Mikey & Justin's Marathon of Best Worst Movies
Oct 20, 2017 21:33:37 GMT -5
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Post by The Sandmen on Oct 20, 2017 21:33:37 GMT -5
Tagline: Twin brothers. Ones a good cop. The other is bad news.
Plot Synopsis: Muscle-bound twins try to smash a jewel smuggling ring.
Stars: Peter Paul as Peter Jade and David Paul as David Jade. Oh. and David Carradine for some reason as Mr. C. Whatever the fuck that means.
IMDB Rating: 3.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: No critic review, that frightens me. 39% from audiences.
Mike's Take:
First of all, Sandra Bullock has never looked more fit in a lead role. I will never get over how hard it was to throw an 80s giant satellite at a car, only for it to be flicked away by Tito. God damn Tito. Dude sucked at his job too. Wait, are we supposed to be selling this movie to people who are reading this post? I might have really fucked this up. Let me try again. Justin told me we had to watch this because the lead character, played by Jon Jones'd Sandra Bullock, wore a crop top and was Justin's idol growing up. I see the resemblance in many ways, and in many other ways, there is no resemblance. All in all, the movie was great fun because Whitney. Only Whitney. Whitney was where it was at. And when there was no Whitney, I was confused. But when there was a Whitney, the movie just made sense. Except for the part where Whitney is knocked out for what seems to be 7 days, and avoids not only getting murdered like the other guy in the room, but also being left to die for no reason at all and his body managed to not give up the ghost, even though I never saw the dude drink or eat, ever. Whitney sure knows how to fast. Doesn't even need water. Saw him pee though. Guess there's that.
Why you should avoid it:
A cop really wanted his partner to be murdered because his name is Whitney.
Why you should see it:
Steroid Twins played by Sandra Bullock kills people by throwing satellites at them when she isn't busy stepping in toilets, or trying on leather jackets while topless. Go Raiders?
Justin's Take:
This was one of my favourite movies as a child. Though I would love to be amusing and say child-Justin was stupid, and his taste in movies reflected that of a special needs child on heroine, I can't. Cause this fucking movie is a God damned gem. It is absolutely everything a 1992 "action" cop thriller buddy "comedy" drama should be. It has no idea what it is. It contains jokes clearly designed for children, like a pair of grown men pulling the rug out from under a bad guy, knocking him down on his keister. Cause that is LOL funny, amiright? But it also contains at least one F-bomb, a cum reference, and includes an unwitty double entendre about pussies.
Why you should avoid it:
If you only have 70 minutes to live, then, and ONLY then, should you avoid this movie. Then you will never know how this early-90s masterpiece ends. And as those of us who grew up in the early 90s know, "Save the rend for the end." And few movies rend the way this movie ends.
Why you should see it:
For the line, "I don't take no steroids, and I don't take no shit!"
Tagline: Surf's up! Time to save the world!
Plot Synopsis: Two boys learn from a mysterious warrior that they are the heirs to the throne of Patusan and set out to overthrow the current monarchy.
Stars: Ernie Reyes Jr., Rob Schneider and Leslie Nielsen
IMDB Rating: 5/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 12%
Mike's Take:
I told Justin we had to watch this. I feel a part of me died when Leslie Nielsen couldn't answer a phone in time with his bionic hand. How in the hell do you become bionic after getting stomped to death by an elephant? It's never explained! Just squish, dead, and then all of a sudden, half cyborg. And not the good kind of Cyborg like Cristiane. The bad kind of Cyborg like David Paul playing Sandra Bullock in that Cyborg cop movie. Also, there's a point where I legit stared at Justin because I was pretty sure the movie just took a turn and introduced potential child prostitution. Spoiler alert: IT DID! I didn't see it coming. Like I didn't see the part with the musical number that came out of nowhere that mocked an Asian man's name and served nothing to the plot, or the part where Rob Schneider mocked and stared at the camera over a man's disability and potential cancer, or the part where the Asian character started speaking with an Indian accent and then sang with an American effeminate accent, or the part where a video game gave a kid AND a monkey super powers and the monkey needed the powers because the kid was too stupid at having the powers, or the part where ninjas wear blue camouflage in a jungle or just on a regular street, or the part where a blue ninja dives head first off the roof of a building and fucking kills himself by breaking his neck after missing on his slow motion dive at no one at all, or, believe it or not, the part where there are starving/dying children who are begging to be liberated, but it's all good because they have barbie dolls. Honestly, come to think of it, this movie was pretty legit.
