What?! Just as Jack Cates is about to close in on a drug kingpin he’s been tracking for years, it turns out his old friend Reggie Hammond is primed to be the kingpin’s next victim. Can they stop the hit and take the baddies down before it’s too late? Find out in… Another 48 Hrs!
Why?! The biggest question is why the hitmen want to kill Reggie, who at the start of the film has spent the last five years in jail. Turns out the big heist that was the center of the first film involved money that belonged to a drug kingpin, the Iceman. Hearing that Reggie is finally out of jail (and away from the protection that he’s bought within), they set up a hit. However, it’s later revealed that the money is small potatoes. In reality they wanted to kill Reggie because he saw the Iceman’s face and could identify him. As for Cates, if wanting to take down a kingpin wasn’t motivation enough, he is framed for manslaughter after he justifiably takes down a hitman that he knows is connected to the Iceman. So now he needs to catch the Iceman to prove his innocence or he faces jail time. He figures out that Reggie was the target of the Iceman’s hit (what a coincidence!) and recruits Reggie to help take the him down. Obviously Reggie’s motivation is to not die, however he seems fairly unconcerned by the whole affair. He only reluctantly agrees to help after realizing that otherwise Cates won’t give him his money from the first film.
How?! Once Reggie is released from jail, both he and Cates are attacked by the hitmen. They end up in the same hospital and Cates convinces the local police to let him escort Reggie back to SF. They track the hitmen from place to place all while Cates is harassed by internal affairs and comes up empty on every lead. Only after Reggie reveals that he can identify the Iceman do they realize that he must be a cop and that’s the reason Cates is having such a hard time. Before they can catch the bad guy, Reggie is kidnapped and in a twist it turns out that the Iceman is Cates’ friend on the force, Kehoe. The twist is particularly bad as Kehoe was in the first film and as a result it reframes aspects of that film! Ugh. A shootout ensues and the bad guys are taken down in the exact same way as they were in the first film.
Who?! I actually realized this week that the Planchet isn’t the only “Who” obsession to work with. We got cameos, presidents, musicians, athletes, etc. So while watching this film I kept my eyes peeled for any of the above. Lo and behold there was a musical act in the middle of the film. Looking in the credits on IMDb the singer was credited as… former heavyweight pro boxer Michael Anthony Williams? Uh, what? That turned out to be wrong (*gasp* are you suggesting IMDb is wrong?) and it was actually the band Curio. This band had two songs on the soundtrack and yet was so obscure that the only place to find details about them is a rare and obscure music blog. Not obscure enough to not have a music video on youtube, though. Enjoy:
Where?! Just as in the first film, we are set in beautiful San Francisco. It also helps that Nolte is a cop as he’s clearly a detective in the SFPD. While obvious, this setting is not necessarily vital to the plot. Could have been LA, Miami, Chicago, New York, Philly, etc. without missing a beat. B.
When?! Another day, another film that seemingly goes out of its way to not give you an exact date. The first film at least threw you a bone and indicated that it was summer in San Fran, this one doesn’t even give you that courtesy. They even seem to purposefully obscure it as you are shown a close-up of a hospital discharge form for Reggie Hammond where the nurse is blocking the “Date of Admittance” line. What we are shown is that Reggie is 28-years-old and born on October 7th, 1961. So that’s kind of a fun exact date. Interestingly, that is the year that Murphy was born, but not the date (April 3rd is his actual birthday). This “When” is full of fun facts… but I don’t do this section for the fun facts. D.
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Another 48 Hrs.? More like Isn’t This Just the First 48 Hrs? Relevant! The first 48 Hrs. was a classic buddy cop adventure with Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy. Why change anything up … at all, is probably what the writers were thinking. Let’s Go!
The Good – I thought this movie was rather entertaining if you pretended it was a standalone movie. I liked Nolte and Murphy’s dynamic, I liked the plot from a buddy cop perspective, I liked how gritty it felt. The things that kill it, I think, are easy to look past if this is something like a Tango & Cash, a standalone buddy cop action-comedy. One of the better BMTs we’ve seen in the past few months I would venture.
The Bad – This movie is waaaay too similar to the original. I have a theory on this: the movie is a sequel to a buddy comedy from five years prior. I think they felt obligated to reset the franchise after such a long hiatus, and they planned to innovate in the third installment. That blew up in their faces when the similarities between this and the first were a major criticism upon release. Otherwise there is a horribly ludicrous scene in which Murphy is standing in a bus that then rolls over three times while everyone notes “well that is unlikely” as if the lampshading helps. The reset is aggravating as well since we just spent an entire film with Nolte and Murphy yelling at each other, why do we have to go through that again? Also …
The BMT – Jamie pointed this out (to be fair), but it is the claim to BMT fame for this movie. Besides being a quintessential example of a sequel going overboard mimicking its predecessor, the aforementioned twist is … more terrible than I ever realized. Consider: Kehoe is posited to have been the drug kingpin Iceman operating out of the SFPD since prior to the first movie (at least 7 years prior to the second film when Reggie saw him during the heist). But yet, in the first film Kehoe is the one who tells Jack about Reggie in the first place … ultimately this means Reggie will be wandering about the police station with every opportunity to tell everyone that Kehoe is the Iceman. The twist is incredibly bad. What I wouldn’t give to be in the writers’ room when someone remarked “Hey wait a minute … doesn’t this conflict with the first movie?”. And that is why this movie is still BMT, shocking oversights like this.
So in the preview I noted that the director was known for his love of westerns and that genre having a heavy influence on his films. So let’s Sklogify (or Remake) it with a little western rewrite. Jack Cates is a loose cannon among the US Marshals often getting a little rough and tumble when apprehending villains in the wild (wild) west. Reginald Hammond is a gunslinger in prison for bank robbery. When Cates finds an old wanted poster among the wreckage of a manhunt gone wrong, he thinks Hammond might know what is up (and might be able to save him from a hangman’s noose) and so he springs him and they go on the run. Indeed, the notorious Iceman, a vicious train robber and gang leader that many Marshals believe to be more myth than reality, appears to be the potential culprit of a planned kidnapping of Hammond to prevent the Iceman’s secret from getting out: Hammond had discovered years before that the Iceman was a US Marshal using his badge as cover for his ruthless crime spree, and had perpetrated the bank robbery that put him in jail as a means of protection. Now working together the unlikely duo, US Marshal and fugitive, have to take down the dirty US Marshal posse before they meet untimely deaths! Another 48 Hrs. seems like a weird name considering I’m remaking this as a stand alone movie, so it would need something else. Maybe just 48 Hrs., considering I’m not sklogifying the first movie (although I could, call me Netflix).
We’ve finally made it out of the woods that was the Squeakuel cycle. Little did we know how harrowing the journey would be and how much work it would actually take to do two movies per week for nine weeks. You live and learn, my friends. Or more likely, you live, learn, forget, and find yourself doing it again next year. And so we end this cycle and start anew with a cycle we call What the ?!&%*#. These are all films that contain punctuation in the title. Additionally we will attempt to do nine different punctuation marks through the cycle. Thrilling stuff. We start with the most important punctuation mark, the period (no offense to those who might think otherwise. Looking at you Christopher Walken). Lucky for us there was a classic disappointing sequel that contained a period. That’s right, we’re watching Another 48 Hrs., the sequel to the comedy classic 48 Hrs., for the Scattegories entry. For those keeping track this is our third Eddie Murphy film in the last year. Pretty exciting stuff. Let’s go!
Another 48 Hrs. (1990) – BMeTric: 31.4
(Stable, right around where I would think it would be given its general reception (30ish). Has the 2011 inflection and the regression to the mean with a final perfectly below average rating of sub-6.0. The only really remarkable thing I would say is it has more votes than I would imagine for a sequel that no one seemed to want or like. I would classify this as a profile of vote dominant. In that almost all of its BMeTric comes from having more votes than most bad movies do, whereas its rating is now basically average. Note that this movie almost definitely transitions from a rating dominant (because it has only a few thousand votes in 2004) to a vote dominant movie all while maintaining basically the same BMeTric. I wonder if that is a trait of regression to the mean and the way the BMeTric is calculated. Not that would be some inside baseball shit.)
Leonard Maltin – 2 stars – Strictly-by-the-numbers rehash of 48HRS., without its spontaneity, pizzazz, or humor: Nolte is forced to turn to Murphy (who’s just been sprung from jail) to help him solve a case and save his police career. Watchable, but not terribly invigorating; mst set some sort of record, however, for breaking more panes of glass than any movie in history.
(Ooof, this review lacks pizzazz Leonard. Strong punctuation game as always (including a somewhat invigorating use of a colon early on there). At least the stars seem to reflect Maltin’s level of concern over this film, he seems like he could give or take it, a true middle-of-the-road two-of-four if I ever saw one.)
(Ah right at the sweet spot where Eddie Murphy scream-singing to music with headphones on was invariably funny (he also does it in the The Golden Child). The boys are back! I’m not sure if you caught that … but the boys are back. To be honest this does look a little fun. I’ll have to rewatch the original to really figure out what they screwed up.)
Directors – Walter Hill – (Known For: The Warriors; Bullet to the Head; Wild Bill (BMT); Streets of Fire; 48 Hrs.; Red Heat; Crossroads; Undisputed; Geronimo: An American Legend; The Long Riders; Johnny Handsome; The Streetfighter; Southern Comfort; The Driver; Trespass; Extreme Prejudice; BMT: Supernova; Another 48 Hrs.; Last Man Standing; Brewster’s Millions; Notes: I remember the most interesting note from Blue City was that he considers all of his films westerns, so again, I’ll look for that influence. Makes sense, Nolte is a sheriff, and Murphy is the hired gun sprung from jail to catch the bad guys.)
