Scattegories – Bad Movie Twins

House of the Dead Preview

Jamie sits nervously in Judge Stranger’s Chambers, Ms. LaRouche at his side. “Ahem, well, given the testimony we just heard in the courtroom, I urge the prosecution to drop the case,” the judge says bluntly and Jamie holds his breath. “We agree,” the prosecutor says with deep seriousness. Jamie and Ms. LaRouche jump to their feet and hug. A cheer can be heard from outside as the news is relayed to the growing crowd. “We agree,” the prosecutor continues, “because we are prepared to charge a different suspect.” Now Jamie is a bit confused. He looks to Ms. LaRouche to share in this confusion, but is even more confused when he finds that she seems decidedly not confused. Suddenly the prosecutor jumps forward and slaps handcuffs on Jamie’s wrists. “What thuuuuuu,” Jamie says dumbly. Suddenly it all becomes clear. The whole time Jamie thought he was cleverly building a case to find a poor young man innocent, when he was really building a case against himself. “Right down to the well toned parkour muscles,” he grumbles in wonder, giving said muscles a quick squeeze to see if they might pop the handcuffs clean off. Alas. The judge looks at a calendar and pauses thoughtfully. “I think we shall set the trial start date for October 31st.” Jamie is startled. “But that’s three months away,” he sputters. “Yes, not nearly enough time for the prosecution to prepare,” the prosecutor says even more seriously than before, “I’d prefer the fourth Thursday of the following month, if possible.” The judge ponders this and gives a quick nod and waves them out of his chambers. As two police officers grab Jamie by the arms, he asks where they’re taking him. They chuckle and reply, “We call it… the House of the Dead.” That’s right! We are starting off the ‘Why are we watching this?’ cycle with the Uwe Boll film House of the Dead. This cycle will be top to bottom trash that we don’t want to watch. Uwe Boll fits the bill. Yay? Let’s go!

House of the Dead (2003) – BMeTric: 90.1; Notability: 29

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 0.8%; Notability: top 26.8%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 1.7%; Higher BMeT: The Room, Gigli; Higher Notability: Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, Gods and Generals, Bad Boys II, The Matrix Revolutions, Hollywood Homicide, Scary Movie 3, Brother Bear, Cheaper by the Dozen, Duplex, Timeline, Agent Cody Banks, View from the Top, Marci X, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde, National Security, Cradle 2 the Grave, Head of State, Malibu’s Most Wanted, Mona Lisa Smile, Daddy Day Care, and 47 more; Lower RT: Dorm Daze, The Foreigner, Hangman’s Curse, Gold Diggers; Notes: I did confirm, Uwe Boll never played on television in the 90s, which makes sense, all of his major films came in the 00s basically. Seen both the higher BMeTs, but I haven’t seen any of the lover RTs which is crazy. Well … not that crazy, I don’t think any of those four were released widely, so they’d have to be Friends.

Leonard Maltin – BOMB – Low-grade horror movie, based on the video-game series, which charts the all-to-predictable fates of some addle-brained young people drawn to an island inhabited by zombies. Sloppily made and mind-numbingly inept. Prochnow’s character is named Captain Kirk. How clever! Followed by a TV movie, House of the Dead 2.

(Slammed. I had to snag the maltin review for this one since I knew it would be a BOMB. They’ve been so rare over time I feel like.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htx3igt0ksk/

(Brought to you by SEGA lol. “Awful zombies”. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. “They are everywhere” lol. This trailer is hilarious.)

Directors – Uwe Boll – ( Known For: Postal; Assault on Wall Street; Rampage; Far Cry; Seed; Rampage: Capital Punishment; In the Name of the King: Two Worlds; 1968 Tunnel Rats; Rampage: President Down; Stoic; Blubberella; Attack on Darfur; Heart of America; In the Name of the King: The Last Mission; Blackwoods; The Final Storm; First Shift; Auschwitz; Sanctimony; Amoklauf; Future BMT: BloodRayne; BMT: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Alone in the Dark; House of the Dead; Notes: My understanding is his big budget career ended the instant they closed a German loophole for film financing. My vague understanding of how it would work: A person makes, say $200 million and owes $100 million in taxes. Instead though they “invest” $100 million in a Uwe Boll production which in turn is paid back to the production studio in various ways. The movie makes no money and The entire $100 million is a tax write off, but you make money from the back end and also in various payments during production as well for catering and stuff. Am I right? No idea, but it makes some sense. But alas, no longer possible either way. Only one more to go, phew.)

Writers – Mark A. Altman – ( Known For: Room 6; Free Enterprise; All Souls Day: Dia de los Muertos; The Thirst; BMT: House of the Dead; Notes: Wrote for Dead or Alive 3, the video game, which is maybe how he ended up writing the screenplay for this.)

Dan Bates – (Notes: Apparently worked in the music industry prior to becoming a producer. This was the last film he produced.)

Dave Parker – ( Known For: Tales of Halloween; BMT: House of the Dead; Notes: Mostly an editor, and almost exclusively for horror films.)

Actors – Jonathan Cherry – ( Known For: Final Destination 2; Goon; What If; Goon: Last of the Enforcers; Wolfcop; The Novice; Die Alone; Another WolfCop; Love on the Side; Dark Match; SuperGrid; Future BMT: Kin; They; BMT: House of the Dead; Notes: Still acts in stuff, although I don’t specifically recognize anything. Love for Starters looks fun/dumb: “To save her father’s lake-front restaurant, a talented interior designer must partner with the celebrity chef her father hired without her knowledge to revamp the place before time runs out.” He’s the chef.)

Tyron Leitso – ( Known For: Assault on Wall Street; Far Cry; Seed; BMT: House of the Dead; Notes: Was one of the main characters in Wonderfalls, a show that looked so interesting and good back in the day, then no one watched it and it got cancelled.)

Clint Howard – ( Known For: Solo: A Star Wars Story; Apollo 13; How the Grinch Stole Christmas; Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery; Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me; Austin Powers in Goldmember; Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian; The Jungle Book; Cinderella Man; Frost/Nixon; Backdraft; Splash; That Thing You Do!; Cocoon; Far and Away; The Rocketeer; Parenthood; Terrifier 3; Edtv; The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh; Future BMT: The Waterboy; Fun with Dick and Jane; Gung Ho; BMT: Halloween; Tango & Cash; Little Nicky; The Cat in the Hat; The Dilemma; House of the Dead; Barb Wire; Notes: He has the best career. Just does random stuff and looks weird doing it half the time. He was in Seinfeld, when the go to L.A., in in Star Trek, in Terrifier 3. Just great stuff.)

Budget/Gross – $12,000,000 / Domestic: $10,249,719 (Worldwide: $13,818,181)

(Hmmmm, yeah that sounds right I guess. Doesn’t really jive with what I said, but possibly the idea is the Budget is $12 million, but the investment is larger or something? I don’t really get how you avoid taxes when you don’t lose that much money, but maybe it is to avoid like … $1 million in taxes?)

Rotten Tomatoes – 3% (2/59): A grungy, disjointed, mostly brainless mess of a film, House of the Dead is nonetheless loaded with unintentional laughs.

(I mean, I don’t really agree, in that I find Uwe Boll films to be surprisingly humorless, intentional or not. It just makes you sad to realize there was this machine consuming IP and spitting out garbage intentionally.)

Reviewer Highlight: To properly convey the jaw-dropping shoddiness of this videogame-based ‘horror’ ‘movie,’ one must approach what scientists call Absolute Stupid. – Scott Brown, Entertainment Weekly

Poster – House of the Judge Dredd

(It’s funny this came out in 2003 because I remember being kind of creeped out by the DVD box in the local video store. Tells you how far I’ve come with horror as a genre. Anyway, I actually like the red tone and the font. Doesn’t give a whole lot, but it’s still perfectly fine. B.)

