The 2nd MoFo Hall of Infamy : Son of Infamy

Well at least you guys don't have to worry about watching the wrong Titanic animated film, since they're both nominated now.

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Brendan Schaub You'd Be Surprised (2019)

I know Brendan Schaub is, he's a failed MMA fighter who was middle of the road but left the sport due to head trauma and the use of his friends (Joe Rogan(News Radio), and Bryan Callen (MADTV). This is an hour long special of a man trying to find a joke and failing horribly. I knew the people he was talking about you likely won't. Schaub's particular brand of humor is incredibly dated he tries to put himself as the butt of the gay jokes...he's not gay and it just comes off as tone deaf.

While his stories ramble he never figures out where the punch line is. The Audience laughs at weird parts and most of the bits just fall flat. The worst parts of the set are when he tries to do physical comedy in his stand up act...it's awkward and uncomfortable. I wonder if Showtime was that desperate for content that they needed to release this but this was pre-COVID though you'll feel like you have a disease watching it.

Bane (2008)

Bane is a good idea executed as a bad movie. A group of four women wake up in a room where a crazed Surgeon picks them off one by one. I'm going to get into spoilers because what I could and could not understand from this film might in fact be spoilers. The scene by scene plots I couldn't follow I was shocked when the girl I assumed was the lead was killed off and the blandest of the four was the final girl.

What sticks out most about this film is the pretentious film making. Dutch Angles, flashbacks, quick cuts, playing with light and shadows, and close-ups...good lord this film loves closeups. The other thing that really sticks out to me is this is a body horror film...but the blood is I guess Tomato soup someone gets his head crushed and water comes out. The whole thing is just weird.

The pacing is also completely out of whack the ending goes on for what feels like 40 minutes. It's like it has three false endings and then the real ending keeps cutting back and forth to images and it's nauseating. Not based on what's on the screen rather all the jump cuts, shaky cam and close ups.

Airplane Mode (2019)


Airplane Mode blends two comedic styles the gross out comedies of the early 00's and the slapstick hijinks of the 1980's told with irreverent humor. And while many of the jokes didn't land and sheer volume of the jokes and amount of humorous people in the film elevated from being a terrible film.



The film is relatively competently shot, Logan Paul is a fully realized and deeply flawed character. He's a decent lead at points as his Ace Ventura style shtick works at times. While the person is detestable and his friends are horrible still I didn't hate this film like the other one's I've watched so far. It's a cheap homage to better films that always takes shots at the lowest hanging fruit but still it was watchable.

Damn, that's a lot of movies.

I watched Bane (2008). This is a poorly made horror film that doesn't work as a horror film or as a good movie. It feels derivative of other better films and the dialogue is weak. Acting is not good, at all. Bane is not thrilling,exciting or entertaining. It is far too long and drags on at times. This needed to be shorter. It also needed better writing and better acting. Not much redeeming value here, so a good pick for this hall.

We actually got a stand-up movie? I'm honestly more curious about that than anything.

Decent score though

I didn’t really like the score.

Loqueesha, 2019

As a Black woman I think I know a bit about integration.

Joe (Jeremy Saville, who also wrote and directed) is a bartender who doles out pearls of wisdom to his clientele. When a grateful customer, Rachel (Tiara Parker), tells Joe about an opportunity at a local radio station, he applies but is rejected. Inspired one night by watching two Black women arguing on a Springer-esque talk show, Joe applies again for the job, this time pretending to be a Black woman named Loqueesha. The ruse works and "Loqueesha" is hired. But when the show becomes incredibly popular, Joe is forced to hire an actress, Renee (Mara Hall), to be the public face of Loqueesha. As the deception goes on, tensions arise.

I knew that the title of this film sounded familiar, and it's because I have previously watched a video about it by MacDoesIt.


So . . . yeah. This movie is racist (and sexist, homophobic, and transphobic). Unlike other films we've watched---like Airplane Mode---that contain racist content, this one's racism is just front and center the entire time and it is exhausting.

It's funny to watch this movie after Wild 90, because here is another case of a guy's ego inflicting some truly terrible stuff on us. Can we all just agree that Saville decided that his "Black woman voice" was hilarious and wrote a movie around that impression?

I don't really need to list the film's sins on this front, as I'm sure they are obvious to anyone with eyes and ears. The name and the voice are the big ones, but it's layered into everything. And who is the villain (and main point of mockery) in this movie? Yes, a Black woman. It's just absolutely tiring. And the stuff that isn't directly racist is incredibly weak. Joe's advice is incredibly non-specific---except for the part where he calls Rachel a "f*cking idiot" and tells her that the problems she's had with men are her fault because she enables their bad behavior. Oh, and just an FYI: if you are having thoughts of self-harm it's because you want attention and people treat you poorly because you don't love yourself enough.