Writers – Roger Spottiswoode (characters) – (Known For: 48 Hrs.; BMT: Another 48 Hrs.; Notes: Mostly a director known for 6th Day and (in bad movie circles) Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! Was married to Jack Palance’s daughter. 48 Hrs. is his only true writing credit which is a tad bit odd.)
Walter Hill (characters) – (Known For: Aliens; The Warriors; Alien³; Wild Bill (BMT); Streets of Fire; 48 Hrs.; Red Heat; Undisputed; The Getaway (1972); The Long Riders; The Streetfighter; Southern Comfort; The Driver; The Drowning Pool; The MacKintosh Man; Hickey & Boggs; BMT: Another 48 Hrs.; The Getaway (1994); Last Man Standing; Notes: We most recently saw him with Blue City and before that Wild Bill (a rare 40% rotten tomatoes film we did to complete the Mapl.d.map). I would consider him a legend if only for The Warriors which is one of my favorite films. The fact that he is only credited for characters makes it possible that the western influence won’t be as present. Another thing to watch out for I guess, whether that influence is present in both the original and sequel.)
Larry Gross (characters & screenplay) – (Known For: Streets of Fire; 48 Hrs.; Geronimo: An American Legend; True Crime; Porto; We Don’t Live Here Anymore; This World, Then the Fireworks; Chinese Box; BMT: Another 48 Hrs.; Crime + Punishment in Suburbia; Gunshy; Notes: Known for his collaborations with Walter Hill. On his wiki page it mentions a diary of his time on the set of 48 Hrs. And indeed, it is a ten part series on a website that barely exists anymore. I am ridiculously excited to read this.)
Steven E. de Souza (characters) – (Known For: Die Hard; The Running Man; Commando; Die Hard 2; 48 Hrs.; Ricochet; BMT: Street Fighter; The Flintstones; Knock Off; Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life; Judge Dredd (BMT); Beverly Hills Cop III; Hudson Hawk (BMT); Another 48 Hrs.; Jumpin’ Jack Flash; Bad Dreams; Notes: Won the Razzie Award in 1992 for Worst Screenplay for Hudson Hawk; Man, this guy is a staple of early 90’s bad movies. He began his career as a game show contestant who subsequently convinced producers to read some of his writing samples. Was known for his ability to balance action and humor.)
Eddie Murphy (story) (as Fred Braughton) – (Known For: Coming to America; Beverly Hills Cop II; Boomerang; BMT: Norbit (BMT); Vampire in Brooklyn; Another 48 Hrs. (BMT); Harlem Nights (BMT); Notes: See the Razzie info below. Almost done with his written filmography. As a matter of fact, if I watch Boomerang and Vampire in Brooklyn I would be totally done with Eddie Murphy as a writer. He actually most gets “story” credits, whereas only Harlem Nights and Norbit has him actually writing it. He was credited as Fred Braughton, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why he got credited that way.)
John Fasano (screenplay) – (BMT: Universal Soldier: The Return; Darkness Falls; Another 48 Hrs.; Megiddo: The Omega Code 2; Notes: Has a winding path to his somewhat modest writing career. He was the art director for special interest magazines, made posters for exploitation films, and directed IBM industrial videos before becoming a screenwriter. His entire family is in the biz, although mostly behind the camera.)
Jeb Stuart (screenplay) – (Known For: Die Hard; The Fugitive; Blood Done Sign My Name; Vital Signs; BMT: Fire Down Below (BMT); Another 48 Hrs.; Leviathan; Lock Up; Just Cause; Switchback; Notes: Pretty impressive early career, where him and de Souza wrote Die Hard as his first credit. He wrote an early draft of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull … in 1995 when it was called Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars.)
Actors – Eddie Murphy – (Known For: Shrek; Shrek 2; Shrek the Third; Mulan; Coming to America; Beverly Hills Cop; Trading Places; Dreamgirls; Tower Heist; Shrek Forever After; Beverly Hills Cop II; 48 Hrs.; Doctor Dolittle; The Nutty Professor; Life; Dr. Dolittle 2; Bowfinger; Boomerang; Imagine That; BMT: Norbit (BMT); Nutty Professor II: The Klumps; Pluto Nash (BMT); Vampire in Brooklyn; The Haunted Mansion; Meet Dave; Holy Man; I Spy; Beverly Hills Cop III; Showtime; Daddy Day Care; Metro; Another 48 Hrs.; The Golden Child (BMT); A Thousand Words (BMT); The Distinguished Gentleman; Harlem Nights (BMT); Notes: See below for Razzie notes; There isn’t much more to say about Murphy mainly because we’ve already done this two other times within a year for Harlem Nights and the Norbit Hall of Fame celebration. Y’all know Eddie Murphy, c’mon!)
Eddie Murphy Razzie Cred – Won the Razzie Award in 2010 for Worst Actor of the Decade; Won the Razzie Award in 2008 for Worst Actor, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress for Norbit; Won the Razzie Award in 1990 for Worst Screenplay for Harlem Nights; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2008 for Worst Director and Screenplay for Norbit; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2013 for Worst Actor for A Thousand Words; in 2010 for Imagine That; in 2009 for Meet Dave; and in 2003 for The Adventures of Pluto Nash, I Spy, and Showtime; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2009 for Worst Screen Couple for Meet Dave; in 2008 for Norbit; in 2003 for Showtime, I Spy, The Adventures of Pluto Nash;
Nick Nolte – (Known For: Warrior; Noah; Hulk; Tropic Thunder; The Thin Red Line; Cape Fear; Run All Night; The Spiderwick Chronicles; Hotel Rwanda; A Walk in the Woods; Over the Hedge; Parker; The Company You Keep; Paris, je t’aime; The Player; 48 Hrs.; U Turn; The Prince of Tides; Lorenzo’s Oil; New York Stories; Hateship Loveship; The Good Thief; Affliction; Down and Out in Beverly Hills; BMT: The Ridiculous 6; Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore; Zookeeper; Breakfast of Champions; I Love Trouble; Arthur; Simpatico; Another 48 Hrs.; The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; Three Fugitives; Nightwatch; Blue Chips; Notes: Was up for the role of Han Solo and turned down the role of Indiana Jones. Interesting fact: could not serve in the Vietnam War after he was convicted of selling fake draft cards.)
Also stars Brion James (Who we saw in Tango & Cash)
Budget/Gross – $50 million / Domestic: $80,818,974 (Worldwide: $153,518,974)
(Not a terrible take. Weirdly some reviews mention it not doing as well as the original, but actually it did make more money, although with inflation and expectations beating out an original movie made five years prior by less than two million dollars isn’t mind blowing. My guess is if it had gone above $100 million and had gotten even a merely below average reception (40-50%) there would have been a third assuming the actors were willing.)
(Kind of in the thick of recent buddy cop films (like Ride Along 2). Also at the peak of 80s/early-90s buddy cop action films a year after Tango & Cash and Lethal Weapon 2. I have a feeling they were going to go the lethal weapon route if this had done well and there would have been a few of these made.)
(Narrowly beat out Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 (The Secret of the Ooze) … oof. We’ve done a ton of these over the last year. Ride Along 2, Are We Done Yet?, Cheaper By The Dozen 2, Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2, Paul Blart Mall Cop 2, Big Momma’s House 2, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous … my God we are mad men.)
Rotten Tomatoes – 15% (4/27): No consensus yet.
(Let’s make a consensus: As one reviewer put it, this is a sequel in the worst sense. Contrived, rarely funny, and basically a carbon copy of the original. Yeah, so the reviews harp on the fact that this is the same movie as the original, although some mention that if not for the existence of the original film this would actually be rather fun.)
Poster – Another 48 Skgs. (A-)
(I really like this poster. I like the red and yellow primary colors, the balance with the car in the middle, and the classic font. I think the weakest point is the pictures of the actors and this could have been really artistic without that, but you can’t blame them.)
Tagline(s) – The Boys Are Back In Town (C)
(If you look in the notes you’ll see that the people involved in the film series were obsessed with this phrase. Shows up in like seven different aspects of the two films. Not sure why, though. A solid ‘meh.’)
Keyword(s) – biker; Top Ten by BMeTric: 92.8 Batman & Robin (1997); 81.9 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011); 80.8 Vampires Suck (2010); 70.7 Grease 2 (1982); 61.3 Ghost Rider (2007); 57.3 The Sweetest Thing (2002); 54.3 The Counsellor (2013); 53.8 Batman Forever (1995); 50.2 The Garbage Pail Kids Movie (1987); 47.4 Extraction (II) (2015);
(The only thing more unlikely than having two Cameron Diaz movies on this list is me remembering that Cameron Diaz is in The Counsellor. Pretty nice list though, we’ll have to hit up the applicable Batman movies at some point, just to get a preview in BMT, despite having seen Batman and Robin at least ten times.)
Notes – According to Brion James around 50 minutes were cut from from the final work-print until the released version. James said this in interview; “Total Recall (1990) came out a week before Another 48 Hrs. (1990) that summer, it made twenty-five million, became the number one movie in the country and the studio panicked because they had invested a lot in the 48 Hours franchise, but they felt that at well over two hours, that the movie might be too much. My stuff was in there until one week before the film opened; that is when they cut twenty-five minutes out of that movie, a week before it opened. It went from around 140 to down around 95 minutes. They said, “Cut all the behaviour, action, comedy…” I lost every major scene I had. That’s the last time I ever cared about a movie because I went to the press screening and it was like getting kicked in the stomach, seeing what is not there. I was the third lead and now I looked like a dressed extra. All the stuff that they had in the set-up, stuff in the trailer, all those scenes were gone.” (Well … that’s sad)
Character actor Frank McRae was cast as Haden, Nick Nolte’s boss, the same part he played in 48 Hrs. (1982). His part was almost completely cut from this picture. If you look closely in one of the shots in the police precinct, McRae appears on camera for a few seconds. He was uncredited for the role. (Goes hand in hand with the above note. I’ll be watching for that guy like a hawk)
Reportedly, Eddie Murphys paycheck for the first 48 Hrs. (1982) film was US $450,000 whilst Nick Nolte’s salary was US $1,000,000. For this sequel, reportedly, Nolte got US $3 million, whilst Murphy received US $7 million. (But how much did Fred Braughton get?)
