Scattegories – Page 16 – Bad Movie Twins

Fifty Shades of Black Recap

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of the Black & Blue Bicycle where we watched Blue City and Fifty Shades of Black in one week. The two recaps are separate but go together. Here is a link to the Blue City Recap]

Jamie

This is the second part of an extra juicy post this week. That’s because we watched two films! A black and blue bicycle of Blue City and Fifty Shades of Black. You would think that as a result we would reap more from Fifty Shades, but not the case for me.

While I had some settings, MonoSklogs, and adaptation heavy lifting to do for Blue City, I didn’t really have any of that for Fifty Shades of Black. Being a spoof of another BMT film boded well, but it mostly just took all the scenes from that film and added excessive sex jokes. Like I bet you could almost play both of the films next to each other and they would proceed nearly in tandem (and look astonishingly similar). The other thing is that I generally do not mind Wayans films. Much like Madea, before BMT I didn’t think too much about the Wayans Brothers’ films. Would I have watched A Haunted House or Fifty Shades of Black or White Chicks or Little Man? Probably not. Now I look forward to them. Most comedies we watch are more boring than anything else and the Wayans don’t do boring (similarly Madea is simply not boring and I don’t care what anyone says). This wasn’t the best one though (that’s obviously White Chicks). It’s better than A Haunted House 2, but not better than A Haunted House. So on the A Haunted House metric this ranks A Haunted House 1.7… White Chicks on the other hand is A Haunted House -0.8. Ya’ll keeping up with that? Good. Because the A Haunted House metric is how I’m rating every film from now on. Phew.

The Settings 101 is pretty trash for Fifty Shades of Grey, it was obviously set in Seattle. It kind of had to be. Throw in a Supersonics joke, gratuitous shots of Seattle’s skyline, and a bus with a “Seattle” sign and we got a C or C+. Just C’s on C’s on C’s this week. Nice a brief for the bonus movie this week.

Patrick

We’re still doing this. Watching two movies in a week is haaaard when you have strict post guidelines. ‘Ello everyone! Fifty Shades of Black? More like nope, non-funny garbage movie! Let’s get into it.

The Good – I counted two chuckles and one hearty laugh, so about the same as Keeping Up With the Joneses as far as actual humor. The description of being “ashy like ET when he was sick in the river” cracked me up for like 5 minutes, I had to stop the movie. I do like Marlon Wayans, I think he’s a very funny actor with incredible screen presence. The way he can control his body and face to play to the camera is incredible. As a matter of fact the acting was pretty solid for a spoof movie all around.
The Bad – If you don’t like wall-to-wall sex jokes this movie isn’t for you. Literally people pretend to have sex on-screen for maybe 20 minutes of the total 90 minute runtime. There are two prosthetic penises (one gigantic and one really small naturally). I deadpanned the last hour of the film as well. None of the jokes really landing after the opening salvo. Irreverent spoof films are hard to pull off and this certainly does not.
The BMT – Certainly, 50+ easy. It is going to ultimately be top 5 worst film of the year for me. I would watch it again though. I would watch it while running a giant mind-melting 2000s spoof movie extravaganza (Scary Movies besides the first, Disaster/Epic/Date Movie, Haunted Houses, and this I guess, ten films, oof).

Let’s see … Since A Haunted House and A Haunted House 2 were both BMT let’s go back in time and learn a little BMHisTory. In particular, all those long year ago what did I think of A Haunted House 2? BAM, a little digest of my thoughts:

Marlon Waynes is a funny guy who can single handedly keep a movie from devolving into the Friedberg and Seltzer garbage that pervades the genre.
Relies way too much on sex and racial jokes.
But like the first four scary movies and Haunted House there are some laughs here (as cheap as they are), and I like all the players. I would (I’m serious) welcome a third movie (once again, totally serious).

My wish was Marlon Wayan’s command it seems, except it wasn’t a third Haunted House, it was this. And I’m having weird flashbacks here, this might as well literally be my review of Fifty Shades of Black! Patrick and Patrick from a year ago are so in sync.

Cheerios (for real),

The Sklogs

Blue City Recap

Jamie

Prepare for a extra juicy post this week. That’s because we watched two films! A black and blue bicycle of Blue City and Fifty Shades of Black. I doubt anyone has actually heard of Blue City. It only has 755 votes on IMDb and its popularity ranking is so low that it comes in behind the 1986 gymnastics film American Anthem. This Italian Terminator rip-off is ranked higher for God’s sake!

As we all know (“You’re a crazy person,” the crowd chants in unison). Yup, I’m a crazy person. So I obviously read the book that Blue City was based on (that obviously no one has heard of either). It is a boilerplate noir thriller. Our hero returns from war to find his estranged dad murdered. With nothing to lose, he descends into the darkest corners of the city to find his father’s killers and bring them to justice, even if it costs him his life. Blue City! As far as an adaptation goes it was a pretty solid example of how some of the best films get made. Find a book of middling quality but with a solid story, tighten the screws, add some meat, and voila! Did it succeed? Ha! No. Lots of changes, merging of character, change of setting (more on that later), etc. etc. etc. But in most cases the changes were simply to try to clean up the seedy characters you are meant to root for. A general brat pack-ification of the material. As for the film itself I actually wasn’t totally disappointed by it. I’ll let Patrick discuss its finer points, but there were some bonkers MonoSklogs being thrown around and some crazy editing/directorial choices. While somewhat boring, it gave me enough to provide sense of peace with what would have otherwise been an odd choice for BMT considering just how unknown it is.

Taken in tandem is the longest post we’ve had since… well actually probably not that long ago. Still, I’ll try to keep the Settings 101 brief…ish. Blue City had a very interesting setting. The book was purposefully set nowhere. Our hero arrives in “The City” without acknowledgement of which state he is in. There is mention of Chicago being somewhat close and that The City was a big tire and rubber center, so I guess it’s a take on Akron, Ohio. But a fake state capital is explicitly mentioned, so that confirms the N/A setting for the book. The movie on the other hand was working hard for its setting. That production designer has so many “Blue City” signs and decals my head was spinning. However, the true setting was only shown once: on the side of a police car where it said “Florida” above the Blue City Police department shield. While there are a lot of mentions of Miami being nearby, there wasn’t enough to float it above C. Similarly, you can almost get an exact date for the temporal setting from a calendar on the wall and a visit to a graveyard (April 1985), but didn’t play a role and wasn’t exact. C- or maybe a C.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Blue City? More like Real Shitty! We completed the Black and Blue Bicycle, which means you’re going to get two, so let’s try and keep them each shorter. Let’s go!

The Good – It is an okay crime story with okay acting from Caruso and an interesting fictional grimy southern setting. I could see someone accidentally watching the film and not realizing it was incredibly reviled upon release.
The Bad – Nelson and Sheedy, woof! Sheedy in particular was just atrocious in this film, it kind of threw me. This was also probably an editor’s nightmare, it came across as just kind of cut to pieces and barely 80 minutes, the first time directing was exposed there. The story is also just unpleasant with undesirable characters thrown around with little regard for how they would eventually have to resolve the story.
The BMT – Naw, again, just kind of a blah, boring crime film with terrible characters and action that hasn’t aged particularly well. A 10 would be right in line, definitely poor, but never popular enough to make it a hit.