Why you should avoid it:
Rob Schneider spends the movie with orange hair and getting yelled at for trying to avoid starvation.
Why you should see it:
Rob Schneider has orange hair and gets yelled at for trying to avoid starvation."
Justin's Take:
This movie is terrible. I am not sure if it's good-terrible, like we were going for, or just objectively and unfunly terrible, like watching your loved ones die a slow and painful death via cancerous AIDS. Especially if the cancer-AIDS contained privileged children who give no shits to learn they are oriental Princes, Rob Schneider playing a propless Carrot Top, and Leslie Nielsen playing what looks to be an offender of the under-aged children variety. Combined with Terminator for NO REASON, just cause...people liked Terminator, right? So here is Leslie Terminator Nielsen. FOR NO REASON. Also, if you are a fan of surfing, skip this movie. Not only does it make a mockery of surfing, it also makes a mockery of ninjas, Asian culture, food, and fashion, history, as well as martial arts in general. That said, if you are a fan of putting your head in a vice, while watching a 32 year old man play a 13 year old boy, perhaps this film is for you.
Why you should avoid it:
It's terrible.
Why you should see it:
You shoulnd't. Unless you enjoy cancer-AIDS. Contagious ones. That attack your brain stem, eye balls, and soul. You will be a less complete human after you see this. But if that is what you are going for, you should see this movie. I guess. (?)
Tagline: Little guys with big guns!
Plot Synopsis:An evil gunslinging midget comes to terrorize the good little people of Tiny Town. The townspeople organize to defeat him, and zany antics ensue.
Stars: Billy Curtis, Karl Kosiczky, Jed Buell's Midgets (for real)
IMDB Rating: 3.5/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: No critic review, I wonder why? 35% from audience.
Mike's Take:
I don't even know where to begin. This movie had an intro to introduce the two main characters, and it was hilarious because they were little. 1938 was a strange time for comedy. The best part of this movie is the random prostitution song, where the height-challenged singer sang "I'm going to make love to you, you better look out." What a strange thing to sing/say to anyone. The bartender chugged beer all the time, people hid in shelves, and a little person cook pranced around trying to murder a duck, who was mischievous. What do any of these things have to do with the plot? Absolutely nothing. It took me until about 90% through the movie that I finally figured out what was going on. Harry Dean Stanton made an appearance though, so that's something. Oh, what's that? Justin has informed me that was not Harry Dean Stanton, it was instead a wax figure who's face was melting. Man, animatronics were pretty legit back in the 30s!
Why you should avoid it:
They literally had to reach up to open the saloon doors that were taller than the actors. Also, they had to force their legs to step up high enough onto the decks to get anywhere, which was about 1/10th of the time spent in the movie. Seriously. 10% of the time, you're watching little people struggle to just walk around and climb regular sized things. Set designer was a dick.
Why you should see it:
The cook, who again serves no purpose, gets literally murdered, then gets back up like nothing happened, and no one gave a shit. Must be a warlock, and everyone was used to it by now.
Justin's Take:
I honestly thought to myself, "A classic western story with an all-vertically-disabled cast? How can I go wrong? The answer was...it's also a fucking musical? Ish? For no reason! Shit will be moving along at an okay pace, the story will be making sense (though, to be rude but honest, all these vertically-disabled people look near-identical - especially on a sub-VHS quality rip - so its easy to confuse characters), then suddenly we pause the whole movie and cut to a tavern wench singing a ballad about nothing for no reason. Sometimes the story kinda keeps happening around her, but never in any meaningful way. Sometimes a man chances a goose with a cleaver. Morbid midget fuck. Well, I guess he wants to eat it, so its okay. But still. Interestingly, this movie was 61 minutes long. And it felt 45 minutes too long. Meaning even if it was an episode of a shitty TV show, it should have been shorter (pun intended as fuck).