Because of the sequence depicting a violent shoot-out in a hotel lobby from the first 48 Hrs. (1982) film director Walter Hill was told he would never work for Paramount again (according to the book “Walter Hill: Last Man Standing” (2004) by Patrick McGilligan). Hill did though, as he directed this sequel for the studio. (fun. fact.)
There were plans to do a third film which never materialized. (Oh, didn’t it? Considering the box office take that is actually surprising. I would guess that perhaps Murphy bailed)
Nick Nolte appears heavier in the role than usual because when shooting started, he was still carrying the weight he gained for Q & A (1990). (huh, I wonder why Nolte put on the weight, he wasn’t playing a known person. As a matter of fact … he was playing a police officer just like in this film)
When Reggie is calling his old friends to try and borrow money, one of the men he calls is named “Willie Biggs”. In the original screenplay for the first movie, Willie Biggs was the name of Reggie Hammond. Eddie Murphy requested that the name be changed because he thought it was a “generic black name.” (Good on Murphy I guess)
The “The Boys Are Back In Town” phrase was used as the main movie tagline for this movie. Similarly, the promotional blurb for the first film, 48 Hrs. (1982), started with the “The Boys Are Back In Town” wording. This was also the name of a song written specifically for that film. The track was never released when that movie came out and was never available on CD until the year 2000. For this sequel, though the original song was heard at the end of the film, the track wasn’t included on this sequel’s album either. (Whaaaaat? That’s a crazy note. I had assumed it was the line from the actual famous song with the lyrics “The boys are back in town”. Is it not? I can’t even tell, was that song written for Another 48 hrs.?! … nope, it is a different song. How strange.)
What?! Baby geniuses are back, Jack! Bobbin’s World daycare/preschool has hit it big and ready to launch a multimedia empire with media mogul Bill Biscane. Little do they know that he’s got a plan to use the partnership to launch mind control kids TV shows. Uh oh! Can a new generation of baby geniuses stop him before it’s too late? Find out in… Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2!
Why?! World domination, duh. Biscane hopes to get children across the world addicted to his television shows so that he makes gobs of money. And he can’t have it fail because, as we are told several different times, he sunk so much money in the R&D for the mind control technology (reminder: this is a children’s film). What isn’t clear about the entire plan is why he gets Stan Bobbins (little brother of Dan from the first film) involved. Biscane owns the technology… why even involve anyone else (particularly what seems like a company run out of a single location)? Such hubris is ultimately his downfall as the the babies at Bobbin’s World seem to want only one thing: to stop him at all costs.
How?! Alright, so in order to get the children of the world addicted to his television network, Biscane needs only to put a DVD into a DVD player and have it play. Simple, right? Wrong! Not when you only have one copy of the disc and employ bumbling idiots as your goons. Just when they are about to play the disc it falls into the stroller of the babies. Oh no! When the goons attempt to get it back they are stopped by a superhero kid named Kahuna who bears a striking resemblance to Whit and Sly from the first film (but that would make no sense. So why did they use the same actor? Beats me). It turns out that Biscane is actually an East German child kidnapper named Kane and that he has spent his life concocting plans to kidnap/control children only to be foiled by Kahuna every time. Kahuna in turn is a kid who drank a magic potion that has kept him young forever and super strong and smart. You following this? Anyway, now these four babies and some other unimportant side characters are caught in the middle of this eternal struggle of good vs. evil. Kahuna and the babies come up with a plan to stop Biscane, but Biscane foils it and captures Kahuna. Oh no! It must be over. Wrong… Kahuna then… uh… gets the disc back (yeah, that’s the ticket) and then… uh… they duke it out and the babies turn into superbabies and they beat up everyone and everyone is happy and Jon Voight becomes a creepy baby Jon Voight. The end. See, this plot is tight.
Who?! I 100% have to give a shout out to the weird-ass cameos in the film. Not only do we get a dose of Whoopi Goldberg playing herself and thanking Kahuna for saving some kids, but we also get a cameo by the boy band O-Town formed as part of MTV’s Making the Band in 2000 and some canned footage of George W. Bush waiting his turn to speak to Kahuna. This, of course, makes this the best president/musician-as-actor film in history.
Where?! Despite being on the cusp of a multimedia empire it would seem that Bobbin’s World hasn’t yet expanded to outside the LA area. This is confirmed as Kahuna’s hideout is straight up in the ‘H’ of the Hollywood sign. Wow. That’s an unexpected A. Using landmarks to perfect effect.
When?! I don’t recall an exact date coming up at any point (other than the flashbacks, which take place after World War I and in the 1960s), but there is a totally random moment where a side character is disappointed that a boy just wants her to tutor him rather than take her to homecoming. It also specifies that she goes to Fillmore High School which makes sense as Fillmore, CA isn’t too far from LA. Creeping about online it seems like their homecoming is usually end of October. That’s like a B-. Semi-exact but vague. Hoping I’m not flagged on too many FBI lists for the searches I just performed.
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2? More like Super Crazy, Sweet Baby Jesuses Too! Amirite? Let’s see, thinly veiled allusions to Nazis in a film starring literally babies using creepy CGI. Could this be real, or is this just fantasy? This was real and it was dog poo in my face! Let’s get into it!
The Good – Not much. Actually nothing? Maybe getting the babies to act was impressive enough, although I wouldn’t say it was better than the first movie. There are flashes of humor in Voight’s performance as well, he has a lot of fun with it. That is it though. Let that sink in.
The Bad – Nearly everything. Shoddily made. 95% of the film is ADR voice work including Jon Voight’s lines. The story is ludicrous. The sets are ludicrous. The lines people say are ludicrous. It is a poorly thought out and put together film, top to bottom. I’ll save you the trouble and not list out everything individually. I’ll leave you with this: they totally unnecessarily connects the original film to this new one by making Baio the brother of MacNicols … why not just say Baio was MacNicols? Because you needed him to be kind of a sell out horrible person? Why not just write it differently?
The BMT – A resounding yes. This movie certainly earns its place on the IMDb bottom 100 (top ten even). It is fascinating that a film like this would be released to over 1000 theaters and even record foreign box office takes. This film probably is the pinnacle of the Bad Kids’ Film genre. This isn’t a genre we typically take part in because early in the history of BMT we watched Dudley Do-Right, and realized it was, one, not that bad, and two, just impossible to make fun of. This earns the place in BMT by sheer force of will and Jon Voight’s tour de force. Really just an incredibly tone deaf and weird to the nth degree acting performance. Steven Paul must have cashed in a few favors to get this made. Considering there is a whole television series after this (released as I think five films) there must have been money to be made, but I find even that unbelievable. In the spirit of the BMT Hall of Fame we introduced recently this would earn its ticket based on the fact that is is the peak of a full genre, the kids’ movie genre. Nothing will ever beat it.
The game this week is tough. I think I’m going to go with a Sklognalysis where I’ll draw a comparison between this movie and a movie in our past. The movie I’m thinking of is pretty niche: The Night They Saved Christmas, a TV movie from 1984. I saw this recently at the bequest of my brother who was feeling very nostalgic about the film. First: would not recommend, the movie is super weird, and mostly boring. But the comparison I made is between the strange North Pole sled depot (with pools of water everywhere and everything just kind of looking like It’s a Small World ride in the Magic Kingdom) and then also with the character of Ed played by Paul Williams (the songwriter … he wrote Evergreen with Barbara Streisand which was nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, and Academy Award) which, in his epic creepiness, operated very similarly to the Kahuna in this film. He has a weird lair, is a 50ish year old man in a child’s body, and puts children in harm’s way for his own selfish desires. They are both so creepy though … watching these movies back-to-back I think would at least make you think “huh, it seemed like we learned our lesson back in 1984 … guess not”. And doesn’t that make this movie at least a bit special in an anachronistic way?
What?! A multinational baby product company,BabyCo, has started experimenting on babies to discover advanced learning techniques. As a control they’ve separated twins, Sly and Whit, to prove the method works. Using his superhuman strength and smarts, Sly is able to escape the lab, leading to the recapture of Whit by mistake. Will the switcheroo be discovered in time to free the babies and bring BabyCo down? Find out in… Baby Geniuses!
Why?! Alright, I know that little synopsis may sound confusing (particularly as a plot to a kid’s film and not a surrealist horror film). Don’t worry, it’s even more confusing when you actually watch it. On the face of it there is a pretty clear reason why BabyCo is flaunting bioethical mores and engaging in baby experimentation: they hope to develop a learning technique so great that everyone will jump at the chance to pay big money to get their kid enrolled. Muddling all this, though, is the fact that both BabyCo and Whit’s father, Dan, are also obsessed with learning the ancient baby language, which purportedly holds all the secrets to the meaning of life (and conveniently explains why all babies secretly talk like adults). I guess BabyCo hopes to use the “babytalk” language to further develop the Kinder method. As for the babies, they’re motivation seems to be freedom and bringing the separated twins back together. Unrightfully separating twins is of course the greatest crime known to man, one that the Atlantic Ocean is guilty of as we speak. Fuck you, Ocean.
How?! Like any good scientist, BabyCo’s chief researcher, Dr. Heep, set up a controlled experiment with twins Sly and Whit so as to definitively prove the Kinder Method is superior to other learning methods. Unfortunately the method works too well (or maybe Sly and Whit are just naturally too smart, it’s never made all that clear) and Sly breaks free to run about town. Coincidentally they corner Sly at the very moment that he and Whit encounter each other for the first time and Whit is taken back to the lab by mistake. Uh oh! Once BabyCo realizes the mistake they know that their little Mengele-like twin experimentation will be discovered and come to an end, so they start to pack it up to jet off to Lichtenstein (this is really the plot). Acting quickly, Sly and Whit organize their baby troops, hypnotize some weak-minded adult helpers, and take down the whole enterprise, all the while spouting odd anachronistic adult-themed jokes delivered by ADR. This very well might be one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.