The only real interest I had in this film, the only thing that kept me even slightly engaged, was marveling at how much run time is devoted to trying to deny the film's racism and misogyny. There are multiple, multiple scenes of people calling Joe out for what he's doing. And every time he gives an impassioned speech about empathy and it diffuses the situation. At one point Joe even says "And what does a Black woman even sound like?"---but he says it in his incredibly stereotypical Black woman voice, like my god! The film makes multiple Black characters complicit in Joe's activities, using their approval as a screen for Joe.

Ironically, Tiara Parker and Mara Hall are probably the best actors in the film, aside from the woman who plays Joe's ex-wife. Somehow it seems like adding insult to injury that Hall has to stand there and deliver the line "You were just a better Black woman than I am."

I think that this film deserves its infamy. It's a special kind of depressing.

A rare half-star rating from Takoma. That one must be really bad.

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IMDb
Letterboxd

It is, indeed, really bad.

It's racist and sexist and homophobic, while at the same time being smugly certain that it isn't any of those things. And it goes back to the well over and over of "truth telling", which at this point just seems to be a code phrase for people who want to say offensive things without dealing with the consequences.

Kinky Coaches and the Pom Pom Pussycats, 1981

Two rival football teams are scheduled for a big match, and one of the teams is willing to go to extreme lengths to mess up their rivals. Chris (Christine Cattell) is caught between her attraction to the quarterbacks from each team.

Okay, after Loqueesha it was almost a relief to get back to a film that is merely terrible and incompetent as opposed to one that hurt my soul.

From the title, I was expecting some kind of sexist raunch-fest, but what we get instead is something almost as bad. It's just . . . boring. All of the "thrills" are incredibly mild. A guy leaps onto a pie topped with whipped cream so that it sprays over the opposing high schoolers. Yawn. A team steals the lucky underpants from the rival coach. Yawn again. The film manages one moment of almost madcap comedy, as a police car arrives and runs into one of the team's mascots, before also crashing into the goalposts where a referee is clinging to one of the post's arms. But this all resolves in about 20 seconds, and there's no real build up or conclusion.

The big problem is that all of the characters lack definition. Some of the bad guys are annoying, but that's about it. There are two sequences of sexual harassment/assault (which bothered me more than I expected, probably because of the way that one of them was shot with all of the men piling into the back of the van and not seeing the girls but just hearing them scream), but aside from getting you to dislike the characters a bit more, even they don't create a sense of stakes. Largely because after these events happen there aren't any real consequences. The strongest emotion we see isn't from Chris--who was nearly assaulted by the rival quarterback---but rather from her boyfriend who rankles at the rival's leering remarking implying that he slept with Chris.

It's all just so very mild. Like a soup that's been diluted with a liter of water. I couldn't tell you the names of any character other than Chris (which I looked up on the IMDb), and I finished the film just 15 minutes ago!

So how do you rate a film like this? Do movies earn popcorns through their merits, or do they lose them because of their flaws? This is a largely inoffensive, but totally flavorless 90 minutes of movie. I'm not mad at it, necessarily, but I have nothing very nice to say about it.

The Misty Green Sky


So right from the beginning it's so bad it's funny. It runs on every dystopian trope from the most politically-minded cyberpunk stories and handles it religiously like THX-1138. Obviously, it was gonna get really predictable really easily. What I didn't predict, however, were scenes of direction so ugly and horrifying that I had to question if this wasn't intentional, especially when we got to the heavy-breathing scenes and the sudden kung fu moves during the espace scene. Characters will make weird ugly faces during completely inappropriate times, which only makes the movie funnier. Unfortunately, when it does TRY for a plot, it forgets this so-bad-it's-good factor and just ends up being just another generic sci-fi movie. And then we get to the scream. Yep. No doubt in my mind this was intentional, right from the dorky kissing scenes to the random piano to the misplaced shadows to the bad sound effects from the game F-Zero GP Legend. Seriously, there were times where I was just ****ing losing it over how funny it could be. Nevertheless, it didn't reach Springtime for Hitler heights because not EVERYTHING about the movie was funny. Much of it was a slow-moving plot where practically nothing was happening, and sometimes the movies use the same bad animation (or joke) too often. Still, the ending was a LITTLE interesting. I found myself actually desiring to know how it ends instead of just waiting for it. And in the end, I was pretty pleased with that damn twist.


