RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[lester1/2jr]

Zombie Pirates (2014) - Somewhere between Adult Ed Film class project and tax shelter is this bland but quickly moving...thing. I don't want to call it a movie. The blonde lead actress would be super hot if she worked in your office, but in a movie she's just okay. She sleep walks through this underwhelming scenario of trying to get some zombie pirate... silver? Meanwhile, silver was about 20 dollars an ounce in 2014. A small bag of coins even with historical value factored in would hardly be worth getting a skinned knee over, much less killing/dying for.

The only scene I liked was one when the smart alec cop realizes that the woman is in a rush, so he asks for a cup of coffee and drinks it super slowly and talks about random stuff knowing that she's quietly infuriated with him. I don't think they are allowed to really do that, though. I also liked how he was willing to risk his life to get to his police radio even though we know he has a cell phone.

2.5/5 extremely low budget and mostly useless but I watched it in one sitting and was able to move on to something else quickly. Spirit Halloween zombie costumes

[HappyGilmore]

A Very Brady Christmas - 1988.

Caught this on tv recently. The Brady Bunch kids and families come home for the holidays. I liked it for what it was.

[M.10rda]

BROADMINDED (1931):
Who's the most irritating male lead in comedy history? Jerry Lewis... Pauly Shore... Rob Schneider? I submit for your disapproval: Joe E. Brown - the rubber-faced, gape-mawed, persistently blinking goon/star of BROADMINDED! Okay, it's a "broad" and competitive field indeed, and Brown is favorably remembered for his supporting role in SOME LIKE IT HOT....... but I just couldn't take this guy for 90 minutes in this flick. And yet I did!
 
A nominally "Pre-code" feature, which in this case doesn't account for much scandalous content besides the extremely bizarre opening scene, where Brown's sidekick arrives at an "adult baby party" pushing fully infantilized Brown in a pram. The co-ed attendees are all dressed as babies in diapers and bonnets, sucking on pacifiers and bottles, etc. I recognize that "Adult Baby" is an authentic fetish in the 21st century  but, weird though it is to watch, nothing sexual or suggestive really happens onscreen, thus I struggle to think this would've been a problem for the Hays Code - but who knows.

Anyway, it's strictly routine antic rom-com after that, w/ weirdo Brown and his womanizing cousin (they've got BROADS on the MIND, see) on a cross-country trip straight out of the Farley/Spade playbook. They repeatedly run into and antagonize Bela Lugosi as "Pancho", a wealthy and quick-tempered "South American" entrepreneur.  Before you shout "Baron Akito" at your screen, Bela takes the high road and just does his normal accent (as if he could really do any other). And somehow it's less offensive watching perpetually-typecast Foreign Guy Bela play a different ethnicity (as he often would) than it is watching other white guys do it.

Bela was the only reason I watched this, but the female cast - Margaret Livingston, Ona Munson, and Thelma Todd - are all attractive and entertaining. The screenplay is cold (not even hot!) garbage... ex. Bela spends most of the film hollering about how Brown once ruined his strawberry shortcake. Todd (who would die under mysterious circumstances four years later) plays Bela's mistress, and it's nice to see him being romantic w/ a woman who isn't under his hypnotic spell and who he isn't bound to murder at some point. Bela also gets to chase Brown at full speed (instead of stalking his victim in a cape); Brown is scared of Bela's size (he calls him a "gorilla") and indeed, one gets to appreciate that the healthy, middle-aged, 6-foot-ish Bela is a threatening guy! In the few moments where Bela isn't in a blind rage (mostly opposite Todd), it's fund to watch him play comedy, which he rarely got to do. (Even in later horror/comedies, Bela always had to be the scary straightman.) So this was worth a watch for a different side of Lugosi.

2.5/5    But man a little Joe Brown goes a mile!