Rip-Off Movie Night

or

but probably

and definitely


Here's the deal. I took a chance that Netflix would send me Robo Vampire in time and it doesn't look like that's going to happen. I'd buy it but it's out of print. I don't think the guy selling it used for a penny will be in any hurry to put that in the mail. So we're going to watch another Godfrey Ho movie, Scorpion Thunderbolt. This works better anyway. I've actually seen Scorpion Thunderbolt so I know how batshit insane and awesome it is. It doesn't have a single ninja in it for people that are sick of Godfrey Ho's colorful ninjas.



The one problem is it doesn't fit into the theme as well. The only thing Scorpion Thunderbolt is ripping-off is itself. Or what ever movies were cut and pasted into it. But that counts, sort of. Oh, and the soundtrack clearly takes compositions from Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman. Rip-off!

It requires no mental gymnastics, however, to call Starcrash a rip-off. It comes from director Luigi Cozzi. He made Alien Contamination about aliens that come from eggs, incubate in humans and then burst from their chests. He also made Hercules a year after Conan the Barbarian came out. Hercules is just the public domain Conan. But before all that he made the Star Wars suggestive Starcrash.

Starcrash has been out-of-print since I've been aware of it. It's finally being released September 14th. But here's a sneak preview. Caroline Munro is the star of it. We saw her in Don't Open Til Christmas, where she played herself for some reason. In Slaughter High she was the one who seduces the main character as an April Fool's Day joke.



It stars another horror movie icon, Joe (Maniac) Spinell. Christopher Plummer from Dreamscape (the movie Inception is ripping off incidentally) plays The Emperor. But you're just going to be waiting for David Hasselhoff, aren't you?

This is all in honor of returning founding BMN member Emily!

Here's what hppened last week:

Crazy Aaron's Thinking Putty on Attack of the Show

I knew Magnetic Putty when it was only a prototype. Before it got popular.

Game Reviews - E3 2011 - Attack This

Impending Remake Movie Night

Here's an updated list of the movies we've watched for Bad Movie Night that have remakes:

Red Sonja
Death Race 2000
Black Devil Doll From Hell
The Last Dragon
The Unborn
Motel Hell
Black Christmas
Nightmare on Elm Street
My Bloody Valentine
April Fool's Day
Teen Witch
The Warriors
The Hidden
Rock n Roll High School
Evil Dead 2
Red Dawn
Hellraiser
The Thing
Phantom of the Paradise
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
It's Alive
Night of the Demons
Last House on the Left

Some are still in progress and may become failed remake attempts. Remakes of Dolemite, Superfly and They Live were talked about at some point but never got off the ground. I suspect this is what may happen to Escape From New York.

It may not be needed anyway. EFNY is the movie that launched a thousand Italian rip-offs. We watched two of them, 1990: The Bronx Warriors and 2019: The Fall of New York. EFNY chose 1997 for their dystopian future date so only 2019 has a chance to be prescient. The plot to that movie has a guy taking the last known pregnant woman to safety after mankind stops being able to reproduce. So at least it predicted the movie Children of Men.

Escape From New York is our fifth John Carpenter movie after They Live, Big Trouble in Little China, Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing. He doesn't have too many left worth watching so I see a day where Godfrey Ho takes over that record. But EFNY has entered popular culture. There's a pizza place:



The Snake Plissken Memorial Playground in Kosovo:



and it seems like I need a third thing here.

I know vampires are in right now but they bore me. That may explain the near absence of them from Bad Movie Night. There was The Lost Boys, which we probably wouldn't have watched if Corey Haim hadn't died. Dracula was just one character in The Monster Squad. There were vampires in Lifeforce but those were naked SPACE vampires. From outer pace. I think that's it. It's getting harder and harder to look through the list quickly. But now we have Fright Night. Directed by the guy who wrote Cloak & Dagger. That movie is great!

Here's what happened last week:



Also, this is amazing:

Machete Maidens Unleashed!

Someone made a documentary about all the crazy movies that came from the Phillipines in the 70's and 80's. That person is the guy who made a documentary about all the crazy movies that came from Australia in the 70's and 80's. I named that one the third best movie of last year. This one's called Machete Maidens Unleashed! (I already have to see it, I see all movies with exclamation points) and here's the super-NSFW trailer:



You'll recognize Weng Weng from For Y'ur Height Only. We watched it on Phillipines Night along with Nine Deaths of the Ninja. Starring Shô Kosugi!

