Bad Movie Endurance Test 9: Glitter Goddess: Queen of the Sunset Strip

Pro-Tip: If making your biopic requires you to write it, produce it, narrate it, and play most of the roles in it, it might be worth asking whether there needs to be a biopic about you. Llana Lloyd, the Clive Turner-like "talent" behind Glitter Goddess: Queen of the Sunset Strip did not ask this question.

The blurb for the movie reads: "Frustrated with her family life, Llana Lloyd rebels by worshiping Alice Cooper, becoming one of the most prolific rock and roll groupies of the 1970s." It should have read "Frustrated with her family life: Llana Lloyd," because that's the bulk of the movie. There are a few scenes in a "club" on the "Sunset Strip" (I'm guessing someone's garage, with  set design that would be embarrassing for a middle school play), and a scene or two with a guy in one of the worst Alice Cooper costumes I've ever scene, but most of the movie is about how Llana's mother was a mean old dyke.

Apparently Llana did the talk show circuit in the 80s, when having a gay parent was scandalous, because probably a third of the movie consists of footage from talk shows (one has a very young Oprah Winfrey and some white dude). Later on in the movie we find out that in the late 80s Llana was artificially inseminated and married a gay man, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with the talk shows losing interest in her gay mother. Aside from archive footage, the movie also has a lot of home movies and photos with narration that wouldn't be out of place in a low-budget educational film about truck farming or something. The third component of the movie are the re-creations of actual events that might have happened, but probably without so much melodrama and so many bad wigs. I've seen mattress commercials with better acting, better sets, better camera work, and more convincing dialogue. Fortunately, it's so bad and everyone involved seems so oblivious to how bad it is that it's kind of hilarious, if way too long.

Takeaway:  If you've ever wondered what Dancin' Outlaw would have been like if it were "A Jesco White Film," this is probably as close as you'll get.

Bad Movie Endurance Test 8: Indemnity: Rage of a Jealous Vampire

So this guy's running through these grainy, badly-lit woods. There's a girl chasing him. She's a vampire. Luckily, he catches a ride to a bar where despite being pompous, unlikable, poorly lit, and surrounded by bad generic pop country music, he befriends the folksy, annoying bartender. Except for a couple of scenes of the vampire chick making her way through town and an incident where the pompous unlikable guy beats up some redneck troublemakers, the majority of the movie consists of pompous unlikable guy explaining that the vampire girl (though he doesn't call her that) wants him dead but he can't kill her for some reason and trying to convince the folksy bartender to kill her for him. When she shows up all vamped out, that's what happens right before we find out that pompous unlikable guy is also a vampire! Did I blow your mind? I did, didn't I?

Every single aspect of Indemnity: Rage of a Jealous Vampire is bad, with acting and dialog competing with lighting for the "Thing Done Most Incompetently" award. It's so bad that there are moment's of The Room-like comedy gold, but they're too few and far between to make this crap watchable. The best thing about this movie is that it's only an hour long.

Takeaway: Moments of "so bad it's good," but they're fleeting.

Bad Movie Endurance Test 7: Cold Creepy Feeling: Paranormal Excorcism

You may have noticed that the titles of many of the movies I've been reviewing have subtitles. I just checked, and this is true of all but two movies in the current collection. Maybe the filmmakers think they make the movie sound more impressive. Maybe they're fans of Mark Rein "cool dot" Hagen (co-producer of TV's Kindred: The Embraced). Or maybe it's that subtitles are traditionally separated from the main title with colons. And as you know, the word "colon" can also refer to a part of the digestive system. Is it possible that the people who name these movies are subtly warning potential viewers that these moves are turds?

Tonight's movie, Cold Creepy Feeling: Paranormal Excorcism, may be the biggest, stickiest, you'll-never get-it-off-your-shoe-no-matter-how-hard-you-try turd I've stepped on so far. I don't think I've ever been so conscious of the clock while watching a movie in my life. Every 3 to 5 minutes I looked at the clock, reminding myself that there were only X minutes left and that if I stopped watching, the movie would  win. This is a terrible, derivative, 20-minute movie with 70 minutes of filler. As you can probably guess from the second half of the title, it's basically a Paranormal Activity movie, but against all odds it's even worse than the movies in what is probably the single worst series of horror movies every made.