Tagline(s) – You won’t last the night (C-)

(Given what I now know about this film, the tagline and the poster are very strange. Definitely seems like they made everything based on the video game and then Uwe Boll just… did what he wanted. That’s fine, probably, as reading about the plot of the video game makes me think they might have been sued by the makers of Resident Evil if they hewed too closely. Oh and the tagline is meh.)

Keyword(s) – top BMeT

Top 10: Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), Snow White (2025), The Twilight Saga: New Moon (2009), Green Lantern (2011), Batman & Robin (1997), Batman Forever (1995), The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011), Ghost Rider (2007), The Happening (2008), A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

Future BMT: 99.4 Snow White (2025), 96.4 Disaster Movie (2008), 93.6 Date Movie (2006), 90.7 Vampires Suck (2010), 89.1 BloodRayne (2005), 88.1 Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023), 86.9 Street Fighter (1994), 86.6 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D (2005), 84.1 Spy Kids 4: All the Time in the World (2011), 83.1 Inspector Gadget (1999), 81.5 You Got Served (2004), 80.1 Jeepers Creepers III (2017), 80.0 Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience (2009), 79.6 Daddy Day Camp (2007), 79.4 Home Alone 3 (1997), 79.3 Boogeyman (2005), 78.8 Shark Night (2011), 78.2 Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022), 78.2 The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure (2012), 78.2 Who’s Your Caddy? (2007)

BMT: Epic Movie (2007), Meet the Spartans (2008), Battlefield Earth (2000), Dragonball Evolution (2009), Catwoman (2004), Jack and Jill (2011), Batman & Robin (1997), Son of the Mask (2005), The Room (2003), The Emoji Movie (2017), Cats (2019), Gigli (2003), Scary Movie V (2013), Alone in the Dark (2005), Jaws: The Revenge (1987), The Last Airbender (2010), Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997), House of the Dead (2003), The Wicker Man (2006), Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966), Madame Web (2024), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), Fifty Shades of Grey (2015), Slender Man (2018), Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997), Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd (2003), Jaws 3-D (1983), Troll 2 (1990), The Love Guru (2008), Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004), In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2007), The Cat in the Hat (2003), The Avengers (1998), Halloween: Resurrection (2002), The Fog (2005), Fantastic Four (2015), Rollerball (2002), Baby Geniuses (1999), Spice World (1997), From Justin to Kelly (2003), Crossroads (2002), Dungeons & Dragons (2000), Norbit (2007), …

Best Options (Uwe Boll): 90.2 House of the Dead (2003), 89.1 BloodRayne (2005)

(Yup, now we only have one more to go (and then however many of his other films we’d consider doing as Friends, which is maybe only one or two I think, although there are quite a few direct-to-video sequels which we’d have to think about).)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 22) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Jürgen Prochnow is No. 9 billed in House of the Dead and No. 4 billed in Primeval, which also stars Orlando Jones (No. 3 billed) who is in Say It Isn’t So (No. 3 billed) which also stars Chris Klein (No. 1 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 2 billed) => (9 + 4) + (3 + 3) + (1 + 2) = 22. If we were to watch The Glass House we can get the HoE Number down to 20.

Notes – Reviews were so bad that Danish cinemas refused to show it.

This is the last film to use the turn-table technique for 360° shots. The risk of actors being hurt or killed by the fast-moving camera was too high.

Jonathan Cherry burned 30% of his hand on the second day of shooting. The scene on the bridge, where he hurts his hand, was shot later, to explain the bandage he had to wear.

Thirty-two video clips from the original game appear in several parts of the movie. Twenty-six appear during the 10-minute battle in front of the house. The remaining 6 are used as transitions prior to the battle.

When asked how she felt about getting naked for the first time onscreen in her swimming scene, Erica Durance said, “I was working on a show once where I had to play a character who was needy and whimsical, which was very different from my personality. That was more embarrassing because you really have to be vulnerable with your inner thoughts, whereas nudity is just about your body. It’s easier to shut yourself off outside than to really reveal your inner thoughts.”

Kraven the Hunter Recap

Jamie

It was Morbin’ Time with Morbius. We dined out at Madame Web’s. If you thought for one second we weren’t going to go cuckoo for some Kraven bits just because it was out in theaters for the end of year cycle then oh ho ho! You must not have been paying attention to the dining experience at Madame Web’s. Now… this had a lot to live up to. Last we saw of this “franchise” (Franchise Man Note: This is obviously the Spider-man Villain franchise, so Jamie is correct here, however it also unfortunately includes the much more successful Venom films… which kind of spoils the fun of these one-off disasters… that’s just a Franchise Fact) Madame Web was donning the dopest sunglasses in the universe so… may as well pack it in and not even try, right? Pretty much.

To recap, Kaven is a hunter. He totally hunts people. Bad people, I guess. We see him hunt a dude and it’s cool and then we flash back to when he was a kid and that is decidedly less cool. Kraven’s dad is also a hunter. He also kind of sucks and everyone hates him. When his mother dies, he and his half-brother Dmitri are taken back to live with their father and become total baddies. On a hunting trip where there is a legendary lion that their dad is just jonesing to kill, Kraven is attacked by the lion and nearly killed. A young girl, Calypso, heals him with a magical serum which turns him into… Kraven the Hunter. Afterwards, his father is like “I totally killed that lion,” and that makes Kraven sad and he leaves Dmitri behind to go live in the wilderness. Flash forward and he’s still living in the wilderness. He’s a protector of nature and only ventures to London to see Dmitri and his father on occasion. During Dmitri’s latest birthday, Dmitri is kidnapped when people come to try to capture Kraven. Their father refuses to pay the ransom sent by the Rhino, the man behind the kidnapping who wants to overthrow the family’s criminal enterprise. It’s time to hunt. He’s tricked into heading to a secret hideout where the Rhino ambushes him, but Kraven escapes. The Rhino then sets the Foreigner on Kraven and hunts him to his sanctuary. During this whole thing Calypso is again helping Kraven… as a lawyer… like just a regular person now pretty much. Ultimately tracking down the ultimate hunter backfires as all the baddies are hunted and killed. He then kills his dad because he was in on it and is dismayed to find Dimitri is now a villain. Nooooooooo. THE END. (Or is it (you bet it is)).

There was a moment about 30 minutes into the longest intro that any film has ever had ever where I thought perhaps they had stumbled into another disasterpiece. I didn’t understand why they were doing this to us… and that felt right. However, after that it all just kind of fell apart. Definitely more Morbius than Madame Web. A couple cool set pieces and a bad guy that is at least serviceable can’t really save a rough script that at times completely lacked logic and an ending that was gobbledegook (see, once again: Morbius). It does feel like these films lacked a coherence that is startling. These are supposed to be the supervillains that populate the Sinister Six and yet… they are pretty much good guys? Why? It would have been a lot more refreshing if Kraven at least played the part. Make him a super hunter who is not afraid to go after the more dangerous game: poachers. He’s recruited to kill a supervillain and agrees because he’s intrigued, not because he thinks it’s right. Not that simple, I guess. Instead this was easily the blandest of the films and definitely felt like the end of the line.

Hot Take Clam Bake! I don’t think that Calypso serum did anything. This was all a Dumbo’s feather scenario and Kraven was Kraven the Hunter the whole time. He just had to believe in himself. His dad was making him feel like he wasn’t the Hunter, but just a hunter, and what you feel is what you are (you know?). But when he felt that serum touch his lips and this future lawyer said it was magic he totally was like “Yeah, yeah I do feel a little magic, now that you mention it.” All in all, what I’m trying to say is that he was never Kraven the Hunter anyway. He was just Kraven the Man. Thank you. Hot Take Temperature: Rhino.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me in a totally rad fur vest just loungin’ on a throne like “what? You don’t know all about Patrick The Hunter?”* Let’s go!

The Good? Some of the performances are fun. I do like the character / villain of The Foreigner, that is a pretty weird performance, but at least interesting in the grand non-Spiderman film villains. I think that’s it.

