Transmorphers

Now this was a straight up bad movie, and I'm pretty sure helped find the proper movie niche we're looking for. I think we should write SyFy a letter and thank them for their amazing direct to TV movies that provide us with our fantastic entertainment.

Transmorphers raised the bar for bad CGI, taking the crown away from the previous champion, Raptor Island. The Transformer rip-off robots (who were holding guns, but would transform so they could use their gun on their back for no apparent reason) looked like a 9th grader threw them together in Maya.

I think my favorite part of the movie was the first time the human resistance went topside, and found their world was a somewhat broken wasteland, that, like the Matrix, had perpetual clouds and storms. These storms apparently require lightning striking on an average of 2-3 times per second, leading to an amazingly bright and seizure inducing strobe effect. A couple of us actually started feeling sick after watching the first out doors scene for a couple mintues. Awesome!

The second best scene was the most awkward lesbian kiss I've ever encountered..... Now I'm all for girls kissing girls, don't get me wrong, but when both parties involved look like they're repulsed by the other one it just looks horrible. Add in that the leader of the resistance, one of the two kissy facers, spends the whole movie with her head tilted down and her eyes cranked up with a creepy look on her face and the whole female cast is just slightly odd. I'm of the opinion they actually meant to film a soft core porn, but forgot to include the naked parts.

All in all, another greatly bad film, and one I would not recommend to anyone unless they had a posse to help rip on it with.

Snakes on a Plane (With a splash of Tomatoe)

Last night saw all sorts of issues, the main one being apparently a 360 can't load all the video codecs you've downloaded to it if it's not connected to XBox Live. Grrr. Fortunately TVersity has a full transcode option, that while not quite fast enough to keep up with converting HD content, is able to chug through SD rips that were probably based off of VHS. All this is relevant because we actually started the night by trying to watch Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Now I'm all for movies that suck pretty hard, but jeeze, this one took it up a notch. I'm assuming it was made as a comedy spoof of other attack/invasion movies of the time, but pretty much everything in it failed. The acting was worse then my high school drama club, the jokes didn't even induce groans, they just made you stare, and the special effects consisted of people off screen rolling tomatoes and dubbing over weird munching noises. So with that in mind we took a vote that passed five for five (small turn out last night) about 20 minutes in and we switched over to Snakes on a Plane, which three of the five of us hadn't seen.

This is probably my fifth or sixth viewing of Snakes on a Plane, and it's a fantastic bad movie. The basic premise of it is one of the most ridiculous you'll ever hear; bad guy needs a good guy witness dead, and after 'exhausting all other options' is left sneaking a giant crate full of poisonous snakes onto the plane the good guy is traveling on. Hilarious hi-jinks ensue. It also follows basic movie 101: everything is made way more enjoyable if Samuel L. Jackson stars in it.

I think one of the best parts of the movie is they cram every single cliched character you could imagine into the plane. Hot stewardess? Check. Asian kickboxer? Check. Black rapper? Check. Quiet but tough cop? Check. Ditzy blonde? Check. Newly weds? Check. I'd list out another ten to twelve of these I'm sure you get the point. The real stars of the show are the multitude of snakes they have on the plane.

Most all of the snakes were CGI, but look pretty honking good. They'll pop out of any available space, logical or not, and bite people on the most inopportune areas. The best reaction from the movie was a snake coming out of a toilet and latching on to a man's privates. The three guys who hadn't seen it...... how to put this..... freaked out, it was fantastic. Other then that, they're biting everything, butts, eyes, boobs, and your more traditional things like arms and legs.

I'll also admit that SoaP (heh, soap) has an amazingly catchy theme song; anyone who hasn't heard it should check out Cobra Starship for their debut song. Other then that, the music is solid, especially when snakes are slithering up to nom on people, it really sets the mood.

Overall? A great bad movie. S. Jackson is a favorite of mine, but this really is an ensemble cast, and is brought together by all the horrible cliches they cram in. Do yourself a favor and watch this with a couple friends, and be prepared for a good time.

Lesbian Vampire Killers

So the first reviewed BMT movie could almost be considered a failure.

It really wasn't a bad movie.

Much in the spirit of Shawn of the Dead, Lesbian Vampire Killers apes it's parent genre and definitely does not take itself too seriously. Set in modern day England, it's the story of two chaps who decide that due to monetary constraints, their 'adventure' will consist of hiking around a rural town. They meet up with a group of sexy historians, unearth a local curse telling that all the girls in the town turn into lesbian vampires on their 18th birthday, and messy adventure ensues.

Story
Full of cliches, but recognizes that fact. From the unlikely hero who's a decedent of the first lesbian vampire killer, to the bumbling comedic buddy, to the vicar who has trained for this fight his whole life, Lesbian Vampire Killers pulls from all the vampire standard fares. And unlike more contemperary vampire fiction, these bloodsuckers are drawn straight from Bram Stokers stories: stronger, faster, able to transform to mist; but at the same time hurt by holy water, repelled by crosses and garlic, and unable to enter your domicile unless invited in.

On the whole it was rather predictable, but had many laugh out loud moments and caused a lot of chatter in the living room. It also has perhaps the best last five seconds of any film I've seen this year.

Special Effects
A bit surprising really. Based on the comments I'd read about this film I was expecting something a little more low budget. While they obviously didn't get ILM to step in, there was quite decent effects going on, and helped facilitate a wide variety of vampire killings. From and axe straight into the head to numerous stakes through the heart, to a beheading via frying pan, vamps were slain in quite gory fashion, with their white 'blood' spurting out everywhere.

Cinematography & Music
The director definitely wanted you to remember they hired on a lot of cute girls for this movie; ample close ups on ample body parts abound. Someone also had a good time creating the score for this as seen by the wide variety of songs they put in. My personal favorite was Amazing Grace blaring as the vicar and friend cruised to almost certain doom in the Crossmobile.

Overall
A funny movie that I'd actually recommend to people, but again, somewhat of a failure as a 'bad movie.'

Movies That Have Come Before

Tonight was actually week four of Bad Movie Thursdays, but the urge to report on the amazingness of the bad movies out there didn't really strike until tonight. In light of that I present you the list of previous BMT champions; perhaps at some point reviews of them can be written up.

Previously (in order watched)
The Room
Raptor Island
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus

Bad Movie Thursdays

Welcome to what will hopefully be the first of many reviews of some really horrible movies.

For the past month now, my friends and I have been getting together Thursday evenings and watching some rather terrible movies. Why you ask? Because good movies, or at least standard entertaining movies are easy to come by. You can throw a large rock and hit at least 4 movies you'd pay money to see, but it's sometimes difficult to dig up the truly wretched movies, the ones that make you tilt your head and ask 'really? that just happened?'

So with that in mind, kick back and get opinions on some bad bad movies.