6Ws – Page 4 – Bad Movie Twins

The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard Recap

Jamie

Michael Bryce is back, Jack! And boy is he still a bodyguard (kinda). Reeling from the events of the first film, Michael is on a spiritual journey. Too bad, cause in crash the Kincaids who get him entangled with all kinds of bad stuff, including a dastardly plot by Aristotle Papadopoulos. Can they stop him before it’s too late? Find out in… The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.

How?! Michael Bryce just can’t get his mojo back. Despite saving the day in the first film, he has struggled to retain his AAA bodyguard license. A vacay is in order to get his head on straight. But suddenly he is whisked away from his Italian paradise by Sonia Kincaid and roped into helping him free his old frenemy Darius. Things immediately go sideways, though, when it’s revealed that they’ve stepped into the middle of a sensitive Interpol investigation of a plot by a Greek mastermind to take down the European power grid and sow chaos as revenge for Greek sanctions (I know, I know, no one cares, neither did we). Anyway, in exchange for them not all going to jail they agree to help entrap the Greek tycoon. Darius and Sonia are fighting the whole time and Michael is whining/unconscious like 50% of the time and basically they are in a load of trouble so Michael turns to the only person he knows that could help: his father. His father is a total bodyguard legend and their relationship is strained since he doesn’t really think Michael is very good. Despite this his father agrees to help and sends them on their way. But oh oh! It’s a trap! They are captured by the terrorist who is revealed to be an old flame of Sonia’s, Aristotle Papadopoulos. Sonia turns against them in favor of Aristotle (oh no!) and so we are back with out buddies Michael Bryce and Darius Kincaid at last. The dream team is back! They don’t give up and infiltrate Aristotle’s yacht where he is drilling into the power grid. They stop the drill, Michael takes down his father in a bodyguard battle, and Kincaid kills Aristotle. All in a days work for our favorite comedy-action duo. THE END (or is it? (probably… right?))

Why?! Money… oh, you mean within the film. This is actually the biggest problem with both the first film and the sequel. They feel the need to go in depth with some pretty dumb and not funny in the slightest set-ups. I think maybe the joke is just how seriously they take going through the minute details of how Aristotle wants to get back at the EU for sanctions by taking down the power grid and creating a hotbed for riotous violence. Or maybe it’s not a joke and they really did feel like they needed to explain all that. Regardless I didn’t care. Bryce wants to get his AAA rating back and Kincaid just wants to have fun… oh and Sonia wants a baby. Great.

Who?! The director Patrick Hughes shows up in a cameo, which is always fun. What’s also fun is that after making (the real bad) Expendables 3 as his directorial debut he proceeded to strike gold with the hitman theme with these two films… so much so that his next film is called The Man From Toronto and no joke appears the be basically the same film. A jokester teams up with an assassin. Wow.

What?! Always fun when a product placement gets some play in the film reviews. Here there seems to be some grumbling about Ryan Reynolds’ gin brand Aviation Gin being shown a surprising number of times in the film. I didn’t notice nor did I know he had a gin brand, but now that I know it’s my new gin of choice (I don’t really drink gin).

Where?! There are a few different settings but the primary one is Italy. Really solid Italy film as they do appear to jet set across the country without ever totally leaving it. They of course have to keep telling you where you are in Italy since they mostly didn’t film there. Lots of Croatia standing in for Italy which tells me one thing: Croatia is beautiful. B+

When?! Always very difficult when we watch something live. Can’t pause it as I stare closely at a screen trying to discern whether a hospital admission form says 8/2006 or 3/2006 or whatever. So I can’t really remember if there was anything specific about the time of year and I don’t remember a holiday being mentioned. Gotta give it an F for now.

I actually really enjoyed the first film quite a bit. The buddy cop (ish) set up was fun, Ryan Reynolds had some interesting quirks to his characters, and Sammy L. was refreshingly lively. My big gripe was that the entire set-up made no sense and was unnecessary garbage that they could have hand waved away but instead did the exact opposite by going into even more details (that made even less sense). But still, enjoyable time at the cinema. Unfortunately they didn’t get the memo that the fans just wanted them to roll it right back and give them more of the same. Slop that basic plot back into my trough, please. But alas, instead they made Bryce all weird and angsty (and mostly unconscious), had Kincaid barely speak to Bryce, and ratcheted up the Sonia to an 11. Kinda gummed up the works. Add on top a somehow even more convoluted and unnecessary plot and I guess I was surprised at how disappointed I was… just run it back! But no. That would have been too easy. At least I got to sit in a theater and watch it. That was fun… everyone else seemed to be having a fine enough time so that’s nice. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! We’re back at it with some BMT Live!!!!!!!! Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – I had figured originally that The Hitman’s Bodyguard was a play off of a very specific subgenre of bodyguard / assassin films. It kind of is and kind of isn’t. The more interesting thing after watching the original is that the director described Ryan Reynolds’s character as a “endlessly suffering fool” which … is not at all what he was in the first film? That certainly didn’t bode well. What were my expectations? I guess for it to be the same film as the original but minus the few scant laughs which made that film merely mediocre instead of bad.

The Good – I think there is always room for silly comedy-genre films. In this case it is mostly a comedy-spy film in a way? It is okay at being that. There are car chases, and European vistas, and a bad guy who wants to do some nonsensical scheme, etc. etc. It has the pieces to do the things it needs to do to be the thing it wants to be. If this was the first film in the series it wouldn’t necessarily have been good, but without the context I also think it is a bit better than it actually is. Best Bit: Vistas.

The Bad – This is the worst of all possible worlds for a sequel to a movie that was actually pretty fun in my opinion. The first floats completely on the charming interactions between frenemies Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson, it has a few solid laughs, and is pretty fun. The second instead decides Ryan Reynolds is a doofus, and (no offense to Salma Hayek) inserts a weird foil right in between any amusing interaction between the two leads (the only good part of the first film!). The plot ends up convoluted as well, with an insane plot to destroy Europe involving a deep sea drill and a computer virus. I hated this film. I understand why people would like it, but I hated it. Fatal Flaw: The anti-Hitman’s Bodyguard, somehow the antithesis of that somewhat charming film.

The BMT – I think this might be one of the finer examples of the people involved in a film managing to completely misunderstand what made the original good. They managed to lean entirely into the wrong thing (Ryan Reynolds’s character getting injured) and away from the very easy right thing (Samuel L. Jackson and Ryan Reynolds banter). I really don’t get it. Did it meet my expectations? It exceeded them. I would have assumed the film was just call backs and boring nonsense (like Zoolander 2 for example), but instead it is a pretty amusing example of production dropping the ball on a successful comedic conceit.

Roast-radamus – I think there is a strong argument for Planchet (Who?) for Ryan Reynolds in this one, which is bizarre to say, but he kind of exists only so that Hayek and Jackson can dunk on him while the plot happens around them. Obviously a ton of Product Placement (What?) for things like Aviation Gin and various car brands. A great Setting as a Character (Where?) for Italy in particular which this film is predominantly based. A solid MacGuffin (Why?) with the undersea electricity junction off the coast of Italy where a diamond-tipped deep sea drill is going to plant a virus and destroy Europe. And finally a crazy Worst Twist (How?) for the very obvious “Hayek and Jackson are going to adopt Reynolds at the end” that you could see coming from about half hour away. As one can tell from this list of superlatives this is closest to BMT.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – You want to hear my plotline for a Remake? Let’s see how we can fix this disaster. What made the first film great? The banter between Reynolds and Jackson. So jump forward a year, Jackson is still a hitman, and feels obligated to help out Reynolds because he saved his life (it’s the Hitman’s Code or whatever). So Reynolds has been using him to help him in his business, Jackson will take out hitmen who are trying to get his high profile targets, and Reynolds has now shot to the top of the Best Bodyguard list for 2021. But as Jackson has been warning Reynolds, he probably shouldn’t be helping Reynolds out so much because other hitmen aren’t going to take kindly to one of their own helping out a bodyguard. Thus a big hit is put out on Jackson, and so he needs a bodyguard to help him get to the main Hitman Headquarters to plead with the Head Hitman for leniency. Bing bang boom, we are back with the same rough conceit as the first film, except building out the bodyguard-hitman fictional universe a bit. In the end, naturally, it turns out the Head Hitman was the one who put out the hit, and Reynolds and Jackson need to kill him first to save Jackson. And in the end Jackson becomes the Head Hitman with Reynolds realizing that he needs to go his own way without Jackson’s help in his bodyguarding duties, it is the true bodyguard way. Simply called The Hitman’s Bodyguard 2.

You Just Got Schooled – Quick one to review The Hitman’s Bodyguard which I’ve been talking about a lot in the recap already. The good is that the leads are very charming and the banter between them is pretty amusing. The European setting works well, and I got a few good laughs out of it. The bad is mostly that the film is a bit long (two hours which is at least 15 minutes too long) with maybe one too many action scenes, especially near the end of the film. I’m not surprised it was quite successful, but as should be obvious, I was quite surprised that they decided to bring in good-in-small-doses Hayek character to the forefront in the sequel. Anyways, a solid B comedy I think, I would have been pretty delighted to watch this on an airplane for example.

BMT Live Theater Review – We were back in theaters masked up in an almost entirely empty auditorium. There isn’t much to say, I checked out an Odeon in South London and was pretty impressed with the facilities overall. It was a giant auditorium which made it kind of sad to watch a movie with like twelve other people, but there is still a pandemic going on, so what can you do? One thing I will say is this: my god movies are loud in theaters. I think since I haven’t been in one in over two years I forgot about that. Insanely loud at times. B+ I liked the theater, but am starting to get ready to see some weird horror film in a packed house again.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Halloween II (1981) Recap

Jamie

Michael Myers is back, Jack! And boy is he angry at his sister (spoiler alert). After the events of the first film, the unstoppable Myers continues his horror spree in the town of Haddonfield. He eventually tracks his ultimate victim, Laurie Strode, to the hospital. Can she stop the maniac before it’s too late? Find out in… Halloween II.

How?! Following the events of the first film, Haddonfield, Illinois is scrambling to figure out what happened. Laurie Strode is in shock and is transported to the local hospital where she is quickly sedated. Forget about her for the next hour, cause it’s the Loomis show everyone. He’s scrambling aroundt being like “he’s goddamn evil!” and “we gotta stop him” and basically acting like a total maniac. Good news and bad news comes with the Loomis show. The bad news is that he inadvertently kills a kid in town that he thinks is Myers. Ooops. The good news is that he does convince people that he’s still alive and they track down Myers. They find that he broke into a school and left curious occult markings and stuff. Suddenly he realizes it! Laurie is Michael Myers younger sister who was put up for adoption after Michael killed her older sister. Her name was changed and no one ever talked about the fact that she was a Myers. Myers is tracking Laurie, which can mean only one thing: the hospital. There, Myers is already killing pretty much everyone. Eventually Laurie wakes up and in a panic begins to evade the killer. She eventually gets out but can’t get a car started to leave. Just then she sees the police and Loomis show up and they are able to save her from Myers before leading him into an operating room. Loomis is stabbed while Laurie is able to blind Myers. In his dying moments (or are they?) Loomis tells Laurie to flee and lights a tank of gas on fire, totally exploding Michael Myers. THE END.

