RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie Thread!)

[chainsaw midget]

Kill Her Goats (2023)

A beautiful big breasted blonde has just graduated college, so her rich father buys her a house.  SAhe decideds to invite a few of her friends over for a girls' night, where they strip down to their undewrwear, take showers, and then hang out in their underwear.  Lots of underwear.  Except when they take it off. 


HOWEVER... this house has a reputatio for being haunted.  Or not. 
Then a maniac wearing a goat mask (played by Kane Hodder) shows up and starts killing people.  At one point, one of the women is killed in her dreams by somebody with a goat face when our goastfaced killer is busy elsewhere killing somebody else.  These weird dream powers are never explained. 

Also at one point, the killer has two chainsaws stuck together with sparklers on them. 


Eventually our leading lady kills Goatface by decapitating him. 


He shows up a scene later alive-and-well, and nobody mentions how. 

There's also a couple of goats that show up.  Again, no idea why. 

The killer is revealed to be ... well, I won't spoil that, but he's just a guy, one that does NOT have supernatural dream powers nor is he a ghost or anything.  He's just a guy. 

Eventually, Goatface gets killed again, and the person responsible suddenly goes crazy and tries to kill her sister. 

The gore is actually pretty good in a practicle effects/80s slasher kind of way but the plot is very much like the women's outfits. Not always there and very skimpy when it is. 

If I had to compare this to any more, I'd say it strongly resembles the Slumber Party Massacre 2.  So, if you like that kind of thing, check it out. 

[M.10rda]

Kill Her Goats (2023)

This could also be the title of a SEVERANCE S2 episode.

[M.10rda]

PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 (2026):
Madame wanted to watch this. We could have spent $24 on seeing it at the drive-in but she was wise enough to wait for streaming. Here's how our conversation went last Saturday:
"Are you sure you want to watch this with me?"

"Yeah..." Hey, it's about witches - that's kinda' Halloweenish. Also Stockard Channing.

"Arya Stark is in it..."

     "Hell yes I'll watch PRACTICAL MAGIC 2!!!"      

...Well...

24 hours later Madame was still complaining about this movie. That's how bad it is. Although she enjoys watching all kinds of rom-com schlock, she's actually much more vicious about bad movies than I am. Her primary complaint seemed to be that Lee Pace, in spite of being (essentially) naked, failed to redeem the film for her. She loves Lee Pace. His character is utterly gratuitous and makes no sense, FTR. The kid from "Cobra Kai" and BLUE BEETLE is also in it... in a coma for two hours. 

There are light horror elements. There are three deaths (more than a lot of rom-coms). Two characters are stabbed in the heart (!) and live/have no wounds.  By the climax things deteriorate into Harry Potter-style horse$#!t.

Bullock (62) and Kidman (59) have had a lot of work done and it's getting harder for them to emote w/ their faces. Much of the running time is commanded by them doing awkward (improvised?) comedy patter, and Bullock's humor chops have altogether evaporated. She looks a lot like imminent pre-death Michael Jackson in many close-ups. Kidman actually looks okay - she's a redhead anyway.

Joey King plays one of their kids and also looks weird, but Hot-weird and she comes by it naturally. (She didn't need to get her face paralyzed or sliced up w/ scalpels to look weird.) Dianne Wiest (78) looks totally natural and good. Stockard Channing (82) has had some work done but looks better for 82 than Bullock does for 62.

Maisie Williams is fifth-billed and (of course) looks extraordinarily (naturally) lovely and is very entertaining - mostly reacting to lines from other characters. The internet seems pretty upset about how she's treated in this film - and I am too. She plays a brain surgeon, so when Xolo M. is hit by a car and enters a coma, one might expect Maisie to have to learn magic in order to save Xolo's life w/ magical brain surgery. Nope!  She and Stockard sit in a room staring at unconscious Xolo for two hours while Bullock, Kidman, and King have actual adventures.

Still, Maisie and Stockard sitting around a room staring is a hard 2.5/5 for me.       I think I enjoyed this stupid, stoooooooooooopid movie more than my wife.

Elsa Lanchester used to routinely get fifth-billing for doing very little in dumb movies. If Maisie's career is only as good as Elsa's, I'll be okay w/ that, but I'm holding out for more!

[M.10rda]

TURTLE ISLAND (2014):
I gotta' watch some more modern horrors in the next week... this one's a Found Footage flick ostensibly about Bigfoot, or........ so I thought. The first 10 minutes had me wondering, though. Those are entirely focused on the problematic love life and stalled career of a lame reality TV/social media dude. None of it ends up mattering in the final third of the film, of course, once the BLAIR WITCH-style running and screaming start. Thus that early exposition ends up feeling quite gratuitous and masturbatory, since the lame dude is played by the writer/director. He's also easily worst actor in the movie. 

To be fair to w/d/star dude, in some way - all the other acting is very good, so at least he knows how to spot a good actor anywhere besides the mirror! Even the small roles of witnesses discussing their BF encounters are well-performed. The other three leads are above average, and all three of them are attractive people, if that's one of your requirements for your BF movies. I'll also acknowledge that there are a couple of cool/funny moments where something that looks like BF makes a low-key appearance in the back of a shot and the characters don't even notice.  Those are fun in an IN A VIOLENT NATURE kinda' way.