Why you should avoid it:
1) Singing.
2) Nonsensical plot.
3) Midgets.
Why you should see it:
I want to say to see 61 minutes of vertically-disabled people acting like vertically-abled people, but thats just not enough for this one unfortunately. I guess seeing little people take swings at salloon doors as they pass under them to make them move as they go through is kinda funny as fuck.
Tagline: Love calms the soul...and so does revenge.
Plot Synopsis:A pair of recently married gay men are threatened by one of the partner's brother, a religious fanatic who plots to murder them after being ostracized by his church.
Stars: Sam Mraovich, Sam Mraovich, and SamMraovichSamMraovichSamMraovichSamMraovichSamMraovich
IMDB Rating: 2.2/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: No critic review, no kidding! 10% from audience.
Mike's Take:
Well, we put this on just to take a peak at the quality, and after staring at it for a few minutes we realized we had watched like the vast majority of the film. What a fucking disaster. First of all, plot? What plot? The character development is anyone that looks like they may at some point be upset about something will in fact become a sociopathic murderer. My absolute favorite part is the cardboard crosses, the actors staring at the cameraman, and most importantly, the abundance of cloraform. There's never enough cloraform.
Why you should avoid it:
It was clearly made on a budget of about 18 dollars and years of broken dreams, and possibly even funded by a gay community to promote some sort of weird agenda about potential incest? Isn't that just playing into the insane perception of extreme anti-gay opinions? Jesus.
Why you should see it:
This movie was everything film should not be, and that makes it sort of important, or something, who the fuck knows.
Justin's Take:
Sam Mraovich really wants you to know he pretty much did this whole movie solo, as the opening credits contain almost 100% his name (like, his name appears in I think 12 of the 13 pre-film credits, including things like casting, music, editing, star, etc). The problem is, he is not Tommy Wiseau. He does not have the solo-power of brutal to make it fun that he is essentially the movie and no one else exists in the world. What Sam Mraovich does excel at, however, is having literally no idea how to make a movie. I don;t mean he is bad, I mean he straight-up has no idea what he is doing. To put this criticism in film language, he does not do the basic things you learn about in first-year film class. He never lays an ambient sound track, so there are moments of dead-silence (if you listen to a real film, there is never silence - there is the sound of SOMETHING, trees, lights, birds, SOMETHING, but literally never DEAD silence. Sam Mraovich doesn't believe in any of that. He also likes to have purposeless reaction shots (which are fucking hilarious, as they have nothing to do with his desired effect, which I assume is conveying emotion and depth of feeling and story. It fails hilariously, and leads to many odd, long reaction shots of a dude just staring blankly at his friend for long, reasonless minutes. I lol'ed.
Why you should avoid it:
It's a masterclass in how NOT to make a movie. Like, literally if you have seen a movie, you know more about making one than these guys did. Also, you might want to avoid it if you respect things like religion. Or the art or quality/semi-quality/mildly competent filmmaking.
Why you should see it:
The best piece of pro-homosexual propaganda I have ever seen. Everything negative gay people face in the world is bundled up into this flick, and every adversary they must face is turned up to 11. Including, as I believe Mike already said, Christians who want to murder gay people. Literally. With guns and chloroform. And Church-hired hitmen.
Tagline: You're never home alone when you're a twin!
Plot Synopsis:An evil business executive (played by George Lazenby), is releasing dangerous toxins and the Barbarian Brothers set out to stop his evil work.
Stars: The Barbarian Brothers (David and Peter Paul), Christian and Joseph Cousins, and George Lazenby for some reason.
IMDB Rating: 5.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: No critic review, 57% from audience.
