Psycho Cop 2

Psycho Cop 2 is not a terrible movie. It's really not. It has a good sense of humor, and realistically depicts the police mentality.

Basically some guys are planning Gary's bachelor party. Rather than rent a hotel suite or go to a strip club, they've decided to use the office building where they work, and have the strippers come to them there.

In the opening scene a couple of guys are talking about the party in a doughnut shop, where Psycho Cop is enjoying his coffee. Psycho Cop overhears their conversation, which includes something about grass. He then leaves the shop, skipping to his police car, because he knows he's in for a fun night. In his car are severed body parts. The number "666" is written in blood on the dashboard. It's an excellent introduction to the character.

The cop then follows the guys to their office building (slowly, in his car), making one of them panic and drop the bag of pot into a nearby mailbox.

Psycho Cop parks his car outside the building. When we get a shot of the inside of the car, there is the sound of flies buzzing - a nice touch. Nobody is safe when there's a cop lurking about. You just know that real cops get together and watch this movie, using this lunatic as a role model.

After the party has started, Psycho Cop gets the night watchman to let him in, and then kills him, making wisecracks. The jokes in this film are obvious, but still generally work because they're coming from an insane cop. He feels justified in killing the watchman because he saw the watchman taking a bribe from one of the guys. Like any other cop, in enforcing the laws and rules, he breaks them all himself.

He shoots the groom in the head, and then reads him his rights: "You have the right to remain dead. Anything you say can and will be considered extremely strange because you're dead." He then kicks the corpse. Scenes like that are hilarious. Later, when pursuing one of the women, Psycho Cop says, "Subject is blond and considered extremely fucking stupid." Obvious, yes, but funny.

One of the characters, Brian, is nervous and suspects something terrible has happened to his friends. So later when they begin finding the bodies, he shouts, "Oh my god, I was right! I'm never right, but now I am right!" It's a great moment, poking fun at other horror films, and the genre in general.

And at the end there is a wonderful reversal of the Rodney King beating.

Also, there is a good amount of nudity in the film. And for the most part the women are actually pretty damn sexy, particularly Alexandria Lakewood as Cindy.

But there is some bad acting. It's admittedly difficult to act drunk, but these guys fail completely. It would have been better to actually get these actors drunk. And though the movie is really short, it still manages to wear out its welcome. The wisecracks become tiresome several scenes before the end. And characters do incredibly stupid things. They have plenty of opportunities to escape, but somehow manage to remain in the film. And that blonde that he calls "extremely fucking stupid" really is extremely fucking stupid. She has a gun pointed at Psycho Cop and could very easily kill him, but allows herself to be talked into dropping the gun and kicking it toward him. And this is after she knows he's killed several people. And thus the chase resumes. At that point, I checked out of the film.

Miracle Beach (1992)

Miracle Beach is a silly and superficial movie about a guy named Scotty (played by Dean Cameron) who goes home one day to find his girlfriend in bed with his boss. His boss then fires him. A moment later his landlord evicts him. So he's having a rough time. Meanwhile Jeannie (a genie), played by the adorable Ami Dolenz, is sent to Earth to check up on humans or something. She doesn't want to go, but she's told that if she messes up this assignment, she'll be forever locked in her bottle without any powers.

Well, Scotty is trying to sleep on a bench at the beach, and a homeless guy played by Pat Morita gives him a blanket and a bottle. Scotty wishes that he had a warm bed and a couple of babes. In the morning he wakes in a big bed with two babes - though that bed is on the beach. Right away he realizes he has a magic bottle, which he grabs off the bedside table (though he didn't wish for a bedside table) and takes to some mystic, played by the wonderful Vincent Schiavelli, to get the scoop.

That's one of the things that's good about this movie. It has an interesting supporting cast. In addition to Pat Morita and Vincent Schiavelli, there is Martin Mull as a movie producer, Dean Cain (Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman) as a volleyball player, and Alexis Arquette as Lars. Yes, Alexis Arquette when he was still a boy. I personally prefer him as a girl - he's much better looking as a girl.