The Bad? The film is very scattershot, often looks like crap, and doesn’t have a particularly good motivation for existing. We are asked, essentially, to care about late-stage Russell Crowe being a bad dad drug dad and keeping his drug empire from someone who quite literally transforms into a Rhinoceros? It is just something I don’t really care about. The DeBois character also feels completely superfluous, she doesn’t even really get a costume. The whole thing seems like them trying to put in the absolute bare minimum amount of work just to finish off this Sony contract once and for all.

The BMT? I think so. Madame Web is glorious. This isn’t quite that, but I still think there are bits there where you are like “oh like he’s literally a rhinoceros huh?” that does just enough for me to keep me going. It is really borderline, but I have a tough time thinking it is merely a bad movie. There is some there there, you know it when you see it.

The final one of the year (phew). So Last week I submitted the top 150 posters from 1990 in an attempt to find posters with clowns. This time? I’m doing the same thing, but splitting it up into groups of 10. My hypothesis would have been that this would result in more false positives since the model won’t lose context / get overwhelmed by stronger clownish posters.

And indeed that is basically what happened. Index (1,8) is Child’s Play 2 and (7,1) is Quick Change. But then it also thinks Drop Dead Fred (10,8) has a clown (it doesn’t, although Fred does appear quite clownish), and Child’s Play 3 (15,7) which I assume is just because Chucky looks crazy in that one. The other false positives are just busy posters as usual. I don’t know, it feels like it did pretty well with 100+ posters, but at the same time am I confident it isn’t missing false negatives? I’m not sure. Do I care? … I’m not sure about that either. Stay tuned in the new year.

Setting as a Character (Where?) for far eastern Russia, which is definitely a place I don’t remember seeing many films set before. Obviously, all of these things need a MacGuffin (Why?), in this case it is all about Nikolai Kravinoff’s drug empire (obviously). And a great Worst Twist (How?) for the ultimate reveal that Kraven’s brother has been transformed into Chameleon, which is a villain we’ll never ever see again I assume. This film isn’t as good as Madame Web, but I still think there is enough there to be BMT worthy in the end.

Read all about hunting I guess in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Kraven the Hunter Quiz

What’s the name of the famous television show starring Raven-Symoné? That’s so Raven? I don’t think so. I think it is called That’s so Kraven. Agree to disagree. Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) This is the sixth and last of the Sony Spider-Man Universe films. Name the other five.

2) Apparently Kraven gained his power while on a hunting trip in Ghana. Ghana is also home to the largest man-made lake in the world. What is the name of that lake?

3) A song on the soundtrack was Sign of the Times performed by Harry Styles. That didn’t realy number one in the US. He’s had two number one singles though, As it Was, and what other song?

4) Kraven is a rarity: he is the only original Sinister Six villain to have his own film. The other characters in the original Sinister Six are Doc Ock, the Vulture, Sandman, Electro, and what villain played by Jake Gyllenhall in the Sony/Marvel Spider-Man films?

5) In the end we learn that Kraven’s brother has become the supervillain Chameleon. In the comics Chameleon’s most humiliating defeat was by May Parker who defeated him with Zolpidem, the generic name for what brand name medication?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: We talking about Benji the Hunted? Regardless, that film played primetime on March 7, 1991 up against:

On HBO. What is this film?

Answers

Kraven the Hunter Preview

Jamie and Patrick can’t hide their anxiety as they sit through the third hour of a marathon Hallston town meeting. Following the disastrous library committee meeting, Jamie insisted that they start breaking the rules. A few soothing words, a reminder that rulez=coolz and a stirring rendition of Your Body is a Wonderland by John Mayer helps bring him back to reality. When the library decision was announced as part of the next town meeting agenda their hearts swelled. These have to be the rulez they are looking for! If they could just show their schematic demonstrating that the chasm (or abyss) was nowhere close to the library, but rather dangerously close to compromising the previously mentioned insane asylum, then they would Save the Library (as their new bumper stickers stated (and in smaller letters: But We Should Probably Do Something About That Insane Asylum)). Finally the vote on the library question comes up. The moderator swiftly moves to bring the question to a vote without discussion. Jamie and Patrick leap to their feet to protest, but just as quickly the moderator shouts them down. “Sirs… sirs, please. I’m sorry, but there is no more to discuss,” the moderator says, holding up numerous engineering reports. “Well, if you would look in the town ordinances you will see that in 1745 Hallston enacted the Library Discussion Act which requires that all matters concerning the library go up for discussion,” Jamie says, approaching the lectern. The air is electric and the crowd is buzzing. The selectboard looks shaken, but suddenly relief washes over their faces. A gasp escapes the crowd. Jamie and Patrick turn and see that international acting super star Matt Craven has entered the room. “What’s Matt Craven doing here?” Patrick murmurs in wonder. Unfortunately we didn’t get to partake in Matt Craven: The Hunter, the 10-part docuseries I produced about Matt Craven. Instead we had to watch Kraven: The Hunter that wishes it was Madame Web. Let’s go!

Kraven the Hunter (2024) – BMeTric: 50.9; Notability: 59

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 9.6%; Notability: top 1.2%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 2.6%; Higher BMeT: Madame Web, Borderlands, The American Society of Magical Negroes, The Crow, Uglies, The Strangers: Chapter 1, Night Swim, Tarot, Trigger Warning, The Exorcism, Imaginary, Joker: Folie à Deux, Hellboy: The Crooked Man, Mother of the Bride, Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate, Time Cut, Mea Culpa, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, The Deliverance, Breathe, and 4 more; Higher Notability: Joker: Folie à Deux, Unfrosted, Reagan; Lower RT: Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate, Borderlands, Madame Web, Mother of the Bride, Breathe, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two; Notes: Now that we are at the end of our 2024 journey let’s check the BMeT. Of that top 20 We’ve seen 9. So not bad, but also there are a surprising number of trash films that either didn’t qualify or we didn’t see … I heard that Megamind one was a catastrophe.

RogerEbert.com – 1 star – Hacky clichés and contrivances abound, making it harder to enjoy when characters say something so gaspingly silly that you have to wonder: wait, did the Foreigner just explain his nickname by saying, “Because I’m not from around?” “Kraven the Hunter” is not, in other words, as mediocre or watchable as the average entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Instead, Sony’s latest Spidey yarn is a charmless stinker that’s only well-polished enough to make you resent the stench.

(Charmless stinker … so you’re telling me it ain’t Madame Web. Wait, what did RogerEbert.com give that film? Two and a half stars. Nice.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR1-ihzff3I/

(The instant you see the guy intentionally going into prison to get to someone you know the movie is going to be terrible. And the movie didn’t disappoint.)

Directors – J.C. Chandor – ( Known For: Triple Frontier; Margin Call; All Is Lost; A Most Violent Year; BMT: Kraven the Hunter; Notes: Nominated for an Oscar for Margin Call. He is writing and directing a TV show remake of The Conversation? That seems like a bad idea.)

Writers – Richard Wenk – ( Known For: The Equalizer; The Expendables 2; The Magnificent Seven; The Equalizer 2; The Mechanic; The Equalizer 3; 16 Blocks; The Protégé; Fast Charlie; American Renegades; Vamp; Just the Ticket; Countdown; Future BMT: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back; BMT: Kraven the Hunter; Notes: )

Art Marcum and Matt Holloway – ( Known For: Iron Man; Uncharted; BMT: Transformers: The Last Knight; Men in Black: International; Punisher: War Zone; Kraven the Hunter; Notes: This is a crazy career. I wonder if I went back to watch Shadow of Fear I would find the true writers deep inside the IP facade.)