And I’m thinking Sequel for this one. Billy Turner, now a long time Florida politician running for Governor, is assassinated at a campaign stop in his hometown of Blue City. With no suspects and no hope his son Jim Turner returns to try and untangle the threads that tied his father to the dark underbelly of the town that tore his family apart. Was it corruption that felled Billy Turner at his moment of triumph, or is that yet another lie surrounding his tragic death? Blue City: Legacy. I’m hearing through the grapevine that I’m writing the screenplay and John Krasinski is attached to the lead role of Jim Turner.

That’s it, cheerios,

The Sklogs

Fifty Shades of Black Preview

See the preview for Blue City to see an in depth explanation of the Black and Clue Bicycle Transition. This is the second leg and first BONUS of the year (something that was far more typical years back and something that will likely make a comeback real soon …). We are going spoof comedy, and this time we spoof previous BMT film Fifty Shades of Grey! Let’s go!

Fifty Shades of Black (2016) – BMeTric: 59.7

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(The number two movie for the year according to the BMeTric after Zoolander 2. Very impressive graphic and extremely consistent rating. Always relaxes me to see such consistency, love it.)

RogerEbert.com – 1.5 stars – But I will say this for “Fifty Shades of Black”: It made me laugh more often than I did in “Dirty Grandpa.” That is to say, I laughed more than once. And you really can’t ask for more than that in January.

(Really tough to pull out a quote for this guy. But the gist: This movie is terrible, but there is method to the madness in a way and when you cut through it it does give you a few hearty chuckles, which is better than most terrible comedies. So there’s that. Take that for what you will because the guy who basically liked it still gave it only a half star above the lowest review possible … so yeah.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1pOTTcdRO8

(Some funny stuff in there. Probably all of the funny bits actually. Pretty solid trailer though right? Really good side-by-side with the Fifty Shades of Grey trailer I feel like. That’s impressive. What more could you ask for out of a trailer? Can you tell I’m nervous about how boring and terrible this film is going to be.)

Directors – Michael Tiddes – (BMT: Fifty Shades of Black; A Haunted House; A Haunted House 2; Notes: Looks like he got in with the Wayans after executive producing Dance Flick (which was written by them). His only credits are these three films right in a row, and his next film looks to be one of the first non-spoof comedies for Marlon Wayans (as the star, the last was probably Littleman) in a while called Naked.)

Writers – Marlon Wayans (written by) – (Known For: Scary Movie; BMT: Littleman; Scary Movie 4; Fifty Shades of Black; Scary Movie 2; Dance Flick; A Haunted House; A Haunted House 2; White Chicks; Scary Movie 3; Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2010 for Worst Supporting Actor for G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra; Won for Worst Actor and Screen Couple, Littleman (2006), Nominated for Worst Screenplay, Littleman (2006), Nominated for Worst Actress, Screen Couple and Screenplay: White Chicks (2004). Ahhhh. Well, what is there to say that we didn’t say for White Chicks. The guy is pretty prolific and can turn a profit on a buck. This looked to be a flop, but he has a strong network of comedians around him, enough to challenge (and win seemingly) the Scary Movie franchise for modern spoof movies.)

Rick Alvarez (written by) – (BMT: Fifty Shades of Black; A Haunted House; A Haunted House 2; Notes: Not much about this guy online, but he is also writing Marlon Wayans’ next project Naked. I would assume he is Marlon Wayans writing partner of sorts.)

Actors – Marlon Wayans – (Known For: Requiem for a Dream; Scary Movie; The Heat; The Ladykillers; Above the Rim; I’m Gonna Git You Sucka; BMT: Norbit; Dungeons & Dragons; Littleman; Fifty Shades of Black; Scary Movie 2; Dance Flick; Marmaduke; A Haunted House; A Haunted House 2; White Chicks; G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra; Mo’ Money; The Sixth Man; Senseless; Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood; Notes: Again what more is there to say. Here’s to hoping him and Shawn get back together for another White Chicks-esque comedy soon.)

Kali Hawk – (Known For: Bridesmaids; Get Him to the Greek; Celebrity; BMT: Fifty Shades of Black; Couples Retreat; Peeples; The Perfect Match; Answers to Nothing; Notes: I knew her to some extent from the television show New Girl where she played Shelby. A comedian she performed for Last Comic Standing and was cast in the pilot for a reboot of In Living Color which did not go to series (which explains how she became involved with this project I suppose))

Also stars Fred Willard who has been in a multitude of spoof movies over the years.

Budget/Gross – $5 million / Domestic: $11,686,940 (Worldwide: $21,164,799)

(That seems … okay. Not great, but considering its budget okay. But one of the worst for Marlon Wayans ever. It is actually amazing: you can almost predict his success with the spoof movies. Scary Movie: $140 domestic; Scary Movie 2: $70 million domestic; Haunted House: $40 million domestic; Haunted House 2: $17 million domestic; Fifty Shades of Black: $11 million domestic. Basically just halve it each time. Amazing.)

#48 for the Comedy – Spoof genre

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(Right near #50 Dracula Dead and Loving It which was Mel Brooks’ last spoof movie. The spoof genre had a pretty sustained run from 1990 to 2005 and then there is just boom time (with much less money …) for a brief period and now we are kind of back to 1980s levels. That boom is when Friedburg and Seltzer re-entered the spoof game. They wrote the first Scary Movie and then Zucker (who continued the series) and them competed for that brief period until the genre flamed out. A similar thing happened recently with the Wayans who basically killed off the Scary Movie franchise with A Haunted House. The spoof genre is an interesting beast because so many people have fond memories of it, and almost all of those fond memories are from the 80s like Airplane! Perhaps we could see a re-emergence of the idea in a few years now that the three big groups aren’t likely to try and enter the game and suck all of the available funding. We’ll see.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 7% (3/43): Wildly erratic even for a spoof movie, Fifty Shades of Black bears the unfortunate distinction of offering fewer laughs than the unintentionally funny film it’s trying to lampoon.

(Haha, wow. Well, it might be boring, but like A Haunted House and A Haunted House 2 I’m sure it’ll end up being slightly underrated in the end. Critics never give the needed leeway with the inherent hit-or-miss comedy that comes out of what might as well be improv. Kind of like SNL skits turned into movies. They aren’t really good, but they are never as bad as the reviews suggest, you just need to roll with the misses.)

Poster – Fifty Sklogs of Sklog (B+)

fifty_shades_of_black_ver2

(Woah! Scandalous. It’s actually a really good poster. Look at the symmetry. Look at the bold red background. Which they didn’t put so many characters on it and the font could be a little less boring. But still quite well done. If you look at the notes or are a fan of James Bond you might know that this is also a spoof of the poster for For Your Eyes Only with Roger Moore.)

Tagline(s) – Once you go black, you never go gray. (A)

Way shadier than gray. (C)

(The second one doesn’t really work. Yes it gives a hint of plot and it’s concise. But otherwise not clever in the least. I think the first one is great. Clever, got some cadance, kinda spoofs Fifty Shades of Grey in itself. It’s damn good.)

Keyword(s) – reference to ryan gosling; Top Ten by BMeTric: 59.9 Fifty Shades of Black (2016); 19.6 Maps to the Stars (2014); 14.0 Vaterfreuden (2014); 1.0 Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014);

(Well … that was a crap as I expected it to be. How is that the number one keyword. Ridiculous IMDb, ridiculous)

Notes – The poster of the cast between a woman’s legs is a spoof of the iconic poster for the Roger Moore Bond film For Your Eyes Only (1981). Jane Seymour starred in Roger Moore’s first Bond film Live and Let Die (1973). (Yup)

This is King Bach’s (Andrew Bachelor) second movie. His first being We Are Your Friends (2015). (Ooooof another incredibly poorly received film)

This film also does a parody about the artist, The Weeknd, who has a song in Fifty Shades of Grey. In this movie he goes by Weekday and looks like the artist The Weeknd.

