Risking my sanity so you don't have to

This is going under Cult Flicks because I'm not sure where else to put it.

I watched the premier episode of Extreme Dodgeball last night on the Game Show Network. I watched it again this afternoon with Mookie, because she TIVO'd it, and this way you get more than first impressions. As if that's important.

Do you like Slamball? If yes, then you'll enjoy Extreme Dodgeball. I admit it, I liked it. But before I actually describe the "sport" itself, well...

William Hung did a video commercial plugging various Game Show Network shows. What did he butcher sing? What else but Queen's "We Are The Champions", in that WH style that causes mass suicides we've grown to tolerate. Cheesy, and the perfect introduction, in my humble opinion. Consider yourself warned.

It's showtime! You know the format: two chatty announcer/hosts - one being Bil Dwyer (that's not a typo, it's only one "L") from BattleBots, with a much more subdued 'do - and a hot babe down near the action to 'interview' the teams during breaks in the action. Throw in pointless segments about various players (called "Beyond the Ball") and you've about summed up the entire show.

Oops, forgot about the teams, didn't I? In the Extreme Dodgeball league (?!?!), the teams are supposedly put together based on occupation, but 'concept' is the real story. Face it, even in LA you're not going to find five real Sumo wrestlers who're willing to be stupid for what probably amounts to minimum guild scale, not to mention the fact that there's no such thing as female Sumo. So the team is actually four fat guys and a fat gal. Just calling it as I see it, and as one of the circumferentially overachieving, let's just say that if I were on the team, my nickname would be 'Slim'. The other teams are horse jockeys, mimes, CPA's, rent-a-cops, hot chicks (and a guy), bodybuilders and tatooed people. Yep, I always wanted to list my occupation as 'canvas for prolific tatoo artist'.

The game itself has enough interesting twists to actually make it, well, interesting. A match is best-of-three games. For the first game, two balls are used. Second game, a third, larger ball is added, and in the third game one team member is designated the "Dead Man Walking" and if you hit them it's all over. The rest of the rules were mostly familiar. My favorite was "no head shots", which meant that a valid strategy was to curl up on your knees facing the other team and let them wail away at your head for no effect - rules-wise, not concussion-wise.

The team balance is actually pretty good, which is what the show's producers want. The rules work well, the strategies and tactics used were logical and surprised me a couple of times. All in all, you can tell that these people extensively tested and tweaked the rules.

So yes, I'll watch it again, if I stumble across it one night when nothing else is on and I want some noise on in the background. It's certainly not something I'm going to seek out and look forward to. I've seen worse. But you already knew that.

Posted by: Ted at 05:42 PM | category: Cult Flicks
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Movie Review Time

Rejected title: Uh-oh, what's Ted gotten into this time?*

I'm going to start with the best and work down to the worst. These are all titles I've recently picked up in various bargain sections.

First and by far the best is Zulu. You may remember this 1964 classic that tells the true story of the 1879 battle at Rorke's Drift. About 150 British soldiers bravely (and barely) hold off a series of attacks by more than 4,000 African Zulu warriors. Starring Michael Caine, this one is a must-see movie, especially for anyone who loves action movies and/or historical drama. If I remember correctly, I got this one at Mieir's as part of a 3 for $10.00 deal.

The second disk of that deal wasn't quite the classic, They Came From Beyond Space. Alien minds take over earth scientists to help them repair their damaged spaceship, and it's up to a McGuyver-esque wannabe to uncover the truth. Luckily for earth, he's got a metal plate in his head, making him immune to alien mind control. I really enjoyed this one, right up until the last three minutes, when the stupidest ending ever committed to film managed to completely screw up a decent movie. This was based on the book "The Gods Hate Kansas", and at times this 60's British import tries too hard and takes itself too seriously.

I almost put this 1998 direct-to-video T&A offering last: Sorority House Vampires from Hell. It somehow seems right that the IMDB description at that link is screwed up. The cast list is correct, but the plot synopsis is for a whole different movie.

I'll just copy the blurb on the box for you instead:

Death, Demons, D-Cups! The UFO-Demon, Rabaalhazor, has sent the vampire, Natalia to destroy the Earth. Each time she takes a victim a natural disaster rocks the planet. Humanity's only hope is the sexy sorority pledge, Buffy, and the members of her sisterhood. She must not only save the world but she also must save herself from the perverted desires of both Rabaalhazor and Natalia.