Stan Lee and Steve Ditko – ( Known For: The Avengers; Avengers: Endgame; Avengers: Infinity War; Iron Man; Avengers: Age of Ultron; Spider-Man: No Way Home; Thor; Iron Man 3; Spider-Man; Iron Man 2; Black Panther; Thor: Ragnarok; Doctor Strange; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; Spider-Man: Homecoming; Thor: The Dark World; Ant-Man; Spider-Man 2; The Amazing Spider-Man; Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse; BMT: Fantastic Four; Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer; Fantastic Four; Madame Web; Kraven the Hunter; Notes: Stan Lee’s filmography, but these two are the creators of Spider-man so naturally they get a credit.)

Actors – Aaron Taylor-Johnson – ( Known For: Avengers: Age of Ultron; Captain America: The Winter Soldier; Tenet; Kick-Ass; Bullet Train; Godzilla; The Illusionist; Nocturnal Animals; The Fall Guy; The King’s Man; Nosferatu; Savages; Shanghai Knights; Anna Karenina; Outlaw King; Nowhere Boy; The Wall; Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging; Albert Nobbs; Chatroom; Future BMT: Kick-Ass 2; BMT: Kraven the Hunter; Notes: Has been suggested for Bond a ton in the past. He certainly has the build. And he seems like he would be willing to do the thing that a lot of people seem to want to try (a Dalton / book version of Bond). Could work.)

Ariana DeBose – ( Known For: Hamilton; West Side Story; Wish; The Prom; I.S.S.; House of Spoils; Company; Future BMT: Love Hurts; BMT: Argylle; Kraven the Hunter; Notes: Notably has had a string of stinkers since winning an Oscar for West Side Story. Is going to be in a TV show called Scarpetta which is maybe based on a book series, so I’ll be reading those terrible books.)

Fred Hechinger – ( Known For: Gladiator II; The Pale Blue Eye; Fear Street: Part One – 1994; News of the World; The Woman in the Window; Eighth Grade; Fear Street: Part Two – 1978; Fear Street: Part Three – 1666; Thelma; Vox Lux; Alex Strangelove; Nickel Boys; Let Them All Talk; Human Capital; Butcher’s Crossing; Italian Studies; Hell of a Summer; Pavements; BMT: Kraven the Hunter; Notes: Insane year. This, Gladiator II, Nickel Boys. Legit the full gamut of bad, mediocre, and great. I think he’ll win an Oscar at some point. He’ll find the perfect role.)

Budget/Gross – $110 million / Domestic: $25,026,310 (Worldwide: $61,989,190)

(Yeah a disaster obviously. I don’t know how these make money though. Like, $100 million, means it needs to make $200 million … in what universe does Kraven make $200 million?)

Rotten Tomatoes – 15% (24/155): Claiming no trophies with its rote story and shoddy special effects, Kraven the Hunter turns out to be a paper tiger.

(Hmmmm … I wonder if these are going to become AI generated. I wonder if they already are. The paper tiger bit just seems like a weird turn of phrase.)

Reviewer Highlight: Built on brawn, J.C. Chandor’s action sci-fi picture “Kraven the Hunter” is limited by incomprehensible plotting and dodgy one-liners delivered by a cast who seem to be practicing their worst Russian accents. – Robert Daniels, New York Times

Poster – Cravin’ The Hunter

(I’m just going to repeat my old man take from Joker on this one. Why is everything so zoomed in nowadays. Why do I need to be so zoomed in on his face for a poster for a movie. What is this? Face: The Movie. Is it about a dude wearing a furry jacket and nothing else? Bah. C+.)

Tagline(s) – Villains aren’t born. They’re made. (D)

(Not quite as bad a Joker. At least they do a little switch-em-up with Villains and Heroes. But it’s still just too too generic. Where have all the artists gone? Does no one care about posters and taglines anymore?)

Keyword(s) – 2024-2024

Top 10: Dune: Part Two (2024), Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024), The Substance (2024), Alien: Romulus (2024), Civil War (2024), The Fall Guy (2024), Gladiator II (2024), Inside Out 2 (2024), Longlegs (2024)

Future BMT: 72.3 Singham Again (2024), 64.5 The Exorcism (2024), 62.6 Imaginary (2024), 47.5 Afraid (2024), 30.3 Slingshot (2024), 29.3 Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024), 28.3 Devara Part 1 (2024), 26.0 Fighter (2024), 24.5 Red One (2024), 24.2 Summer Camp (2024), 21.7 The Fabulous Four (2024), 20.0 Reagan (2024), 19.9 Here (2024)

BMT: Madame Web (2024), Borderlands (2024), The American Society of Magical Negroes (2024), The Crow (2024), The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024), Night Swim (2024), Tarot (2024), Kraven the Hunter (2024), Argylle (2024), The Watchers (2024), The Garfield Movie (2024), Back to Black (2024), Joker: Folie à Deux (2024)

Best Options (superhero): 50.9 Kraven the Hunter (2024)

(Boom, smashed out those superhero films this year. It is like a treadmill, you have to just keep on keeping up. As far as Future BMT is concerned though … Randomly watching like Red One is maybe the best we’ll do I feel like.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 22) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Russell Crowe is No. 6 billed in Kraven the Hunter and No. 2 billed in Virtuosity, which also stars William Forsythe (No. 5 billed) who is in 88 Minutes (No. 5 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (6 + 2) + (5 + 5) + (3 + 1) = 22. If we were to watch The Eye we can get the HoE Number down to 15.

Notes – Previous attempts to bring Kraven the Hunter to the big screen had failed. Sam Raimi wanted to include him in Spider-Man 4 before it was canceled, and Kraven’s spear was seen in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) as a tease for his planned appearance in the Sinister Six film, which was also canceled. Ryan Coogler wanted to include him in Black Panther (2018), taking inspiration from Christopher Priest’s Black Panther comic book, but he couldn’t secure the rights. Jon Watts wanted Kraven to be the backup villain for Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) in case the multiverse story didn’t pan out.

The original release date of January 13, 2023 was delayed to October 6, 2023, then to August 30, 2024 due to strikes, then to December 13, 2024.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s six pack abs displayed prominently on the poster are real and not photoshopped. Photographer Gavin Bond who took the original picture confirmed saying, “Yes those abs are real, this young man put in some serious hours at the gym.”

In his more human looking form, Rhino wears glasses. In nature, rhinos have terrible eyesight.

The first Marvel movie from Sony to be released with an “R” rating.

Awards – Nominee for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress (Ariana DeBose)

Nominee for the Razzie Award for Worst Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel

Nominee for the Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay (Richard Wenk, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway)

Night Swim Recap

Jamie

It feels like we have gotten back to a place where films like the haunted swimming pool movie aren’t getting unacceptably high RT scores. In 2024 we had a plethora of horror films to choose from. Night Swim was a major horror release too and still critics didn’t lean on the “well this isn’t for me, but if it’s for you then maybe you’ll like it,” kind of review. Perhaps because now there are more critics that would say horror is actually for them. Not sure. Regardless, it feels good that I can look at the trailer for a horror film and go ‘that looks like trash,’ and then a month later it comes out and gets the trash reviews it needs for me to watch it. BMT life.

To recap, Ray and Eve are just trying to navigate the end of Ray’s baseball career due to MS, while also taking care of their children, Izzy and Elliot. While out in MN looking for a handicap accessible home to move to, they stumble upon an older house with a swimming pool. Ray, who isn’t quite ready to totally call it quits, is drawn to it. In particular the pool, which he uses to convince Eve that they should buy that house instead. As they clean up the pool, Ray scratches his hand. The pool maintenance man also reveals that it’s a special pool hooked directly to a natural spring. As a result of the scratch, Ray begins to spend more and more time in the pool and his illness seems to recede. He even begins to send out videos to scouts showing what he can do. Meanwhile things are going to shit for everyone else. The kids are attacked. The cat disappears. At a pool party they throw, Ray ends up almost drowning the child of a friend of theirs (as happens). Even begins to investigate the pool and tracks down a previous owner who is pretty willing to offer up the fact that she used the pool to save her son. All she had to do was sacrifice her daughter. No biggie. Even thinks this is a real biggie, actually, and realizes that the pool will kill one of their children in exchange for healing Ray. When she gets back home shit has really hit the fan. Ray is trying to kill everyone. So is the pool. Elliot gets sucked into the water and Eve has to dive and save him. The real Ray is able to realize what is happening and sacrifices himself in order to avoid the sacrifice they fear. Eve then has the pool filled in with concrete to avoid any chance at a sequel. THE END.