Justin's Take:
I was excited for this movie, since it had "The Barbarian Brothers" in it, and Double Trouble is the best thing since humans discovered intercourse. But...Twin Sitters was terrible. Again, not fun-terrible, but just objectively boring and terrible. Lots of stupid 90s things that are almost-fun in small doses for a second or two (like, any of my peeps remember "PSYCH!" or "NOT!"? Yeah, that stupid shit). But it gets painful, and is painful and the movie is painful and I was unhappy. The best part of the movie is the end (spoilers coming), where, the child-twins are kidnapped, and the Barbarian Brothers (apparantly they adopted that billing for this picture and subsequent ones), call their friends to come help them retrieve the asshole child-twins (who we do not care about at any point in this movie - they are sociopathic dicks who at one point play around with things that could be interpreted as attempted murder). And their friends are....fellow super-twins! We have weird Asian martial arts twins, who specialize in rapid-fire kicks (mostly ineffectual ones), and we also have Hip Black Bro twins. Who specialize in...being hip and I guess also kicking ass? All these cameo twins were fun, and totally make the previous 90 minutes of movie worth watching. NOT! (HAR HAR HAR!!!)
Why you should avoid it:
Reasons. All of the reasons. Every single one of the reasons.
Why you should see it:
The last 4 minutes with The Avangers: Twins Edition. You are fine if you just watch the last 4 mins though. NOTHING. ELSE. MATTERED. (After I wrote this, I updated the ratings from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes - HOW THE FUCK DID PEOPLE LIKE THIS CRAP!) Justin out.
Mike's Take:
I almost fell asleep. I'm leaning toward the possibility that it was the drowsy effect of the allergy medication I was fighting through for the duration of the movie, but I'm pretty sure I half dreamt a better movie than what I saw. In my dream, there were times that candy came alive and beat the piss out of the we're-fake-dead twin kids because all they wanted to do was eat fucking bologna and peanut butter. What combination is that? Is it literally a peanut butter sandwich where the bread is bologna? Is it peanut butter soup with bologna chunks in it? Is it bologna sliced up into spaghetti noodle appearance with melted peanut butter sauce over top? It's never explained. And there are many opportunities where this random food desire problem immediately leads to one of the Sandra Bullock twins getting so angry he is about to murder these children. But when danger actually comes, they love the kids, or maybe they just love the ridiculous amount of money they are being paid to watch them? Five grand a day goes a long way. But then randomly at the end, we find out they were never paid, and the creepy butler, who may or may not have diddled the children, paid for a restaurant? None of this shit makes any sense. The stuff I dreamt was more cohesive than this bore fest.
Why you should avoid it:
Because it's bad. Not fun bad, not cringe bad, just boringly, stupid bad.
Why you should see it:
We didn't rewind to see if there were killer candy people, so fuck me, it might require a re-watch.
Tagline: It's Shocking! It's Beyond Your Imagination!
Plot Synopsis:A family gets lost on the road and stumbles upon a hidden, underground, devil-worshiping cult led by the fearsome Master and his servant Torgo.
Stars: Tom Neyman, John Reynolds, Harold P. Warren, Diane Adelson
IMDB Rating: 1.9/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 7% from critics, 19% from audience.
Justin's Take:
Manos: The Hands of Fate is legendary for being one of the worst movies ever. It works. I mean, not as a legit film, that will make you feel things, or give shits. But it works as a good bad-movie. People do things that don't make sense for reasons that are never explained, causing consequences that are irrational and silly. Precisely what you want in a best-worst movie. This one has a "The Master", who looks like Freddy Mercury takes orders from Manos, a steel mannequin head, while ordering around his strange zombie-wives. But not too much, as they have about a 12 minute break from obeying him to participate in a battle royale cat fight from hell, which accomplishes nothing and is not sexy. Thus pointless. The best part of this film is the character of Torgo, played expertly by John Reynolds. He doesn't stop twitching, walks with a goat-like limp, and, when you get down to the actual movie, serves literally no purpose than to separate the lost family from Manos and Freddy Mercury for half the film to build suspense. It doesn't. Several times I expected the film to break out into a musical. It didn't.
Why you should avoid it:
I mean, it's not very good? There is a couple throughout the film that keeps being hassled by "the man" (police), because they are drinking booze and making out in a car. Ultimately, they do this all night, and never get farther than making out and sipping the gin. If cock-blocking, blue-ball-inducing police officers bother you, this might be a film to avoid. It's pervasive throughout the film. Very pervasive.
Why you should see it:
Freddy Mercury wears a robe-cape that has hands on each flap. When he puts his arms together, it looks like his robe-cape is clapping. If you only need one reason, see the film for the Fabulous Freddy Mercury and his Clappy-Hands Cape of Doom.