But the movie is pretty shallow. Jeannie begins granting wishes left and right to Scotty and his two friends. So they end up with a giant beach-front home and they throw a big party for some beauty pageant contestants. There are some slightly amusing jokes involving the beauty contestants, like Miss Iraq and Miss Kuwait fighting, and Miss Bermuda Triangle disappearing. But Scotty is using all his wishes to make a hottie (played by Felicity Waterman) fall in love with him. This isn't someone he's been pining for for years or anything. It's just some woman he saw on the beach and decided she was the one for him.

Predictably, she's not a good person, and Jeannie falls in love with Scotty. But he doesn't see that Jeannie is the one for him. It's the same old thing we've seen a million times (done best in the film Some Kind Of Wonderful). So Jeannie tries to help him win the girl's love while falling in love with him herself. We get the routine montage where she's trying to make him more cultured - so they go to an art museum and an expensive restaurant and so on. Blah, blah, blah.

Even after cathing Dana with another guy, Scotty's interest in her doesn't wane. Which makes no sense. When he caught his girlfriend with another guy in the opening scene, he immediately broke up with her. So they established that's something he doesn't put up with.

All through the movie i kept wondering, Wait, why was Jeannie sent to Earth? What was her mission? Because if she fails, she'll be stuck in the bottle forever. Forever. That's huge. So she's something of a genie fuck-up. And she turns out to be favor the Clippers over the Celtics, so clearly she's a mess.

Oh, and when the beauty contest actually happens, both Dana and Jeannie enter it, which is lame and makes no sense whatsoever. Dana is Miss Miracle Beach, and Jeannie is Miss Fantasy Land. Guess who wins.

The movie does provide a good amount of nudity in the form of the beauty pageant contestants. And there are some funny jokes: the vanity plate on Scotty's car says, "WISH #10." But basically this movie is flat and pointless.

The Loch Ness Horror (1981)

The Loch Ness Horror features an item i've never seen in another movie: a magic telescope. A man is in his home looking through this telescope, which is pointed straight out through his window, not up at an angle. What he sees is a fighter plane high above the ground. The plane dives down, and the camera (so also the telescope) pans with it. The plane continues down, actually going below the camera, which means that the plane is somewhere in the first floor of his house. The film cuts back to the man, and the telescope is still pointed straight out through the window. And again we see through his telescope. This time (and keep in mind it's pointed exactly where it was a moment earlier) he sees the Loch Ness Monster pop its head out of the lake. That is one amazing telescope.

Anyway, that was in 1940. The film then takes us to 1980, when two men are on a small inflatable raft in the lake. They talk about how they have all the gear they could beg, borrow or steal - though what it amounts to is two scuba tanks. Apparently, they're not good thieves or beggars. They see Nessie pop her head above water for a moment. So they put on their scuba gear, dive down, and find the plane and also a large egg. One of them is killed, but the other makes it to shore with the egg. An older man is waiting in a camper van at the shore. That night Nessie, who is amphibious, comes out onto the land and kills the guy who took the egg, but not the old guy, who remains in the camper van watching his cohort get killed.

There are also some college students on bicycles, and a somewhat cute (though incredibly prudish) girl with the worst Scottish accent ever in the history of film. And for some reason there's a kidnapping. The old guy in the camper van kidnaps the chick with the bad accent. It makes no sense whatsoever, but soon Nessie eats the guy anyway. That is one of the best shots in the film - the ridiculous Nessie creature with its mouth around the old guy's head. And by "best" i mean funniest.

This film also has an odd Shakespeare quote for no reason whatsoever. And the magic telescope comes into play once more near the end. The girl who was kidnapped returns home, changes her clothes and pretends she was home all along. Then she looks through the telescope and sees a diver on a raft who is about to set off some explosives that will kill Nessie and destroy (or at least damage) the fighter plane.

As the young scientist says at one point, "It isn't easy to achieve monster status." Indeed.

Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama (1987)

There really isn't much to say about Sorority Babes In The Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama. Three dorky guys are hanging out, drinking cheap beer and watching a movie, when one of them has the idea to spy on a sorority house because it's initiation night. So they go there and spy on them, though one of them is drunk from one can of Budweiser (and this guy turns out to be our hero - oh well). There are only two initiates, which is odd until you consider that there are only three girls in the sorority. So adding them almost doubles their numbers. (Apparently, there was no money in the budget for a few extras.)

One of the sorority girls - Babs, the chick in charge - is a bit of a sadist, and goes on paddling the two initiates for quite a while. One of the things i liked about this movie is the reference to the Marquis de Sade.

Anyway, the boys decide that looking through the window isn't good enough, so they sneak in, and watch the two initiates cleaning whipped cream off their bodies in the bathroom. In one of those completely unbelievable movie moments, the three guys stick their heads in the bathroom door, and neither of the girls notices. And for those who love nudity, this is a nice long pointless shower scene. One of the girls cleans the whipped cream from her breasts at least three times - but it's clearly that magically reappearing whipped cream that we've all read about but never been able to purchase. Goddamn government.

Babs, however, catches the guys, and makes them part of the girls' initiation. The five of them must break into a bowling alley and steal a trophy. The guys, thinking that they'll score with the two girls, go along with it, and when they get to the bowling alley they find the door already open. That's because another girl (named Spider) has decided to rob the place, but to rob it very slowly. Also, the bowling alley is somehow attached to a mall, though from the exterior shots it seems impossible. And Babs' father owns the mall, so the three sorority girls sneak in with the aim of scaring the other girls and the guys. But really they just go to the security area and watch them on the cameras.

They find a trophy, but when one of them drops it, an imp is allowed to escape from its confines. At first it promises to grant them each a wish, but then decides to kill them. One of the problems with this movie is that the imp doesn't do any of the killing. Instead, he turns two of the three sorority girls into demons and lets them kill the others while he cracks lame jokes and watches. But actually, he rarely moves, so I guess he's able to see the whole place in his mind or something.

There is no sex in the film, even though one of the guys wishes to have sex with one of the initiates, and so she is suddenly all hot for him. But as soon as they're alone, he tries to stall, saying she's moving too fast. But she's not moving too fast. In fact, their not-having-sex scene goes on for an insanely long time. They keep cutting back to it, with him saying, "Wait, wait, wait, wait." Even the imp forgets about them for quite a while. Whatever.

The acting is terrible. But the imp is slightly amusing, and the movie doesn't take itself at all seriously. And there are a couple of decapitations. And you can't help but love the film's title. So there.

Mega Piranha (2010)

This one is incredibly bad, but often hilariously so. Barry Williams (yes, that Barry Williams) plays the Secretary of State. His character's name? Bob Grady. So clearly this movie is not taking itself too seriously. How could it when Tiffany is one of the stars. Remember Tiffany? She was big for a weekend in 1987 for lame covers of songs by The Beatles and Tommy James & The Shondells. She was extremely popular with somewhat retarded girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen.

Anyway, Tiffany has gained in years and girth, but not in talent. She has absolutely no acting skill whatsoever. I mean none. None. Was she hired just because Debbie Gibson starred in Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus? Probably. And just as Gibson always had more talent in the music field, she has more in the acting field as well. I can't stress enough how poor Tiffany's acting job is. Okay, here you go. Remember when you were in like second or third grade, and your class put on some sort of short Christmas play? None of the kids could act, but there was always one kid who was particularly awful - so they made him be a tree or something. Remember that? Well, that kid is fucking Laurence Olivier compared to Tiffany. (Perhaps they should have cast Tiffany as a tree.)

Anyway, the film starts on a small boat on a river. On the boat is a U.S. ambassador and a Venezualan diplomat. The boat is attacked by piranha, which jump out of the water (in a nod to James Cameron's masterpiece, Piranha II: The Spawning, in which fish can fly). Well, the piranha eat the boat - hungry little fuckers.