I actually really disliked this film. It’s not that I think it’s too silly or poorly made. Really it’s just that when I sit down to watch a movie called Night Swim I don’t really want to watch a drama about a dude navigating this end of his professional baseball career. If the film was called Sad Baseball Dad, then yeah, I’d be picking up what they were putting down. As it is, this is simply a really, really bad horror film that spends far too much of the film messing around and far too little time scaring you or doing fun, spooky things with the haunted pool. Sigh. Why can’t they just give us The Faculty or I Know What You Did Last Summer or even, like, House of Wax? This is just not for me. But maybe you’ll like this sad baseball dad movie. As for Revolution, I can certainly see why they took one look at this film and thought “goo!” and shelved it. It’s boring, the acting is bad, it’s chopped to shit and that’s still not the worst part. It’s unpatriotic! You think maybe an American audience might not take kindly to an “actually, the American army and British army were both pretty terrible” take on the gritty realities of war? What a blunder. I’m actually offended by it. Booooo, Revolution.

Hot Take Clam Bake! Oh, that pool’s coming back. Straight-to-VOD Night Swim 2: The Deep End is going to be made despite that pool getting filled in with concrete. They’re going to find out that they just filled in their own pool with concrete and didn’t do any more digging (literally or figuratively). Two blocks over we’ll find that there is another pool, fed from the same spring. Spooky ghost girl will be back to haunt (and help?) again. Really the best turn they could do with the franchise would be to pull a Friday the 13th and just change the bad guy to be a slasher eeeevil pool guy. Night Swim 7: Jacob the Pool Guy in Manhattan here we come. Hot Take Temperature: Hollywood hut tub.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me with super bloodshot eyes slapping a phone out of Jamie’s hand while screaming “STOP THAT”* Let’s go!

The Good? Well, I liked the setting. I used to live in Minnesota, and that plus the random stuff about baseball was just kind of fun. The film isn’t scary, but I’m a spooky scaredy cat, so I do like relaxing horror films and this is at least somewhat relaxing. I thought the daughter in particular was very good, and the two leads (the parents) were also pretty decent.

The Bad? Not scary! The film has to be a little scary. Horror films are supposed to be a little scary. This isn’t scary. The film feels like it is entirely predicated on the idea of “haunted swimming pool” being an interesting concept. By all accounts it is a concept that can hold up in a short … a feature length film less so.

The BMT? I mean, we are starting off strong for 2024, but I still think this is a Bad film. Horror films kind of have to be laughable in the end, this is merely not scary and in the end uninteresting.

I think I mentioned this in a prior Recap, but my boss told me the other day that AI will be a new programming language except “stochastic and a black box”. I’m okay with the first part, but not so with the second … except it does tickle that one part of my brain which is like “wait, is this a puzzle?” Part one in further exploring the poster analysis is trying to formalize a few things and then determining a benchmark.

An initial benchmark is that I took the top 100 films from 1990 (according to IMDb popularity), and noted that three of them feature Mel Gibson prominently (Air America, Bird on a Wire, and Hamlet). I then compiled these 100 into a video and asked the simple query “This video is a series of movie posters. Give me timestamps for whenever Mel Gibson appears.” I asked this 10 times in a row. It was, impressively, 10/10 for all three. I then took the Hamlet poster and created three new posters, one where I blocked out Gibson’s face, one where I blocked off his name at the top of the poster, and one where I blocked off both. The results are here:

Basically: initially I was getting a little impressed it was still getting Mel Gibson pretty well, but once I got to Experiment #3 I realized what was happening. By keeping the original Hamlet in the set it was just using that context to answer the same as the original poster (kind of impressive … also kind of concerning since it means the context is influencing its response as it consumes the images, so it is a little different than batch image processing, but good for video analysis I suppose). The last three experiments are testing this and yeah … it is fairly clear it is probably just using the name to determine if Mel Gibson is in the Hamlet poster. It must be able to do facial recognition in some capacity because it can recognize Emilio Estevez in Mighty Ducks movie clips. There are no words in those clips, so it can’t be cheating. But with posters, I would guess it is going to be woeful for anyone not incredibly famous or without their name on the poster. More analysis to come.

As part of this final “friend” cycle film we watched the Al Pacino classic Revolution. Uh … what the hell is this film? First, Al Pacino appears to be doing a half accent which maybe is supposed to be a mix between colonial American and French Canadian, it is very hard to place. Second, meanwhile, Nastassja Kinski appears to have simply kept her accent. Third, this film seems to want to make a realistic look at the Revolutionary War, but instead seems to have made a very boring look at the Revolutionary War. I do appreciate that they made the British just mustache twirling villains in this. Not a single redeeming quality in the bunch. A bunch of snivelling assholes throughout. Just very funny. A little like how the British are sometimes depicted in Indian period films like RRR. C-, too boring to be good, but too interesting to be truly worthless. Very weird though.

Obviously Setting as a Character (Where?) for Minnesota, which I do love, he is definitely getting treated at the Mayo Clinic, or at least that must be the indication in some way. A new category, The Haunted Blank (Why?) for the core of a movie being a ridiculous Haunted Swimming Pool. You know what? I like the twist that there is nothing to be done, the father has to sacrifice himself to appease the pool. The film, as I said, is Bad though, not scary, not fun.

Learn all about … Swimming pools? In the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Transylvania 6-5000 Recap

Jamie

We are killing ourselves with bonuses here, but fortunately we are really hitting some big time BMT films with them. Like *checks notes* Transylvania 6-5000? Weird. Did you know the title of this is based on a song Pennsylvania 6-5000 from 1940? It’s such a disastrously misguided title that I have to twist myself into pretzels to even justify it. Really the only justification is that Dow Chemical funded the film as a way to convert their Yugoslav dinar into American dollars. Otherwise that money had to stay in Yugoslavia. I can just imagine the ancient executives at Dow Chemical being like “just one note… call the movie Transylvania 6-5000. The kids love that swing music and jazz cigarettes.”

To recap, Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr. are two reporters for a tabloid. Goldblum aspires to bigger and better things, so is particularly dismayed when a grainy homemade video suggesting the existence of a Frankenstein’s monster gets them assigned to the wild goose chase. Off they go to Transylvania where Goldblum assumes they will find nothing. Jokes on him because Frankenstein is real. Not according to the townspeople, though… or the police… or anyone, really, and Begley Jr. is laughed at whenever he inquires. Goldblum is more fascinated by a lovely tourist, Elizabeth, but slowly also gets a feeling that the town itself is not what it seems. As they begin to have run-ins with several other monsters, such as a vampiress and a wolfman, they grow suspicious of a local mad scientist. Things start to really get out of control when Elizabeth’s daughter appears to be kidnapped by the Frankenstein’s monster. This culminates with them finding the laboratory of the mad scientist, who appears to have created all of the monsters they have run into. But they eventually also learn the truth, that the mad scientist is trying to help them. They reveal this to the town, who eventually welcomes the monsters with open arms. This enables Goldblum and Begley Jr. to get a crazy story out of it all and the publicity of their dreams. THE END.