Mike's Take:
Torgo has small feet. I am not sure why this movie is almost 80 minutes long. It's about a 4 minute story. But let's talk about what I learned in watching this masterpiece. I literally just checked the IMDB page to see if the Master's actual character name is Manos. It is not. It's just the Master. That means that in Manos: The Hands of Fate, there is literally nothing in the movie about Manos other than he is the person people dedicate doing bad things for. There's also no magic, just a lot of spousal abuse, and a sort of half-goat man who's goat aspect serves no purposes whatsoever to the film. The dad is also a dick. Like, he basically forces his family into the house, when Torgo is like "seriously guys, the Master is not going to be cool with this, like at all" and essentially begs the family to just not be assholes. But alas, they are assholes, and they stay, and they yell at Torgo because despite being hospitable as fuck, they hate his guts. Why? Because the family is a wild pack of assholes. But I digress. All in all, it's just a family that is too stubborn to ask for directions, a father who is as dominant as they come and yet is probably the biggest physical flake in the entire film, and a bunch of women in night gowns pretending to be frozen in place when the giant black and red unitard with hands on it (handitard?) is pretending to be sleeping on a pillar... in a basement... that is coincidentally connected to the desert. Like, you go into the basement, and you're simultaneously in the basement and in the desert. It's like a secret portal to Narnia, except instead of Narnia, it's a basement with a few pillars and the entire desert. I would love it if my basement led to a desert. It would give me ideal living space. Oh, speaking of the Narnia connection, isn't there a goat-man in Narnia? Maybe Manos is a prequel to Narnia or something. I'm just going to keep bringing this back to Narnia. I liked the part where the woman put on a hat for 8 seconds and couldn't avoid the slowest attempted grope in history. Also Narnia.
Why you should avoid it:
It's never explained why Torgo's walks and talks strangely, and perhaps only does so to be strange and make you wonder about him. But the dude very clearly acts and talks like a goat. Like in Narnia.
Why you should see it:
Torgo's walking music was incredible, and it was there for about 12 seconds and then disappeared forever. We got to hear a lot of that shitty flute though. Probably a lot of flutists in Narnia. Gotta satisfy the flautist community. Meanwhile, this artistic Narnia rip-off movie is more flaw-tistic. Get it? I don't. I get nothing. Narnia.
Tagline: He menaced women with weird desires!
Plot Synopsis: A former vaudevillian gifted at impersonation assists a mad scientist in reanimating corpses and soon goes mad himself.
Stars: Bill Woods, Horace B. Carpenter
IMDB Rating: 3.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 89% from critics, 32% from audience.
Justin's Take:
This movie is about psychology. Or it thinks it is. And...ironically, it left me feeling very, very confused for a large portion of the film. Things don't make a lot of sense, and every 10-15 minutes, a screen-crawl will come up explaining some outdated psychological condition. It didn;t feel like it quite matched up with anything I was watching on screen, but I felt like it thought it did, so I was trying desperately to make those connections. Eventually, there were some boobies in the movie and I forgot how confused I was, and was concentrating on my hopes and desires of seeing more boobies. Cause boobies!
Why you should avoid it:
It's really damned hard to make sense of it. It gets you feeling like you are missing things, just because it doesn't really follow any logic or rules. It pretends to be an educational film/documentary at times, but containes weird pseudoscience, potions, and even a zombie.
Why you should see it:
There's one scene in which a crazy man is brought into see the impostor-doctor by his wife. The imposter-doctor gives him a shot of adrenaline. The man gets up, runs to the other side of the room just as a zombie-woman happens to saunter into the room. The adenalized crazed man scoops the zombified woman up in his arms, and races out the door with her. His wife gives no shits, and carries on an unrelated conversation with the impostor-doctor. If for no other reason, that is why you should see this film. That and it has 1930s boobies in it, because it's an exploitation flick. But mostly the scene I explained.
