Devil’s Den, all hell has broken loose. The strippers have all turned into what I assumed were vampires, and they are tearing the customers apart. The only person besides Caitlin who knows how to fight is Leonard, and he’s swinging a katana around, chopping off heads left and right.

So that’s the setup, two criminals stop at a strip club that’s infested with stripper-monsters, and everyone who survives the initial massacre has to band together in order to survive. Sounds a lot like From Dusk till Dawn, right? Well it’s totally different, because Leonard explains that the strippers aren’t vampires, they’re ghouls. They’re not trying to drink blood, they’re trying to eat flesh. So yeah, totally different. 

I’m just having a bit of fun with the plot though. I actually did enjoy Devil’s Den, and beyond the basic setup, the movie is pretty different as it goes on. We learn about who Caitlin and Leonard are and why they’re there, and the star power of Kelly Hu and Ken Foree absolutely helped sell me on the goofiness of the story. I immediately liked then, but I never got to where I liked Quinn. He is a whiney, selfish douche who got into the whole mess by trying to drug a woman and take advantage of her. He has a bit of a redemption arc, but by that point in the movie I was hoping for a random ghoul attack to take him out. But two out of three isn’t bad, and Caitlin and Leonard (and there ridiculous backgrounds) more than made up for Quinn. 

Plus, you know, stripper monsters are pretty much always fun. Sure, it’s a bit of a rip-off of From Dusk till Dawn, but I don’t care. A fun movie is a fun movie even if I’ve kind of seen it before. Also, as I understand it, Zoe Bell doubles for one of the ghouls who has an extended fight scene with Kelly Hu, and that is super fun to watch. So yeah, I’d recommend Devil’s Den for people who enjoy silly horror movies with a fair amount of blood and boobs. 

Devil’s Den – Trailer from Ken Ohara on Vimeo.

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Decoys 2: Alien Seduction A Movie A Day Journal Entry

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Decoys 2: Alien Seduction (2007) – A Movie A Day 2021 #2

Decoys 2 DVD Case
Decoys 2: The Second Seduction DVD case

Even in the world of online streaming everything, I’m still hooked on physical media. As part of my unfortunate addiction to outdated formats, I make regular trips to used movie stores like Movie Trading Company. On every visit I’ll be sure to check out the $0.99 DVD table, and almost every time I’m done pawing through the rows of forgotten and unwanted dics I’ll come away with a stack of cheap entertainment. It’s like a treasure hunt, though I admit I do have to be very generous with my definition of “treasure” in most cases. Still, over my years of bargain-bin shopping I’ve found some movies I love that I would probably have never given a chance otherwise.

For example, if I had seen Decoys 2: Alien Seduction on any of the streaming services I frequent, chances are I wouldn’t have clicked on it. It might have been added to one of my endless queues where it would have existed until it either got dropped from the service or I cancelled my account, but with so many choices available online there’s not a great chance that it would have piqued my interest enough to devote an evening to it. But, on a shopping trip yesterday, Decoys 2: Alien Seduction did pique my interest enough to pay ninety-nine cents plus tax for it, and it even topped the short stack of DVDs I arrived home with. There’s just something about having a physical disc in my hands that makes me feel almost obligated to watch it with undivided attention. So, long story long, last night I watched Decoys 2: Alien Seduction. So was it a successful treasure hunt? Do I love the movie? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Decoys 2: Alien Seduction (also known as Decoys 2: The Second Seduction according to the DVD I now proudly own) is a Canadian sci-fi monster comedy about a group of horny college guys who create a contest to sleep with the most women over a certain amount of time. I seem to remember the contest’s time frame being like two or three days, but I could be misremembering that, and it’s not important anyway. While the guys are preparing to prey on the hapless females of their university, there is a group of female aliens on campus who need to find virile men to seduce so they can impregnate the men with their alien spawn. Unfortunately for the guys, the process of impregnation involves a rapid bodily temperature drop that tends to kill the victim (hence the need for virility so they can survive the process). Why is there a temperature drop? It has something to do with the aliens being from a very cold planet. The aliens’ frigid planetary origins also explain their one major weakness: they’re allergic to heat. Oh yeah, and the aliens are all disguising themselves as beautiful women, and they can read minds and change their clothes to mimic any man’s fantasy. So with all of that in place, hilarity ensues. Well, something like hilarity ensues.

If I had to describe Decoys 2: Alien Seduction somewhat succinctly, the movie is an attempt at making an eighties sex comedy crossed with a late nineties sci-fi movie in the vein of Species, but filtered through the budget-conscious lens of an early Syfy Channel original movie (it’s not a Syfy movie, but it sure does feel a lot like one). Everything is done in an intentionally campy way, which, given the budget and the premise, was a wise decision. It’s a silly movie designed to get a few laughs, show a few breasts, and then roll the closing credits before it overstays its welcome. For what it set out to accomplish, I think Decoys 2: Alien Seduction did a fine job.

Though most of the comedy was just okay, I did smile a few times, and though they teased more nudity than they actually showed, I still found myself not regretting my decision to watch the movie. And I’m glad I stuck around until the end, because you do get to see the aliens in their true forms a lot more as the main group of guys (and one female friend who has of course been pining over the not-quite-so-scummy member of the group) hunts down the beings that have been killing their friends. I really enjoyed the designs of the monsters (again, think Species), and even though they didn’t have the budget to make the aliens very mobile in wider shots, the action was goofy and fun in a cheap sci-fi way. There were also some digital effects that looked okay for the era and budget, and overall the action/sci-fi portion of the movie was entertaining. 

There is also a bit of star power in Decoys 2: Alien Seduction. Tobin Bell and Dina Meyer, both involved in the ongoing Saw series at the time this movie was released, make appearances as a professor and a doctor respectively. Tobin Bell looked like he might have been able to show up for one or two days to shoot out all of his scenes, but Dine Meyer played a fairly important role throughout the whole movie. She was even included in the climactic battle at the very end of everything. 

And I suppose the only other thing that bears mentioning is the plot itself. I enjoyed the obvious role reversal of the predatory males being preyed upon by females who shove phallic alien tentacles into the guys’ bodies. It’s not super clever, but it doesn’t need to be. It works, and, as ridiculous as it is, it drives the plot forward. So yeah, I enjoyed Decoys 2: Alien Seduction enough to pay ninety-nine cents for it. Someday I might even watch the first Decoys… but only if I find it in a bargain bin somewhere.

 

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Spaceballs A Movie A Day Journal Entry

by chrisA Movie A Day / Journal EntryLeave a Comment on Spaceballs A Movie A Day Journal Entry

Spaceballs – A Movie A Day #90

This was my best friend’s choice for his birthday movie, so I watched this with him and his wife. I hadn’t seen Spaceballs in a long, long time, so it was definitely a fun time. I remembered a few things while watching (specifically, I remembered Michael Winslow’s scene and lots of Rick Moranis’s lines), but a lot of the movie felt new to me it’d been so long since I’d seen it. Of course I loved it.

I don’t think I really need to explain Spaceballs to anyone. I’m sure you know what it is and what it’s about. If you don’t know, it’s a spoof of Star Wars and other sci-fi and fantasy movies, and it stars some of the greats of comedy cinema. It definitely made me want to binge John Candy and Rick Moranis movies.

I’ll admit to not being a huge fan of many spoof movies. Mostly though, it’s the modern ones that I can’t really stand. Things like Scary Movie and Superhero Movie I just have zero interest in. But I grew up on things like Naked Gun and Airplane. I suppose I’m pretty particular about comedy. I know I am. Spaceballs absolutely works for me though. I shouldn’t wait so long to watch it again.

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