Who?! Twin film alert! Have to mark it for next year’s Smaddies Baddies. As for Planchets, I have to highlight Kyle Howard’s Dickie (self nicknamed Icepick). He is a teenager who is given a job at Whit’s parent’s daycare as a favor to his parents, given that he can’t hold down any other job (and doesn’t appear to want to). He spends the entire film dressed in bizarre costumes (including a gigantic hoop nose ring) trying to get fired. No dice, though, as he ends up playing a part in saving the babies… which I guess means he cares or something.
Where?! Very nicely takes place in Pasadena, where BabyCo is headquartered. Mentioned outright in the beginning and supported to the very end as the LAPD race to BabyCo HQ to save the day. The Bobbins’ place seems to be somewhere in the LA suburbs not too far away. Pretty solid C+.
When?! Xmas film, alert! When Sly escapes the lab he ends up making it to a mall, where he spends the night. It is very clearly decked out in Christmas decorations, with a mall Santa and everything. We also get a clear “Merry Christmas” from one of the mall security guards. Perfection. B+.
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Baby Geniuses? More like Sweet Baby Jesuses! Amirite? We watched a kid’s film literally starring babies. Totally our wheelhouse. Not the antithesis of everything BMT holds desr. What could go wrong … it isn’t like it could ruin my life, right? Right, obviously, baby geniuses didn’t ruin my life, that’s absurd, but it wasn’t very good. Let’s go!
The Good – You’d be surprised by how okay the story actually is. It is silly, and it doesn’t make much sense, but if you squint and let it wash over you like a summer rain it isn’t the most unpleasant. My wife actually watched this movie a bit growing up and had fond memories of it. So credit where credit is due. This is probably up there with Master of Disguise now as BMT films where people I know were kind of flabbergasted that the movie was bad. Also, I don’t know how they get babies to act. At times I was just confounded as to how they got them to do certain things. It is incredible. The supporting acting appears bad, but they are also super committed and I kind of loved that.
The Bad – Shoddily made. Number one. All the way down to a rented limousine having a tail light out. I would assume a feature film shoot wouldn’t be so tight on budget or schedule that they could request a not-broken limo to be sent, but not in Baby Geniuses. It looks like a movie made in 1993 but it was made in 1999. The finale was creepy enough I didn’t really know how children would watch it without becoming scared for life. Obviously it is really stupid and none of the jokes land.
The BMT – Yes, but lower than it is and mainly just because the idea of the movie is really stupid (or at least transparently pandering to very young kids who they knew just wouldn’t care) and the movie shoddily made. But it is like a 50. You can imagine people liking this film. It is possible. Why does this sound like praise? Read my Superbabies Baby Geniuses 2 recap to find out! The legacy of this film will be that it is a great Twin Film, and part of probably the worst film franchise in history.
I’m going Sequel Prequel Remake here and going for a Prequel. I’m much more interested in Peter MacNicol’s character of Dan Bobbins than anyone else. Why is he special in that he can understand baby talk a bit? He suggests it is in the back of his mind, just out of reach. The prequel will explore the extraordinary events of his babyhood that lead to the incomplete crossing-over and residual retention of baby talk. LSD experiments by a young and radical Dr. Heeb related to MKUltra (although you’d have to accept that Heeb is much older (70’s or even 80’s) or MacNicol’s is much younger (30s) than the actors who played them in Baby Geniuses were at the time), drawing a connection between Kane and BabyCo in the process, a manipulation to draw Dan and Robin together to allow Heeb to continue his research through Dan. It’s got it all! Baby Geniuses: Origins, coming this fall to Netflix. Totally, definitely getting picked up by Netflix.
With the first BMT Live! of the year behind us, we continue onto the Razzies entry of the Squeakuels cycle… or I should say what was the Razzies entry. That’s right. Minor shake-up for 2017 is that this entry in the cycle is now the Challenges entry. This still includes Razzies as we continue to try to cover as many nominees as possible, but it also includes any BMT challenges we may come up with. For the moment that is just the Calendar, but the Periodic Table of Smellements and a world mapl.de.map would also fall into the cycle once we officially put them on the website. So without further ado we start this new entry off with a couple of films that are both on the Calendar. Give it up for the worst reviewed film series in history and the only set of films to both appear on the IMDb Bottom 100. That’s right, we are subjecting ourselves to Baby Geniuses and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Lord help up. Let’s go!
(Interestingly has more IMDb votes than its predecessor (if you are going to bother voting why not for both? Or do you think *gasp* … they didn’t watch the original before the sequel?!). Below 2.0 is obviously incredible, it is the reason this film is an insane #3 on the bottom 100 list! The lowest we had gone before was #15 with From Justin to Kelly. The Baby Geniuses Franchise will represent our 10th and 11th movies on the list, and unfortunately we’d be hard pressed to find nine qualifying movies to make that a cycle. Maybe we’ll try … but probably not.)
Leonard Maltin – BOMB – Sequel to Baby Geniuses casts Voight as a media mogul out to brainwash children via a tot-aimed TV network. He wants to use them to take over the world, but a band of tykes catches on and sets out to stop him. Gimmick has kids speaking to each other, thanks to creepy computer generated lip movement. Crude humor makes this not just bad but insulting.
(Whoop their ass Leonard! Seriously, I do think this is a strong contender for the worst franchise in history. Leonard is pretty conservative about BOMB ratings and both earned it, the movies have one good review out of 89! I even think both will have their own flavor of terrible. In the first I think it will be that it will just look shoddily made with the old school peanut-butter-esque mouth movements, where this, as I expected, uses the creepy CGI mouths now. This must have been pioneering in that respect, but in the last ten years it has become easy and cheap enough to do in even the worst direct-to-VOD sequels. Things like Santa Paws 2.)
(Oh …. Oh my God. Voight has a German accent and appears to be wearing a very Nazi-esque uniform at one point. I was very skeptical of the IMDb note claiming he based the character off Mengele, but … I mean, it certainly is a lot more possible than I initially thought! The CGI looks hilariously terrible, I might actually find this movie kind of interesting to watch. Like, how does this happen? How do you even go about directing a film like this?)
Directors – Bob Clark – (Known For: A Christmas Story; Black Christmas; Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things; Murder by Decree; Dead of Night; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Baby Geniuses; Rhinestone; Porky’s II: The Next Day; Loose Cannons; Porky’s; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Director for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; And in 1985 for Rhinestone; Directed Black Christmas which is widely considered one of the first films in the slasher genre.)
Writers – Steven Paul (story) – (BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Baby Geniuses; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Screenplay for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; … He’s the manager for Bob Clark and Jon Voight which explains the cast and crew I suppose. In 1979 he was reported as the world’s youngest ever film producer at 20 years old.)
Gregory Poppen (screenplay) – (BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Screenplay for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Wrote an incredible number of Awards shows including seven straight ESPYs from 2002 to 2009.)
Actors – Jon Voight – (Known For: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them; Heat; Transformers; Tropic Thunder; Varsity Blues; Deliverance; U Turn; Mission: Impossible; National Treasure; Zoolander; Holes; The Manchurian Candidate; Enemy of the State; Midnight Cowboy; The Rainmaker; Ali; Rosewood; Glory Road; Catch-22; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Anaconda; Bratz; Getaway; An American Carol; Lara Croft: Tomb Raider; Four Christmases; Pearl Harbor; Most Wanted; National Treasure: Book of Secrets; September Dawn; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1998 for Worst Actor and Screen Couple for Anaconda; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2008 for Worst Supporting Actor for Bratz, National Treasure: Book of Secrets, September Dawn, and Transformers; And in 2005 for for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; And in 1998 for Most Wanted, and U Turn; Father of Angelina Jolie, although they were estranged for years apparently. Is devoutly religious and a well known conservative (which explains An American Carol at least …))
Scott Baio – (Known For: Bugsy Malone; Foxes; The Bread, My Sweet; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Cursed; Zapped!; Notes: In 1997 he was rumored to have died in a car accident. Not only had he not died, he hadn’t been in an accident in the first place and it is unknown how the rumor got started. More well known for his television work in Charles in Charge, Happy Days (and the spin-off Joanie Loves Chachi), and Arrested Development.)
Vanessa Angel – (Known For: Kingpin; King of New York; Bread and Roses; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot; Hall Pass; The Perfect Score; Kissing a Fool; Spies Like Us; Sleep with Me; Notes: I will always remember her as the computer generated Lisa from the Weird Science television series, a staple of the Sklogs’ childhood.)
Budget/Gross – $20 million / Domestic: $9,219,388 (Worldwide: $9,448,644)
(An absolute disaster. The budget is probably a bit inflated, because I don’t really see why it would get a $20 million dollar budget and cast Baio in a major role. I suppose they were hoping to slightly increase the $36 million take of the original?)
(Oooof, on the second page with Caddyshack II and Teen Wolf Too! Of the films below it I could see us eventually doing Return of the Killer Tomatoes, Mannequin Two: On the Move, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: Rise of Taj, Meatballs II, and Teen Wolf Too eventually. A veritable bounty awaits. Naturally this came during the BMT gold rush from 2000-2010, the Golden Decade as I just started calling it. It would all come a-tumbling down presumably due to Hollywood’s hubris, but we have been on the rise again. A boy can dream …)
Rotten Tomatoes – 0% (0/45): A startling lack of taste pervades Superbabies, a sequel offering further proof that bad jokes still aren’t funny when coming from the mouths of babes.