Mike's Take:
This movie had a lot of reading in it for a movie that wasn't a silent film, and perhaps what makes it worse is I had to read the random citations for the notes, as if I am going to watch this film and then be outraged at the reading content and go to the library and ask the librarian if the information was wrong. You know, because it's fucking 1934 and google doesn't exist yet? Jesus. What a shitty time to be alive when your options for the weekend are going to the library, or going to see this film, being outraged and then going to the library anyways. I mean, I enjoy a good library as much as the next guy, but I want a little more in my entertainment than a pseudo-mockumentary-partial-skin-flick thing with zombies, and lots of mice and cats fighting and a guy who's incredible transformation to impersonate a doctor is to cut his hair and smack himself in the face with baby powder. And that part had literally no eroticism. How utterly disappointing. Almost makes me want to go mad. Oh, and there was a time Justin and I cringed at the possibility we might see an animal get murdered on screen. That was awkward.
Why you should avoid it:
Nothing in this movie reminded me of Narnia, and that sort of disappointed me.
Why you should see it:
Because I'm just so confused as to what it was, that by having you see it, maybe we can do a poll the audience and see what the consensus is for what kind of movie it is. We'll also poll the audience on the zombie breasts. Also, this movie set out to do, uh, something, and instead did, um, mostly nothing, and that in itself might be something.
Tagline: You'll Pay To Get In... And Pray To Get Out!
Plot Synopsis: Two police detectives try to catch a serial killer who is stalking a rural California drive-in theater, randomly killing people with a sword
Stars: Douglas Gudbye, John F. Goff,
IMDB Rating: 3.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: No Reviews from critics, 5% from audience.
Justin's Take:
Major spoilers throughout this whole write-up. But its okay. I am saving you time of your life.
This movie starts off with decent potential. It has the structure and formula and workings of an enjoyable gore-fest slasher movie. For 7 minutes. After that, it goes downhill in dramatic fashion. Picture: beauty gore-kill, exceitement, tone, drama. Then...20 minutes of LONG dry exposition of a special needs man explaining IN DETAIL a bunch of stuff he knows about every drive-in patron. Ever. Then, an okay gore-kill, not as good as the first, but okay. Potential picks back up. We get into it again, then....30 minutes of LONG dry exposition of a special needs man explaining IN DETAIL a bunch of stuff he knows about every drive-in patron. Ever. Then, a boring gore-kill. I think what turns out to be pretty much the last one of the movie. So now what? You guessed it...30 minutes of LONG dry exposition of a special needs man explaining IN DETAIL a bunch of stuff he knows about every drive-in patron. Ever. Then the grand finale. Since this movie has been billed as a horror/MYSTERY, I can accept this exposition of we are fucking going somewhere. Like, if all that boring babble took us to some exciting revelation at the climax of the film. So. Drumroll. Here it comes. What do we get after 70 minutes of exposition and 3 kill-scenes? Who did it? Which of the 35 people we heard SO SO SO SO much about is guilty? No one. Like...literally, we get a title card that says this:
That is the grand finale of my mystery/horror movie. Waste. of. fucking. Time.
I could have forgiven the movie IF it had a good ending. It played its cards like it did. But it had no ending. It just...nothinged. I feel shame for having viewed it.
Why you should avoid it:
The ending.
Why you should see it:
I feel like this had one redeeming quality, but since the ending was so horrificly dumb, I don't recall what it was. I mean, at one point a guy has a SHIT LOAD of Playboy Centerfolds on his wall. So you see some second-hand fullfrontal nudity. That's a reason to see things, right? If not, I got nothin'.
Mike's Take:
Fun, campy 70s slasher scenes that are about 4 seconds long mixed with watching a train wreck. But not like a quick wreck where it happens and then you're recovering. No, the long and slow kind, where everyone on board is able to get off loooooooooooooong before the actual damage happens, and then walk up alongside the in-process-of-wreckage train, collect their baggage, flag down a taxi, take it to the airport, board a plane, fly home, go inside, get their drone, program the coordinates of the train, send off the drone and film the train bumping a tree, but not so hard as to knock it down. No. Just enough that the tree wiggles a little. Oh, and the tree it collides with was planted last week, so it's like 4 inches tall. That is this movie. At one point, they ask a homeless guy, who looks identical to a peeping tom guy, like a thousand questions, and the only answer the dude doesn't know about literally everyone and everything on the fucking planet is who was the Zodiac killer.