Every character in Mega Piranha is introduced with a black and white freeze frame of their image, with their name zooming across the bottom of the screen accompanied by a swooshing sound. In the world of this film, that's called style.

Tiffany is some sort of scientist who, along with some other scientists, has been increasing the local food supply by redesigning certain species of fish. She was in charge of piranha. Wait, who eats piranha? Anyway, something went wrong, but please don't blame Tiffany. After all, she helps out a lot during the film by shouting out such useful advice as, "Hurry" and "Shoot them" and "Drive faster."

Anyway, Greg Brady sends Jason Fitch (played by the extremely serious Paul Logan, Bram Stoker's Way Of The Vampire) to find out who assassinated the United States ambassador. Fitch is helped, and then hindered by Colonel Diaz, who is doing something in the jungle. It's alluded to often - Tiffany confronts him at one point, saying that she knows what he's doing in the jungle. And for that, she's arrested. But we never learn what he was doing in the jungle. But anyway, Tiffany hands Fitch a piece of the boat, and Fitch makes his report based on that one little piece of wood. He suggests to Diaz that "a group of animals working together" destroyed the boat. He delivers that line seriously.

Fitch wants to go to the river to continue his investigation. Diaz says, "I'll make sure I fly you there immediately." That is perhaps the oddest line in the film. Read it to yourself out loud a few times. It's goofy. Anyway, they take off in a helicopter, but when they get to the site, Diaz suddenly says the area is off limits, and yells some inane nonsense about the United States, then flies back. Why would he do this? What a waste of fuel and time - you know, if he wasn't planning on helping Fitch get to the spot anyway. And it makes that line he spoke even more ridiculous.

But whatever, Fitch goes there anyway and sees the giant piranha. In fact, a fish flies out of the water to attack him. But he kills it and takes it back to the laboratory. But that's when Diaz decides to shut down Tiffany's laboratory and she tells him she knows what he does in the jungle. So he arrests her and the other scientists. Diaz and his men torture one of the scientists by hitting him with a book. It looks like a paperback, however, so don't worry about him too much.

Meanwhile the fish are getting bigger, and flying out of the water and exploding into buildings. Yes, exploding. No, i couldn't figure out why. But it's bloody hilarious. Though not nearly as funny as the shot of Paul Logan on his back kicking fish after fish as they fly at him.

This movie is insanely silly. The budget seems to have been two hundred dollars, which they spent on alcohol while writing the script. This film repeats the same establishing shots over and over - every time the film returns to a location. And of course there is some terrible CGI. And more than one nod to Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus. In that movie, the shark leaps out of the water and eats a plane. In this movie, a piranha leaps out of the water and eats a helicopter.

The end of the film makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but who cares? I'm looking forward to Mega Shark Vs. Mega Piranha, in which Tiffany and Debbie Gibson mudwrestle. Actually, no, never mind, that sounds utterly repulsive.

St. Trinian's (2007)

This movie is total rubbish. I was in the mood for a bad movie, but i'm never in the mood for something this awful. This is one of those movies that sends up multiple flares warning you that a joke is coming. And then upon the joke's belated and annoying arrival you want to take the writers of the film (it took two morons to put together this script) and drill holes into their skulls and then fill the holes with some of your own fecal matter. And only then can you really laugh.

This is also a movie that thinks itself a pretty clever little thing. It actually has a dog that is named Mr. Darcy, and that dog repeatedly humps Colin Firth's leg. Oh, so funny. Enough with the Mr. Darcy references. The entire country of England should be ashamed. The good thing is the dog is killed an hour into the film.

The one slightly amusing joke is that the artistic masterpiece the girls plan on stealing is a painting of Scarlett Johansson from Girl With A Pearl Earring (which isn't a very good film either, but much better than this horrid festering disaster - Colin Firth is in that one as well - this movie really loves to make references to Colin Firth's other work).