Why?! With the revelation that Laurie was in fact adopted and was the sister of Michael, this colors almost all the motivations from not only this film, but also the original film. In the original it is set up that Michael Myers is mostly interested in the memory of the sister that he killed and the family home that Laurie is seen dropping a key off at. It appears he becomes fixated on Laurie as a result of the random happenstance, right? Wrong, apparently. Just a coincidence… and maybe he just kinda magically is drawn to her by pure evil will. Otherwise it seems to make little sense that he would actually know that Laurie is his sister (secret adoption and name change and all)… this is all to say that Laurie just wants to survive and Myers just wants to kill (but more specifically wants to kill he remaining sister (which still makes no sense)).

Who?! I do like to talk a little bit about the monsters when we watch the entries of horror films, just to note how they change. I think I kinda forgot how consistent Myers was (besides the sister thing). Always an unstoppable force of evil from the get go. The one minor thing they add, that becomes a major thing, is a connection to Celtic occult lore… which ends up kinda ruining everything. Besides that, Dana Carvey shows up in a non-speaking role for like five seconds.

What?! Love it when a sequel really embraces the product placement. Here everyone is constantly asking each other if they might like a refreshing Coke. What does the guy in the hospital do to try to be sweet to Laurie? “Hey, I’m gonna go grab you a Coke.” Honestly, don’t blame them. What’s the only thing that can stop Michael Myers in his tracks? That cool refreshing taste of a Coca-Cola.

Where?! Unlike the revisionist history of Nightmare on Elm Street, this series was always set in the midwest, specifically the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois. I wouldn’t say Illinois is required for the plot or anything, but it is made clear, so I’ll say a B+. It really makes it lame that Nightmare went Ohio at the end. Would have been nice if the major horror franchises were East Coast (Friday the 13th), West Coast, and Midwest. Zombies would eventually take the Southern region as their own.

When?! Right off the bat we can throw out an A+ Time Setting Alert on this guy. Set on Halloween and cha, it just might be important to the plot. It is a different kind of horror franchise though, since usually the films still sorta stick the everything being set in the year that the film is actually released. Obviously not the case here. If the first film was set in 1978, then the second one is as well. So really a period piece.

This is certainly a worse movie than I remember from the first time I watched it. It has far too much Loomis (who really started to annoy me even by the end of the first film) and far too little Jamie Lee Curtis, who spends much of the film in a coma. I also still can’t really understand why they made Laurie his sister. It has never made sense and never will make sense. But at least Carpenter doesn’t pretend like it was the plan the whole time. Even he kinda thinks the twist is dumb and only did it because they needed a new storyline for the sequel. Despite this, I think overall the film comes out on the plus side as far as horror films go (not to mention horror sequels). I still like the hospital setting quite a lot and the kills are a nice mix of gory and silly. It makes me wish they made one more for a trilogy to finish the full Halloween night of mayhem. As for The Birds II: Land’s End, it actually lived up to expectations a bit. It’s a little slow going at first, but you can get by with just how much of a total dick one of the characters is and also just how much of a rip-off of Jaws the whole set up is. Shame, really, for a classic film to have a sequel reduced to a boilerplate rip-off decades later. But really the payoff is the end, which is just a batshit crazy scene of mayhem where people are full body burning left and right. Wasn’t expecting how enjoyable the experience would be. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! We are continuing to collect the films I’ve already seen before. I think I’ve seen Halloween II a few times. Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – At one point I decided I just wanted to watch a full horror series without waiting for BMT and so I consumed most of the Halloween series in the span of a few months. The preview is a revelation about the second Halloween though. At the time I was like “oh weird they continued the story and it was okay”, but the preview makes it clear Carpenter mostly did the film reluctantly and also forced them to make it gorier because he figured that was the direction horror in particular had gone between 1978 and 1981. I was genuinely surprised at how much of a hand Carpenter had with the odd direction the franchise took after the classic first film. What were my expectations? Well, I had seen the film before and mostly liked it. Given that it is, in fact, a bad movie, I figured with more horror franchise knowledge under my belt I would probably think it was a bad film like the critics did.

The Good – I do like the setting a lot. The setting of the hospital was a genius maneuver instead of running back the same suburban setting from the first film. I was somewhat surprised to realize just how much connective tissue from the first to the second there is, in particular the surprisingly varied methods of killing people and the way Michael displays the bodies all are very similar to the first film. The final full body burn is very impressive. Best Bit: The hospital setting.

The Bad – I cannot understand or believe how little they give Jamie Lee Curtis to do in this film. She basically doesn’t move or talk in the first hour of the film, and then mostly limps around barely being able to scream for the rest. Loomis is a jerk and dumb and I had forgotten how lame his character was until he ended up being the star of the film when outside of the hospital. Speaking of which, too much of the film takes place outside of the hospital, it should have all been inside the hospital with Loomis only showing up at the end. The kills in this one feel far more exploitative, and I think the entire thing would have been better served by a similarly slow and methodical pace of the first. Fatal Flaw: Too little Curtis.

The BMT – Yup, I can transparently see all of the issues this film had now that I know the rhythms of an 80s horror franchise. It tries to ratchet up the gore, but it feels exploitative. It fails to leverage its star, favoring a dialogue-less monster instead, which never works. It has far too much filler with Loomis wandering around. And then the twist is awful. And amazingly, from what I can glean, all of those decisions were Carpenter’s … I guess it makes sense given he didn’t want to so a second Halloween film, he wanted to do an anthology series instead. Did it meet my expectations? Absolutely. I kind of liked this film the first time I watched it. This time? I can transparently see all of the things they failed to do to keep the franchise going.

Roast-radamus – A solid Product Placement (What?) for the obviously placed Coca-Cola machines seen in the hospital. A very excellent Setting as a Character (Where?) for Haddonfield, Illinois which is where all of the original Halloween films take place (as that is where Michael Myers grew up and where he killed his sister in 1963). And an A+ Temporal Setting (When?) for the film taking place mostly on Halloween Night, 1978 (explicitly that year as it is explained that it is precisely 15 years after he killed his sister). Mostly closest to BMT I think, in that isn’t isn’t unpleasant to watch, just bemusing.

Prequel, Sequel, Remake – I think with a lot of sequels your best bet is a Remake. Mainly I think the key is setting it entirely in the hospital. Show Loomis finding the body missing and telling Laurie that the killer is still out there and to not let the doctors knock her out, that he’ll get there as soon as possible to prevent Michael from finding her. Then introduce the late-night skeleton crew at the hospital. From that point it is mostly the same as the film, except now Laurie is conscious and actively trying to rally the staff to defeat Michael because she knows he’s there somewhere. We see the staff picked off one by one (after they find the security guard missing … curious), and the remaining survivors corralled further and further into the dark hospital unable to escape. In the end Laurie and the young EMT friend find the staff killed and displayed like the girls in the first film, and just as Michael finds them Loomis comes bursting through the door and incapacitates Michael once again. Loomis explains that the police arrested him, suspicious as to how much he knew about Michael during the events of the first film, but they were convinced once the hospital’s phone lines were found to be cut. This sets up a concluding sequel which would take place entirely within the Myers home. Still called Halloween II.

You Just Got Schooled – Obviously I had to rewatch the classic Halloween (1978) prior to watching this film. And yeah, it is a classic for a reason. It is a lot different than the other films in the series though (even the second). It basically invents the Unstoppable Force as far as killers go (that might not be precisely true, but I think it is a plausible claim at least). But then the film takes absolute ages before anyone is killed. Mostly Myers can be seen stalking some of his victims and waiting around before finally starting to kill them. It works because it is not really a “slasher” film as the genre has now been defined. I also get why later entries in the series ended up going with the more early kills and more evenly paced kills. A. The film is, as I said, a classic and is probably one of my favorite horror films. Curtis is, in particular, amazing in the film.

Bring a Friend Analysis – Wow, this is getting long, but I can’t not talk about The Birds II: Land’s End. I hadn’t seen the original prior to the viewing, but did catch up on that as well (obviously a great film and quite a bit different than I imagined, I thought it took place on an island like Jaws). I think the makers of Birds II took to heart the idea of animals attacking during an otherwise intriguing family drama a little too much. The sequel is 95% the story of a family dealing with tragedy, and 5% “oh, wait, I forgot about the birds, quick put some birds in there for a second.” The film would have been boring except that the local newspaper editor/photographer, Frank, is an insatiable horndog who can’t stop hitting on Ted’s wife May even after being told multiple times about Ted’s difficulties dealing with the death of Ted and May’s son. It is just an incredibly aggressive and unyielding display which captured my interest in the most BMT way. B. Unusually high, but I think the combination of it being a made-for-tv sequel to a beloved film, and Frank makes for a film that as crazy as it sounds I would willingly watch again. Wild stuff.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Young Guns II Recap

Jamie

Billy the Kid is back, Jack! And boy howdy is it… a movie that was made. As the authorities in New Mexico try to reign in the remnants of the Regulators, they start arresting the whole gang, inadvertently bringing them back together. Back on the run, they are pursued by an old ally, Pat Garrett. Can they escape before it’s too late? Find out in… Young Guns II.

How?! Unfortunately this film is bookended by a weird sequence that supposes that the conspiracy theory that Billy the Kid survived to old age is true (hint: it’s not) but whatevs. We learn that after the events of the first film (which we all know by heart), Billy the Kid continues his wild ways with a new crew. Unfortunately, Doc Scurlock and Chavez are brought back into the mix as the authorities of New Mexico try to arrest and do away with Billy the Kid and his associates. Seeing the writing on the wall, Billy makes a deal with the Governor to get a pardon, but is arrested instead. As a result he doesn’t just escape jail, he also frees Doc and Chavez for one more go around. Like the asshole that he is, Billy promises that they’ll escape to Mexico, but instead leads the new gang around having fun. Meanwhile a former member of the gang, Pat Garrett, is offered the job of sheriff in order to hunt down Billy and the gang. He pursues them to a house of sin, where through trickery Billy and the gang escape again. Soon thereafter the gang learns that they were never heading to Mexico, but it’s too late… Garrett is there and most of the gang is killed trying to escape, including Chavez and Doc. Billy is captured and even though he ends up escaping he is sad to find the gang dead and scattered. Eventually cornered by Garrett again, Billy begs to just let him go on to Mexico and eventually he relents (confirming the conspiracy story). Thus Billy the Kid lives happily ever after… until the sequel! THE END.

Why?! Who knows. Billy the Kid is portrayed as a rambunctious kid with no plan and a death wish (which mostly just results in the deaths of everyone around him). There is no reason for anything in this film. They aren’t trying to get money or anything… just kinda a general sense of revenge and doing crazy stuff. At least the first had some reason for the events. Here Billy just comes off like a crazy asshole.

Who?! The funnest fact of all is that Jon Bon Jovi and Tom Cruise appear unbilled in the first Young Guns film. Even funner is that Jon Bon Jovi apparently was so thrilled with the experience that he came back for more, appearing unbilled and in Young Guns II AND did all of the songs for the soundtrack AND that was his debut solo album! The more I write about it the crazier it all seems. I can only assume that he and Estevez were like super pals or something.