(Noice. Always solid to hit up a 0%-er on rotten tomatoes. There are only 16 films with 25+ reviews on rotten tomatoes and the perfect(ly terrible) score. See here. Sorting by the number of reviews this is fifth on the list and with One Missed Call and a rewatch of Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever we’d have the top five there done. A sadly sparse list as far as qualifiers are concerned, but there are some future gems like Redline. This is the 12th film we’ve seen from that list (I think … the list is pretty long so I just skimmed it).)
Poster – Superbabies: Baby Sklogses 2 (D-)
(Wow, lot to unpack with this one… this is horrendously bad. Even with good spacing, unique font, and a blue tone to the whole film I cannot help but puke all over myself when looking at this travesty. Are those drone helicopters in the corners? Is there a bouncy ball-human hybrid? What are the ghostly objects in the background? I hate this. [EDITOR NOTE: By the way, having watched the movie, these are all random babies, they aren’t the four main characters of the film … what the fuck baby geniuses?])
Tagline(s) – Meet the new generation of superheroes (A-)
Don’t drive, crawl! (Ugh.)
(It’s almost incredible to say, but that first tagline is nearly perfect. It’s a play on the dual meaning of “new” to give a hint at the premise of the film. It’s also just short enough. Some small tweaks and we might have had an A+ on our hands. The second one makes me sad.)
Keyword(s) – science experiment; Top Ten by BMeTric: 76.1 Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2 (2004); 38.6 Allegiant (2016); 35.8 Splice (2009); 35.8 Cutting Class (1989); 28.3 Gekijô-ban poketto monsutâ – Myûtsû no gyakushû (1998); 28.0 Morgan (2016); 20.1 The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971); 15.8 The Experiment (2010); 15.7 The Last Mimzy (2007); 15.3 The Killer Eye (1999);
(We’ve seen none! Morgan looked like trash, I saw the trailer for that before Keeping Up With the Joneses in October. I actually don’t think we are going to get to any of the others. Just not very many good-bad science experiment bases films I guess.)
Notes – Jon Voight reportedly based the role of Kane on descriptions of Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor that performed grotesque experiments on prisoners in concentration camps. (Alright well … initially I had a kind of condemning note here angry at IMDb for not purging what appeared to be a clearly false note made by some jokester. But having now watched the trailer this seems, uh, slightly more plausible. May God have mercy on our souls.)
Last film directed by Bob Clark. He died in a car accident in April 2007. (Pretty sad story if you bother to look it up, … glad we’re ending on that note, anyone ready for a kids film?)
Awards – Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Picture
Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor (Jon Voight)
Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Director (Bob Clark)
Nominated for the Razzie Award for Worst Screenplay (Steven Paul, Gregory Poppen)
With the first BMT Live! of the year behind us, we continue onto the Razzies entry of the Squeakuels cycle… or I should say what was the Razzies entry. That’s right. Minor shake-up for 2017 is that this entry in the cycle is now the Challenges entry. This still includes Razzies as we continue to try to cover as many nominees as possible, but it also includes any BMT challenges we may come up with. For the moment that is just the Calendar, but the Periodic Table of Smellements and a world mapl.de.map would also fall into the cycle once we officially put them on the website. So without further ado we start this new entry off with a couple of films that are both on the Calendar. Give it up for the worst reviewed film series in history and the only set of films to both appear on the IMDb Bottom 100. That’s right, we are subjecting ourselves to Baby Geniuses and Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Lord help up. Let’s go!
Baby Geniuses (1999) – BMeTric: 72.1(#66 on IMDb bottom 100)
(Just shockingly low. It does seem like it wants to go up, but obviously also legendary because it really has stayed pretty consistent over the nearly 15 years this graph covers. This movie would also probably be a poster boy for why I need to figure out how to “backdate” the BMeTric. I would assume for the most part that Baby Geniuses increases in votes proportionally to the rest of IMDb. So you would assume the BMeTric should really stay the same over time. But it is based off of average votes for a movie today, so it’ll just rise over time. Such is life at the moment.)
Leonard Maltin – BOMB – Unless you want to see walking, talking toddlers hypnotizing DeLuise into picking his nose, steer clear of this almost history-making comedy clinker about power-mad child psychologist Turner, who’s raising three bright babies in her lab. Technically shoddy and recipient of some of the decade’s worst reviews (though people did go see it). If these kids are such geniuses, why can’t they spark even a single laugh?
(Cooooooold bloooooded. That’s is just body-shot-body-shot-upper-cut Leonard, taking the industry down. History making boys, that’s why we do it. That’s why we play the game. If you are going to watch a kids’ movie, at least make sure it is historically bad, right? I’m getting all amped, nothing can push me off this mountain.)
(Aaaaaand, I’m out. This does look shoddy enough though that it has an outside chance of being bemusing to the point of interest. Like, I do wonder which computer graphics company developed the tech for the moving babies and whatnot, some of that did look more impressive that I expected.)
Directors – Bob Clark – (Known For: A Christmas Story; Black Christmas; Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things; Murder by Decree; Dead of Night; BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Baby Geniuses; Rhinestone; Porky’s II: The Next Day; Loose Cannons; Porky’s; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Director for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; And in 1985 for Rhinestone; Once hit a royal flush on a video poker machine on the Strip and won over $80 thousand on a two dollar bet.)
Writers – Steven Paul (story) – (BMT: Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Baby Geniuses; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2005 for Worst Screenplay for Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2; Was a playwright at the age of 12. Well known as a producer, he produced things like Ghost Rider and the upcoming Ghost in the Shell film. He loves ghosts.)
Francisca Matos and Robert Grasmere (story) – (BMT: Baby Geniuses; Notes: Matos basically became the writing partner of Grasmere, and while they have been attached to a number of projects this is the only significant one produced. Grasmere has had a far more impressive visual effects career including films like Demolition Man, The Core, and Toys (and yeah, I chose the worst of the bunch, it is a very impressive list).)
Bob Clark (screenplay) – (Known For: A Christmas Story; Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things; BMT: Baby Geniuses; Porky’s II: The Next Day; Porky’s Revenge; Loose Cannons; Porky’s; Notes: The last feature film he wrote, although he directed more than he wrote through his career.)
Greg Michael (screenplay) – (BMT: Baby Geniuses; Notes: Was the second unit director for a murderer’s row of 2000s action films: the entire Mummy series, The Time Machine, The Tuxedo, Van Helsing, G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra! Has never really made the jump to director, although he is attached to a film called Wild Heart that was just announced.)
Actors – Kathleen Turner – (Known For: Marley & Me; The Virgin Suicides; Who Framed Roger Rabbit; Romancing the Stone; Body Heat; Monster House; Nurse 3-D; Peggy Sue Got Married; The Jewel of the Nile; The War of the Roses; Serial Mom; Prizzi’s Honor; The Accidental Tourist; The Man with Two Brains; BMT: Baby Geniuses; Dumb and Dumber To; V.I. Warshawski; A Simple Wish; Beautiful; Undercover Blues; Notes: A devoted activist for Planned Parenthood for years including becoming a chairperson. Obtained a reputation for being difficult to work with later in her career.)
Christopher Lloyd – (Known For: Back to the Future; One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; Back to the Future Part II; Clue; Sin City: A Dame to Kill For; I Am Not a Serial Killer; Back to the Future Part III; The Addams Family; Who Framed Roger Rabbit; Anastasia; Piranha 3D; Addams Family Values; Star Trek III: The Search for Spock; Man on the Moon; The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension; The Postman Always Rings Twice; The Tale of Despereaux; Mr. Mum; Goin’ South; Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road; The Dream Team; DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp; Eight Men Out; BMT: Piranha 3DD; Baby Geniuses; Suburban Commando; My Favorite Martian; Dennis; Love, Wedding, Marriage; Fly Me to the Moon; A Million Ways to Die in the West; The Pagemaster; Angels in the Outfield; Camp Nowhere; Hey Arnold! The Movie; Notes: Is the uncle of Sam Lloyd known for his role as the lawyer on scrubs. What more is there to say? Has been in some of my favorite movies from my childhood.)
Kim Cattrall – (Known For: The Ghost; Police Academy; Sex and the City; Big Trouble in Little China; Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country; Ice Princess; Masquerade; The Return of the Musketeers; BMT: Crossroads; Sex and the City 2; Baby Geniuses; The Bonfire of the Vanities; Mannequin; 15 Minutes; Porky’s; Notes: Won the Razzie Award in 2011 for Worst Actress for Sex and the City 2; Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1991 for Worst Supporting Actress for The Bonfire of the Vanities; I can’t find anything about their relationship, but she appeared in four Bob Clark films: Tribute, Turk 182!, Porky’s, and Baby Geniuses! She is British, but her accent is Canadian where she grew up. She is an avid supporter of Liverpool F.C.)
Budget/Gross – $12 million / Domestic: $27,250,736 (Worldwide: $36,450,736)
(Wow, not bad all things considered. I’m pretty shocked by the foreign number. It doesn’t really make sense to release to foreign markets, although (and I don’t really know how this movie is constructed, so take this with a grain of salt), if they are merely putting voices over without manipulating the mouths too much it might have been a fairly trivial dub which could have made it worth it.)
Rotten Tomatoes – 2% (1/44): Flat direction and actors who look embarrassed to be onscreen make Baby Geniuses worse than the premise suggests.
(The rogue good review states: “With the recent popularity of baby-themed shows, this film has perfect timing. Younger patrons will be drawn into the fantasy, while the humor is sufficient to keep adults interested.” I had to look it up, but indeed, the show Baby Bob came out mere months before this review (June, 2002), bizarrely three years after the movie came out! Which also means Baby Geniuses held a 0% on rotten tomatoes for three years before losing it.)
Poster – Baby Sklogses (C+)
(The positive is that the symmetry is pretty good. Everything else is not great. Font is uninteresting and the coloring is not great. It does get the message across, though, with that baby wearing glasses.)