The biggest (enormous) problem w/ TURTLE ISLAND is similar to that in many FF flicks, but worse - the inherent logic of it being Found Footage fails to hold up. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense why the characters keep rolling tape as they're being pursued through pitch black woods and terrified for their life, but moreover we get a couple of brief interjections early on in the film/"in the tape" where footage has been recorded after the events at the end of the film. Why? How? These questions aren't answered (implausible as any answer would be) and furthermore they set-up the reveal at the end of TURTLE ISLAND, which I will just go right ahead and SPOIL for you below:

.......Like two semi-famous BF films from the 70s, the BFs in TURTLE ISLAND are (diegetically) just guys in suits. Apparently these guys in suits also have enormous metal teeth and claws.  Why? In this case, one can only speculate. However if not for those unnecessary and inexplicable early cut-ins of events post-climax, the viewer would just think these Bigfeet are actual (fake-looking) Bigfeet instead of homicidal rednecks in mangy white gorilla suits. TURTLE ISLAND's director really outsmarts himself on this one.    2/5

[M.10rda]

I forgot to mention the worst and funniest Bad Movie thing about PRACTICAL MAGIC 2, which is that the bad guy drives the left side of Joey King's head into a stone wall, knocking her unconscious, and then when she's rescued she has a large contusion on the right side of her head.      Somehow I will relate this information to

THE LEVENGER TAPES (2012):
...Another FF film that I didn't watch consciously after TURTLE ISLAND, though the title should have been a tip-off. An annoying geeky community college kid and two girls who are way too hot to ever be hanging out w/ him commit a couple minor crimes during a road trip in the woods and then spot a famously missing/abducted little girl (yes, in the woods) and can't call the police after having committed some minor crimes so they attempt to investigate/rescue her themselves. Now, spotting a famously missing/abducted little girl in the woods could have been a sufficiently suspenseful premise all on its own, but THE LEVENGER (that's the little girl) TAPES, in its infinite wisdom, decides to add a second little girl in the woods who is possessed by a demon. Actually, come to think of it, it might be the same little abducted girl who is possessed by the demon, though I couldn't figure out that part and honestly I don't think it made any sense or really mattered anyway.

LEVENGER TAPES has all the same problems as TURTLE ISLAND but none of the positive attributes. The three protagonists [sic] receive a lot of laborious character development that never matters to the plot. The guy is insufferable and the two ladies either act with improbable earnestness or transparent boredom. Every (handheld camcorder) shot is perfectly framed on the action at all times, even in moments of stark terror when by all indications the character holding the camera wouldn't be looking in the direction of the camera. I know some people really hate CLOVERFIELD, but that film provides a psychological motivation for keeping the camera pointed at the action. How do CLOVERFIELD-detractors feel about FF films like LEVENGER...?

LEVENGER has a similar tragic flaw to TURTLE ISLAND in that both films seem to acknowledge the limitations of the FF genre and thus introduce additional narrative elements that end up compromising the FF premise altogether. LEVENGER has non-FF sequences where three cops (including Chris Mulkey, who was a regular on TWIN PEAKS for God's sake) sit around watching the Found Footage. During these scenes, two of the characters in the FF are described as being totally dismembered and disemboweled, which contradicts what we see or hear about happening to them in the footage.  Did LEVENGER's filmmakers even watch their final cut before they released it, or did the demon girl kill two people hastily, then return to further dismantle their bodies?

Incidentally, it would seem as if the demon girl picks up the camera herself and carries it through the woods at the end on an errand. Or maybe this is just further narrative confusion engendered by the misconceived multiple diegeses.......

1/5    Also, FTR, a plurality of characters are attacked and knocked unconscious in the middle of the film, survive, and come to in order to wander the woods again before meeting their inevitable fates. This happens quite often in films that I watch, including PRACTICAL MAGIC 2, in which both King and Lee Pace receive blows to the head, fall unconscious, and then recover w/ no apparent significant concussive trauma/brain damage. (Well, Lee Pace is even more attracted to imminent pre-death Michael Jackson Bullock after she knocks him out, so there's that.)

In reality, losing consciousness for more than a few seconds from head trauma generally results in some small or large amount of short- or long-term cerebral impairment. An ex-girlfriend's brother fell off his skateboard and hit his head, momentarily blacked out, then forgot his name and couldn't recognize his family for weeks. (That kid went on to star in some relatively well-known low-budget horror flicks, btw.) I made a horror feature in college where multiple characters are knocked out, but when they come to they wander around seriously f***ed up, as one tends to do. I myself have received multiple heavy blows to the skull as a child, though I only was hit in the face and blacked out once (in my 20s), totally sober, and recovered consciousness w/in 2-5 seconds. Now did I receive any brain damage? I ask you, behold my reviews on this website and you make the call!   

[LilCerberus]

Tonight's Stinker
Come Back Charleston Blue(1972)
https://youtu.be/b9Irpa2r984?si=mnBDrXl3GuSYpfiS

At a charity ball in Harlem hosted by a known drug dealer, a local police chief is being honored, & is asked to crown a local beauty queen... Meanwhile, detectives Gravedigger Jones & Coffin Ed Johnson are working the floor to ensure two-bit pickpockets are taken care of.... Then a kitchen worker is found murdered, & the murder weapon, a high end strait razor, is left behind.....
Rumors of a gangster from the 1930s returning (From the dead?) start circling.... Meanwhile, the local drug transporters are getting attacked, & the local supply of heroine is drying up....

The story meanders, but stays entertaining, with a decent soundtrack.....
About an hour in, there's a really crazy gun battle in a cemetery that always stuck out in my childhood memory.....