Unlike A Haunted House and its sequel, this film follows very close to the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. (Bullshit. Haunted House was Paranormal Activity and Haunted House 2 followed Sinister as well. All of the Scary Movies follow specific movies as well. Bullshit.)

Blue City Preview

Hoo wee. I’m actually pretty excited for the end of the cycle this time around. Why? Because our transitions have typically turned into an attempt to find a film that matches both the current cycle and the upcoming cycle. However this time our current cycle is films of 1986 and the upcoming cycle are films of 2016 (potential Razzies). Uh oh! No film can both be of 1986 and 2016. What to do? Obviously the only solution is to punish ourselves by watching two films for transition. The transition will be done using two film (one from 1986 and the other from 2016) that have some other property in common. In a way the two film form a small cycle of their own (a bicycle if you will). For this transition we are going to use the final Worst Picture nominee Blue City (never heard of it? Nobody else has either) and the Wayans Bros. spoof Fifty Shades of Black. The bicycle is the “black & blue” cycle. Get it? It’s amazing. So for our preview will we post information for both these films and have to watch both for this week… we are so goddamn good at this whole obsessive bad movie watching! (Patrick’s Note: And at making watching bad movies feel like a chore!) Let’s go!

Blue City (1986) – BMeTric: 14.0

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(Oooof less than a thousand votes. Kind of a wonder it even manages 14.0 BMeTric, but 4.0 is pretty rough as far as rating is concerned. That low it makes sense it will look linear (which is roughly in line with the vote count). It will basically take off if it could ever even sniff the rough inflection vote point which is currently near-ish to 3000 votes.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB – Perfectly awful film about wiseguy kid who returns to Florida hometown after five years, discovers that his father was killed, and vows to avenge (and solve) his murder. Senseless and stupid; Nelon’s unappealing character seems to possess a one-word vocabulary, and the word isn’t fudge. Based on a good book by Ross Macdonald.

(Oooooof. The bomb probably comes from this movie being perfectly boring. Leonard is on tip top semicolon game as usual. I like the idea of an unappealing character, after the interestingly okay characters we saw in Keeping Up with the Joneses, it will be fun to see people just drop the ball completely in that regard. Get ready for some F-booooooooooooombs.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9GIsyUgwxE

(Certainly old school and left un-updated from presumably VHS pre-trailers. Does it get me excited though? No. The acting looks sub-sub-par, the soundtrack is poised to be a travesty, and it just looks old. The only hope for this not being boring is that Nelson looks fun in the action scenes they teased. Tenuous.)

Directors – Michelle Manning – (BMT: Blue City; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1987 for Worst Director for Blue City. Producer with John Hughes for Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, in 1997 she transitioned to president of production for Paramount where she still works. This is her one and only directing credit. Makes sense though, Nelson and Sheedy means a close connection to Hughes in general. I wonder if she just did not enjoy directing.)

Writers – Ross Macdonald (novel) – (Known For: The Moving Target; The Drowning Pool; BMT: Blue City; Notes: aka Kenneth Millar (Macdonald is a pen name). Most well known for his character Lew Archer. Blue City is his third novel written in 1947 and is one of only six novels which are not Lew Archer. Too bad, I would have liked to see Judd Nelson As ….. Lew Archer!)

Lukas Heller (screenplay) – (Known For: The Dirty Dozen; What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; The Flight of the Phoenix; Monte Walsh; Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte; Damnation Alley; The Killing of Sister George; Too Late the Hero; BMT: Flight of the Phoenix; Blue City; Notes: German screenwriter died a few years after this film was released. The father of Zoe Heller who wrote the novel Notes on a Scandal which was made into a film with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett.)

Walter Hill (screenplay) – (Known For: Aliens; The Warriors; Alien³; 48 Hrs.; Undisputed; Streets of Fire; Red Heat; The Getaway; The Driver; The Long Riders; Southern Comfort; The Streetfighter; Wild Bill (BMT); The Drowning Pool; The MacKintosh Man; Hickey & Boggs; BMT: Another 48 Hrs.; The Getaway; Last Man Standing; Blue City; Notes: Directed previous BMT films Bullet to the Head and Wild Bill (which now has a 41% on RT. [Editor’s note: that’s bullshit. I guarantee some of those are duplicates]). Extremely illustrious career and is credited with bringing back the western to an extent. He claims all of his movies are westerns at heart, stripping down to a world beyond normal avenues of social control.)

Actors – Judd Nelson – (Known For: The Breakfast Club; Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back; St. Elmo’s Fire; New Jack City; The Transformers: The Movie; BMT: Steel (BMT); Airheads; The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day; Blue City; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1988 for Worst Actor for From the Hip and in 1987 for Blue City. Part of the Brat Pack and partially known for several more recent television roles like Suddenly Susan.)

Ally Sheedy – (Known For: X-Men: Apocalypse; The Breakfast Club; Little Sister; WarGames; St. Elmo’s Fire; Short Circuit; Bad Boys; Welcome to the Rileys; High Art; Only the Lonely; Life During Wartime; Betsy’s Wedding; Twice in a Lifetime; Sugar Town; Happy Here and Now; BMT: Short Circuit 2; Man’s Best Friend; Maid to Order; Blue City; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1991 for Worst Supporting Actress for Betsy’s Wedding; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1990 for Worst Actress for Heart of Dixie and in 1987 for Blue City. Another member of the Brat Pack. Was for years married to the nephew of my hero Angela Lansbury, but they sadly filed for divorce in 2008.)

David Caruso – (Known For: First Blood; An Officer and a Gentleman; Session 9; King of New York; Proof of Life; Kiss of Death; Mad Dog and Glory; BMT: Jade; Hudson Hawk; Twins; Blue City; Thief of Hearts; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1996 for Worst New Star for Kiss of Death, and Jade. Actually famous for being the main character in CSI: Miami and NYPD Blue. I do not remember him from Hudson Hawk.)

Budget/Gross – $10 million / Domestic: $6,947,787

(Ooof, that would be a bomb. I had never heard of this film before, so this is no surprise at all.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 0% (0/4):

(I had to add that in myself because you need at least 5 reviews to actually get a rating from rotten tomatoes. I’ll just copy this dire review’s brief recap: A dull disaster from start to finish. … Another review kind of derisively bashes the film for having Nelson pretend he is gay in the film. Because it kind of suggests Nelson is gay in real life? Always interesting to see a guy who just kind of never acknowledges rumors like that (see Kevin Spacey), and is seems like Nelson hasn’t because there is almost nothing online suggesting it is anything more than rumor.)

Poster – Sklog City (D+)

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(I really do not like this poster on almost every level… but that font. I can’t quit you poster font.)

Tagline(s) – It’s below Miami and above the law. (B-)

The coolest heat you’ll ever feel (D)

(Haha. This one is both kind of amazing and pretty much the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. It’s got that 1980’s joie de vivre. The second one skips the amazing and lands directly in stupid.)

Keyword(s) – police; Top Ten by BMeTric: 92.7 Batman & Robin (1997); 89.5 Catwoman (2004); 84.6 Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997); 82.6 Street Fighter (1994); 80.5 Home Alone 3 (1997); 79.3 House of the Dead (2003); 77.3 Super Mario Bros. (1993); 77.1 RoboCop 3 (1993); 75.8 Inspector Gadget (1999); 75.0 Police Academy: Mission to Moscow (1994)

(amazing list. There are also over 100 pages on IMDb of films with this keyword and 564 films with a BMeTric over 20! Reminds me that we have to watch all of the police academy films at some point.)