What?! I think most people were probably put off by the scene where Billy the Kid decides to put away his childish ways and grow up, but then takes a swig of Mountain Dew and winks at the camera. But I thought it was a bold acting choice by Estevez. There is also a surprising number of props for sale for a film that pretty much everyone forgets exists… like check out this wanted poster for Doc that is apparently authentic and unfortunately sold out for the low, low price of $145.

Where?! New Mexico, baby. Very solid setting given that the state is somewhat rare and it’s kind of mentioned all the time. Historically necessary to the plot as well… I mean, I think I have to give this a solid A.

When?! Since this is a historical film, you would have to assume it sticks to the idea that this all took place in 1881. The bookends apparently take place in 1950, meaning that Emilio Estevez in old man makeup is portraying a… like 90 year old. Alright, that’s crazy town. What is he, Clint Eastwood? A-.

It’s super weird to realize that in the late 80’s there weren’t just major Westerns being made, but like hip and rad Westerns starring dope teen heartthrobs. The first film is a much better representation of that as it’s a tale of revenge (classic) and honestly, other than some funny opening sequences of everyone being like “wahoooo, shoot some guns,” is played pretty straight with solid acting all around. Estevez’s take on Billy is in particular quite good and there’s some funny bits in there as well. The sequel though lacks all of that purpose. No more revenge. No nothing really other than Billy and the gang getting hunted down. And they don’t even pay that off. Instead they just lean into the conspiracy that he was still alive. They could have made the film about how Billy had to die. He was a shooting star that was destined to fall. But nah, nothing matters and he’s alive as an old man in bad old man makeup looking like Jean Claude Van Damme a la The Quest. Don’t worry about the plot of the film because he survived and is just a shitty old man that led all his friends to their deaths… so I guess I’d sum it up by saying I wish it had something interesting to say and then maybe it wouldn’t have been totally forgotten to time. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! I cannot wait until they make Old Guns to finish up this trilogy (it is more likely than you think …). Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – My perception of this film was that it was going to be like … electric guitars and a “young actors version of a western in 1990”. Which admittedly would have been amazing and rad. The trailer and original film told a different story. As the original film was pretty good, I was intrigued as to why the second was considered so bad. What were my expectations? I guess for it to just be the first movie again? A tale as old as time as to why a sequel to a successful film ends up being panned by critics.

The Good – The acting in the film is still good, especially Estevez who I think created quite an interesting character with his giggly psychotic Billy the Kid (in both films). I would have been pretty skeptical, given how the first film ended, that they would have had much of a “true” story to tell in the second, but there was quite a lot to work with given the events that lead up to Billy the Kid’s death. And yeah, the true story aspect was interesting. During both films I found myself reading a ton of Billy the Kid history on wikipedia, and they seemed like they did a decent job with both films in the end. Best Bit: Interesting historical story.

The Bad – The worst part was probably the bookends (which you could maybe tell they knew about at the time since there is nary of whisper of old-man-Estevez in the marketing material), the dumb story of a con man pretending to be Billy the Kid in the 50s is just not very interesting. The film also just feels very muddled. They want to have this lingering question of Billy being alive at the end, when the actual interesting bit was the manhunt a la Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The whittled down ensemble is much less impressive in the second, and they also unnecessarily kill a bunch of them when that didn’t happen in real life which was annoying. Fatal Flaw: Bookend segments.

The BMT – As we go through sequels I think we’ve managed to capture quite a few films which had great / surprisingly good initial films and terrible / surprisingly bad sequels. That is obviously the trope, but it makes me wonder whether that is anomalous in BMT history. Anyways, this is a bad western, which is a rarity. But, it is also a little too genuine to be fun, so I doubt I’ll ever revisit it. Did it meet my expectations? It mostly defied them. I expected them to crank up the electric guitar to 1000% and lean into all of the worst bits of the first and create an abomination. Instead it was an interesting movie with decent acting which just failed to be well made and really sunk itself with the bookend segments. I wonder if it wouldn’t have been BMT at all without those bookends … we’ll never know.

Roast-radamus – Basically only can get Setting as a Character (Where?) for New Mexico … long ago we did The Host as New Mexico, a movie I genuinely just don’t remember the plot of. Why didn’t we do this movie? Anyways, closest to Good I think.

Prequel, Sequel, Remake – The obvious answer to the question is Prequel, as that is really the only place you can go with it. Prior to the first film you have Billy the Kid, orphan, gunslinger, and genuine psycho just starting out in life. Fifteen, working in a boarding house for food, and stealing whenever and whatever he can get his hands on. The story would mainly focus on his time in and around Bonita where he is stealing horses for a living and gaining his original Kid Antrim name, and several run ins with the eeeeeevil Francis Cahill (fictionalized, probably just a dick … I’ve read just the Wikipedia page). The film culminates with him shooting Cahill, turning himself in, and then, realizing his life is already over, laughing and escaping. The end of the film is him in a saloon in Lincoln County and asking someone who the dapper gentleman is. “Oh, that’s John Henry Tunstall, he raises cattle.” The end. Obviously it is called Youngest Gun.

You Just Got Schooled – And that is a perfect introduction to the review of the original Young Guns. First, I’ll say that I quite enjoyed the film. I was surprised that it is an actual western. I figured it was going to be a silly electric-guitar faux-western or something given the brat pack cast. And the story is very interesting. If you trust Wikipedia it seems like quite a good telling of the Lincoln County War which I hadn’t really heard of before as I hadn’t ever really read up on Billy the Kid before. Estevez’s performance in particular is really rather good. I’ve mentioned it a few times, but his psychotic giggling is just pitch perfect for a character where you are like “wait … is this guy a sociopath?” … he is. B+. Kind of like Wyatt Earp, it is a film mostly interesting because of its historical context, but enjoyable if you like westerns I think.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Problem Child 2 Recap

Jamie

Junior is back, Jack! And boy is he still a problem. After moving with his dad, Ben, to the divorce capital of the world, Junior is distressed to find his daddio is the object of affection for the villainess Lawanda. Teaming up with frenemy (and fellow problem child) Trixie, can Junior stop the potential wedding between Ben and Lawanda before it’s too late? Find out in… Problem Child 2.

How?! Junior and his dad, Ben, just need a change of scenery. Enter the Divorcee Capital of the US (Orlando?) where Ben is not just in demand, but literally an indescribable hunk. To make matters worse his grandpa shows up having lost everything in a bum business deal and is super lame. Junior is not happy about this unlikely turn of events and begins to act out again. He ruins a lemonade stand, he blows up a barbeque, and hypnotizes Grandpa’s dog, etc. etc. etc. As each of his dad’s hot dates show up, Junior finds creative, and often dangerous, ways to get them out of the picture. Little does he know that a storm is a-brewin’ in the form of the local bank owner. Oft-married (and oft-divorced) Lawanda has her eyes on the prize that is Ben Healy and will destroy all in her path to get him. Turns out Ben likes being waited on hand and foot by a rich, beautiful lady, and they get engaged. Even Grandpa is thrilled with the potential financial windfall that is heading the family’s way. Despondent, Junior finds a kindred spirit in another problem child, Trixie, and is excited to find that her mom is pretty dope and should probably be with his dad instead. They team up to ruin the wedding in a variety of ways. When this doesn’t work they instead just roll a giant boulder down the aisle and squash Lawanda, but not before she reveals her true colors to Ben. Ben is like “phew, thank god I didn’t marry that lady before a boulder squashed her,” and instead smooches Trixie’s mom. Then, realizing an opening when he sees one, Grandpa swoops in and starts smooching Lawanda. Finally (and this is real, so prepare yourselves), Trixie and Junior light a firecracker, shoot it into the wedding cake, it proceeds to fly up into the air and land on Grandpa and Lawanda, who then are shocked to find that Grandpa’s dog has made a giant poop. THE END.

Why?! That sweet cash, baaabbbbbyyyy. This sequel has no purpose other than to make money for everyone involved with no regard for human life or decency. I guess Ben Healy wants to get married again so that Junior has a mom, but Junior just wants fun dad time with the World’s Best Dad. In the end they split the difference and seemingly live happily ever after.

Who?! Twin film alert! There are not one, but two sets of twins in the film. Junior has a set of twins as neighbors named Dolly and Madison, which appears to be a joke on the Hostess brand of food. Either than or a joke about the First Lady of the US. There is also a brief commercial shown where Grandpa is in a hot tub with twins. Those actresses actually have appeared in a number of BMT qualifying films so look forward to seeing them again.

What?! I think the obvious winner here is the Love Rock, which is like a meteorite or something that crashed near the town and has a heart shaped, red-colored indentation on it. People make wishes on it. Unfortunately this is not a prop I’m seeing for sale, nor did they decide to make it a permanent fixture in Orlando, so presumably it was destroyed. I would have never let that happen.

Where?! It’s odd to encounter these films that have very clear settings sprinkled throughout the internet that are impossible to identify in the actual films. In this case, Problem Child 2 is apparently set in Oregon… that would be mystifying to anyone that actually watches the movie. It’s clearly shot in Orlando and Patrick astutely pointed me to some places (e.g. a phone book) where this is confirmed… so isn’t this set in Orlando? Usually when this happens it’s because in an interview the creators said it was set in Oregon, or the script sets it in Oregon, or someone one time thought it was set in Oregon, or a slight chance it’s actually set in Oregon and we missed it. But I don’t think so. I think this is set in Orlando. C-.

When?! I don’t recall seeing a specific time for the film, but it appears to be set right at the beginning of school. At least when Junior shows up at school and is skipped a few grades he ends up in class where the teacher is going around the classroom finding out what level everyone is operating at as if it’s just off of summer vacation. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it. C+.

Oooooooooooof. This is dog poo in my face. In fact it’s the giant dog poo at the end of the film right in my face. It is bizarre to an extreme degree, which at times can be fun. Like the carnival scene which descends into an absurd amount of puke flying around the screen on par with an SNL sketch. Otherwise, they destroyed every single spark of charm that remained from the first one and the actor playing Junior regressed to near unwatchability (presumably due to a combination of a bad script and a poorly chosen director). Add in a good dose of toilet humor and this is just no fun and somehow, despite dropping the problematic aspects of the first film, feels way more gross and unpleasant. You can really just watch the very end of the film (described above) to get the full picture of what this terrible, terrible film is all about. I honestly wonder how John Ritter got through it. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Problem Child was the surprise smash hit comedy sensation of 1990. Run it back!!!!! We’re going again. Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – I’m 90% sure we owned Problem Child on VHS when we were growing up. Problem Child 2 on the other hand … I think I just saw it several times when it was on cable. I’ve definitely seen it that way, because I also know that they cut out the two scenes involving comically large piles of dog shit. What were my expectations? Well I was hoping for it to be a surrealist delight like the first film. I fully expected it to be an unfunny surrealist nightmare though. I didn’t even like this film as a kid I don’t think.

The Good – Not much. I think the acting is still pretty solid given all the material they are working with. On occasion you get whiffs of the same charming weirdness from the first film (the scene with the animal control officers is amusingly odd for example). The film is worse in every respect compared to its predecessor though so it is difficult to point to anything as actually good with that comparison available. Best Bit: John Ritter.