Tagline(s) – Think innocent. Think helpless. Think again. (I am dumber because of this.)
Naps are history. (Seriously. What is going on?)
(What in the fuck are these? The first one is like someone from a different country that didn’t speak english was forced to study taglines for a year and come up with one for this film. The second one is like an actual baby came up with it. Dear God. Those are rough.)
Keyword(s) – baby; Top Ten by BMeTric: 85.0 Date Movie (2006); 83.9 Scary Movie 5 (2013); 82.8 Son of the Mask (2005); 74.1 Junior (1994); 72.2 Baby Geniuses (1999); 71.4 In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011); 70.2 Look Who’s Talking Too (1990); 66.1 The Animal (2001); 64.7 Honey I Blew Up the Kid (1992); 63.4 Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013);
(Wow, so there are a few movies there we’ve seen (Junior, Look Who’s Talking Too, The Animal … a few times, Honey I Blew Up the Kid) but only one we’ve done for BMT. That is a new rule by the way. We’ve stopped considering movies “watched” unless we’ve done them for BMT. So a while to go in the baby top 10 … which is a weird mix of the expected and just weird films.)
Notes – The amusement park is the one at Circus Circus in Las Vegas, NV. (Circus Smircus?! We were (kind of) just there!)
Kathleen Turner, who plays Dr. Elena Kinder, and Christopher Lloyd, who plays Dr. Heep, also co-starred in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), in which they played Jessica Rabbit and Judge Doom.
The last theatrically-released film of Dom DeLuise (although several later films he made were never publicly released). (Kind of a thing isn’t it? Terrible movies being the last release. I wonder if it is because things like voices and kids films are less demanding so actors who ultimately die of a terminal illness just end up in those roles as they approach their death. Sorry to muse about the subject, but I do find it interesting)
Dr. Elena Kinder’s surname is derived from the German word for children.
The combination for Sly’s alarm system at the beginning of the film is “1673.” (This is the kind of shit we’re supposed to do. Like me having my ATM pin be 1673 … it isn’t by the way, but that would be pretty weird right?)
The film is included on the film critic Roger Ebert’s “Most Hated” list. (These two films are hitting a bunch of marks)
Important couple weeks for BMT, so felt like it was key to catch up. Let’s dive right into Species II.
What?! Sil is back, Jack!… JK. She was engulfed in a flaming tar pit at the end of the first Species. She’s dead. Instead astronaut Patrick Ross returns from a mission to Mars having been infected by ancient alien DNA similar to Sil’s. The military has to find and destroy him (perhaps with a little help from Sil’s genetic clone, Eve). Can they stop Patrick before it’s too late?! Find out in… Species II.
Why?! Like Sil before him, Patrick is driven by one thing and one thing only: getting it on with as many ladies as possible (but who isn’t, amirite? Ayyyyyeeeeeeee [hits jukebox]). This is so the alien species can spread its DNA far and wide and overwhelm the earth and its denizens. Press Lennox (still a real name that was written in a script unironically) is once again pressed into action to stop him at all costs. That’s it… there is literally no other motivation here. These films are just gratuitous gore and nudity… wait, is there a reason these films aren’t still being made?
How?! After Patrick is infected, Press and Dr. Baker team back up to try to figure out how to stop him. Unlike in the first film, Patrick was infected as an adult and is far more powerful than Sil was (she still needed to mature and learn the fine arts of seduction, while he’s already a handsome national hero a.k.a. a lady killer… literally). Through their efforts experimenting on Eve we get some further details on how the alien species operates. Many thousands of years ago the alien DNA was sent to Mars (much like it was sent to Earth in the first Species). It infected the Martians that lived there and destroyed everything leaving the once thriving planet desolate (this is only implied, but I love how bonkers it is). As suspected in the first film, the aliens aren’t here to take over the earth, but rather just to exterminate us. The alien hybrids are advanced biological weapons. Furthermore, through their experimentation they figure out that Eve/Sil won’t mate with inferior DNA not by preference for a stronger mate, but because she literally can’t mate with inferior DNA. This allows for one of the astronauts with sickle cell trait to not only be immune from infection, but also makes his blood poisonous to the aliens (which seems like a super terrible fatal flaw of the weapon, right? You’d think they would have R&D’d that shit a bit more before launch). They pack up his blood and go a-alien killing (culminating in a scene where Press stabs the astronaut in the leg with a pitchfork in order to use his freshly squeezed blood to kill the final alien puppet monster. Word.) Don’t try to think through the science of how this all works… seriously, don’t try. It’s horrendous. In fact, while the first film tried hard to keep things coherent, Species II allowed itself to descend into ridiculousness and contradiction almost immediately.
Who?! Definitively no Planchet in this one, so I’ll just give a little shout-out to my favorite minor character: Richard Belzer randomly playing the President of the United States. You read that correctly. Mr. Law & Order himself. So minor that it’s not even listed on the wikipedia page for portrayals of Presidents in film. Maybe I’ll have to go ahead and add it.
Where?! We jump coasts for the sequel and are entrenched in our nation’s capital, where most of the action takes place. We get some nice scenes of the Capitol building, clear license places, etc. Additionally, we get a “Welcome to Virginia” billboard when the characters jump the border, which is my favorite. Overall a solid B.
When?! Booooooooo, no clear indication of the exact date that the film took place. We know it’s not too long after the first film due to returning characters, but that’s all we got. At one point Eve is shown watching an MLB game, so if I were truly insane I would try to figure out what game that was to give us an exact date. Fortunately I’m not that insane (yet). F
I gave you all the pieces of species (ooof, sorry about that), now let’s see how it stood up to BMT analysis.
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Species II? More like Cease Please, Too! Amirite? If I seem less excited about that kick ass rhyme that means you didn’t read my recap of Species because I made the same rhyme and my mind melted. Now it is old news. In the second installment of the series we have the vicious besmirching of the name Patrick by the alien/astronaut Patrick Ross. The sequel brings a ton more sex, but let’s just say I thought it got a bit less erotic. Let’s go!
The Good – Hmmmmm, I guess I kind of like the idea of continued experiments on Sil and trying to make her a defense against a future alien attack. I did find it a little odd there is just no mention of the fact that a nearby solar system has not only intelligent life, but deadly killer intelligent life (and yet we are happily trotting off to Mars to collect exactly three soil samples, good use of your 16 month journey idiots). This is starting to look like criticism, but there really isn’t much to like in this sequel beyond that it delivers on a few of the promises (what if the alien was a man? We could be doomed!) from the first film.
The Bad – Hmmm, well they got rid of what I liked about the first film (a gaggle of alien hunters on the trail of a fugitive alien, Forest Whitaker’s kind of awesome if confounding empath, the learning about the world aspect of Sil) and replaced it with trash. Now we have terrible practical effects instead of terrible CGI. And as I said, the sex is just less erotic, mainly because most of the women in the film eventually burst in half. The movie is slower and a bigger mess. There is nearly nothing to like here.
The BMT – And yet, I don’t feel like the movie is completely dog poo in my face … and I can’t really think why. I think this movie is like a 50. Above average, but too shoddily made to jump up to 70ish. It is hard to recommend the film, although back-to-back with its surprisingly superior predecessor I might consider it.
Today Species II has inspired me to dust off the old Ph.D. and get back to Sklogbusting the scientific myths from bad movies. In this episode we look at the starting mission to Mars. In that mission to Mars Patrick Ross becomes the first person to walk on the surface and, ultimately, he collects exactly three soil samples to bring back to Earth. First flag: According to NASA is takes six months to get to Mars (and in the movie I do believe they say it is day 180 of the mission, so that makes sense), but you would have to stay on/at Mars for about 1.5 years in order for the planets to align to make the return trip. In all the mission would take 2.5 years … and yet they snag three soil samples and happily return home. I guess it is all that sweet cash from the advertisements on their ship’s rocket booster (thanks Pepsi, Sprint, and others for the probably billion dollars this wasteful mission cost). So that’s complete horseshit. Second flag, it is later revealed that Dennis Gamble, the only non-infected astronaut on the mission, wasn’t infected because he is a carrier of the sickle cell genetic marker. Now, I know that athletes for example have to be very concerned about playing in Denver with this trait (see the case of Trent Coleman). So could an astronaut be on the first manned mission to Mars with the trait? In fact you are not explicitly barred from becoming an astronaut due to carrying the trait, and since the 1970s the Air Force no longer discharged servicemembers carrying the trait! So indeed it is possible. I’m going partially busted here. No way the mission shook out the way it did, but the personnel seems plausible (even if it is ludicrous that only three people would be involved in a manned mission to Mars). Oh, they were also talking directly to Houston without an eight minute delay. This documentary seems like a load of shit.
What?! The US government has secretly combined human and alien DNA to create a hybrid named Sil. After realizing her danger they attempt to kill her only to have her escape to Los Angeles. Can they destroy her before she finds a mate and her DNA spreads like an unstoppable virus?! Find out in… Species.
Why?! Sil is a mating machine. She literally has a single thing in mind: find the ideal mate, get naked, get it on, and kill anyone that gets in her way. The agents chasing her (an all-star cast of Michael Madsen, Marg Helgenberger, Forest Whitaker, and Alfred Molina) also only have one thing in mind: kill Sil… and also get it on with each other and anyone else that might come along (it’s an erotic thriller after all). That’s it though. The species films are amazing in their single-mindedness.