Notes – Actress Jenny Wright originally was cast in the lead female role of Annie Rayford which in the end was played by Ally Sheedy.

The movie’s two top billed lead stars, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy, were at the time the movie was made and released, part of a then young group of American actors who were known as “The Brat Pack”, a term which referenced the earlier group of American actors who had been known as “The Rat Pack”.

The movie was nominated for 5 Golden Raspberry Awards at the 7th Golden Raspberry Awards Ceremony in 1987. These included Worst Picture, Worst Director (Michelle Manning), Worst Actor (Judd Nelson), Worst Actress (Ally Sheedy) and Worst Supporting Actor (Scott Wilson) but failed to win a Razzie in any category. (Amazing how reviled this movie I’ve never heard of seemed to be)

The make and model of the motorcycle that Billy Turner (Judd Nelson) rode was a 1978/79 750cc Triumph Bonneville T140E. This motor-bike is apparently the same one that was seen in the earlier movie An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) which was also produced by the same Paramount Pictures studio that made Blue City (1986). (Now that is a fun fact. I love this for some reason)

The film was made and released about thirty-nine years after its source Ross Macdonald novel of the same name had been first published in 1947. (Get ready for the book review woooooo)

This is the only film directed by Michelle Manning. (One and done director, oh how far we have come since that delightful cycle earlier this year)

The movie’s marketing connected with the then current hit TV series Miami Vice (1984). This was manifest in the film’s main tagline which read: “It’s below Miami and above the law”. The fictional “Blue City” of the film’s title was, like Miami, set in the state of Florida, where the city of Miami is situated. (huh, also a pretty fun fact)

Awards – Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture (William Hayward, Walter Hill)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor (Judd Nelson)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Actress (Ally Sheedy)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor (Scott Wilson)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Director (Michelle Manning)

Deadly Friend Recap

Jamie

This week we began on the Sklog’s Birthday Bonanza, all movies from 1986, with a movie based on a book, Deadly Friend. As I watched Deadly Friend I couldn’t help but think to myself “Hmmm, I would have thought I’d be having more fun watching this than I am.” After all, this was a film that featured a bright yellow robot as a main character and a death scene involving a zombie throwing a basketball at someone’s head so hard that it literally explodes! But almost everything outside of those two things was pretty meh. But I’ll leave the further analysis of the film to Patrick.

In terms of the adaptation from the book Friend by Diana Henstell, we actually got a bit of a departure going from print to screen. The book was just a classic boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl is killed by father, boy resurrects girl on a stormy, lightning-filled night. Just classic stuff. At its core it’s just an update of the Frankenstein story to a 1980’s love story. The movie kept a lot of the main storyline (the boy’s weird robot best friend is probably the most peculiar), but scrapped a lot of the Frankenstein heavy features, choosing instead to focus on the love story (and eventually the gore). The most prominent change made was to the motivation of the main character bringing his love interest back from the dead. In the book the boy is distraught over her death and in a fit of anger/love/insanity steals her body from the mortuary and attempts to revive her (to horrifying effect). In the film they seemed to shy away from having the main character straight-up rob a grave. Instead he plans on installing a microchip into her brain to revive her from a coma. Finding that he is too late to the hospital and she has already passed away he decided to go forward with the operation and revives her (to horrifying effect). Just a little softening to make an unlikable character… well, still pretty unlikable. Overall, I found the book to be quite the drag (mostly because the main character is a pain in the ass and super weird) and unsurprisingly the movie it inspired isn’t much better. It’s basically the worst combo. At least with a lot of the other films we watched for this cycle I enjoyed either the film or the book (or both). In this case they both were just OK. Phew… finally no more books to read.

This week Settings 101 was an exhilarating adventure. We’ve been on quite the run of films with distinct locations, so it’s nice to have to work for it this week. While watching the film there were several scenes with fairly clear license plates shown to the viewer. Unfortunately, these license plates turned out to be prop plates with “Drive Safely” written at the top rather than the state name (kind of like the “Great State” license plates of The Tuxedo). Unwilling to give up I scoured the rest of the film for any other indication of location. Fortunately the film opens with a scene of the boy moving with his mother to their new home. He is navigating the highways and byways of America and has a map on his lap. That map? A map of Illinois! Now this would hardly be definitive except that there is a line marking their route through the state ending near the city of Peoria. Now does this really mark their route? How are we to know whether this truly means that the film is set in Illinois or if they just grabbed a random prop map for the film? Who cares! Set in Illinois! A definitive D-. Literally the least amount of information that could possibly be provided and still arguably have a set location. I. Love. It.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Deadly Friend? More like Dreadful Fraud, amirite? We watched what I will describe as a very strange movie, and probably for a very strange reason. Let’s just get into it:

The Good – Um, honestly nothing? It isn’t really a movie I would say. It is somewhat charming in the technological youth it exhibits in its hopes and dreams of robots at that point in the 80s. But it is a barely movie through and through. Even the practical effects aren’t effective. And acting is okay for what it is I guess. But at that points in time it is a low-budget nonsense movie. I wonder why it has a cult following …
The Bad – I’ve already went through it a bit, but the movie is bonkers. It makes little sense in some ways (the main character is either totally insane or a sociopath) and then is only morbidly fascinating in most others. It is boring, and weird, and falls short in almost every way. As Jamie said: it should be more fun, but it isn’t.
The BMT – No. Too small and boring. Like Maximum Overdrive it is only BMT in showing how people completely botched horror in the 80’s. Probably the cocaine.

Ah, and why did we watch this movie? Because 1986 is amazing terrible for bad movies. It was between this and Shanghai Surprise as far as we could tell (since we have already seen Cobra) and Shanghai Surprise had to be reserved for Romance … so yeah, getting a bit sparse. This cycle … might be bad.

You know what? I’m going to leave it there. Deadly Friend isn’t very inspiring.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Deadly Friend Preview

And this week we are excited to announce the next cycle, a very special cycle indeed. This October the bad movie twins will be turning thirty (it’s a pretty big deal), and we we thought it would be fun to do movies that are also turning thirty years old. That’s right, the cycle is the Sklog’s Birthday Bonanza, The Films of 1986. And since we are in a transition period between cycles we had to find a movie that is not only based on a book, but also specifically came out in 1986. And that means there is really only one choice (no, seriously, I think there was literally only one decently qualified movie to choose from in this case): Deadly Friend. A Wes Craven picture based on Friend by Diana Henstell, this is considered somewhat of a cult classic, but is also very well known for the meddling of producers during production. It looks … really strange. Getting me kind of excited. Let’s go!

Deadly Friend (1986) – BMeTric: 24.2

DeadlyFriend_BMeT

DeadlyFriend_RV

(Ah, very similar to last week’s plots and I think this is a trend for films from the 80s / early 90s. It rises until it reaches a stable rating/votes proportion in the BMeTric, and this again is a very good example of a film regressing to the mean as time goes on. I think movies that existed prior to IMDb going “mainstream” tended to have a much broader range of ratings (perhaps) and so with older movies you see this regression to the mean much more starkly. Always interesting (to me))

Leonard Maltin – 2.5 stars – Inventive teenager, in love with the girl next door, revives her (a la Frankenstein) after she’s killed. More heart, and more actual entertainment, than you’d expect from a Wes Craven horror film … though it’s probably the only movie ever made in which someone is beheaded by a basketball!