The Bad – The film is grotesque in precisely the way that critics slammed the first one for (incorrectly I think). There is literally people drinking piss, the aforementioned giant piles of dog shit, a scene with so much vomit that the joke is merely the sheer volume of vomit in the scene, medical mutilation, and animal cruelty. The film is aggressively unfunny, so much so that it mostly ruins the scant charm of the lead child actor in the process. And obviously, when asking for a sequel, it was necessary to revert all character growth as well which is a shame. The whole thing feels like exactly what the film critics thought the first Problem Child was, when in fact they hadn’t seen anything yet. Fatal Flaw: Grotesque body humor.

The BMT – A marvel of our childhood at the very least, I’m quite glad I finally got to see these films back-to-back. They compliment each other very well. The first is a somewhat misunderstood not-really-kids’ movie. The second is the monstrosity that happens when you mix that formula with a cynical cash grab. They are beautiful in a way. Did it meet my expectations? Yeah, although I wish the second film was less gross. I would never dare to watch the film again just because it is just so gross to watch. No so with the first.

Roast-radamus – Maybe our first Twin Film (Who?) of the year for the neighbor twin girls that Junior antagonizes. Some decent Product Placement (What?) for things like Uhaul throughout. And a minor Setting as a Character (Where?) for Florida as the phonebook prominently suggests that they are, in fact, in the Orlando area. Wait a second, is that why there are so many divorcees and cougars around? I just got that. Closest to Bad I think.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Since we are going to ignore the direct-to-video third film, let’s go with a Sequel. Junior is all grown up, thirty, and divorced. He worked for his ex-wife’s father so obviously his insurance career is in shambles as well. Adrift he is moping around when who shows up? His step-grandmother Lawanda, with his 9-year-old uncle Ben in tow. It turns out his grandfather, now 90, had left Lawanda for a younger woman and with the kid. Well, like nephew-like-uncle I suppose, because the kid is a nightmare! He terrorizes the neighborhood, wreaking havoc on Junior’s life as he tries to win his wife back. Through Ben, Junior meets a well meaning teacher at the local elementary school and they hit it off. Vengeance on his father-in-law is had, lessons are learned, and Junior and Ben decide to have a go at being a family with Junior officially adopting Ben from Lawanda. Problem Child Generations. Exclusively released to local libraries on VHS.

You Just Got Schooled – I was thinking I would skip this part, but what the hey, I decided to watch The Bad Seed (1956) which the writers of Problem Child claimed the film was vaguely based on (but as a comedy). It is hard to assess old films, this one in particular is two hours, but in reality is a neat 90-minute film where they decided to tell-not-show a bunch of stuff that would have been left unsaid in a a film made in the 80s or 90s. The film is a weird inspiration because the child is the polar opposite of Junior. In The Bad Seed Rhoda is an 8-year-old girl who has a severe temper, appears older and wiser than her age, and is a compulsive liar. A textbook sociopath (given the definition at the time I assume). Junior on the other hand delights in telling you that not only did he do the things he’s accused of, he laughs uncontrollable about it and would do it again with glee. Junior I think would be considered precocious more than anything else. Rhoda is a monster. I liked the movie, but it is slow going, and you’ll get the idea they are going after about 2/3rds of the way through. B, a solid 50s “horror” film in the end.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Problem Child Recap

Jamie

Junior is a child and also is a problem. As a result he keeps getting returned to the orphanage. That is until Ben and Flo Healy show up looking to enter the exclusive parental club. While Junior wreaks havoc across the land, driving everyone around him crazy, Ben keep on killing him with love and kindness. Can Ben help Junior feel loved and change his ways before it’s too late? Find out in… Problem Child.

How?! Junior spent his childhood shuttled from home to home until ending up in an orphanage where his troublesome ways continued. The nuns have been driven insane and just when it seems like Junior will be all alone forever, in walks Ben Healy and his wife Flo. They are a couple desperate for a child, Ben so he can be the perfect all-American dad, Flo so that they can start getting invited to the exclusive parties, dinners, and trips that other families partake in. Junior seems like a quick and easy fix to all of their problems, right? Wrong. Junior continues his terrible ways as he ruins camping trips, birthday parties, burns down his room, injures his grandpa, etc. etc. etc. It all comes to a head when Junior injures a multitude of children during a baseball game and our boy Ben realizes that maybe, just maybe, Junior is bad news. When they confront the manager of the orphanage they are appalled to find that Junior has been returned over and over from other families. Unlike Flo, though, Ben is more appalled at himself. How could he, all-American dad, be unable to give the love necessary to help Junior? But when he goes out to tell Junior that they won’t be taking him back, Junior doesn’t believe them and drives away in the family car, destroying his grandpa’s business in the process. Suffering a mental breakdown, Ben doesn’t realize that things have gone from bad to far far worse when a serial killer that Junior has been corresponding with shows up at the front door. Thinking he’s Junior’s uncle, Flo woos him as a way to try to take Junior (or maybe just her) away with him. Waking up to find Junior and Flo gone and a ransom note scrawled on the wall Ben snaps out of it just in time to race to the circus (for real) and attempt to pay the ransom and get Junior back. The serial killer attempts to escape, but not so fast! Ben and Junior super team chase down the serial killer and stop him just in time. Now best buds, the father and son super team head off into the sunset together. THE END.

Why?! Probably the sweetest thing about the film is Ben Healy and just how desperately he wants to be the bestest dad in the world ever. The implication is that his own father is cold and distant (despite selling sporting equipment geared to the father-son experience) and Ben is determined that his own son will never lack for love. This unerring love for his son ultimately wins out and saves Junior. Probably we could drill pretty deep into the root of Junior’s behavioral issues. Despite the implication at the beginning of the film that he is evil from the get go, we get the sense that a lot of his behavior is more about the feeling that he is unlovable.

Who?! Dennis Dugan has a long history of BMT films. Not surprising as he’s one of Adam Sandler’s favorites. This was his feature directing debut and as a result the first of many cameos he made in films he’s directed. I think we’ve done about eight of his films and I believe he made cameos in all of them. Impressive.

What?! Smiley Pies obviously has a very, very prominent product placement (in my memories at least). Patrick points out Pepsi as the actual most prominent product placement, but for me the product that stands the test of time is Penn tennis balls as there is a scene where a car crashes into a giant display case of tennis balls and it’s burned there forever… actually every moment of this film is indelibly burned into my memory.

Where?! Very clearly takes place in Illinois in a town called Cold River, which is obviously made up. Impressive number of signs and posters for the location given that it’s not real. Not in the least bit relevant to the plot, but it is prominent. B+.

When?! Patrick pointed out to me that this could be one of the few Fake Holiday Film Alerts we’ll come across. The baseball scene occurs during Founder’s Day in Cold River, which being a fake place must mean it’s a fake holiday. Which is bizarre in a great way. Really there are a large number of dates thrown around in the film via newspaper, but the most solid seems to be from the poster advertising the Circus which would place the film at the end of June or beginning of July, which tracks with the camping trip, baseball, etc. B+

Problem Child is everything I remember it is. It is just nonstop one liners and gags by a small child. It makes me wonder if I maybe underrate Dennis Dugan as a director given how much I loathe some of his films (looking at you Grown Ups(es)). The fact is that he took a kid that basically never acted before and spun some really entertaining gold. He obviously was helped by a very game John Ritter who is actually amazing in this film. He’s just so goddamn likeable that you basically ignore a pretty problematic concept (but weren’t they all back in the day). I have to acknowledge that the film’s basic plot is dark in a pretty gross way. The opening scene is shocking as we see Junior shuttled from home to home before being unceremoniously dropped at an orphanage. And throughout the film there is a stigmatization of adoption that is unacceptable by today’s standards. But all this doesn’t change that it basically lived up to my memories. It is quite entertaining and the sheer number of memorable quotes is impressive. I think the first Problem Child is actually… not that bad. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Smiley Pies!? I haven’t had one of these in FIF-teen years! Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – I think I could have written the preview from memory, I’ve seen the film so many times. I looked up the kid actor who played Junior and really not very involved in acting after the films themselves. He is a great actor though given the part, but I’ll get to that later. What were my expectations? A blast from the past. I’m not joking when I say I’ve seen the film at least a dozen times. Which is kind of weird, as this simultaneously feels like a kids’ film which has become completely forgotten at this point.

The Good – The actor who plays Junior is really good considering the part was written for Macauley Culkin. He does a decent facsimile of the wiser-than-his-years mischief for a not-very-well-known child actor. The acting top-to-bottom is actually really good. And the surreal nature of the whole film is also just … it makes it really unique. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but as mean-spirited and weird as the film can get, there is an undeniably interesting point-of-view to it all. A comedic Bad Seed, as the screenwriters say, which I would say they nailed. Best Bit: Junior and John Ritter.

The Bad – Now, I say a comedic Bad Seed is interesting, but that doesn’t necessarily make it good. It is a very weird film, and almost definitely not a kids’ film … and yet it operated under the guise of a kids’ film. Which makes it unsurprising that critics thought it was abhorrent and that everyone involved thought it would bomb. The film isn’t really funny in any capacity, and Junior’s behavior at times is, indeed, abhorrent and unpleasant to watch. Fatal Flaw: Pushes things too far.

The BMT – On one hand I would say that they could have easily edited and reigned by Junior’s behavior and created a more tolerable mainstream hit I think. But then, Problem Child wouldn’t be the bizarre boundaries-pushing masterpiece that it is. I would argue though that this first one is actually really good, as long as you buy into the surreal weirdness of the cartoon world the screenwriters create. Did it meet my expectations? Yes, it is always odd to watch a film I watched constantly as a kid in BMT. I was pleasantly surprised with this one and I very much enjoyed watching it again.

Roast-radamus – A solid Product Placement (What?) for Pepsi throughout the film, not least of which prominently displayed during the baseball game (which, despite taking place on Founder’s Day, is not a secret holiday, more like a fake holiday). A really really good Setting as a Character (Where?) for Cold Water, Illinois. This film is really really Illinois which is excellent, but then also there is a giant statue of the founder Carl Coldwater outside of the adoption agency which is awesome. This is somehow closest to Good, don’t argue it just it, sue me I like the film.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Seeing as there are already multiple sequels and a television cartoon there is only one way to go, backwards! The Prequel goes full period piece, it is the late 50s, and Big and Little Ben are amoral travelling salesmen who will do whatever to earn a buck. The story centers around the arrival of the Healy’s in Cold Water. Big Ben places Little Ben in the local orphanage and gets him adopted out to a rich childless family where he begins to terrorize the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Big Ben reenters town pretending to be a local returning from war to find his young wife dead and only son adopted. The plan is for Little Ben to terrorize the couple into un-adopting him, and then Big Ben would exploit the shame and humiliation to blackmail them. In the end Little Ben realizes that they (gasp!) love him, and no matter what he does they will always love him! He runs away to the local circus where a friendly clown tells him that all families are different and he shouldn’t hate his father for their life of crime, that the best he can do is grow up, have a son, and love him as much as he can. Little Ben returns to town where Big Ben promptly turns him over to the rich couple for the reward money they’ve offered for his safe return. They are touched by the young family, unadopt Little Ben, and let Big Ben keep the money. He uses it to start his sports store and they settle down to a normal life. The End. Cold Water Grifters: A Problem Child Story.