Found on the Internet

Shô Kosugi was in Nine Deaths of the Ninja. Remember the gay Nazi guy? Well, he wasn't that guy. Some day we'll watch Revenge of the Ninja with his son:



But Ninja Terminator is happening this Friday. It got me to thinking. Past Bad Movie Night movies Lady Terminator and Lady Streetfighter are probably in my top 5 best movies we've watched. If Ninja Terminator turns out as good that only leaves a movie called Ninja Streetfighter to form a Square of Most Awesomeness. Unfortunately there is no movie by that name, only a motorcycle:

Godfrey Ho/Richard Harrison Movie Night

Remember Undefeatable? When this happened (eye trauma):



That was directed by Godfrey Ho and it turns out Undefeatable is one of his more competent movies. We're going to watch two of his lesser movies that he made with Richard Harrison because his lesser movies are his better movies. That's the way I do math.

Richard Harrison made 18 movies with ninja in the title and 4 with the word thunderbolt. But there's only one that has both and that's Ninja Thunderbolt. He also made 6 movies with the word force in the title. Alas there is no Thunderbolt Ninja Force but I still think it puts him in the running for coolest guy ever. He could hire that Dos Equis guy to wipe his butt. Too bad he may be most famous for turning down Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars and recommending Clint Eastwood for the part. Ouch.

We saw Harrison in Challenge of the Tiger (AKA Seize The Formula) which you may remember for four things. It starred a guy named Bruce Le, was written by someone named Poon Fan, it showed Bruce Le punching a bull who then turned into a cartoon and had women playing slow-motion topless tennis. All of which is in this trailer (and also some mild eye trauma):



Godfrey Ho would edit two movies together, inserting Western actors for American audiences. He would also use music from other movies. As a result, the soundtrack to Ninja Thunderbolt is great. As far as Silver Fox and Ninja Terminator, there's no one and no thing named Silver Fox in it. But it does have Richard Harrison using the least manliest phone in all of film.

Here's what happened last week (you may not want to watch this, especially if you're Marissa and you were thankfully asleep during this [eye trauma hat trick!]):

Recent LiveJournal Images

Lucio Fulci Movie Night

Fulci, although he did plenty of other movies, is closely associated with Italian zombie films and gory ones at that. So much so he's been called the Godfather of Gore. Although Herschell Gordon Lewis had previously been named that. Maybe Fulci should be known as the Godfather II of Gore, which many people consider superior to the original. Just don't mention the Godfather III of Gore, Lloyd Kaufman. He would have been better with Winona Rider. Fulci is also known for eye trauma. His zombies are not a fan of the fact that you have eyes and they aim to rectify the situation.

Nineteen eighty-one is seen as a banner year for horror movies. You got The Evil Dead, Dead & Buried, Friday the 13th Part 2, Happy Birthday to Me, Cannibal Ferox, The Burning, My Bloody Valentine, the werewolf trifecta of An American Werewolf in London/The Howling/Wolfen and some of my favorite bad movies: Final Exam, Don't Go in the Woods, Mystics in Bali and Bloody Birthday. There's also The Beyond, a movie Quentin Tarantino re-released in theaters for the love of it. I always mention Tarantino and his association with some of the movies we watch to give the movie some gravitas. But a lot of people hate him. Are you more or less inclined to see a movie Tarantino has celebrated?

Zombie is a pretty important horror movie but I've been putting it off since I showed it at a birthday party a few years ago. It was supposed to play in the background while the crowd actually talked to people but it kinda got watched. In the invite I talked about the complicated history of the Zombie sequels. It's known as Zombi 2 (roughly translated from the Italian it means Zombie 2) in Italy because Zombi was what Dawn of the Dead was called there. Happily, and predictably, there's a Wikipedia page to keep it all straight. Oddly, there's a Microsoft commercial on right now that uses footage from Zombie. It's been pulled from YouTube because, you know, you wouldn't want people watching your commmercial.

Here's what happened last week (one of my favorite scenes in all of BMNdom):



But one of my favorite moments is the voice at the end of this clip:



Although the guy with inexplicable robot voice is good too.

resurrecting an old tradition

back when emily lived with us, we used to have a special 'family' dinner once a week. also, every one in a while, michael would come up with some crazy idea for a meal, and we would make it. remember the sesame chicken and waffle fry pizza? well, we are combining these two into a new tradition. yesterday michael conceived the idea for tonight's dinner: pasta with meat balls and italian dressing. it was pretty good!

the corn was my idea...