This is barely a movie. Mel Brooks must have had so much sway back then to get this and Silence of the Hams made simply because someone remotely connected to him (but not Mel Brooks himself) was involved. It’s like a one note SNL sketch stretched out for ages as people scramble around. I guess one positive note about it is that I thought it got better as the film went on (and on and on) and we get some early Michael Richards doing a bunch of crazy shit, which is always a bit fun. But when I say they are scrambling, I really do mean they just kinda bop around doing bullshit for 90% of the film. Not even funny bullshit mostly. But… it’s better than Silence of the Hams (raves Bad Movie Twins).

Hot Take Clam Bake! Keeping the Mel Brooks connections going, are we sure this isn’t riffing on The Elephant Man? Hear me out. We have that hot Brooks connection. We have a doctor taking “freaks” under his care to try to help them be more accepted by society, which he ultimately succeeds in doing. They were shopping the film for five years. It’s a 1985 film. What was five years before that? The Elephant Man. Is it a sequel? Is it a prequel? Is it a reboot? I think it’s a reboot. You heard it here first: Transylvania 6-5000 is a reboot of The Elephant Man franchise (“and it’s better than the original!” – Patrick). Woah! Now, Patrick… that really is a hot take. I don’t think I’d go that far. But you do you. Hot Take Temperature: John Hurt.

Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! *Gif of me manically running around a hotel while a young Michael Richards chases me* Let’s go!

The Good? Oooooooof. I mean, some of the jokes I guess. We’ve watched a few spoof films in the past few months. This, I didn’t really expect to be a spoof film, but in many ways it is a spoof film, spoofing the classic Universal Monster Films. And there are little kernels here and there that I can appreciate. The trick on getting into and out of the insane asylum. The monsters all being people looking for medical treatment. Some of Michael Richards gags. As over the top as it often is there are on occasion small funny bits.

The Bad? The film is very unfunny, it very weird, feels interminable, looks like shit, and is basically just two actors playing right into their schtick. I like both of their schticks, but it is just not enough to sustain the whole thing. It is unbelievable this is a wide release film. It looks soooooo bad. It is such a weird film. It is really just a much smaller step up from Silence of the Hams than you would expect.

The BMT? I don’t think so. The film just is too bad and not funny. Same with Silence of the Hams. I would be embarrassed to show this film to someone and that pretty much precludes it from being a true BMT film.

I had to try out this image batch operation on some posters. So I scraped the top 200 posters for 1985 off of IMDb and asked the very scientific query: “Give me all the posters which feature Jeff Goldblum”. The results were: Silverado, Into the Night, Transylvania 6-5000. Those three are correct. In that those are the three major films Jeff Goldblum was in in 1985. The only quibble is that it can’t really differentiate between the name being on the poster and the person appearing on the poster. I don’t think he’s on the Silverado poster, but his name is there. Still, fun.

A real Setting as a Character (Where?) for Transylvania, which, this could be the best Romania film we’ve ever seen. There is a MacGuffin (Why?) in that they are chasing a story about the real deal Frankenstein (and they get more than they bargain for). And again, I liked the twist (that all the monsters are just regular people getting medical treatment), so there. The film is Bad, straight up, not funny and scattershot.

Learn all about monsters I guess in the Quiz. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Night Swim Quiz

Who was the last person to bat .400 in a season? Ted Williams?! Hell naw, it was Ray Waller. Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot!

1) In the movie the main character has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which ends his baseball career. MS is an autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the insulating covers of nerve cells called what?

2) Wyatt Russell, son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, plays a professional baseball player in the film. He actually was a professional athlete for the Richmond Sockeyes, Langley Hornets, and Brampton Capitals among other amateur and professional teams. What sport do these teams represent?

3) Kerry Condon plays the AI voice F.R.I.D.A.Y. in the MCU. The name doesn’t seem to mean anything, or at least no reputable source claims to have an official reason behind it. In actuality it appears to merely be a reference to what Daniel Dafoe book?

4) The Judas Priest song You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ is on the soundtrack, and it is the only US charting song for the heavy metal band. It isn’t the highest UK sharting song though, that honor belongs to both Living After Midnight and what three word song (a song title often chanted by Beavis & Butthead)?

5) Produced by Blumhouse, there has been over 100 productions by the company in the 25 years of its existence. The company though really got started with the release of what film which ended up being a hugely lucrative franchise for the company?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: Spare yourself from this similarly named horror film:

What is this film?

Answers

Transylvania 6-5000 Quiz

What was the name of the doctor who created the monster in the novel by Mary Shelley? Dr. Frankenstein? Hell naw, that’s Dr. Malavaqua. Let’s go!

Pop Quiz Hot Shot

1) Pennsylvania 6-5000 was made famous by Glenn Miller, but it only hit number 5 on the Your Hit Parade charts. He did have many number one hits over his career including a rendition of what 1939 song which won the Best Original Song Oscar in 1940?

2) Speaking of, the local Transylvanian band butchers the song New York, New York, which naturally was written for the movie New York, New York. Not nominated for any Oscars (including Original Song, absurd), who directed that film?

3) The classic Universal Monsters (many of which are spoofed in this film) were considered to be what five monsters?

4) The film was financed by the Dow Chemical Company as a scheme to repatriate money accumulated in Yugoslav dinar that couldn’t otherwise be freed under Yugoslav law. Yugoslavia would split into Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Republic of Yugoslavia. What three countries did the Republic of Yugoslavia eventually split into?

5) Leonard Maltin is apparently somewhat famous for his one word review for the film which involved him in a video swaying along to Pennsylvania 6-5000 and when that part of the song comes up he says the name of the movie and what one word?

Bonus NYTimes Listing Question: On March 28th, 1997, Transylvania 6-5000 played on Comedy Central. A little earlier on TMC:

What is this film?

Answers

Night Swim Preview

With that, Samantha turns and picks up a rock from the Bin of Rocks and turns to perform the ceremonial destruction of her previous entry on the Wall of Lovers. While Brad and Alejandro’s ghosts are a bit annoyed by this, they also understand that it was never them. It was always Jamie. There is no other way but to take a Rock to their false love. Four or five Rocks later and covered in sawdust, Samantha turns to Jamie. Together they use a Lover’s Chisel to begin carving the heart that will represent their forever love. It takes hours, interrupted only by intense makeout sessions the likes of which the roller skaters at the roller rink could only dream of. When they finish, Jamie turns to Samantha and asks what’s next. With tears in her eyes she whispers, “Life.”

Months later, Jamie stands on the shores of Hallston Lake. He had moved to Samantha’s hometown and they had indeed lived. But now he was alone. Well, almost. Because Patrick had also moved to Hallston to be there for Jamie in his time of need. “Hey buddy,” Patrick says kindly. “You thinking you want to head back to Brooklyn? Maybe start in on the third book of the Platonic Solids series? How’s that sound?” But that didn’t sound good at all to Jamie. “No… no I don’t think so,” Jamie says monotonously. “I just… need to… go for a swim,” he says looking at the moonlight bouncing off of Hallston Lake. With that he strips entirely nude and wades into the depths of the ice cold lake. Patrick is worried. It was very unlike Jamie to go midnight skinny dipping without eating a large surf and turf dinner immediately beforehand. That’s right! We are taking our own chilly dip into spooky waters with Night Swim. It’s about a haunted swimming pool. Given the impossibility of actually connecting to the 2024 cycle from the 80’s by definition, we built a bicycle with an (ironically) equally spooky horror film, Transylvania 6-5000. A movie that even me, a child of Comedy Central, barely knew existed. Finally we are pairing those with our final Friend of the Bring a Friend cycle: Revolution. It’s the Al Pacino film that doomed the Revolutionary War genre of film for decades. Let’s go!