How?! Once Sil escapes, the team of agents get to work. These are the bounty hunter Press Lennox (a real name written down in a script), Dr. Baker who kinda runs the show on the science side, a useless anthropologist, and Forest Whitaker’s empath, who is a super useful psychic-type who feel deeply about everything (including exactly where Sil is at all times… phew, how lucky). They track her from murder to murder until Sil, learning from avid TV watching (much like a President of the United States I know), fakes her own death and throws them off. Shortly thereafter the unsuspecting (and still useless) anthropologist is seduced by the alien-in-disguise (i.e. a wig) and inadvertently impregnates her (you are so useless!). Fortunately, Whitaker feels her presence in the hotel room and they chase her to a series of tar pits deep under the hotel (conveniently made accessible by the 1994 earthquake). Sil is able to give birth, but she and her baby are almost immediately thrown into a flaming pool of tar, destroying all of their terrible alien DNA… or did it? It’s actually a pretty tight plot as far as horror-scifi-erotic-thrillers go.
Who?! The comic relief is certainly Alfred Molina, however it’s tough to consider him a Planchet. He’s more like the 4th (and least important) Musketeer. He’s also useless, a horndog, and majorly fucks up at the end to almost destroy the Earth. So boo on him.
Where?! Beautiful settings film. The film very clearly starts in Utah, the location of the top secret lab that created Sil. She then catches a train through Salt Lake City and onwards to Los Angeles, where most of the film takes place. This plays on a common theme in film and TV: that taboos are so acceptable in the dangerous world of LA that even a killer alien seductress would hardly make a splash there. B
When?! Near the beginning we are told that in 1993 the alien DNA was sent to earth. You would think that would be it… that is until Sil is hit by a car and hospitalized. Against all rules and regulations of HIPPA we get a full on glimpse of her hospital file and find that Sil was admitted on April 24, 1995. Exact date (although I think it would have to be confirmed with a Blu-Ray copy of the film as it’s hard to make out for sure). Props to the props guy who even had her name as “Jane Doe” in the file. Very thorough. B-
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Species? More like Cease Please! AMIRITE!?!? Woof, I need to catch my breath there, that kick ass rhyme was a bit too much for me. What do you get when you cross the Sci-Fi / Horror wonder of Alien with literally softcore pornography? The rare and wondrous world of the Erotic-Sci-Fi-Horror genre. Shhhh, don’t scare it away, let’s get into it:
The Good – I kind of dug The Fugitive crossed with Alien feel of the storyline here. Speaking of which the story is surprisingly coherent: Sil is good at two things. Killing and reproducing. Anyone who gets in the way of her reproducing is gonna get killed. Easy peasy. Gets going fast and goes at a good clip.
The Bad – The CGI, woooooof. Not a good choice. I think that might be what held the series back a bit. The alien puppet/CGI in the first two films never fascinates you like the xenomorph or predator does. Not surprisingly Sil’s acting is subpar. And Whitaker’s character, even though I kind of love it, sticks out like a sore thumb (they bring in a biologist, sociologist, manhunter and … a psychic? Like, are we now required to believe this empath stuff is real?). Terrible twist ending where in the end a rat is infested by the alien DNA. Based on what we have just seen on screen this situation would inevitably lead to the end of the world as we know it.
The BMT – No, I kind of dug this film. The twist at the end kind of ruins things, and it is silly, but again, totally into The Fugitive crossed with Alien idea. I would give it a 10. Definitively below average and basically underrated by its rotten tomatoes score in my opinion.
I’m thinking Sequel Prequel Remake, but in this case I’m thinking television show. A true crossover between The Fugitive and X-Files. Almost a Men In Black project. You got Press Lennox as the manhunter, Dr. Laura Baker the xenobiologist, Dr. Stephen Arden the sociologist, and Dan Smithson the hyper-observant human lie-detector, all directed by Xavier Fitch the mysterious director of the secret government agency entrusted with hunting down and neutralizing alien threats against Earth. Season 1: The assembly of the team in order to hunt down Sil, the human-alien hybrid developed after a transmission from space is decoded and orders followed. Finale has Sil getting killed, cliffhanger is the development of Eve, the friendly and almost unstoppable clone of Sil. Season 2, Eve is on the team and a new alien threat in the form of national hero and infected astronaut Patrick Ross emerges. This develops into hunting down the offspring he leaves behind in a cross country rampage culminating in the mutual destruction of Eve and Patrick. Later seasons further explore the landscape of these evil alien species, who now know humans as an opposing sinister force on the cusp of long-distance space travel, and the attempt to survive the ensuing galactic war. Species: The Series! Coming this … fall or something on … Netflix or something.
There had been some thought that this week might be time for a BMT Live! Rings came out to absolutely horrifying reviews (see what I did there?) and we had to think quick on whether we should act. The answer: not until we see the reviews for Fifty Shades Darker. It would be irresponsible to let it go by without giving it a chance at BMT Live! glory. It deserves it. So instead we head into SciFi/Fantasy and get to do a set of films that I’ve been eyeing for awhile. That’s right, we’re watching Species and Species II. These films promise three things: nudity, a scene where someone kisses someone else and their tongue bursts through the back of their skull, and… uh… nudity again. So basically I’m super duper duper excited. Let’s go!
Species II (1998) – BMeTric: 67.3
(Again we see the 2011 inflection and regression to the mean as the votes increase. Unlike its predecessor this one is considered definitively bad. As I said in the Species preview these plots are all starting to look the same to me, so I’m categorizing them. For Species II I’m going to call it: Poorly Rated, but Perplexingly Popular. In this case a sub-5 rating is definitively terrible, but we still see a high number of votes (I think … I think I’m going to automate this now that I think about it).)
Leonard Maltin – BOMB – The first man on Mars gets infested with alien DNA, and begins raping women who immediately, and fatally, give birth. Elsewhere, scientists have recreated the half-alien woman from the first film, hoping she’ll be nice this time. Compared to this clunker, the first looks like a collaboration between Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury.
(Well, I’ll set aside the atrocious last line there. This plot sounds bonkers. Like … the first part! This will be at least the third film in which someone gets infected by a disease on Mars. And like Doom and Ghosts of Mars before it may it be a ridiculous nonsense movie.)
(Also seems pretty rad … but also definitely a step down from the last one. That storyline is indeed just as bonkers as Leonard seemed to suggest. So he wasn’t exaggerating there. I having a feeling the erotic horror sci-fi genre might not attract the best and brightest you know? …)
Directors – Peter Medak – (Known For: The Changeling; The Krays; Zorro: The Gay Blade; The Ruling Class; Let Him Have It; BMT: Species II; Romeo Is Bleeding; Notes: Has had a very long career in Hollywood starting in the late 50’s. His best known film has got to be The Ruling Class for which Peter O’Toole received an Oscar nomination for Actor.)
Writers – Dennis Feldman (written by) – (Known For: Just One of the Guys; BMT: Species II; Virus; Species (BMT); The Golden Child (BMT); Notes: Just a character credit on this one. I find it amusing that he also wrote Virus, which Jamie Lee Curtis considers her worst film.)
Chris Brancato (written by) – (Known For: Hoodlum; BMT: Species II; Notes: He is the creator of the Netflix show Narcos… say what?)
Actors – Natasha Henstridge – (Known For: The Whole Nine Yards; Bounce; BMT: Species II; Ghosts of Mars (BMT); The Whole Ten Yards; Maximum Risk; Adrenalin: Fear the Rush; Species (BMT); Steal; Deception; Dog Park; Notes: Uh… I already had to make a note for the first Species so… she’s Canadian and part Native American. Fun stuff, right?)
Michael Madsen – (Known For: The Hateful Eight; Kill Bill: Vol. 1; Reservoir Dogs; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Sin City; Kill Bill: Vol. 2; Die Another Day; WarGames; Wyatt Earp; Thelma & Louise; Donnie Brasco; The Doors; Free Willy; The Natural; Pauly Shore Is Dead; BMT: BloodRayne; Species II; My Boss’s Daughter; Scary Movie 4 (BMT); Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home; Hell Ride; House; Species (BMT); Notes: Brother of BMT legend Virginia Madsen.)
Marg Helgenberger – (Known For: Erin Brockovich; Bad Boys; Mr. Brooks; Always; In Good Company; My Fellow Americans; BMT: Species II; Fire Down Below (BMT); Species (BMT); The Cowboy Way; Notes: Won an Emmy for her role in the Vietnam War drama China Beach.)
Budget/Gross – $35 million / Domestic: $19,221,939 (N/A)
(Wowzer. I would genuinely believe it if this was the worst original-to-sequel ratio for a major release ever. The original made basically six times more that its sequel and they were released to roughly the same number of cinemas. Astonishing.)
(Ooooof right near Shark Night 3D. I feel like 1998 is a significant year where the studio system completed its transition from the blockbuster 80’s era through slow experimentation with CGI and effects. From 2000-2010 we would enter a true golden age where bad movies flowed like wine. Here though an Erotic SciFi Horror sequel was made and released to 2500 theaters. Think about that.)
(That peak though. This sadly clocks in right around Apollo 18 which undoubtable cost maybe $40 to make. But it came right at a true peak of the genre. It has been an up and down experience since, but the Species franchise could have stood alongside the second tier of the genre (Underworld and Resident Evil) if not for flaming out and pushing out two direct-to-video sequels instead of waiting on a better opportunity.)
Rotten Tomatoes – 9% (3/33): No consensus yet.
(Another consensus to make: A totally unnecessary sequel which amps up the silliness without adding any brains to the equation. Nearly exploitative in its gratuity. As EW puts it: “By now, if you’ve seen one set of slimy phallic tentacles shooting out of someone’s back during orgasm, you’ve seen ’em all.” Sounds like a plan EW.)
Poster – Mating Skloging Begins (C-)
(I like the color tone and the font (again), but there is a bit much going on now. What are all the sparkles everywhere? Stars and… a bunch of lines like in a western blot… because DNA or something?)
Tagline(s) – Mating season begins… (C-)
(Meh. It’s short and certainly tells you what this one is all about: some aliens going to the bone zone. Rad. But nothing clever about it.)