You Just Got Schooled – Now what are the chances Problem Child had some weird cartoon series … 100% it turns out! I watched the first episode of Problem Child, the early 90s cartoon series. The episode is called Toys Will Be Toys. This cartoon is, first of all, terrible. But even besides that it has nothing to do with the movie it claims to be an adaptation of. Junior doesn’t seem to be an orphan, his father has the same red hair as him. Junior has a weird mutant possum pet, and a best friend who’s a girl not-named Trixie. His grandfather is the mayor, which very specifically didn’t happen in the films. And his father is a cop. Oddly the writers of the films did make the show, although I think it was drawn by a Spanish company which maybe explains it getting a bit lost in translation. The episode itself is pretty silly, Junior wants a toy bazooka, and scrimps and saves to buy the toy, only for it to turn out to all be elaborate false advertising. The episode ends with Junior getting revenge on the toy company president. D. Actually, maybe the worst adapted cartoon series I’ve seen. The Back to the Future show is way way better.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1 Recap

Jamie

Twilight is back, Jack! And you best believe Edward and Bella are getting married and having some vampire sex. But uh oh! They didn’t know that she could get pregnant! Gulp. Now they have to figure out how to save her life. Can they stop the little vampire baby and/or the local hunky werewolves before it’s too late? Find out in… The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1.

How?! I mean, that short synopsis really sums it up pretty well. That’s cause we open with an extended sequence of Bella and Edward’s very fancy backyard wedding. Then we transition to an even more extended sequence of Bella and Edward’s very fancy honeymoon on a secluded island in Brazil. There Bella is pretty much ready to get it on. Unfortunately their night of monstrous love making leaves the room in shambles, Bella bruised for her efforts, and the viewer decidedly uncomfortable at what they have just witnessed. The rest of the trip they apparently just play chess against each other while Bella is none too thrilled with her sexually repressed vampire husband. Things go from bad to worse when Bella discovers that she’s pregnant and things are progressing at a far faster clip than anyone could expect. She returns to Forks where Edward and his family mull over what to do while she steadily wastes away as her unborn child literally sucks the life out of her. Jacob swings by and is pretty distraught at what has occurred because part of the werewolf code (that we all know and love) says that now his tribe has to kill everyone now. So he breaks off from the pack and sets up shop protecting Bella. They are able to keep Bella alive by feeding her blood (you know… cause the baby’s a vampire), but when Bella gives birth things don’t go well. To save her life Edwards injects his venom into her in order to (finally) make her a vampire. In order to save the baby from his fellow werewolves, Jacob imprints on the child named Renesmee. This ends the feud and we conclude with Bella opening her eyes for the first time as a vampire. THE END.

Why?! Why, indeed. I mean.. I guess to progress the story somewhat and make a boatload of money. As for the characters, love mostly. Although, while I laughed while reading the first book about how Edward is a monster for wanting to “bite” Bella and ultimately can’t “bite” Bella until they are married (wink, wink), this film gets a bit confusing. Even after they are married Edward seems the be pretty adamant that postmarital sex is also monstrous and off the table… so I kind of lost the thread on what the author was ultimately trying to say about love and sex.

Who?! Interesting fact that this is the only Twilight sequel where the author of the series Stephanie Meyer chose to make an appearance. She was one of the attendees of Bella and Edward’s wedding. Oh and I’d also like to note that Taylor Lautner, Kellen Lutz, and Maggie Grace all make appearances. Just a few of our faves.

What?! You know things are real when entire articles are written about the extravagant lengths companies went to to be featured as part of Bella and Edward’s wedding/honeymoon. Gotta get a piece of that sweet, sweet monstrous postmarital lovemaking that Edward immediately regrets and makes Bella feel bad about. Anywho, here’s the article.

Where?! We get a nice split here between Forks, Washington per usual and not-so-steamy Brazil. It’s interesting that no one in the film acknowledges the kinda weird fact that Bella and Edward honeymoon in the same place he hid away in the second film… and you know… decided to kill himself when he mistakenly thought Bella had died. Uh… romantic. A-. Washington has always played a role in the film’s concept.

When?! Bella graduated in the previous entry and without school you do get a bit unmoored from the timeline. The wedding, honeymoon, and pregnancy? Seems like it all occurs in the insular world of the Cullens without much temporal reference. So I can’t really remember if this is all during the summer and then into the following autumn, but that would be my guess without going back and watching the film again. D.

I’m of two minds about the Twilight series. The first and the third ones are silly but ultimately not really as bad as they are sometimes made out to be. Particularly the first one. The second is not good, but at least it’s kinda weird. So really the series is probably closer to After than Fifty Shades of Grey (a point of reference we all understand), while also admittedly not being my cup of tea. However, this pretty clearly crosses the line to actually bad. It just churns through a wedding, a honeymoon, and Bella’s pregnancy without much else happening. By splitting to book into two films they have a lot more time to meditate on postmarital sex, the idea of turning someone into a vampire, and several conversations of how and if to save Bella’s life when it becomes clear that she has a very real chance at dying in childbirth. These are not the questions I’d like to be pondering when watching my sexy vampire/werewolf love triangle soap operas and make it a tough watch. My final conclusion is this: how is it possible we still haven’t gotten to the sexy part?… what’s that? Even the last book isn’t sexy?! What are we even doing here? Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! We are finishing off The Twilight Saga. If you are Team Jacob, I swear to god … I’m genuinely curious how that could be. He’s the worst! Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – Well, the preview is a bit moot since I watched the entire series before. I think it was because Doug Benson was doing it for his podcast or something? I mainly remember this one being mind-numbingly boring. Nothing happens. So that’s something to look forward to. What were my expectations? To be bored, BUT I also knew I would end up watching the third and fifth ones and those are alright, so it wasn’t all bad.

The Good – The even numbered entries in the series seem like they want to explore the lore of the series (and, ahem, the more overt religious themes which I’ll ignore), and it is actually halfway decent. Bella becomes pregnant and then it begs the question as to why human-vampire hybrids don’t exist if they are, indeed, possible. Beyond just that vampires tend to kill humans they have sex with, it would appear that a big issue with it is that no one really seemed to realize that the human mother would need to drink blood to bring the pregnancy to term. Seems obvious, but it at least provides an okay explanation as to why a hybrid hasn’t been seen for perhaps hundreds of years. Best bit: Okay lore building.

The Bad – We could, of course talk about Jacob, a fully grown adult, “imprinting” on a literal baby … it is supposed to be a godfather relationship, but still ultra creepy. We could talk about the shades of spousal abuse (and battered woman syndrome) that pervades the honeymoon. Or maybe the overt religious themes surrounding the pregnancy. But I choose to merely point out that nothing super interesting happens in the film and it ends with maybe the worst fight scene in the entire series involving a dozen wolves fighting a dozen vampires in the front yard of the Cullens and it looks like garbage. Fatal flaw: Boring and terrible looking.

The BMT – When I watched this series through the first time I was convinced this was the worst of the bunch. Nothing happens. Watching it again, I think at the very least having Edward around (unlike the second) and thus having one of the two best actors involved in the series around is a saving grace. And while I think it is kind of weird, the overt religious themes of this one at least gives the audience something to mull over while watching CGI wolves fight CGI vampires at the end. Ultimately this is probably second worst. It is a bad movie, but not as bad as I remembered it somehow. Did it meet my expectations? I think with some distance from the series I’ve come to appreciate that while bizarre, the religious themes of the series are at least not-boring. And so I wasn’t nearly as bored as I thought I would be while watching the film … but it is still mostly boring because there is only one terrible looking fight scene. Everyone knows you need at least one big blowout fight with decapitations for a Twilight film to be good.

Roast-radamus – I can only really give it a Setting as a Character (Where?) for Forks, Washington. As usual, the dreary raininess of the pacific northwest is center stage of a Twilight film, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. In the end the film is I think closest to BMT, which is a surprise since it is boring, but I think the series as a whole is an interesting watch from a teen romance / bad movie perspective and that makes it worth it.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Please no … I guess the best option is prequel though? Because then you could pick up a story involving the Cullens from prior to the series. Well, what is super in right now? That’s right, 80s nostalgia (is that still in? I might be a few years behind here, but whatever). Set it in the 80s with a comical 80s ecological villain who wants to just chop down all those trees and destroy the Cullen’s hunting ground. Oh no! Working with a gang of eco-protesters, the Cullens need to stop the logging company, while keeping their vampire secret under wraps. The Twilight Legacy: Montgomery Gadzooks and the Lumbering Lumberjacks. Oh, did I mention my 80s villain is called Montgomery Gadzooks? Also this is actually just a kids’ cartoon starring the Cullens. Not the worst idea I’ve ever had.

You Just Got Schooled – You can’t watch the 4th film without the 3rd and 5th can you? First up, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. A pretty solid entry to the series. It brings all the characters back to Forks (the fatal flaw of the second film), gives a ton of vampire fighting and decapitations, and accelerates directly into the final film(s). Obviously Jacob is a brooding weirdo and the worst, but on a positive note he also gets continually dunked on by Edward throughout the film, so that’s nice. B-. I would actually happily watch several of these films again (and I have). It is the opposite of Star Trek, every odd one is good. Remembering The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 the only thing that came to mind really was the big battle. There is a lot more to it, although it mainly is a who’s who of random cameos (Rami Malek and Lee Pace being the most notable I think). There is also a quite effective twist at the end and out of all of the films it was the most entertaining (maybe because like 70 people get their heads broken off?) and I think balances the lore building with the action very well. A solid B+ I think. Very funny that arguably the best and worst films in the franchise were the two part finale.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

The Rage: Carrie 2 Recap

Jamie

Rachel is already a bit of an outcast, so when her BFF commits suicide and she ends up in the corsshairs of the coolest kids in school things go from bad to worse. Unfortunately for them Rachel isn’t any ordinary girl and her rage unlocks her supernatural powers. Can her rage be stopped (and maybe still get the guy) before it’s too late? Find out in… The Rage: Carrie 2.

How?! Rachel isn’t Carrie, which is confusing given the title of the film. But don’t worry, she’s Carrie’s sister, so that makes sense… other than the timeline being decades off. Anywho, forget all that. Just remember that Rachel is Carrie and totally has telekinetic powers. This will become relevant much later in the story, though, because at first she’s just a regular ol’ high school student. When her best friend commits suicide as a direct result of a group of football players’ gross game of hooking up with as many girls as possible, Rachel turns over some photographic evidence against one of them. This puts her in the crosshairs of the gang’s ire and as a result the school guidance counselor, who knew the original Carrie, gets increasingly concerned. Meanwhile, one of the popular guys, Jesse, begins to grow close to Rachel and he tries to stop his fellow players from bullying her. They all agree and play nice, but it’s all a ruse. They plan a romantic getaway for Jesse and Rachel and secretly film it. Then they set it up so after a big football game Rachel is whisked away to the post-game party without Jesse. Stranded with her tormentors, they play the tape of her and Jesse’s tryst much to her embarrassment… and rage! With her powers revealed she totally destroys everyone and the whole party becomes a scene of horror. Jesse arrives at the last moment and is able to calm her down enough to stop the horror, but Rachel is crushed when the house they are in collapses. Years later we see that Jesse is still terrorized by his memories of Rachel thus starting the cycle towards Carrie 3: Still Ragin’. THE END.

Why?! Rachel just seems to want to live her life, but it’s hard when you have supernatural powers that you are trying to keep in check. Everyone else wants to either help or hurt her and not much in between. Obviously this doesn’t turn out great for everyone involved.