(Yeah, this movie sounds bonkers insane. I also don’t believe Leonard actually reviewed this. Maltin is notoriously uneasy about horror films, he’s like me, he finds them spooky scary. Maybe at the time he might have watched it as a job requirement, but I have a feeling this was compiled for the book and represents a review by some staff writer. Two and a half stars for this bullshit horror film. I don’t believe it. All that being said, this movie sounds like a genuinely terrible idea.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQj2GKwKp5w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQj2GKwKp5w

(Wow! I’m actually shocked at how cheap this looks. This was made after Nightmare on Elm Street, which I think is a surprisingly beautiful film, but this looks like an amateur film in comparison. Another weird thing? Nary a robot to be seen. And I know for a fact that there is a hilarious yellow robot in this.)

Directors – Wes Craven – (Known For: Scream; A Nightmare on Elm Street; Scream 4; Red Eye; Scream 2; The Hills Have Eyes; The Last House on the Left; Swamp Thing; New Nightmare; Paris, je t’aime; Music of the Heart; The Serpent and the Rainbow; BMT: Vampire in Brooklyn; Cursed; My Soul to Take; Scream 3; The Hills Have Eyes Part II; Shocker; Deadly Friend; Deadly Blessing; Notes: Died last year from brain cancer. Was set to direct Superman IV: The Quest for Peace but was dropped after feuding with Christopher Reeve.)

Writers – Diana Henstell (novel) – (BMT: Deadly Friend; Notes: Horror/Thriller writer in the 80s. Apparently worked in publishing for most of her career. That’s all I could find about her.)

Bruce Joel Rubin (screenplay) – (Known For: Ghost; Deep Impact; The Last Mimzy; Jacob’s Ladder; Stuart Little 2; Brainstorm; My Life; BMT: Deadly Friend; Deceived; The Time Traveller’s Wife; Notes: Won an Oscar for Ghost. The story is that he was going to turn down this film on principle as he had higher ambitions, but thought better of it because he really needed the money.)

Actors – Matthew Labyorteaux – (Known For: Mulan; Kaze tachinu; A Woman Under the Influence; Everyone’s Hero; King of the Gypsies; BMT: Bride Wars; Pinocchio; Deadly Friend; Notes: You hear that? That’s us improbably completing this random dude’s BMT filmography with what must be the most bizarre set of movies I’ve ever seen.)

Kristy Swanson – (Known For: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; Big Daddy; Pretty in Pink; The Phantom; Hot Shots!; The Program; Higher Learning; BMT: Dude, Where’s My Car?; Mannequin: On the Move; Buffy the Vampire Slayer; 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag; The Chase; Flowers in the Attic; Deadly Friend; Notes: Started dating Alan Thicke when he was 40 and she was 17 (wot?). They were engaged but never married.)

Budget/Gross – $11,000,000 / Domestic: $8,988,731

(Wow, 10 times the budget of Nightmare on Elm, but made a fraction of the box office. Probably didn’t help that it was part of a publicly troubled production process and got terrible reviews once actually released.)

#39 for the Cyborg / Android / Robot genre

cyborg_39

(Look at those waves. This guy came right on the heels of Terminator and Short Circuit and a little before Robocop, so definitely a trend. Now Ex Machina and Chappie are coming at a semi-boom in the same category. The waves may be indicative of how bad robot movies often are (see the keyword below) you make a few with great care and dedication … and then you saturate the market with garbage, then start all over again. Blah.)

#54 for the Sci-Fi – Based on Book genre

scifibook_54

(The second example quickly on the heels of The 5th Wave, this is far less interesting. Maybe this was introduced at a time when book adaptations were waning a bit, but hard to tell. Still, the amount of sci-fi movies based on a book now dwarfs those from the eighties. It is pretty stunning.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 0% (0/7): No consensus yet.

(A rare, but kind of cheap 0% movie since it only has six (often far after the fact) reviews on rotten tomatoes. I’ll make a consensus though: While filled with its fair share of Cravenisms, it is also filled with classic Craven miscues. An interesting premise is squandered as the film instead becomes merely another cliched teenaged revenge fantasy.)

Poster – Deadly Sklog (C-)

deadly_friend

(Personally I like it. I like the style, very classically 70s/80s horror I feel like. I like the idea of it in a way. But … I mean, what does it have to do with anything? What is this movie about? It doesn’t really scream “this is about a killer robot!”. It doesn’t say “this is a teenaged revenge fantasy!”. It is just … surreal. If anything it screams “like Nightmare on Elm Street this is a movie focused on the terror found within dreams”. If I was only given this poster I would say this movie is about a bullied teenage girl who discovers that through incredible psychic power she can control other people’s dreams and terrorizes those who terrorize her in the real world … hey, that sounds like a pretty good movie actually. Kind of a what-if-you-could-be-Freddy-Krueger in real life. Could actually be a fun movie)

Tagline(s) – She can’t live without you. [trailer] (A)

There’s no one alive who’ll play with the girl next door! [poster] (what in the fuck? F.)

(The second one being on the poster is a travesty. How? It is awful. The trailer tagline is a nice, concise play on words. Hints at the connection to Frankenstein. Hits all the right notes.)

Keyword(s) – robot; Top Ten by BMeTric: 90.3 Meet the Spartans (2008); 78.4 The Avengers (1998); 76.9 RoboCop 3 (1993); 76.8 Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003); 75.6 Inspector Gadget (1999); 72.3 Jason X (2001); 71.2 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D (2005); 69.8 Pluto Nash (2002); 66.5 Scooby-Doo (2002); 65.1 Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982);

(That is a simply fantastic list of terrible movies. Robots do seem to enter into a lot of ludicrous and hilarious plotlines. If only Lindsay Lohan’s robot leg and arm from I Know Who Killed Me counted! Also this is an amazing set of sequels too. I just can’t get over it!)

Notes – Director Wes Craven’s and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin’s original vision for the film was a PG-rated supernatural science fiction thriller, with the primary focus being on the macabre love story between Paul and Samantha, as well as a secondary focus on the adults around them and how they are truly monsters inside themselves. Craven filmed this version of the film and Warner Bros. decided to screen it to a test audience mostly consisting of Wes Craven’s fans. The response from fans was negative, criticizing the lack of violence and gore seen in Craven’s previous films.

I would say that this is part of the Michael Eliot trilogy. Eliot was an editor brought in by Warner Bros. to reedit this film, along with Out for Justice and Showdown in Little Tokyo.

BB robot cost over $20,000 to build. Craven used a company called Robotics 21. His eyes were constructed from two 1950 camera lenses, a garage remote control unit, and a radio antenna taken from a Corvette. BB could actually lift 750 pounds in weight.