Why you should avoid it:
Did you seriously just read my previous paragraph? That paragraph was more interesting than the entire movie.
Why you should see it:
If you are a person who just loves, I mean like your whole life is based around you sitting in a parking lot and just watching cars move from spot to spot and parking, then this is totes your fetish movie. Good luck in your adventure.
Tagline: N/A
Plot Synopsis: A bed possessed by a demon spirit consumes its users alive.
Stars: Dave Marsh, Demene Hall, Julie Ritter, Linda Bond, Rosa Luxemburg
IMDB Rating: 4.4/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: No Reviews from critics, 30% from audience.
Mike's Take:
Deathbed, even when it explains how it became a deathbed still doesn't really explain anything. There's something about a tree, and some girl who is accidentally murdered or something after the tree demon sexes it up with her on the bed, and then she's alive, but kind of dead and a dude lives behind a drawing, but not like behind the actual drawing. Like the demon cast him away for eternity in a cubby hole in the wall where the drawing is. I guess the demon is also a decent architect? And the cubby-hole dude gets to watch people sex it up before getting eaten and he can't do anything about it because all he has are thoughts. Then, there's a 10 minute scene of someone crawling on the floor to escape. Ten. Minutes. Just grunting noises, and barely crawling. Now, granted I would probably lose a crawling race against a donut, I could escape faster without my legs than this person ever could dream of doing. Oh, and she doesn't. Spoiler alert. The bed has a tongue. It's probably the second best part of the movie.
Why you should avoid it:
There's a two minute black-screen audio-only opening of listening to, presumably, a bed chewing an apple or a carrot. We weren't sure which one, but it's just the sound effects before, wham, bam, holy sheet, there's a bed.
Why you should see it:
Because the actual best part of the movie is when a bed devours a bucket of chicken, and gets drunk on a bottle of wine, but re-corks the wine, and puts all the chicken bones back in the chicken bucket (off camera of course, probably with its tongue) and returns it to surface, where the about to be sexed man character says "I guess I made a mistake." What? As if it's some sort of common occurrence in the 70s for people to go to KFC and get home and open the chicken container and go "aww, damn, it happened again, I got the order of just bones." The 70s were a psychedelic time, man.
Justin's Take:
This movie had a lot of interesting and creative ideas in it. It is clearly built on schlock-horror, as it revolves around a bed. That eats. People. But there are more crazy/interesting ideas beyond that. There is a man trapped behind a painting (literally, in the wall, behind it, bound by magic to be imprisoned and unheard). When the bed eats people, various artefacts from those people end up in that strange mini-room with the imprisoned man (jewellery, cigarettes, a leg brace). The special effects are much better then I thought they would be, as there's some delightful early shots of the bed eating/dissolving chicken, wine, and apples. Looks like someone soaking these things in acid or something, but its actually legit-cool. Where the movie turns gibberishy though, is the assembly of these pieces. It has lots of cool stuff, but also has a hard time telling the "story" with any reasonable pacing, so there are long bouts of almost nothing that break the rhythm of cool that the concepts alone are driving with. Mike mentioned the 5 minute scene where the women is half-eaten by the bed, so she is crawling from the bed to the door. For 5 minutes. Only to reach the threshold of liberty to be snatched back up by Death Bed's sheet-tongue and devoured like a Thanksgiving turkey. This movie lacks people doing strange things for no reason at all, and strangely long and unnecessary close-up reaction shots of a dude doing nothing. As such, it falls a bit short of some of the other masterpieces of "WTF AM I WATCHING" we have watched previously this weekend, but this sucker had many of the most enjoyably interesting elements. Just no execution. Except the bed, it executed a lot of people. Like, 3 in fact.
Why you should avoid it:
You will never feel comfortable hiking up to an abandoned mansion, sneaking into their strange add-on dungeon room, and arbitrarily sleeping in a suspisiously-freshly-made bed ever again.
Why you should see it:
You get to see a bed's stomach acids devour chicken, wine, apples, eyeballs, and hands. And when all that causes intestinal distress...Death Bed devours Pepto Bismol. #Rinning.