I'm not going into any more detail because, once you count the time it took to write this review, this movie has taken away slightly over 100 minutes of my life, and that's at least 99 more minutes than it deserves.

Bad Movie Endurance Test 6: Order of One: Kung Fu Killing Spree

As you may remember, Order of One: Kung Fu Killing Spree was the move title that made me risk five bucks on one of the bad movie collections I've been making my way through. I'm happy to say I was right. For the first time since I started this little experiment, I got to see a movie that was actually enjoyable to watch and I would recommend for a bad movie night. As is often the case, the thing that made the movie was that  the people making it were in on the joke. They were fully aware of their limited capabilities and considerable disadvantages and found a way to turn them into something that wasn't a steaming pile of zombie shit.

The movie opens with a reporter in a diner interviewing some guy for a story, though before we can discover the nature of the story a couple of cops come in with a prisoner they're transferring to a high security prison. Then some lady assassins dressed like Austin Powers extras show up and start shooting up the place. The convict escapes the diner and one of the assassins follows him, and during this fight we get the first hint these people might know what they're doing when the convict uses an INTERNAL ENERGY SUMMONS! to break his handcuffs. We know  he's using an INTERNAL ENERGY SUMMONS! because it appears on the screen in great big letters in front of a red star burst.

The convict gets away, but not before the reporter jumps into the car he's stealing (which happens to belong to the reporter) carrying a sword he got from the interview subject. We know from the opening narration that this sword was forged from the Spear of Destiny, so it's chock  full of Jesus blood and magical powers. The reporter explains that they have to get the sword to a group called The Order. After they exposition, we get the second clue that these guys know what they're doing in the form of a scene break: freeze frame, fade to monochrome, zoom in. Ok, they know they're making a bad 70s action movie. Good for  them! Pretty much every scene ends like that, with appropriate accompanying music.

Next we meet Mr. Park, who is obviously the bad guy because he's stern and  Korean and grunts a lot. He wants the sword and dispatches his minions to find it. This leads to a couple hours of the reporter and the convict (Sonny) running into Park's henchmen, often because they fall for really obvious traps like free beer at a strip club (because a movie like this has to have a scene at a strip club) or a sexy lady with car trouble. Nearly all the people they fight are basically wearing Halloween costumes. In addition to groups like the mod lady assassins and some rockabilly-esque grease monkeys, there are all different types of gangsters, the expected Kung Fu fighters, a cowboy, and so  on.  I wouldn't be surprised if there was a pirate in there somewhere that I just missed.

The fight scenes are mostly competent and what they lack in expertise they make up for with super loud sound effects, gratuitously breakable walls, and--in the case of gunfights--overly bright muzzle flashes, all accompanied by a soundtrack that mixes equal parts Shaft, disco, and Double Dragon-style video games. And of course there are more moves so cool they have to be highlighted on-screen, including SKULL DESTRUCTION FIST!, EYEBALL EXIT PUNCH!, and HEART EXTRACTION FIST! While Sonny uses most of these, a few others get in on the action. One of the more prominent thugs (kind of a street hustler/pimp type with the ability to see the future during the full moon) uses something called the SZECHUAN DON PALM (whatever that is), and even the reporter takes down a bad guy with the DRUNKEN POOL CUE SWIPE! A bit later in the movie, we briefly get an indication that these are kind of a Scott Pilgrim thing when Sonny enters a building with a pistol and the screen goes into FPS mode, complete with stamina meter and ammo count.

So yeah, it's really goofy, some of the acting isn't great, and a couple of the fights go on a  little too long, but it's fun to watch. The real advantage of intentionally trying to make the movie look 30+ years out of date is that it makes the mistakes a lot less blatant. While some of the screw-ups are obviously unintentional, some things are done badly on purpose, so there are times where the line between bad movie making and genre fidelity is  very, very blurry. If you enjoyed Fist of Jesus, you might like this one.

Takeaway: Finally found one that didn't make me want to tear my eyes out. Unfortunately, I'm less than halfway through the first collection. Hopefully I can figure out how to do the EYEBALL EXIT PUNCH! on myself.