So, not a FAILURE but certainly not the worst movie I've ever seen. Still worse than my second nominee, Legend of the Titanic, which is miles ahead of my first nom IMO.


3/10.

So I rewatched my first nomination, the terrible 1968 comedy, Candy. I remember when I first watched it, how disappointing it was. I had expected a reasonably fun, sexy 60s comedy but instead got a poorly made film that was not enjoyable or entertaining. The movie is genuinely offensive on several different levels. And there's not a lot of movies that I would label as offensive. It is not funny and the acting is atrocious. The dialogue is terrible too. Ewa Aulin is gorgeous, but the film feel exploitative, taking away from any fun or sex appeal. I've seen other films that are considered exploitation and some I have liked, but this is one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

So today I suffered through Loqueesha. This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen and I think it could easily win this hall. Jeremy Saville is an awful director, writer, and actor. I did not like or believe his performance at all. For something like this to possibly work, the lead character would have to be sympathetic and likeable and Saville is neither. The screenplay is poorly written and the film is offensive and unfunny. The story isn't believable at all and the film is a disaster. How did this film get made? Why did anyone agree to be in it?

I just watched Wild 90 (1968) on the Criterion Channel. Directed by Norman Mailer, the film stars Mailer, Buzz Farbar and Mickey Knox. The film consists of the three of them in an apartment drinking and arguing. This was painfully boring. Seriously, one of the most boring, dull, and uninteresting films I have ever seen. The characters and the actors playing them are not interesting. There isn't much of a story and the film drags on pointlessly. This felt a lot longer than it was. I didn't see any artistic value or merit in the film. .

The Legend of the Titanic, 1999

Especially the women! They just raise a ruckus and get in the way!

Aboard the Titanic, a group of men are engaged in a conspiracy to begin whaling in the Atlantic. A plucky group of mice and a young couple, along with some friendly sea creatures, try to foil the evil plot.

"You know how to draw an octopus, right?"
"An octopus, yeah, yeah."
"What . . . what do you think an octopus looks like?"
"You know, kind of like a bald dog?"
"Sounds right."

Anyway, yes, this movie is totally ridiculous and somehow manages to be bad in ways that the other film we watched about cartoon animals on the Titanic wasn't.

The animation is basic and lacks personality. The characters are likewise bland and make no impression.

But what's most offensive here is maybe the blithe way that the film plays with the real tragedy of the sinking. In the very first scene, the mouse telling the story asserts that people weren't really missing or dead after the sinking. Bwah?! As the plot---and I use that term really loosely--unfolds, the sense of gentle blasphemy never goes away. The iceberg? Panted there by an octopus who was tricked by some no-good sharks. Why didn't the ship steer away? The rudder was stalled by those same no-good sharks. Also, some characters for no apparent reason are able to talk to animals. This includes one of the bad guys and the two main characters.

It must be said, I'm not sure I've ever seen an animated character who was more unintentionally nightmare fuel than poor, dumb Tentacles. He looks like what would happen if a puppy, an octopus, and a bodybuilder went through the portals from The Fly together.

I love that the cover says "an animated classic." Talk about trying to manifest your destiny!

The Incredible Petrified World, 1959

There's nothing friendly between two females! Never was, and never will be!

Two men and two women go on an expedition to explore the "phantom zone" in the ocean, but when their diving bell breaks off from the ship they sink down and end up in a series of underground caverns. Alone with just a single madman--a castaway from a previous wreck--they must figure out a way to get back to the surface.

It's amazing how many movies there are out there that are just sort of . . . nothing.

I let myself be optimistic for a few minutes at the beginning of the movie. There are lots of fun underwater shots of fish swimming by and, hey, some stock footage of pretty fish wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

But alas, this is a sit-around-and-talk movie. And what they're talking about isn't at all interesting. The characters are pretty much non-entities. The only one who really stands out is Dale (Phyllis Coates), who is bitter over being abandoned by her fiance and single-handedly manages to embody the worst stereotypes about women. She's catty! She's inexplicably deferential to the men! She needs to learn a lesson so someone tries to rape her!

The problem is that this movie doesn't have the budget to be the kind of sci-fi adjacent adventure it wants to be. This film just begs for some large creatures, real or fictional. And at the same time, the writing is so weak that it doesn't work as a drama. The whole thing is a limp noodle, lacking anything outrageous (good or bad) to make it noteworthy.

The only nice things I can say about it are: it was only 70 minutes long, and I liked the fish at the beginnning.

I watched this 4 days ago and I'd already forgotten what it was about. What an endurance test this thing is.