They spared all expense for this one. The opening sets were cardboard boxes covered with random PC boards glued here and there. Not that you noticed, because there was a topless vampire babe go-go dancing in front of it. Intended to be in the same vein (pun intended) as movies like Scary Movie this spoof muddles along without letting anything like humor and production values get in the way.

There are occasional smirk-worthy bits, including onscreen subtitles that appear every time Surfer Boy speaks. Rabaalhazor sounds like a cross between Mako and Cheech Marin. But mostly, it's an unwatchable mess, which is a pity, because I really like the title.

So what could possibly be worse than that? This last movie was irretrievably spoiled by a horrid audio track. I can overlook weak plot, uneven pacing, poor acting, and sleaze and cheese, but when I have to strain to hear dialogue that sounds like it's coming from the bottom of a well, it kinda ruins it for me.

Ghost Gunfighter (also released as High Tomb) is a horror story set in an abandoned western ghost town. The town starts to come to life around a bunch of stranded kids (surprise, surprise), and of course they start to die (ditto).

I may upgrade my review of this one in the future, because I'm that pissed off right now about the audio. The movie has real promise, but at the moment it's in the "sucks" category. Maybe my mind will change, but there's an awful lot of stoopid and lame-ass going on, podner.

So there you have it - a classic, a fair-to-middlin' flick, and two stinkers.

* Thanks to Dawn of Caterwauling for the inspiration to use the 'rejected title' idea (translation: I stole it from her fine site).

Posted by: Ted at 07:06 PM | category: Cult Flicks
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Sex dominates the world, and now I dominate sex!

Hi-dee-ho esteemed guest, it's movie review time! Since I seem to have driven my old readers away in disgust picked up several new semi-regular visitors, let me tell you that I adore obscure and crappy horror movies. Then I bore you to tears write all about 'em here, because that's what I do. If you'd like to see the rest of the Rocket Jones "Cult Flicks" category, click here.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of watching several movies, but for this post I'm going to review just three.

Let's start out with a question: when someone says "Argentina", do you automatically think "horror movie"?

Me neither. How about "mad scientist monster movies?" No? Hmmmm... ok then: "cheesy sexploitation movies?" Ding ding ding ding ding ding! We have a winner!!! Argentinian sexploitation sci-fi horror. How cool is that?!?!?!

Screwing around aside (no pun intended), the story here is that a mad scientist, the Curious Dr. Humpp, has his monster (we know he's a monster because he has a blinking light in the middle of his forehead) kidnap various people in order to have sex with each other. Among the victims are a lesbian couple, a group of orgiastic hippies, a stripper, and so on. According to his evil plan, he then uses aphrodesiacs and "electronic control of the libido" to coerce them to have frequent sex, after which he extracts the "blood forces of sex" from them. The title of this post is one of his dramatic lines from the movie. Of course, not all goes according to plan and even the evil talking brain in the jar on his desk can't help much.

Believe it or not, this movie is better than it sounds. The production values are reasonably decent, the acting isn't terrible, and even the dubbing is pretty well done. According to what I've dug up on the web, several extra sex scenes were added to spice up the movie for release in the US, so if you fast forward through most of the nudity and softcore you'll actually be watching the movie as the director originally intended, making it more of a morality play and less of a schlock flick.

Next up is a double feature DVD from Something Weird Video: The Toy Box and Toys Are Not For Children.

The Toy Box is just plain odd. Equal parts horror, sexploitation, science fiction, and acid trip, this is a flick that works best if you just hang on and enjoy the ride without trying too hard for understanding. If you insist on storyline, then "Uncle" throws parties where people act out fantasies to get rewards from 'the toy box'. That's about as distilled-down lucid as you can get with this movie, and even that falls way short of the actual twisted happenings.

Winding up this odd threesome of odd movies is Toys Are Not For Children. Looking for a one-word description? "Disturbing" fits as well as anything else. A young girl grows up obsessing about her father, who was tossed out of the house by mom. In a bizarre series of events, she gets a job in a toy store, gets married (unhappily), and then finds happiness by becoming a hooker. She eventually does have a reunion with her daddy, and it's hard to imagine things going any more badly than they do. Although still considered a 'sexploitation' flick, this movie is more a psychological study, and there is actually very little nudity.

So there you have it, three twisted movies, each deemed worthy of your time. If you're into that sort of thing, of course.

Posted by: Ted at 06:24 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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