Bad Movie Endurance Test 5: Below Ground: Demon Holocaust

Maybe it's because I took a few days off, but tonight's movie, Below Ground: Demon Holocaust, seemed especially brutal. The movie starts with a guy explaining that he's a director and there's a zombie apocalypse going on (of course he doesn't call it that, because all zombie movies must pretend they take place in a world without zombie movies) and he's going to film it with a super 8 camera. To show that's it's a super 8 camera (and to keep them from having to do any special effects more complicated than corn syrup and fake teeth), there are random film artifacts and breaks throughout the movie. Kind of like Grindhouse but without the restraint, originality, or actual good movie behind the old film feel. Based on the first ten minutes or so, I assumed this was going to be a collage of poorly-acted, cheaply made shot-for-shot re-enactments of scenes from every other zombie movie.

They couldn't afford that, so except for the opening bits and one grainy scene of TV news, it's just five jerkoffs in a basement talking: Director Guy, Stripper, Douchebag, Holy Guy, and Holy Guy's pregnant wife (who has of course been bitten by one of the zombies). In an explosive beer shit of scenes full of emotionless acting and terrible dialog, we get a book review (not sure if it's of a real book. I could look it up, but I just don't care), a discussion of religion that could have been taken line for line from any internet forum frequented by college freshmen, a very special anti-drug message, and some Jerry Springer type stuff establishing how everyone knows each other (they've all been to the strip club where the stripper works, but unless you're legally brain dead you probably could have figured that out yourself).

Eventually they all start passing a bottle of vodka around and become best friends despite all the interpersonal tensions we didn't care about earlier. So of course start telling their stories. You know that scene in Chasing Amy where Holden is about to propose his brilliant plan and you're thinking, "don't say it, you idiot?" This is kind of like that in that you know exactly what they're going to say. In Chasing Amy, you don't want Holden to say what you know he's going to say because you realize it will end badly and you don't want that to happen because you're emotionally attached to the characters involved. In this one, you don't want them to say what they're going to say because you know it will be predictable crap and, worst of all, is probably going to lead to attempts at DRAMATIC ACTING. It does, it goes on for what feels like the bulk of the movie, and all you can do is hope for the sweet embrace of death--of the actors, the director, the DVD player, yourself, it really doesn't matter after a few minutes, as long as the suffering ends. But it doesn't.

After all of this nonsense finally ends, there's a film break and they tie up the bitten pregnant lady and throw her out of the basement because she's turning into a zombie. The discussion of this decision apparently was the one thing the guy with the camera didn't film because there was an outside chance it would result in a watchable scene. I'm pretty sure that during the "throw out the zombie" scene, the zombie-bitten woman was played by the same actress who played the stripper. This gave me a bit of hope. Maybe the original pregnant zombie lady actress realized what a terrible movie she was involved in and left to do something more rewarding with her life, like re-posting hoaxes on Facebook or artificially inseminating cockroaches or something.

Once the zombified pregnant lady is ousted, the stripper asks the director why he didn't hang himself earlier that day (the suicide plan was part of his dramatic backstory. I won't go into details because it's statistically improbable that anyone cares). He tells her that he saw the camera and it gave him a reason to live. If this is autobiographical, I have something to say to him if he's reading: If it happens again, hang yourself. You having access to a camera will only hurt more people. If nothing else, at least think of the children who might accidentally see your film vomit and lose all faith in humanity. Seriously, kill yourself. Do it now.

After that, talk turns to some of the director's other films (not real, I assume). The first couple of titles are completely generic, but then he mentions one called Werecow. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? You had an idea for a movie called Werecow and instead you made this stinking pile of derivative shit? Really? When you could have made WERECOW?  Kill yourself immediately. Werecow has way to much potential to be trusted to the likes of you.

After another film break, the stripper tells director guy that she's worried because holy man has been praying for hours, even though during his poignant backstory we learned that the zombies made him lose his faith--not sure if that's a hint something's wrong or a plot (and I use that term loosely) hole. Could be either. It doesn't matter, because there is no way that anyone could give two tugs of Warren Ellis's proverbial dead dog's cock. When they go to check on him, he zombies out (even though as far as we know he hasn't been bitten) and bites the stripper. In a final scene that might have been emotional with characters anyone on earth cared about, the stripper asks the director to kill her and he does. It's like Old Yeller, if at the end of Old Yeller the audience let out a collective sigh of relief, thankful that their suffering was finally over. There's no indication of what happens between the director, the douchebag, and the now-zombified holy man after that, but since tying up those loose ends would have meant even more terrible scenes, I'm happy that they left things unresolved.

Takeaway: I wish they would have made Werecow.