Who?! We get some nice archival footage here in order to tie everything to the original Carrie. Sissy Spacek obviously makes an appearance in these flashbacks and is immediately the biggest star in the film. The only other notable thing is that the primary antagonist is played by Dylan Bruno who happened to go to MIT graduating in 1994 with a degree in Environmental Engineering. He then played a character on Numb3rs that also went to MIT. Fun facts.

What?! The “sex book” angle was an interesting one. It’s a ripped-from-the-headlines trope that comes up with regularity in tv and film. In a wild coincidence I was also watching Riverdale at the same time and the third episode of that show is also a “sex book” plot. It’s based on a California event about a group of high schoolers who called themselves the Spur Posse and I’ll just stop there. Terrible people and a terrible name.

Where?! There is an aspect of the plot that would likely necessitate it takes place in California, but I’m not going to go into that mostly because they make it clear it takes place in the same town as the original Carrie. That film is no doubt set in Maine and as a result I won’t even entertain the possibility that this one isn’t set in Maine. So Maine it is. It’s worth mentioning though that the film was not originally written as a sequel to Carrie, but rather was changed to fit the Carrie lore. So likely the original script was set in California. B-.

When?! It’s the beginning of the football season so we know it’s early Fall. There are a bunch of football schedules posted around town in a bunch of scenes that declare “We Support Bulldog Football.” In one such scene it appears like the first game of the season occurs on September 27th… so that is somewhat of an exact date and makes sense with the rest of film. It’s always fun to find something like this B-.

There were two things I kinda dug about this film. One is that I realized that I’m a sucker for any kind of high school drama. I actually would have almost preferred this was just an episode of The OC and all the paranormal mumbo jumbo didn’t factor in. But alas… it’s unfortunately a Carrie sequel. The second is that I appreciated that they went for it in the final scene. It needed to be fun and horror-like in order to make up for the complete lack of any of that stuff for 95% of the run time. It did a pretty good job on delivering. Gory with some fun kills. As for absolutely everything else in the film? Amateur hour. Second week in a row where I was scratching my head wondering how this even made it to theaters. But that wasn’t the worst bit. It’s the half-hearted attempt to make a Carrie sequel out of something that clearly wasn’t written as such. Rachel even being Carrie’s half sister is quite the stretch given that in the book Carrie’s dad is long dead and even in the movie he’s long gone having run out on the family. So you’re saying he came back to town, impregnated another woman and then ran away again… by why? Why the same exact town? Makes you wonder whether you could even make a telekinetic high school student film… or would it be rejected from the jump because it’s too similar to Carrie? Is that plot now totally off the table other than the occasional film they then retcon into a bullshit sequel? Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! Carrie was so nice they made it twice. Only the second time it was considerably worse and about goths and stuff. Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – The trailer looks like a television movie. It has television actors in it. It is a sequel to a beloved horror film from the 70s based on a beloved horror book by the quintessential horror author. And yet … it was released to theaters. The 90s man. What were my expectations? Uh … well, I fully expected to just watch Carrie again, but with cheesy 90s trash thrown everywhere and probably a heavy metal soundtrack maybe? A remake in all but name.

The Good – The reskin of the Carrie story works in its own 90s way. The outsider goes from being a sheltered weirdo, to, effectively, a goth. Combine that with the bizarre aggressiveness of the football team and the whole package works … as a television movie. All of this is “good” in the sense that all of this is not released to theaters as a Carrie sequel. I think it is important to make that caveat. Best Bit: The main character.

The Bad – Rachel being Carrie’s half-sister is an obvious twist that begs way more questions than it answers and provides no interesting lore. Like … is Ralph White telekinetic? Is it genetic? Do all of his children have this gift? Are there other strange psychic powers in this world (… does this take place in the world of The Shining, I guess I would think so)? They are interesting questions, but the twist is so half-hearted that it gives nothing in return. The ripped-from-the-headlines sex book is gross, a pretty bleak blast-from-the-past. And the direction is terrible, a hodge-podge of restless camera movements and unnecessary black-and-white nonsense. Fatal Flaw: Dumb twist.

The BMT – If this was merely a made-for-television sequel/remake of Carrie it would be a whole lotta nothing. But as a genuine released-to-theaters sequel to Carrie it is an abomination. I wanted very much to like a lot of the film, especially the somewhat interesting Rachel as played by Emily Bergl, but the entire thing feels like a weird joke. Almost a parody of the source material / Stephen King in general. Did it meet my expectations? Yeah, it is basically a Carrie clone masquerading as a sequel. I guess they do a decent job in updating the main character / triggering event to something a bit more 90s (goth / secret sex tape), but that is about it.

Roast-radamus – In reality the only good superlative is Worst Twist (How?) for the inevitable reveal that our orphaned hero Rachel is Carrie’s half-sister. Closest to Bad in the end I think, as much as I wanted to find all of this very amusing, it is kind of a nothing movie that I could never see myself watching ever again.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – Well … we’ve already had a sequel and a remake to Carrie. So I guess we are just left with a prequel. And Ralph White is ripe for the big screen treatment. Let’s see, given Carrie’s age in the book it isn’t absurd to think that Ralph White could have been involved in World War II, so let’s go with that. He’s a soldier in the European theater during the push to Berlin near the end of the war. While travelling through a German village he meets a young woman who he falls in love with. But tragedy strikes, his platoon mates (who despise him), are determined to play a trick on him during the final night in the town (the same night he and the young woman consummate their tryst). Embarrassing Ralph (they’re all going to laugh at you! But in german) he goes insane and levels the town. The army is convinced that Ralph is just the lucky survivor of one of the final battles of the war, and he is sent home, disillusioned about love with his new power awakened. But, what a twist! We see later that the young woman miraculously survived … as did her child, destined to have the same powers that Ralph has! Ba-ba-baaaaaaaaaaaa. Carrie: Origins is basically the only good name, although an amusingly cryptic and simple Ralph White would also be fun. Everyone would be like “am I supposed to know who Ralph White is? Oh, it’s Carrie’s dad? Weird.”

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Highlander: Endgame Recap

Jamie

Kell is the new immortal on the block gaining power by quickening up the wazoo. But Conner MacLeod and his best bro Duncan have plan. Can’t get killed by Kell if you’re already dead (think about it) and if you’re dead then the other can gain your quickening skillz. Can Duncan stop Kell (and perhaps get the girl) before it’s too late? Find out in… Highlander: Endgame.

How?! This shall be my greatest challenge ever. Remember the whole prize thing, well once again forget that Conner ever won that. Instead let’s start at the beginning where Conner, newly immortal, returns to his hometown. Considered a monster he is captured and his mother is burned at the stake. Enraged, Conner escapes and destroys the whole village, including the local priest, Kell. Years later he befriends a fellow immortal from the clan MacLeod, Duncan, and they begin decades of adventure together, obviously never mentioned in any previous installments of the franchise. Anywho, they meet up in NYC and are best bros, but tragically Conner’s adopted daughter is killed in an explosion set off by *gasp* the also immortal Kell (what a twist!). A grief stricken Conner then hides away in The Sanctuary, a place where The Watchers lock away immortals to keep Kell from winning the ultimate prize. But that doesn’t exactly work as Kell breaks into The Sanctuary and murders everyone (or does he?). Our boy Duncs goes to investigate but has to battle Kell and his army of immortals and is nearly killed. Instead he is captured by The Watchers who want to compel him to stay locked away like Conner. Duncs is like no way and with the help of some friends he escapes. Once freed he finds that Conner is actually alive, being saved for last by Kell as a form of revenge. Duncan also now knows that his former boo Kate is amongst Kell’s army and they flirt and stuff, but Kate can’t forgive him for the eternity of pain Duncan inflicted on her by turning her immortal (wait, what?). While Kell gathers strength by Quickening to the x-treme via the beheading of his army, Conner and Duncan fight one last time so that Conner, tired of his immortal life, can sacrifice himself to give his Quickening strength to Duncan. In a final climactic fight, Kell and Duncan face off and, duh, Duncs tots wins for sure. In the end we see that Kate has also survived and is ready to bone Duncan for the next 1000 years or whatever. THE END.

Why?! To win the prize allegedly. Although no matter how many times someone wins the prize they don’t seem to actually win the prize and then eventually they die. Makes you wonder whether there is even a prize… or is the ultimate prize really the friendships Conner made along the way (awww).

Who?! Two interesting casting choices here. Damon Dash, cofounder of Roc-A-Fella Records, made his screen debut in the film as one of Kell’s immortals. Probably ended up being his biggest film too, which is interesting. The wrestler The Edge also made a brief appearance in his feature debut… also the biggest thing he ever did.

What?! The Prize and the general immortal storyline is vague enough to probably constitute a MacGuffin on their own. Although not in the traditional sense. And hold up… you’re seriously telling me that Kell’s fake decapitated head went up for auction and didn’t get sold?! I can’t wait until I’m rich enough to need subjects of conversation for my rich person cocktail parties. “You know what this is?” I will say, pointing to a prop head that looks startlingly like Damodar from Dungeons & Dragons.

Where?! A lot of the film is set in New York City and Scotland, like the original. Some brief moments in Europe, but really the NYC aspect of Highlander is fun to have preserved. I have such nostalgia for the first one and the kinda grimy Madison Square Garden wrestling match in the beginning and stuff. It’s great. B

When?! Superb Secret Holiday Film Alert as this is explicitly set during Christmas. At first I was like “hmm, is that a Christmas tree in the background?” and then a minute later a character was quipping “Merry Christmas” to a dude just before he killed him. It is glorious. It’s just too bad that the film is such a piece of shit or I would say pair it up with Cobra and Turbulence and have a very merry Christmas trilogy. Also interesting the Highlander wiki has the film set in 2004… probably something to do with the TV timeline or whatever. A- just for Xmas sake.

I cannot accept that this film was actually released to theaters. It is straight up incomprehensible. Even for giant Highlander fans it would be incomprehensible. I have watched the critically reviled second entry enough to have actual opinions on it… like I have a whole theory that a good cut of Highlander 2 could be made, but in fact has never been made. But despite how much I have thought about the franchise, this fourth entry had me scratching my head wondering whether I was supposed to already know the subtle nuances of highlander lore they seemed to take as a given. Had I overestimated my Highlander acumen? Well I soon learned this was supposed to bridge nearly a decade of the Highlander tv series and finally bring Conner and Duncan MacLeod together. Ah! What everyone across the country was clamoring for! A continuation of the straight-to-syndication show that people probably caught momentarily while taking a sick day that one time. No wonder they released it to 1500+ theaters. Anyway, the movie makes no sense and looks exactly like what it is… a 90’s straight-to-syndication TV series. On a positive note, I actually didn’t mind the final Conner and Duncan fight, it was kind of sweet to show how Conner was ready to die for the fate of humanity after years of losing so many people he loved, and there was some surprisingly good martial arts, but I just can’t shake the fact that they thought this was a good idea. Highlander’s greatest strength was rising from the ashes to reset and forget the tragically misguided last entry in the series… it’s the only way you can get through something like Highlander 2 to claim the vaunted prize: a syndicated TV show. And yet once that prize was attained they decided we must remember everything forever. No wonder the immortal series finally died. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! There can only be one! … left, there is only one Highlander movie left to do, and it is Endgame. Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – There can only be one! Or four or whatever. The most intriguing thing about the film was just how much of the film seemed like Highlander: The Series: The Movie. That, that seems crazy. Because there was six seasons of that show and it ended two years before this film was made … so they wouldn’t actually do that right? What were my expectations? Totally incomprehensible nonsense. There is no other way you can make a Highlander sequel and you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Good – There is a genuinely good martial arts scene in the middle of this film. So good, in fact, that I’m fairly convinced that Donnie Yen choreographed it. This isn’t the worst of the bunch, surprisingly. Luckily I brushed up on the lore from the television series so I didn’t have too much trouble following what was actually an impossible to follow plot. And Lambert and even Adrian Paul I think were quite good, or at least, it wouldn’t have really felt like a Highlander film without them. Best Bit: That one fight scene.