Most of the movie i spent waiting for Stephen Fry. His name is on the back of the DVD box, and is the main reason i bought this thing. He's in only two scenes. The first time he shows up is at the fifty-one minute mark. So it's best just to start the film at that point if you feel a burning need to watch this one. His second scene starts at the one hour eleven minute mark.

Stephen Fry actually says in the film, "I just wonder if I'm wasting myself doing this platitudinous drivel." Yes, absolutely. Now if only Hugh Laurie would quit playing an american doctor, the two of them could get back to doing some excellent comedy.

But really, this movie is just an obnoxious mess. There is a scene of the girls walking in slow motion toward the camera for no reason whatsoever. Then we see it again, in split screen. Then again, with closeups of different girls. Fuck off already. There is even a makeover scene.

If i ever meet the writers of this film, i will cut off their hands so that they will be unable to write or type any more of this nonsense, and tear our their tongues so they won't be able to dictate it to someone else. (Holy shit, they actually made a sequel to this movie.)

Druids (2001)

Wouldn't you feel like the biggest bastard on the planet if you made a great actor like Max von Sydow utter lines like, "The magic of his death must teach us the lesson of his sacrifice"? Of course you would. And yet, that's just what Jacques Dorfmann did in the terrible film Druids (also known as The Gaul, a title which makes a hell of a lot more sense).

Druids is one of those films that's incredibly frustrating because it has some good elements. The locations are good. The costumes are good. They hired some good actors. But this is one of the most poorly structured films ever made. It seems like mistakes were made and scenes were inserted in the incorrect order.

Vercingetorix (played by Christopher Lambert) is forced into a giant battle that he didn't want. (This battle scene is absolutely awful, by the way.) He loses the battle to Caesar's army. Then there is a scene where Caesar talks about how he is sure that Vercingetorix will avoid a decisive battle. Uh, wait, Caesar, the decisive battle just happened, and you won it. Clearly these scenes were somehow inverted in the editing, and no one caught it.

A bit about the title. It's called Druids, but the druids are only in the very first scene. After that it's mentioned that they've all been killed. Max von Sydow survives, but doesn't really do anything for the rest of the film, so his survival doesn't matter. And some supposedly amazing female warrior also survives, but again, she plays no part later.

Actually, that's another truly irritating thing about this film. Vercingetorix wants revenge for his father's murder, which he witnessed as a little boy. He tells Max von Sydow that he's going to go take care of that now (it's been how many years?), and Max tells him he's not ready. He says he must take him to a great master. So Max leads him approximately twenty feet into the forest, and there she is: the great master.

We then get one of those terrible scenes where the master tells the pupil to attack, and of course the master easily defeats the pupil. Now those scenes usually lead into the long training. But in this film, at the end of the scene, the great master tells him he's ready. What? After being easily defeated? Okay, whatever.

Also, in that fight scene, she moves with superhuman speed, clearly possessing some magical talents. Then later during that decisive battle scene, she is there, but does no fighting, and is easily killed with a spear. So much for setting up that magical ability. The movie is full of crap like that.

Like right before the big battle scene, some of the women begin taunting the Roman soldiers by showing their breasts. The soldiers then break formation as Caesar watches, and begin efforts to climb the walls - not to fight, but to fornicate. The soldiers place tall ladders against the wall and begin climbing. So of course while watching this, i'm wondering, okay, what is the women's plan? Are they going to dump oil on the soldiers or what?

Well, guess what, we never find out. The battle begins, and we never get another shot of those soldiers on the ladders. Who knows? Maybe they made it over and were having their way with the women during the entire battle. Hell, maybe that was the women's plan - maybe they were just horny. It doesn't really matter, because the filmmaker tells us that it doesn't really matter.

Also, in the decisive battle scene, Vercingetorix never lifts his sword. He does no fighting whatsoever. Some leader. The only shots of him are slow motion shots of him looking around at everyone dying. In fact, basically everyone is slaughtered but him. What a jerk.

One other thing: the music in this film is seriously irritating.