Night Swim (2024) – BMeTric: 67.5; Notability: 16

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 2.0%; Notability: top 13.2%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 7.0%; Higher BMeT: Madame Web, Borderlands, The American Society of Magical Negroes, Uglies, The Crow; Higher Notability: Joker: Folie à Deux, Reagan, Borderlands, The Garfield Movie, Madame Web, Back to Black, Here, Argylle, Kraven the Hunter, Lift, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Red One, Jackpot!, Atlas, The Union, The Crow, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two, My Spy The Eternal City, Harold and the Purple Crayon, A Family Affair, and 13 more; Lower RT: Megamind vs. The Doom Syndicate, Borderlands, Madame Web, Air Force One Down, Mother of the Bride, Kraven the Hunter, Breathe, Uglies, Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths – Part Two, Tarot, Reagan, Killer Heat, Canary Black, Mea Culpa, Atlas; Notes: The only thing to do with 2024 films is to highlight ones we aren’t watching I suppose. Uglies is a hilarious one. It might as well be the Platonic Solids series, but somehow unironic. With an objectively attractive woman (Joey King) being the titular “ugly”. It’s nuts. I’ll probably read the book long before I watch this movie.

RogerEbert.com – 2.5 stars – Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, it’s “Night Swim,” your annual January horror movie from the folks at Blumhouse. … The reveal of the entity that’s causing all this terror is laugh-out-loud hilarious, though, and I’m going to choose to assume that was McGuire’s intention. “Night Swim” also features amusing turns in small, supporting roles from Nancy Lenehan as the Minnesota-nice real estate agent who sells the family the house and Ben Sinclair as an oddball pool technician. And Russell clearly knows what movie he’s in as evidenced by some of his line deliveries, which are innocent and earnest in the face of increasingly absurd circumstances. It’s as if he’s beckoning us: Come on in, the water’s fine.

(Do I believe that any of this is ironic? … No, I don’t. Are there jokes in horror films? Yeah, there always has been. The idea that any level of absurdity means all levels of irony are possible I think is an issue in modern filmmaking. This movie isn’t a good horror film. It fails at that at any level. Intentionally failing is not the same as succeeding.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhlLO3Nb3sY/

(The Billie Eilish sting is absurd. The movie looks like it could be scary, but something about it (the heavy reliance on young actors maybe) points to this as a disaster in the making.)

Directors – Bryce McGuire – ( BMT: Night Swim; Notes: It is a littler interesting. He has nothing on the docket. That is pretty abnormal for a young director I feel like.)

Writers – Bryce McGuire – ( Known For: Baghead; BMT: Night Swim; Notes: He wrote and directed the short film this is based on as well. Again, the idea that he is ironically making this a bad movie is absurd.)

Rod Blackhurst – ( Known For: Blood for Dust; BMT: Night Swim; Notes: This guy also wrote and directed the short, but didn’t direct the feature length. He has two on the docket though, both horror films.)

Actors – Wyatt Russell – ( Known For: 22 Jump Street; Cowboys & Aliens; This Is 40; Overlord; The Woman in the Window; Escape from L.A.; Everybody Wants Some!!; Ingrid Goes West; Cold in July; We Are What We Are; Shimmer Lake; Goon: Last of the Enforcers; Love and Honor; High School; At the Devil’s Door; Blaze; Folk Hero & Funny Guy; BMT: Soldier; Table 19; Night Swim; Notes: The son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn. He’s now in the MCU as <checks notes> John Walker? Whatever. He’s also in some sort of Steven Spielberg film that is coming out.)

Kerry Condon – ( Known For: Avengers: Endgame; Avengers: Infinity War; Avengers: Age of Ultron; Captain America: Civil War; Spider-Man: Homecoming; Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; The Banshees of Inisherin; Unleashed; This Must Be the Place; Ned Kelly; Dom Hemingway; Bad Samaritan; Angela’s Ashes; In the Land of Saints and Sinners; The Last Station; Intermission; Dreamland; Gold; Rat; How Harry Became a Tree; BMT: Night Swim; Notes: She was nominated for an Oscar for Banshees of Inisherin. And also she voiced the new AI in all the Avengers films.)

Amélie Hoeferle – ( Known For: The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes; BMT: Night Swim; Notes: The daughter. This is legit just her second feature film, she did shorts prior. None of her upcoming projects immediately ring a bell. She is German apparently.)

Budget/Gross – $15 million / Domestic: $32,494,740 (Worldwide: $54,768,317)

(That isn’t bad. As usual, horror films basically can’t lose money. This almost certainly made a return, although maybe not as much as they sometimes hope on these low budget films.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 20% (34/173): Despite a promising start and a handful of solid scares, Night Swim is undone by a premise that just isn’t strong enough to support a feature-length film.

(That makes sense since it is actually just a short extended to full length. I don’t think there are any good scares though.)

Reviewer Highlight: Condon’s fierce yet heartfelt performance and the underwater sequences keep Night Swim treading water, but the high concept novelty wears out its welcome quickly for seasoned horror fans who’ve seen this scenario play out so many times before. – Meagan Navarro, Bloody Disgusting

Poster – Night Sklog

(Nicely spooky and artsy. Wish the font tried a bit more with that watery effect. Can barely see it. Not bad, though. B+.)

Tagline(s) – Everything you fear is under the surface. (B+)

(It’s straining a little too much and is a little too long to warrant getting up into A range. I can see what they are doing. Under the surface with the double meaning. Implication about the aspect of the plot. It’s clever, but they couldn’t quite get there.)

Keyword(s) – 1983-1991

Top 10: The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Back to the Future (1985), Goodfellas (1990), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983), Die Hard (1988), The Terminator (1984), Scarface (1983), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Future BMT: 72.7 Look Who’s Talking Too (1990), 72.5 Teen Wolf Too (1987), 67.9 Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 (1983), 61.1 Staying Alive (1983), 59.1 Suburban Commando (1991), 57.7 The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990), 57.6 Ghost Dad (1990), 56.7 The Karate Kid Part III (1989), 55.1 Who’s That Girl (1987), 54.8 Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), 53.5 Graffiti Bridge (1990), 52.5 Johnny Be Good (1988), 52.5 Porky’s II: The Next Day (1983), 52.4 Porky’s Revenge (1985), 52.2 Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), 51.8 Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986), 49.3 King Solomon’s Mines (1985), 48.7 Hercules (1983), 48.6 Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990), 48.6 My Stepmother Is an Alien (1988)

BMT: Jaws: The Revenge (1987), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), Troll 2 (1990), Jaws 3-D (1983), Highlander II: The Quickening (1991), Going Overboard (1989), Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989), Police Academy 6: City Under Siege (1989), Mac and Me (1988), Caddyshack II (1988), Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (1988), Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991), Howard the Duck (1986), Supergirl (1984), Cool as Ice (1991), Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985), The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987), Leonard Part 6 (1987), Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), Superman III (1983), Poltergeist III (1988), A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child (1989), Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol (1987), Wild Orchid (1989), Cyborg (1989), Problem Child 2 (1991), Rhinestone (1984), Red Sonja (1985), Troll (1986), Bolero (1984), …

(This is a hold over from Transylvania 6-5000. We didn’t have a true way to transition from the mid 80s to now, so we have to do a biCycle of sorts.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 23) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Wyatt Russell is No. 1 billed in Night Swim and No. 7 billed in Table 19, which also stars Anna Kendrick (No. 1 billed) who is in What to Expect When You’re Expecting (No. 3 billed) which also stars Jennifer Lopez (No. 1 billed) who is in Gigli (No. 2 billed) which also stars Ben Affleck (No. 1 billed) who is in Pearl Harbor (No. 1 billed) which also stars Josh Hartnett (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 3 billed) => (1 + 7) + (1 + 3) + (1 + 2) + (1 + 1) + (3 + 3) = 23. If we were to watch Jack, and The Glass House we can get the HoE Number down to 23.

Notes – The real life house location used for the family home on screen doesn’t actually fully connect to the garage, so the pool can be seen from the front yard. A facade was added to make it look like one full structure and to block the pool from the view in the front of the house.

The school that the kids attend is named Harold Holt. Holt was an Australian Prime Minister who was an avid swimmer and disappeared, and presumably died, while swimming in the ocean.