Fair Game Recap

Jamie

Fair Game, God damn! I love when we have a plethora of media to work our way through. I, of course, read the book that this (and the Sly Stallone masterpiece Cobra) was based on, A Running Duck by Paula Gosling. It’s a dime store thriller that was only available to me by ordering it in large-print edition (for the visually impaired) from a Wisconsin library. If there was ever anything that made me question everything that BMT stands for, it’s imagining a little old lady in Wisconsin working her arthritic fingers to the bone trying to find the only copy of A Running Duck that exists in the MN/WI area. She probably thought some other near-blind little old lady in MN wanted a thrill ride for the ages, but nope. Just me. Anyway, the book is nothing really to write home about. A standard thriller and honestly a bit boring. Someone wants to kill a woman, a Vietnam vet-turned-cop troubled by his violent past is set to protect her, they bone, he kills the bad guy. The only interesting thing to talk about with it is the odd similarities that exist between a book like this and current bestsellers like Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey. Throughout the book I was hit over the head with dominance/submission overtones. The male protagonist frets constantly over the safety of the female protagonist (who always seems to be defenseless and in a daze). Much like Twilight there is a powerful force out to get the female character and eventually the male character takes over her entire life to battle this force. There is a lot of talk of “doing as I say” and “learning to obey commands” with the idea that the female character will in the end be safer. And she of course realizes that this type of relationship is what she has been missing in her life and falls in love with him. You could have really replaced the characters in the book with Bella and Edward, and the assassin with a rival vampire and you would have basically had Twilight. Certainly interesting to think about.

As for the adaptation, to truly get a full picture of it I rewatched Cobra. This turned out to be a good thing because it helped realize that both adaptations are actually pretty good. They take key aspects of the plot of the book, but twist them in slightly different directions. They are neither too close or too far from the source material. In fact they are almost complements of each other, things that are changed in Cobra are often the same as in the book in Fair Game and vice versa. I think Cobra is the slightly better adaptation, because a lot of the changes for Fair Game were pretty silly and lame (the bad guys are now Russian hackers plotting a heist, random setting of Miami, Billy Baldwin is not a particularly good cop, etc.) while Cobra kept a lot of the cool shit. This by no means implies that Cobra or Fair Game are good films. They are not. They are both ridiculous.

Word up. Once again I’m going to go with the Settings 101 game that I love so much. Right away in Fair Game we get a clear idea of the city and state that we are dealing with. That’s because whenever there are cops involved in a film you can’t just make up a police department. Billy Baldwin has to be from the Miami PD. Perfecto. What takes this up to the B grade is the fact that the bad guys spend most of their time (life?) on La Tortuga, a boat that located off the coast of Miami. How do we know where it is? Because the film continually shows a map depicting exactly where in the ocean they are floating. Wonderful. Of course, Miami itself doesn’t really get to shine all that much in the end, so it can’t really make it up to A-level. In fact I honestly can’t really think of famous Miami landmarks. Are there any? I guess they would have had to set up a sting at a Marlins game or something (a la Abduction). Anyway, just for kicks we can also give Cobra a C+ or B-. It also clearly takes place in Los Angeles with the LAPD… but that’s all it really has. Kind of the bare minimum with a clear setting without resorting to license plates.

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Fair Game?! More like Fairly Lame! Kind of true. This was a weird one, let’s get into it:

The Good – The movie was pretty much composed of non-stop adrenaline-fueled in-your-face action, if that’s your thing. The actions scenes were also often quite impressive from a technical perspective (even if they were often ludicrous). The movie is more of a movie than I expected, but …
The Bad – The movie still felt like it was barely theatrical released. Basically Billy Baldwin was all that stood in the way of this being Firestorm starring Howie Long, and it was about two levels below the other A Running Duck adaptation Cobra in quality. Cindy Crawford was genuinely terrible and there is no excuse really. Selma Hayek’s character makes no sense.
The BMT – Yes. More so that Firestorm. 40-50 I think. Quality stuff, but again, not as much of a “real movie”™ as one would hope. Would I watch it again? Yeah, maybe. I could imagine it fitting in quite well with a Seagal / Van Damme / Baldwin trilogy bonanza. Like … On Deadly Ground / Timecop / Fair Game would make you question everything you’ve done with your life.

I’m going to keep this a bit short, so let’s think of a quick game. I’m feeling Sequel / Prequel / Remake and especially a sequel. Imagine an older Billy Baldwin and older Cindy Crawford running around like idiots pretending like any of this still makes sense? It would be truly glorious. I would even still make the bad guys Russian and the theme of the movie would still be heavily focused on the neo-Luddite ideals of technology allowing criminals to control the world. I would call it Fair Shake and could make it on a dime Netflix.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Fair Game Preview

We are finishing up our first BMT Calendar cycle and boy what a success it was! The Calendar in a way represents the worst of the worst, so every week we had some gangbuster film on tap. Don’t be fooled though, the Calendar also hides days of the year where no truly spectacular critical flop ever was released. So like the mapl.de.map that came before it, the calendar will eventually descend into sadness and disarray (hooray). But we don’t live for the future. We live for the now! And now we are officially transitioning to my favorite cycle that we’ve done. It’s time for another Now a Major Motion Picture cycle! In this cycle all the films have to be based on a book (which I will also read cause I’m insane). We start off with the classic Fair Game starring Cindy Crawford and William Baldwin. It’s based on a small dime store thriller released in Britain as A Running Duck, which was released in the US under the title Fair Game, was adapted into the Sly Stallone BMT film Cobra, rereleased in the US under the title A Running Duck (Now Filmed as Cobra), adapted into Fair Game, and released under the title Fair Game. It was an absolute terror to find through my local public library, but that’s a story for next time. For now, let’s go!

Fair Game (1995) – BMeTric: 56.1

(Only somewhat interesting for the fact that its rating over the last 10 years went down a bit and then up. Just a somewhat abnormal trend. Kind of crazy this movie I would have literally never heard of if not for BMT (and a movie we might not have done if not for book cycles being such a smash hit) has a 50+ BMeTric. The pull of Crawford in a rare acting role must elevate it beyond its expectations.)

Leonard Maltin – BOMB – Totally pre-fab action thriller that almost looks as if producer Joel Silver is trying to satirize himself. Miami lawyer Crawford survives the requisite amount of firepower and fireballs during her pursuit by former KGB operatives. Baldwin is the cop trying to keep them both alive. Arguably the worst movie of 1995. In her acting debut, supermodel Crawford makes a good jogger.

(Acting debut!? Loving it! A very rare BOMB from Maltin, although his review is hardly scathing. The worst he says is what? That it is a pre-fab action thriller? People basically satirizing themselves is a new theme for BMT. I’m looking at you Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct 2)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC3npzqwXcs

(That is a perfect BMT trailer. We have Billy Baldwin in his heyday looking sweet, whatever it is Cindy Crawford is doing and calling it acting, a mustachioed Shooter McGavin, explosions, more explosions, and even more explosions. Woooooo! Let’s do this! I’m excited! The night’s still young! Woooooo!)

Directors – Andrew Sipes – (BMT: Fair Game; Notes: One and done! One and done! A sparsely cited television writer prior to his break. He quit Hollywood in 1997 and is now a tech entrepreneur having founded eCasablanca, MyPermitting, OurHistree, and Our Stay. The latter two companies are certainly still functioning.)

Writers – Paula Gosling (novel) – (BMT: Fair Game; Cobra; Notes: Hilariously based on the same single book A Running Duck. And after both films they re-released the book under difference titles Otherwise a very successful crime novelist. )

Charlie Fletcher (screenplay) – (BMT: Fair Game; Mean Machine; Notes: Okay this guy’s filmography is amazing. He wrote Mean Machine in 2001 which is described as “A soccer star jailed for assault leads a group of inmates in a match against prison guards.” … That’s the plot of The Longest Yard with soccer (and it is literally described as an adaptation of The Longest Yard on wikipedia!). He is now best known for writing the YA trilogy Stoneheart)

Actors – William Baldwin – (Known For: Forgetting Sarah Marshall; Flatliners; Born on the Fourth of July; Backdraft; The Squid and the Whale; Internal Affairs; Bulworth; Aftermath; Noise; Three of Hearts; Adrift in Manhattan; BMT: Virus; Fair Game; Sliver; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1996 for Worst Screen Couple for Fair Game; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1994 for Worst Actor for Sliver. Shockingly low number of BMT films in his filmography, although he has been mostly VOD/Direct-to-DVD for a long while.)