The Bad – The madmen did it, they made a movie that was the fourth in a franchise, but also the direct sequel to a six season syndicated television series, and then they released it to 1500 theaters. How is such a thing possible? What were they doing in the 90s where they thought releasing a sequel to a television show to kick off another television show required a theatrical release. Bananas. As a theatrical film it looks bad, it is directed poorly, most of the actors are bad, most of the fight scenes are bad, and the whole thing makes no sense unless you had happened to watch the television show. What the hell is happening?! That’s some wild stuff. Fatal Flaw: Six seasons of television as required viewing for a sequel to an 80s film …

The BMT – In many ways this film is legendary. A late sequel to a series we’ve done in three parts to finish it off. It is maybe the only direct sequel to a television series where you have to watch the show first or else it makes no sense. Martial arts, and Christopher Lambert, and quickenings. The whole thing is just a wild ride while also impossible to recommend. How do you tell someone “man, if you think about just how weird it is that the television show is required to watch this movie … then you’ll get it.” Hard sell. Did it meet my expectations? I think it exceeded them in every way. And after all that you want to hear a wild thing? I kind of dug the film! Or at least I liked it better than the third, and it is more well put together than the second. Really weird.

Roast-radamus – A for real deal Secret Holiday Film (When?) because the climax of this film is set during Christmas in maybe the best way possible! There is an extremely quick moment where a guy is going to interfere with the immortals, and you can see Christmas decorations in the background, and then another guy shoots him and is like “Merry Christmas”!!!!!!! Great stuff. Highlanders are always good for a MacGuffin (Why?) because you know they all are looking for the sweet Quickening. And also a genuine Worst Twist (How?) for Conner sacrificing himself to Duncan to give him a level up Quickening right before his super Kell Quickening at the end. Duncan is a super Highlander now I think. Definitely right in there for BMT, it is a highly amusing film.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – I don’t think you necessarily need to remake anything, it would be more like a retcon to fix the lore (I do love lore). But let’s call it a Remake for clarity. I think the first film is perfect, even though it makes it a bit more complicated. MacLeod versus the Kurgan to become the last Immortal. But here’s the twist. He’s won the game, and the final quickening happens, and then … the game starts anew with MacLeod as an Immortal outside of the game, a new batch of Immortals born into the world. Being outside of the game he founds The Watchers, an organization which observes and reports on the happenings of the game to gently help good Immortals (like Duncan, whom Conner takes under his wing as an apprentice), hoping to prevent another Kurgan from gaining the ultimate immortality. Eventually, as the game cycles, new Immortals win the game (Duncan being the second), until a final film where a fourth is set to join and it is revealed (much to our heroes’ chagrin) that they are, in fact, the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and that is the point of the game, to mark the end of the Earth. So it becomes a race to prevent the completion of the last game. There must be two! The end. Tight stuff, I’m open to discussing the option terms Netflix.

You Just Got Schooled – Lots of good stuff here as well. First, the film was supposed to tie in heavily with Highlander: The Raven which was running in 1998-1999 when the film would have at least been in pre-production (but it was then canceled). I did watch the pilot called Reborn. Have to say … kind of okay, better than I remember the original series being, which I think makes sense, one was a syndicated show from 1992 and the other from 1998. This was cheesy, but mostly seemed like it was going to be a procedural cop show involving Immortals and all that jazz which is a pretty cool idea actually. I’m going to give it a B-, entertaining for a syndicated show from the 90s.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol Recap

Jamie

The Gutes is back, Jack! This time Commandant Lassard has been given the chance to start Citizens on Patrol, a program where regular citizens get police training. But things quickly go sour when Capt. Harris comes back to head the program. Can Mahoney and the gang save the program and the day before it’s too late? Find out in… Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol.

How?! Considering his long history of success with the police academy, Commandant Lassard is given the opportunity to test out his pet project: C.O.P, Citizens on Patrol. It’s a program where regular citizens take the law into their own hands by training at the academy. All of our Police Academy friends are called back into action to help make the program work, but unfortunately Lassard is sent off to promote the program at a police seminar, leaving Capt. Harris in charge. Oh no! Harris thinks C.O.P. is real dumb, particularly after a couple of skateboarders (what jokesters) are thrown in the program in lieu of being sent to jail. Despite the program generally running OK, even sparking a love interest for Zed, Harris is the brunt of a series of pranks that makes him even more determined to shut the program down. Really, though, he doesn’t do anything to stop the program. Instead on the very first day that C.O.P. is out on the streets the citizens spoil a long running undercover police operation. Just as Lassard triumphantly returns to show off the program to a bunch of international police bigwigs he is informed that C.O.P. is donzo. Everyone is real sad. That is until Harris’ precinct allows for a number of hardened criminals/ninjas (this is real) to escape their jail. The C.O.Ps and our police academy friends team up to track down the criminals using jet skis and hot air balloons (naturally). Harris comes off looking like a total loser, duh, while Lassard and the police academics are heroes once again. Oh and the Gutes smooches his latest love interest (Sharon Stone!). Hooray. THE END.

Why?! By the fourth one they are really struggling to keep a coherent plot together. Lassard wants to improve police-community relations and so C.O.P. is his idea to do that. The Police Academy crew seem to just want to help out their friend. Harris is just a dick and thinks police work shouldn’t be handled by the community. It’s all very vague and constantly interrupted by whatever prank the police academy jokesters are playing on their latest victim.

Who?! The presence of NFL player Bubba Smith has to be noted. Pro boxer Tex Cobb also had a cameo appearance. He’s better known (to me) as Lyle in Ernest Goes to Jail. Finally, we get some rad skateboarding scenes that are some of my favorite images put to film. Apparently a number of pro skateboarders were used for that including Tony Hawk.

What?! I am truly at a loss for anything for this section. So I’m just going to go on a tear regarding the prank that plays a huge part in the Where?! and When?! sections. That’s the 1986 Mazda Gator Bowl. Sure it’s not really a product placement because it’s neither seen nor heard in the film, but it was the first time the Gator Bowl was sponsored in any capacity, so that’s kind of a fun fact.

Where?! This is a little strange because pretty much everything the Police Academy world is built on has them operating in an anonymous American city. However, as mentioned above we have a prank that distinctly features the 1986 Gator Bowl between Clemson and Stanford in Jacksonville, FL… so is Police Academy set in Jacksonville? Possibly. C-.

When?! Police Academy doesn’t just exist outside of space. It also exists outside of time. It is useless to dive too deep into this or waste effort on it. However… much like above if the events were to coincide with the 1986 Gator Bowl then we would have a Super Secret Almost Too Secret to Count Holiday Film Alert as that game took place two days after Christmas, so likely portions of the film would occur on Christmas. And before you even entertain any other possibilities: yes, that is the only time Clemson and Stanford have ever played. C-.

I really enjoy watching franchises. There are so many flavors. Last week we had a classic horror franchise that built lore while bringing the monster to the forefront. This time we have a classic megahit stretched for all its worth. Every film in the series basically rehashes the same formula that struck gold in the first, low-budget entry. Gutes is smirking, Winslow is beeping and booping, and somebody wants to stop them from succeeding. The further you get into the franchise the more the plot becomes tissue thin. Just squashed between random pranks, jokes, and Winslow’s sound effects (which I’m not sure actually counts as a joke). At this point Guttenberg’s love interest barely says a word or is given the time of day before she’s riding off into the sunset with him in a hot air balloon. They don’t need her to… you already know Gutes will be smooching on her, so who needs character development? You can really feel that by the fourth entry they simply had a series of dots that they were connecting in order to move onto the next one. No wonder they were able to make the first six films in less than five years (!). Overall I wasn’t offended by how terrible the film was or anything (although there are numerous actually offensive things in the series), but it is a terrible film. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! The Police Academy series is something of a marvel, four films with 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Five films given a BOMB by Leonard Maltin. It might actually be the worst franchise ever made. Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – We’re back babyyyyyy. We watched the first two Police Academy’s two years ago (I think, if you told me it was five years ago I probably wouldn’t be shocked, BMT just blends together at this point), and it was high time we started back in. By all accounts the later sequels are just the same unfunny garbage over and over with little plot. Excellent. What were my expectations? The same unfunny garbage over and over with little plot.

The Good – As far as an ensemble cast is concerned there is a good mix of 80s charm (Guttenberg), 80s tropes (Bubba Smith as a generic sports figure turned comedy actor, Sweetchuck as the nerd), and off the wall comedians like Bobcat and Winslow. As a first credit for David Spade he is quite good and you can see why he ended up being a solid comedy actor soon after. I wonder, given that he has the same origin as Guttenberg in the original police academy, put in the program in lieu of prison, if the intention was for the character to come back in the sequels … that didn’t work out. I guess what I’m saying is the only good thing in this film is the cast. Best Bit: The cast.

The Bad – I mean, it is unfunny garbage that is the same jokes over and over and there literally isn’t a plot. The Commandant wants to create a citizen police force because he feels like the police and citizens have a bad relationship. They do, despite the meddling of people who want the Commandant to fail. It blows up in their faces, but then, once some ninjas escape (totally true) they realize it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. The end. That’s the story. And I honestly can’t think of a single joke in the entire film I found funny. I can’t even think of a single joke from the film period. Fatal Flaw: It isn’t funny despite apparently being a comedy.

The BMT – We are getting there. By all accounts the fourth film is the jumping off point for the series to really go downhill. The next one is Miami, then City Under Siege, and then Russia … so they are really just blowing it out after this one. This can be remembered in BMT legend as the last reasonably sane Police Academy film. Oh and also for having the raddest skateboarding montage in history! It is out of nowhere and completely amazing. Do yourself a favor and watch this thing:

Did it meet my expectations? Yeah, it was unfunny garbage which drove the same bad jokes into the ground over and over until it unceremoniously ended.

Roast-radamus – I genuinely think this doesn’t qualify for any superlatives which is quite interesting, it is even in what is described as an unnamed city according to Wikipedia (it seems like Los Angeles, but that is probably not the case considering the giant waterfall nearby … so it is like a cross between Los Angeles and Toronto?). It is closest to BMT I think.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – I think it is time for the long awaited Prequel to the entire Police Academy. We knew Mahoney as a lackadaisical petty-criminal-turned-prized-officer in the series, but what about those petty criminal days? Mahoney prowls the bodacious bods of the beach by day, and hustles the mean streets of Unnamed City by night. But when he witnesses a murder most foul, he gets roped into the detective business with straightlaced beat cop Carmichael Treech. What an odd couple! With Treech’s world weary tenacity, and Mahoney’s street smarts, they get all the baddies and save the day, hooray! No explanation is provided as to why, given Mahoney actually worked with the police department before, that this is never mentioned in any of the films. Don’t worry about it. That’s Mahoney: A Police Academy Story.