In 2018, director Rod Blackhurst and writer Bryce McGuire sold a feature length adaptation of their short film Night Swim (2014) about a woman terrorized in her pool by an evil spirit to James Wan’s Atomic Monster. McGuire is set to direct.

Wyatt Russell’s dad, Kurt Russell, was actually a very good minor league baseball player and would have made the MLB if it were not for an injury.

Transylvania 6-5000 Preview

Transylvania 6-5000 (1985) – BMeTric: 47.3; Notability: 29

StreetCreditReport.com – BMeTric: top 2.4%; Notability: top 12.8%; Rotten Tomatoes: top 9.8%; Higher BMeT: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, Howling II: … Your Sister Is a Werewolf, Red Sonja, Porky’s Revenge, King Solomon’s Mines, Perfect; Higher Notability: A View to a Kill, Spies Like Us, My Science Project, King David, Maxie, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, Santa Claus, Perfect, Rocky IV, Brewster’s Millions, Head Office, Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment, Invasion U.S.A., Turk 182, Death Wish 3, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, The Slugger’s Wife, Heaven Help Us, Godzilla 1985, Creator, and 12 more; Lower RT: American Ninja, That Was Then… This Is Now, Head Office, Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer, The Slugger’s Wife, Maxie, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, King Solomon’s Mines, King David, Once Bitten, My Science Project, Private Resort, Fever Pitch, Death Wish 3, Summer Rental, Tuff Turf, Gymkata, Rustlers’ Rhapsody, Perfect, Friday the 13th: A New Beginning, and 2 more; Notes: I’m continually a little amazed when I realize we still have such big movies left. Howling II, Porky’s Revenge, King Solomon’s Mines. These are bad movie classics when you are in the know. We’ve watched a crazy number of bad movies, but the job never ends.

New York Times – The actors in ”Transylvania 6-5000,” which opens today at Loew’s State and other theaters, seem to have the impression that they are doing something funny, though where they got that idea is anybody’s guess. It cannot have come from the screenplay, which was written by Rudy DeLuca, who also directed the film, as a series of utterly listless comic setups. It’s not that Mr. DeLuca has done anything wrong, exactly; it’s simply that he never does anything right. There’s no reason for this material to be funny, so, not surprisingly, it never is.

(I mean … fucking nailed it. It is true, it is basically an improv troupe where nothing is working quite like you’d expect despite the setups being there.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulPZNXkpa5s/

(It’s cute. The movie is aggravating, but the trailer is actually like not that bad. In that it is taking the best part of the film and delivering in small doses like it is intended. Like it looks like it might work … rest assured it does not.)

Directors – Rudy De Luca – ( BMT: Transylvania 6-5000; Notes: He was an actor in a bunch of Mel Brooks films as well, including playing Vinnie in Spaceballs.)

Writers – Rudy De Luca – ( Known For: High Anxiety; Silent Movie; Caveman; Box Office 3D: The Filmest of Films; Screw Loose; The Good Bad Guy; Future BMT: Dracula: Dead and Loving It; Life Stinks; BMT: Transylvania 6-5000; Notes: He won two Emmy for writing on the Carol Burnett Show. Eventually he also did a bunch of variety shows as well.)

Actors – Jeff Goldblum – ( Known For: Jurassic Park; The Grand Budapest Hotel; Thor: Ragnarok; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2; Independence Day; The Lost World: Jurassic Park; Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Annie Hall; The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; The Fly; Isle of Dogs; The Prince of Egypt; Asteroid City; The Switch; Morning Glory; Invasion of the Body Snatchers; The Player; The Right Stuff; Cats & Dogs; Wicked; Future BMT: Man of the Year; Holy Man; Hideaway; Vibes; BMT: Jurassic World Dominion; Independence Day: Resurgence; Mortdecai; Nine Months; Transylvania 6-5000; Mad Dog Time; Notes: Nominated for a short Oscar in 1996. These days he manages to be notable as being the weirdest and wildest part of the Wicked films.)

Joseph Bologna – ( Known For: Ice Age: The Meltdown; My Favorite Year; The Big Bus; Alligator II: The Mutation; Coupe de Ville; Jersey Girl; Love Is All There Is; Chapter Two; Boynton Beach Club; Cops and Robbers; Tango Shalom; Made for Each Other; Mixed Company; Heaven Before I Die; Future BMT: Big Daddy; The Woman in Red; BMT: Blame It on Rio; Transylvania 6-5000; Notes: Nominated for an Oscar for writing Lovers and Other Strangers in 1971. He died of cancer in 2017.)

Ed Begley Jr. – ( Known For: Pineapple Express; Ghostbusters; This Is Spinal Tap; Whatever Works; Best in Show; An Officer and a Gentleman; Book Club; Strange Darling; A Mighty Wind; You’re Not You; Lucky; Streets of Fire; Cat People; Get Over It; She-Devil; The Accidental Tourist; Plus One; For Your Consideration; Auto Focus; Hardcore; Future BMT: What’s Your Number?; The Pagemaster; Renaissance Man; Greedy; Protocol; Fly Me to the Moon 3D; Young Doctors in Love; BMT: Batman Forever; Amsterdam; CHIPS; Transylvania 6-5000; Notes: Nominated for 7 Emmys, 6 times for St. Elsewhere. He never won. His role in Hardcore is insane, and the son of Ed Begley who won an Oscar for Sweet Bird of Youth. I obviously know him as being in the later seasons of Veronica Mars, he was the president of the College she goes to.)

Budget/Gross – $3,000,000 / Domestic: $7,196,872 (Worldwide: $7,196,872)

(That is better than I would have expected I guess. The economics of mid-80s film is confusing because I doubt they made much on television of home video, but they probably got more from the theaters as well. Seems like a break even.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 20% (2/10)

(There is really only one review here and the gist is: This might be the worst horror-comedy you’ll ever see. The guy ain’t wrong … although things like Dylan Dog exist so who knows.)

New York Times Short Review: Strained Frankenstein spoof. Forget it.

Poster – Sklogsylvania 69-6969, Nice

(A great classic poster style. What’s funny is that by today’s standards this doesn’t work. Too much going on. Nothing to anchor to. Like reading a book rather than an advertisement. But if a modern movie made an alternate poster in this style it would be fun. B.)

Tagline(s) – WANTED: Two thrill-seeking reporters, brains optional, looking to dig up the story of the century. For information call… (F)

(We were in that transition period where posters were changing. Taglines were changing. A (bad) relic from that bygone era.)

Keyword(s) – 1983-1991

(There isn’t really a sub-genre here, so I didn’t include it. We were just looking for a good 80s film to pair with Night Swim, and this came up as one to do.)

Welcome to Earf (HoE Number 19) – The shortest path through The Movie Database cast lists using only BMT films is: Jeff Goldblum is No. 1 billed in Transylvania 6-5000 and No. 3 billed in Trigger Happy, which also stars Burt Reynolds (No. 6 billed) who is in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (No. 5 billed) which also stars Leelee Sobieski (No. 3 billed) who is in Here on Earth (No. 1 billed) => (1 + 3) + (6 + 5) + (3 + 1) = 19. If we were to watch Paranoia we can get the HoE Number down to 13.

Notes – The movie was financed by the Dow chemical company in order to spend frozen finances (money that could not be spent outside the country of origin) that the company had in Yugoslavia.

Jeff Goldblum recommended Ed Begley Jr. to the director for the role of Gil Turner and Begley recommended Michael Richards for the role of Fejos.

Much of the scene between John Byner and Carol Kane preparing the lunch was improvised. The script’s only direction was ‘cut fruit and serve’.

The little girl playing Elizabeth’s daughter, Sara Grdjan, was a locally cast Croat who spoke no English. She had to be taught to speak her lines phonetically.

The director saw 40 women for the role of Odette. They liked Geena Davis and when she pulled off a compelling Bela Lugosi accent, they knew they had their Odette.