Cindy Crawford – (BMT: Fair Game; 54; The Simian Line; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1996 for Worst Actress, Worst Screen Couple, and Worst New Star for Fair Game. One of the most famous supermodels in history, also famous for the Pepsi Superbowl commercial in 1992 and was the wife of Richard Gere for a few years. Valedictorian of her high school class she got a scholarship to study Chemical Engineering (what what) at Northwestern, but dropped out to pursue modelling after one quarter.)

Budget/Gross – $50 million (estimated) / Domestic: $11,534,477

(Oooooof. We’ve been on quite the streak of box office bombs. That could explain a bit the popularity of this film relative to my expectations. People love a good box-office bomb. The bombs of the 80s and 90s particularly can be somewhat legendary for sinking studios (who couldn’t absorb failures as well as they can today seemingly). Cutthroat Island (which we still need to watch) comes to mind, which sunk Carolco pictures. Coincidentally Basic Instinct was also made by Carolco.)

Rotten Tomatoes – 13% (3/24) No consensus, so bonus Ebert review snippet: Works as a thriller for anyone who lives entirely in the present. Those with longer memories will find the film grows increasingly funny as it rolls along.

(What Ebert is tactfully trying to say with the line, “Works as a thriller for anyone who lives entirely in the present,” is that it works for dumb people… you might like it if you’re dumb. If you are not dumb though you will merely find it funny… because of how dumb it is.)

Poster – Sklog Game (D)

(Nope, I do not like this. I don’t like when people (and all their mish-mash of colors) are the focus of a poster, the font here is not interesting or unique, and the tagline is hilariously long. I guess it has OK blocking… or something.)

Tagline(s) – He’s a cop on the edge. She’s a woman with a dangerous secret. They’ve been targeted by the Russian Mob, and now they’re both… (D)

(Fair Game… to finish the tagline for you. Way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way, way too long, but doesn’t get an F because I didn’t feel like giving it an F. So there.)

Keywords – russian top 10 BMeTric examples: 82.5 Street Fighter (1994), 78.0 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), 57.8 Tekken (2010), 57.5 Virus (1999), 57.1 A Good Day to Die Hard (2013), 56.1 Fair Game (1995), 52.7 Jupiter Ascending (2015), 51.7 The Transporter Refueled (2015), 49.1 Alex Rider: Stormbreaker (2006), 49.1 Red Dawn (2012)

(The Pacifier and Mortdecai were also close to cracking this sweet top ten. This will be our fifth seen in the top ten, and Superman 4 and Virus in particular will definitely be on the docket in future BMTs. I have no idea what actually makes any of these things “russian”. Like … I guess Zangief makes Street Fighter get the “Russian” keyword?)

Awards – Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Actress (Cindy Crawford)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Screen Couple (William Baldwin, Cindy Crawford)

Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst New Star (Cindy Crawford)

Notes – The Paula Gosling novel the movie is based on was previously the basis for the 1986 movie Cobra (1986) with Sylvester Stallone.

Julianne Moore and Geena Davis were originally considered for the role of Kate McQueen.

Brooke Shields and Drew Barrymore were each offered the role of Kate McQueen, but both turned down the part.

Originally set in San Francisco, changed to Miami to suit Sylvester Stallone, who subsequently left the project. (Ha, no fucking way. Was Sylvester Stallone attached to both adaptations of the book A Running Duck?! I want to live in that universe please)

Salma Hayek only took her part in the film after insisting that she rewrite it (good idea!)

Can’t Stop the Music Recap

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Can’t Stop the Music? More like Please Stop the Movie! Amirite!!!!! Wowwy Wow. Let’s get into it:

Good – Guttenberg was certainly enthusiastic. Really really into it. The director has some tricks up her sleeve that, while not wholly original, at the very least showed passion. If you like beefy man bods there is puuuuuhlenty to work with here. Paul Sand was funny. Caitlyn Jenner was actually really good at acting, at least relatively. If you hadn’t told me that was Caitlyn Jenner I would have guessed he was just a no name 80s actor.
Bad – Let’s start with 90% of the music in the film. A lot of it was genuinely bad. Most of the actors were terrible, especially the leading lady. They put way too much on the shoulders of the Village People who were all really really bad. The movie was also literally 40 minutes too long. I was shocked it was over two hours. This should have been a 70 minute barely movie from conception.
BMT – Uh, yeah. But you have to really get into it, or else it is merely boring. Watch the musical sequences and marvel at their length. Revel in each gratuitous shot of Dr. Pepper as they sip it casually in every other scene. Wonder aloud “did Guttenberg really suggest that Perrine should eat two snowballs and a ding dong for his music career? What a bizarre sexual innuendo that is simultaneously disgusting, offensive and inventive”. If you are there this is a 70 BMeTric movie, creme de la creme. If you are like me though, this was a borderline 25, something that needed to be watched more for bad movie street cred rather than specific enjoyment. Can’t Stop the Music, you’ve just been served (speaking of future music-based BMT choices…).

I was trying to gauge where on a bad movie musical scale this fell. You might be surprised if you had looked it up because it is rare to find Can’t Stop the Music on any online list. I saw it listed #31 on one list and left off of multiple other lists entirely. At the very least Spice World, Glitter, From Justin to Kelly and Rhinestone (all BMT) are all pretty universally considered worse. The Apple shows up more frequently as a similar contemporary. I would kind of agree, this ain’t nothing special. Get over yourself Can’t Stop the Music.

Game time, I needs a prequel baby! It’s called It Takes a Village and is focused on Sam Simpson’s rise through the mean streets of the fashion world while staying grounded in her crazy loft in the Village. As her career skyrockets a new hot designer, Chili Piper, invites her to fashion week in Paris. But will her blossoming romance with young music exec Steve Waits derail this huge opportunity with the smarmy Piper (who wants her body for more things than just pictures)? A cameo (somehow) by a young Steve Guttenberg delights. Billy Zane is electrifying as Chili Piper (spoiler, he doesn’t make it to Fashion Week in Paris, poor Billy Zane).

I want to see that movie.

Jamie

Now that you know a little about the “film” we can get a little into what the film means. It both causes me to exclaim “Why don’t we watch more older film? This film is nuts!” And “This is a perfect example of why we try to stay away from older films.” Why? Well like White Comanche before it I think Can’t Stop the Music exemplifies a type of film that occasionally crosses our BMT path. This is the “inherently hilarious” film. A film whose mere premise will make people say “You have got to watch this. It’s stars William Shatner playing a Native American…” And then you watch it and indeed, there’s William Shatner playing a Native American. Are these types of films fun to watch? Yes, occasionally. I think Can’t Stop the Music is a good example of one that is pretty fun to watch (albeit way too long). But often times once you get past the inherently hilarious part, there is nothing underneath to capture your attention. It’s actually just a really boring film that stars William Shatner as a Native American. And Native American William Shatner can only take you so far. That’s mostly why Patrick and I have steered clear of these types of films for BMT, which populate the 1980s at a much higher rate than the late 90s and the 2000s (mostly due to the rise of mid-major studios in the 80s… and probably cocaine). Thus our predilection for more recent fare. For us it’s just more fun to make fun a film that managed to sneak out of the studio system and still end up a complete disaster. So Can’t Stop the Music holds a place in the niche section of BMT whereby we build credibility as BMT experts. “Yes, we’ve seen Can’t Stop the Music. But have you seen Here on Earth?” That’s what BMT is.