Keyword(s) – sex scene; Top Ten by BMeTric: 89.8 Fifty Shades of Grey (2015); 78.6 Sex and the City 2 (2010); 72.7 Jason X (2001); 71.4 Showgirls (1995); 67.3 Species II (1998); 65.3 The Boy Next Door (2015); 63.8 Knock Knock (I) (2015); 62.6 All About Steve (2009); 62.0 Jennifer’s Body (2009); 59.1 Captivity (2007);
(Pretty amazing list. Wish something like Color of Night could sneak in though, those classic 80’s/90’s erotic thrillers deserve a place on the list, some representative.)
Notes – Though showing Eve in a black leather outfit on some of the posters and DVD-Covers, she never actually wears it in the film.
Shortest of all four Species movies. (small blessings …)
EVE stands for Extraterrestrial Vulnerability Experiment. (Egad)
Most of the nude scenes, such as the debutantes having sex with Patrick or the strip-club sequence, were shortened in the final version of the movie. The full scenes can be seen in the DVD extra features. (No wonder someone stole the DVD from the Minnesota public library system)
Natasha Henstridge is on the miller lite cut out in the grocery store when they are hunting her. (nooooooooooo. Never a good idea. I hope the cut out says “Great taste, less filling, out of this world.” Get it? Cause she’s a famous alien.)
There had been some thought that this week might be time for a BMT Live! Rings came out to absolutely horrifying reviews (see what I did there?) and we had to think quick on whether we should act. The answer: not until we see the reviews for Fifty Shades Darker. It would be irresponsible to let it go by without giving it a chance at BMT Live! glory. It deserves it. So instead we head into SciFi/Fantasy and get to do a set of films that I’ve been eyeing for awhile. That’s right, we’re watching Species and Species II. These films promise three things: nudity, a scene where someone kisses someone else and their tongue bursts through the back of their skull, and… uh… nudity again. So basically I’m super duper duper excited. Let’s go!
Species (1995) – BMeTric: 34.9
(This plot basically shows the 2011 inflection and regression to the mean. The BMeTric is amazingly consistent through time (35 basically). Hey, since these plot are getting a little boring I’m going to start a new series with this. This is to put movies into groups based on what I see. The first group, for Species, is: Below Average and Perplexingly Popular. Basically this movie ultimate doesn’t seem too bad (rating of 5.8), but the sheer number of votes (nearly 60 thousand) gives an impressive BMeTric overall.)
Leonard Maltin – 2.5 stars – DNA-tampering scientists at a Utah facility ultimately get theirs after creating a murderous creature, complete with tentacles, who’s packages like a blond centerfold. Fast and not without entertainment value, but don’t look at yourself in the mirror too closely if you end up defending it. Direction is somewhat sturdier than the script, which has its share of (we think) unintentional howlers.
(I mean, I’m all about unintentional howlers Leonard, you know me. Films with the horrible villain-scientists are the best though. Like Bats I hope these guys are real megalomaniacal assholes.)
(Alright, that looks pretty rad. Pretty old school though. Just a short rundown of the movie: Contact, communication, experiment, termination, escape, pursuit, mutation, confrontation, outcome unknown. Species! Yeah …. That sounds about right, and I’m on board!)
Directors – Roger Donaldson – (Known For: The Bank Job; The Recruit; The Bounty; Thirteen Days; No Way Out; The World’s Fastest Indian; Cadillac Man; White Sands; Smash Palace; BMT: Dante’s Peak; Cocktail (BMT); Species; The Getaway; Justice; The November Man; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 1989 for Worst Director for Cocktail. His son Chris represented New Zealand in the 100 meter sprint in 1996 and 2000 Olympics. Now that’s a fun fact.)
Writers – Dennis Feldman (written by) – (Known For: Just One of the Guys; BMT: Species II; Virus; Species; The Golden Child (BMT); Notes: Brother of Randy Feldman who wrote Tango & Cash and son of producer Phil Feldman.)
Actors – Natasha Henstridge – (Known For: The Whole Nine Yards; Bounce; BMT: Species II; Ghosts of Mars (BMT); The Whole Ten Yards; Maximum Risk; Adrenalin: Fear the Rush; Species; Steal; Deception; Dog Park; Notes: According to an interview she gave in Empire she turned down roles in both Independence Day and Men In Black after reading the scripts and thinking, “What is this shit?”)
Michael Madsen – (Known For: The Hateful Eight; Kill Bill: Vol. 1; Reservoir Dogs; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Sin City; Kill Bill: Vol. 2; Die Another Day; WarGames; Wyatt Earp; Thelma & Louise; Donnie Brasco; The Doors; Free Willy; The Natural; Pauly Shore Is Dead; BMT: BloodRayne; Species II; My Boss’s Daughter; Scary Movie 4 (BMT); Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home; Hell Ride; House; Species; Notes: A published poet (he has released eight books of poetry) and photographer.)
Ben Kingsley – (Known For: The Jungle Book; Schindler’s List; Shutter Island; Hugo; Knight of Cups; Iron Man Three; Ender’s Game; A.I. Artificial Intelligence; Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb; Lucky Number Slevin; The Walk; The Dictator; Gandhi; Eliza Graves; Tuck Everlasting; Sexy Beast; The Boxtrolls; Life; Sneakers; Oliver Twist; The Triumph of Love; Robot Overlords; Dave; House of Sand and Fog; Searching for Bobby Fischer; Learning to Drive; Bugsy; Transsiberian; BMT: The Love Guru (BMT); BloodRayne; A Sound of Thunder (BMT); Thunderbirds; The Last Legion; Species; War, Inc.; The Ten Commandments; Exodus: Gods and Kings; Suspect Zero; Slipstream; Rules of Engagement; Self/less; Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; Notes: Nominated for the Razzie Award in 2009 for Worst Supporting Actor for The Love Guru, War, Inc., and The Wackness; and in 2007 for BloodRayne. Nominated for four Oscars, winning one for Gandhi.)
Budget/Gross – $35 million / Domestic: $60,074,103 (Worldwide: $113,374,103)
(Of course, otherwise there is no chance this is franchised. Just thinking of the storyline I don’t think they would even think of this these days. It almost comes across as exploitation, and with erotic thrillers being basically a totally defunct genre I don’t really see it. Erotic Sci-Fi Horror … how’d this make $100 million?!)
(Ooooo right on the cusp of a giant surge. Obviously this was fueled by Jurassic Park (not this one, but creature features). Critters 2 and King Kong Lives are recent BMT examples, and recently the genre is back with Jurassic World and Godzilla. The new King Kong should continue that trend if it gets good reviews.)
(Ahead of its time! And since about 1995 it has been a pretty consistently released genre. It just doesn’t make a ton of money. I mean, Species is the 10th highest grossing film ever! It is at quite the nadir at the moment, but things like Predator and Alien should sustain it for at least a while longer. It isn’t totally VOD yet!)
Rotten Tomatoes – 34% (12/35): No consensus yet.
(Ooooo I love giving consensuses: A smart take on schlocky sci-fi horror which ultimately devolves into soft-core pornography with a clunky premise. My favorite part of a review is from Ebert himself where he describes the alien as a: “[d]isgusting, slimy morph-creatures with rows of evil teeth, whose greatest cultural achievement is jumping out at people from behind things.” I don’t like jump scares either Ebert.)
Poster – Our Sklog is Up (B+)
(While it is cheesy in a lot of ways, it is also epic. Really raw image with great font, nice balance, and coloring. Looks like a knockoff of the Alien poster. Still good though.)
Tagline(s) – Two decades ago scientists sent a message to space. This… is the reply. (B)
(Too long and detailed (we need to know that it was two decades ago?), but I like the suspense. Got some cleverness in too with the ellipses.)
Keyword(s) – interspecies sex; Top Ten by BMeTric: 67.3 Howard The Duck (1986); 46.7 Caligula (1979); 35.9 Decoys (2004); 35.8 Splice (2009); 34.9 Species (1995); 22.9 Ta paidia tou Diavolou (1976); 20.1 The Dunwich Horror (1970); 18.5 Une vraie jeune fille (1976); 17.2 The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat (1974); 17.0 The Beast Within (1982);
(This is real everyone. This is the real top keyword for this movie on IMDb, yet again proving that IMDb keywords are useless … also false! Howard the Duck never has sex with a human. Liars! This list is a house of lies!)
Notes – During the production, MGM opted not to shoot the “nightmare train” sequence to keep costs down. H.R. Giger was not willing to accept that, however, so he spent $100,000 of his own money to finance the sequence.
For the scene in which Sil is ‘born’ from the cocoon, the train set was built upside down. Natasha Henstridge, totally naked and covered in KY Jelly lubricant, was pushed through the cocoon, and the shot was flipped upside down afterwards, to achieve the effect of her falling out.
Xavier (Ben Kingsley) Fitch says that the alien signal was received by the Arecibo radio telescope exactly nineteen years after an outbound message was transmitted. Since the transmissions traveled at the speed of light, that means that the alien solar system is approximately nine light-years from Earth. There are two stars which are likely candidates, Sirius and Luyten 726-8A. (now these are the fun facts I like to see)
Fitch’s comment that they made Sil female to be more docile is an in-joke that belies his ignorance. In every predatory species known, the female is always more aggressive. (I don’t believe this is true)
Michael Madsen and Marg Helgenberger were allowed to improvise their sex scene.
SIL is actually S1L, the medical cell in the lab where the DNA was grown.
An early draft of the script had the young Sil calmly killing a friendly cab driver. In an effort to keep the audience’s sympathy for her character (and to make the murder of the porter more shocking) the scene was changed to Sil killing a tramp in self defense after he attempts to attack her. (There was another BMT film like this, where there clearly was just no kills by the “bad” protagonist for almost the entire movie … but I can’t remember what it was, although I do remember it was a terrible idea.)
When Sil watches TV at the motel, she flips through different channels and they all show various things she will do later in the film. Like having sex, changing her hair, showing off her body, etc. (coooooool)
Bad Movie Twins 