You Just Got Schooled – So previously on BMT we watched the first two films. This time around the third didn’t qualify (barely, hitting exactly 40%), so Police Academy 3: Back in Training had to be viewed separately. All of these films are the same. The third and fourth film are basically just the first film except with different motivations for why they are at the academy. Here they are there because Lessard needs them to help him save the Academy in a competition. Inexplicably both Zed (the bad guy from the second film) and Sweetchuck (an antiques dealer if memory serves) have now joined the force and are quite the odd couple / secret best friends. Literally, not a moment of this film is funny, but that isn’t much different than any of the sequels to the first film so … I guess carry on. This was merely an appetizer for the main course of four straight Police Academy films with 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. D+. Not funny, but also not annoying enough to give an F I think.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare Recap

Jamie

Freddy’s back, Jack! And for the final time (not really). This time Freddy had turned Springwood into a wasteland, having killed all the children across generations. Now, in order to escape to kill again, he must lure his child (!) back to the town. Can a new gang of dream warriors subdue Freddy for the final time? Find out in… Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare.

How?! When a kid with amnesia stumbles into town, the police quickly collect him and send him to a home for troubled children. The kids there are all battling demons from their past and using all kinds of therapy techniques to try to help. For example one of therapists is an expert in dreams, which I’m sure won’t come in handy. Anyway, one of the therapists, Maggie, notices that the new John Doe has a newspaper clipping from Springwood and decides to take him back there. Incidentally a few other kids stow away in the van and are discovered after arriving in town. Weirdly, Springwood is a ghost town and the teens are met with fear and curiosity. The stowaways are sent home, while Maggie and John investigate. In a nearby school they discover that Freddy had a child! This must be the key to what’s going on and John is convinced that he is that child. Meanwhile the teens can’t seem to escape Springwood, so settling into a recognizable house on Elm Street they try to get through the night. Not likely as one-by-one they are pulled into the dream world by Freddy. One of the teens, Tracy, escapes and gets Maggie and John to come help. John and Tracy enter into the dream world to help the other kids but it’s too late and they are almost killed. As they try to leave Springwood, Freddy corners John and tells him that he’s not the child, rather it’s a girl. As he is killed by Freddy, John awakens and tells this to Maggie. Back home, Maggie finds that she’s adopted and that she is actually Katherine Kreuger and has inadvertently brought Freddy with her to a new town. With the help of the dream therapist, Maggie enters the dream world and is able to get into his head and pull him into the real world. There they have a climactic battle which ends with him stabbed by his own glove and blown up with a pipe bomb, thus finally killing Freddy Kreuger. THE END (or is it? (no, not really)).

Why?! I guess this is probably the most interesting motivation for Kreuger as he has turned Springwood into an isolated, crazy mess with no more kids to kill. So looking for a way to get to a new town he sends John Doe out for the express purpose of bringing Maggie back to him. With their connection, Freddy knows that he can use Maggie as a vessel to get out of Springwood.

Who?! There’s some weird shit in this one. Roseanne Barr and Tom Arnold are credited as Mr. and Mrs. Tom Arnold, which is odd. Then Johnny Depp has a cameo and got credited as Oprah Noodlemantra. Finally, in a flashback we see Freddy kill his abusive adoptive father. Who’s his daddio? The musician Alice Cooper. The hits keep coming in these films.

What?! Oh man. One of the best product placements in a while as one of Freddy’s lamest kills of all time comes when he traps one of the kids in a video game. He’s playing it (poorly I might add) trying to kill the kid when John Doe and Tracy come and snatch the controls away. Not so fast says Freddy… cause he’s got dat sweet Nintendo Power Glove like a real video game Wizard. Unfortunately I don’t think there is an unironic entry in a Power Glove Trilogy, so it’ll have to remain a Power Glove Duology. As for the MacGuffin-ish way of killing Freddy? They go for a classic with bringing him out of the dream world and into the real world to make him mortal.

Where?! This opened with a map and on it appears Springwood, Ohio as the location where the action is taking place. I audibly gasped when it showed up on the screen. As I mentioned in the 5th film’s recap I had firmly settled into Nightmare being the Westcoast entry in the horror franchise canon. All of a sudden it joined Halloween in the midwest set. They claim they had it as Ohio from the jump, having changed parts of the first film’s original script to remove mention of California, but I don’t totally buy it. Still this is a solid B.

When?! This is a funny one where they also put on the screen that the action of the film takes place “ten years in the future” when Freddy has destroyed Springwood. Apparently ten years from the end of the fifth film. This would place it in 1999 and makes parts of the film totally incomprehensible. John Doe thinks he’s Freddy’s kid who was taken from him 33 years before… So you’re almost 40, kid? Really? B.

Boy oh boy, this movie is terrible. Really an ignominious final entry in the main series. You’re much better off just jumping straight to the reboot New Nightmare rather than suffer through the straight-to-video level trash that they ended up making here. God, it’s a real shame given how surprisingly solid and mostly fresh and interesting the first and then third through fifth films are. You can’t blame them for a little stumble on the second, but you can definitely blame them for this one. Not only is the entire film a big step backwards in production, with only a couple visually pleasing scenes, but Freddy Kreuger enters full self-parody as he comes off like a lame old man constantly spouting terrible one-liners and calling everyone a bitch. At one point he’s getting ready to fight and is all like “check this out,” and proceeds to do a super lame-o cartwheel and immediately gets kicked in the face like a dumbo. What a dumb, terrible idiot Freddy has become. And what dumb terrible idiots we are for watching this dumb terrible entry in an otherwise fun horror franchise. Patrick?

Patrick

‘Ello everyone! The big 600 babyyyyy! That’s right, 600 films watched for BMT. And what better way than with the only truly dire Nightmare film? Let’s go!

P’s View on the Preview – The director of this film has a wild story. She was a mathematician who worked at Johns Hopkins when she met John Waters. She then, through that connection, ended up doing various jobs on all but the fifth Nightmare film. And then she was asked to direct the last one (and ended up using a bunch of people from John Waters’ regular film crew to do it). Apparently, in the writers’ room she was known for coming up with truly outlanding dream kills for Freddy to do. What were my expectations? I knew in my heart that the film must be bad, but I also hoped that at the very least you would get some really cool kills out of it.

The Good – Not much. I would say I can kind of see the allure of some of the kills for some people. Someone involved in production said their favorite kill in the entire franchise is the Q-tip kill with Carlos which is in this film. I can appreciate how long and elaborate the nightmarish torture scene is … but it still seems a bit too silly to me. The idea of Springwood being a ghost town is interesting. The idea of Freddy being able to branch out to the wider world is a little interesting. There are tiny bits of interesting stuff, that’s probably the best thing you can say about it. Best Bit: Some practical kills.

The Bad – This movie is the one genuine trash film of the bunch. It is dog poo in my face. It completes the transition of Freddy into a complete joke, adds an unnecessary (or at least sub-par) lore element of the Dream Worms into the mythos, and adds in a confounding aspect to Freddy himself which shows up in none of the other movies. Even the idea of Springwood being a ghost town, which I guess is kind of cool if you ignore some of the elements of earlier films, is completely wasted by making that a joke too. It goes too far, the movie slips too far into irony, and its only saing grace is that it was intended as a finale so it didn’t leave any handing threads that needed to be resolved by further sequels and retconning. Fatal Flaw: Freddy, and the series, fully becomes a joke.

The BMT – And there it is, the first six films of the Nightmare franchise are kind of their own thing so that is now cemented into the BMT record. There will be a few more to do (New Nightmare doesn’t qualify, but will be done alongside the 2010 remake), but like with Friday the 13th that is another mega-franchise for the books! Did it meet my expectations? Yes, this film is the only in the entire series where it is completely confounding as to how it was made. It just smashes the lore apart with no regard for human life. So yeah, definitely an amusingly bad film in context.

Roast-radamus – Really good Product Placement (What?) for Nintendo in what is bar none the worst kill of the entire franchise. Decent Setting as a Character (Where?) for Springwood, Ohio, where the entire franchise takes place, although I think they only really make it explicit in this one for the first time. Borderline MacGuffin (Why?) for Freddy’s daughter, a mystery that everyone is desperately trying to solve throughout the film. And speaking of which, Worst Twist (How?) for the reveal that Freddy’s kid isn’t, in fact, the young man whom Freddy would have had to father after his death, but instead it is the older woman who is juuuuust the right age. This is a quintessential bad slasher sequel, and thus has to be a BMT contender.

Sequel, Prequel, Remake – I can’t help myself, I have to go with Remake here because I think there is a decently obvious path from the fifth film to what should have been the conclusion to the series. Borrow the Krueger as Dream Master idea from the comic book (see below) and like in this film smash cut to the future, about 17 years, to focus on Alice’s son Jacob. With no Elm Street children left to kill, and no Dream Masters to use, Freddy has been locked away in the dream world. Alice has trained her son in the art of the Dream Master, but due to Hypnocil abuse is now confined to an asylum. While trying to communicate with his mother in the dream world, a slip up by Jacob gives Freddy a chance. He uses his Dream Master ability to commit a string of dream murders with the ultimate plan to use Jacob to get pulled out of the dream world and back into the real world. He will be mortal again, but will instigate a new group of vigilantes to kill him once more, generating a fresh set of Springwood children to haunt and give him power for another generation. Ultimately, Jacob goes into the dream world and pulls Freddy in, Alice kills Freddy during a nightmare severing Freddy’s connection to the dream world, killing him in real life, and condemning him to hell. The end … or is it? It is, much like what happened with the actual sixth film Freddy v Jason and other sequels would occur in the time between the fifth (1990) and sixth (2007 in this case) films.

You Just Got Schooled – There is a ton of extra stuff with Nightmare on Elm Street. There was a NES game, A Nightmare on Elm Street. I didn’t play it, it seems like a straightforward platformer, instead I watched the Games Done Quick co-op speedrun which is quick and pretty entertaining, B+ for the GDQ run, but I would guess a C- for the platformer itself. There was also a series of comics. I read the two Marvel comics released as Freddy Krueger’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. There was supposed to be four, but Marvel got skittish about protests about violence in the media and they cut it off. B+, the second one is quite good especially for a black and white comic book. I wish they had gone with the idea of Freddy Krueger being a Dream Master instead of the dream worms or whatever, but c’est la vie. Finally there was a television show called Freddy’s Nightmares which was direct to syndication. This ended up causing a lot of problems (specifically, due to syndication a show involving a child murderer haunting people’s dreams and killing them would be on at like 3PM in some places), but despite that it got two seasons. Only eight episodes feature Freddy himself out of the 44 that were produced. I watched the pilot and it was awful. So bad, in fact, that I didn’t even end up finishing the second episode I tried to watch (episode 4 featuring a very young Mariska Hargitay). Reminded me very much of The Highlander television show (which was also direct to syndication, and also awful). D. If this was done today it would have definitely been four two-part episodes per season focusing on Freddy versus a single person, but that isn’t how they rolled in 1988.

Cheerios,

The Sklogs