Hope that wasn’t too philosophical. It’s sometimes hard to explain why BMT generally lives in the more recent past than most bad movie ventures. Can’t Stop the Music provided a vehicle for the explanation. As for my BMTsolution, Can’t Stop the Music is not based on a book. If it was it would be based on the Village People’s memoir called Macho Men. The book details the group’s rise from the anonymity of the streets of NYC to global stardom. The climax of the book involves the making of the Village People biopic called Can’t Stop the Music, which ends up being a massive flop and tears the group apart. In the book, the film is based on a memoir written by the group called Macho Men, which details the group’s rise from anonymity of the streets of NYC to global stardom. The climax of the book within a book involves the making of the Village People biopic called Can’t Stop the Music, which ends up being a massive flop and tears the group apart. In the book within a book, the film is based on a memoir written by the group called Macho Men, which details…

Oh dear, seems like my book collapsed in on itself and created a tiny black hole. Oops. Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Can’t Stop the Music Preview

This week we finally come to the conclusion of our Airball category (pro athletes in film). This also means that we are excited to make the transition to the second cycle of the year. We are proud to announce that this cycle will be… [drumroll] … [more drumroll] … [still drumrolling] … [even more drumroll] … [seems like the drumroll is coming to an end] … [he tricked you, still drumrolling] … [now he’s done] … [JK, still drumrolling] … [and now it’s done] … One and Dones! That’s right, the next cycle will be films where the director never made a feature film prior to or since making the film. It will be the only feature film in their filmography. So for the Scattegories week we were required to find a film that fit both categories. This led straight to a Razzie classico (the week of the Razzies nonetheless) as we were able to watch Can’t Stop the Music, the Village People film that won the first ever Razzie award for Worst Picture. It stars Caitlyn Jenner (at the time of filming Bruce Jenner, of course), Olympic Gold Medal winner in the Decathalon. It was also the only feature film directed by famed television actress Nancy Walker. It’s rare that we find such a perfect transition film, but this time we did. It feels good. Let’s go!

Can’t Stop the Music (1980) – BMeTric: 26.2

CantStopTheMusic_BMeT

(So, now having some experience reading these graphs this actually is indicating that Can’t Stop the Music is, illogically, decreasing in BMeTric over the last 6 years. Why people are feeling compelled to give this higher ratings I wouldn’t dream of speculating on. Regardless, 25+ for a film from 1980 is incredible.)

Leonard Maltin – 2 stars – One or two catchy production numbers aren’t enough to salvage otherwise stiff comedy about the music-publishing biz, though some will feel they have to see what V. People and Jenner are doing in same film. Gay subtext abound, despite eye-boggling profile shots of Perrine.

(Funny little review here. Why does he call them the “V. People” (Patrick’s guess: This was for a newspaper blurb which restricted him to a certain number of characters)? Super strange. I’m also not sure I like Leonard talking about the “eye-boggling” profile shots of Perrine. Getting a little Rhinestone “look at that body” vibe and I don’t like it. Deep cut right there, guys. Deep cut.)

Trailer – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU21LKlfrmA

(What… the… fuck.)

Director(s) – Nancy Walker – (BMT: Can’t Stop the Music; Notes: Nominated for Worst Director, Can’t Stop the Music (1980). Much more famous as a television actress she won multiple Golden Globe and Emmy awards for Rhoda and McMillan & Wife)

Writer(s) – Bronte Woodard (written by) – (Known For: Grease; BMT: Can’t Stop the Music; Notes: Won for Worst Screenplay, Can’t Stop the Music (1980). Died in August 1980 6 months prior to “receiving” the Razzie Award.)

Allan Carr (written by) – (Known For: Grease; BMT: Can’t Stop the Music; Notes: Won for Worst Screenplay, Can’t Stop the Music (1980). Won a Tony for La Cage aux Folles in 1984. Well known for his disastrous production of the 61st Academy Awards, which became a laughing stock and destroyed his career.)

Actors – The Village People (BMT: Can’t Stop the Music; Notes: Obviously a highly successful band from the 70s and 80s)

Valerie Perrine – (Known For: What Women Want; Superman; Superman II; Lenny; Slaughterhouse-Five; The Electric Horseman; BMT: Can’t Stop the Music; Maid to Order; Boiling Point; 54; The Amateurs; Notes: Nominated for Worst Actress, Can’t Stop the Music (1980). A former Las Vegas Showgirl.)

Budget/Gross: $20 million / $2 million

(No entry on Box Office Mojo, so all we know is that this was clearly a massive flop. The release of this and another flop Raise the Titanic, both in 1980, are blamed for the failure of the film company AFD.)

Rotten Tomatoes: 7% (1/13), No consensus yet.

(Per usual a film this old just doesn’t have the review numbers to give a solid RT score or consensus. I’ll make one up. Consensus: For those that weren’t convinced that disco was dead, this film just killed it.)

Poster – Can’t Stop the Headache (D)

CantStopTheMusic

(Wow. I’m not sure I can even unpack everything on the poster. There are the V. People, NYC skyline, a giant piano keyboard, and showgirls dancing on said keyboard. It’s giving me a headache.)

Tagline(s) – The Movie Musical Event of the 80’s (D)

(It’s 1980! You can’t say that! Booooo.)

Notes – The lead role was originally offered to Olivia Newton-John, who turned it down to do Xanadu (1980). (oooooof, out of the frying pan into the fire!)

Tensions on the set between Walker and Perrine rose to the point where Walker wouldn’t be present for any scene Perrine had to shoot. Cinematographer Bill Butler had to step in to film those scenes

The film was originally entitled Discoland: Where the Music Never Ends! (egad!). But when the disco craze failed just prior to the film’s release, the producers tried to distance themselves from the genre. (Ha! Good luck with that. I’m sure no one suspected that the Village People film was about disco).

The film “won” the very first Razzie® award for Worst Picture. It was nominated for every category of the inaugural Golden Raspberry Awards except Worst Supporting Actor. (That year was literally in the guy’s living room and had waaaay more nominees. It was a super weird year, look it up, I guarantee you won’t recognize most of the films)

Half of the film’s $20 million (US) budget was spent on a lavish world-wide publicity campaign that included spectacular openings across the United States and Europe. (See, this is the stuff I like to hear about. I wonder who got fired for that blunder)

After the movie’s theatrical release, Village People member David Hodo said “When I first read the script, I threw it across the room. I thought it was a piece of crap. It read like one of those stupid old Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney pictures. We didn’t believe in the movie, but no one would listen to us! You can only go on for so long being a joke.” (Poor form, just embrace it, man. Like Jane March in Color of Night, smile and say you liked being in the film so much you didn’t even notice it was bad until it was too late).

Razzie Awards 2005: Nominated for Worst ‘Musical’ of Our First 25 Years

Razzie Awards 1981: Won for Worst Picture, and Worst Screenplay (Bronte Woodard and Allan Carr); Nominated for Worst Actor (Caitlyn Jenner), Worst Actress (Valerie Perrine), Worst Supporting Actress (Marilyn Sokol), Worst Director (Nancy Walker), and Worst Original Song (Jacques Morali, For the song “(You) Can’t Stop The Music”)