Ordinary Day

Went in to see my new dentist for gum graft surgery today, which is because I’ve got a few spots in my mouth where the gums have pulled back enough to expose the roots of my teeth. This has caused me all sorts of sensitivity issues, and my new dentist’s recommendation was that we do some simple gum graft surgery–not only to return protection to the affected teeth, but also to prevent the problem from worsening as I grow older.

I’ve had work done on one side of my mouth today, and some time next year, we’ll be doing the other side. Then the problem will be done and dealt with.

Fortunately the procedure was pretty simple. I had to show up an hour early for my 9am appointment, at which point they had me take a tablet of Triazolam, and hang out waiting for the succeeding hour. I noted with interest that about twenty minutes in, I started feeling slightly drunk. And between that and how they gave me nitrous during the actual procedure, I went almost right out. I had massive time compression, and pretty much remember only the doctor asking me to turn my head a couple of times–and then the nurse was taking the gas mask off of me and I was mumbling, “Whuh? Are we done?”

They gave me four, count ‘em, four different prescriptions to go pick up after–some Vicodin, some prescription-strength Motrin, this mouth rinse I’m supposed to use in lieu of brushing my teeth for the next few days, and some amoxycillin as well. They told me to rest a lot today, with my head elevated, which I’ve been doing in between doing the latest Murkworks Movie Suckoff! And I figure I’m going to pretty much be zzzzzzz for the rest of the weekend. By Monday though I should be fine, and should be able to use the prescription-strength Motrin during the day if I need it, and hold the rest of the Vicodin for the evenings. I’m supposed to come back on the 15th to have stitches out, and that will be that until next year, when we do this again to the other side of my mouth.

As for the Movie Suckoff, I report to my chagrin that we were unable to find Deep Blue Sea on Paul’s Netflix account! So we swamped it out for Empire of the Ants, a 70′s Bert I. Gordon schlockfest, notably featuring Joan Collins. We did still get 2-Headed Shark Attack, though! I got really sleepy during the shark flick and had to come back and watch the rest of it later, but once that was done, Dara and I decided that Empire of the Ants definitely sucked more. It committed the crime of starting off being stultifyingly boring, mostly! At least in 2-Headed Shark Attack, you got to see things blow up.

There may be a second Suckoff tomorrow depending on if I’m feeling up for it. More on this as it happens, Internets!

Mirrored from annathepiper.org.

I gotta say, eveshka, you chose wisely.

solarbird brought this home for me today since whoever had had it last returned it to Scarecrow. She and I just got done watching it. And this pithy quote of Dara's sums up the entire experience: "It makes Manos seem vibrant and coherent."

It really does. I am in awe of the fact that there exists a film that can make Manos: The Hands of Fate look good. I weep to think of the horror this would have inflicted on poor Joel and the Bots, even as I find myself wondering if the Cinematic Titanic people are aware of this thing. 'Cause DAMN.

Other bonus features of this thing:

• Its very own intro from the writer/director.
  
• AIGH CREEPY DEMON EYES on the DVD menu.
  
• Dividing of the film into three acts helpfully labeled Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.
  
• The bed oozing yellow foam as it ate things. And people! It's an Evil Bed AND an Evil Yellow Bubble Bath!
  
• Movie: "Something's wrong! I must have made a mistake!" Me: "Yeah pal, you and everyone else involved with this movie."
  
• Movie: "I wonder where this house is supposed to be". Dara: "I wonder where this plot is supposed to be!"
  
• Stabbing of Evil Bed = Eating of hapless stabber guy's hands down to the bone. I'm still not sure if he survived the movie. I'm only half sure I survived the movie.

So yeah. This thing wins the March 2009 Suckoff, hands down. Well played, eveshka. Well played.

In this corner, wearing bad denim and leather and spending most of its film time riding around on motorcycles, brought to us by mojave_wolf: Werewolves on Wheels!

Werewolves on Wheels is in general an incoherent mess, and I wanted to punch everybody in the cast pretty much from the opening credits. The bikes are themselves mostly incoherent (ETA 3/7/09 9:42am: the bikers are incoherent, not the bikes, and I leave this as an exercise to the reader as to the coherence of your movie reporter when she wrote this originally), and seem to have nothing to do with themselves but ride around, get drunk and/or stoned, and fondle the two females in the group--who in turn have little to do in the movie other than flash their boobies. Oh wait, there's the one guy who's into reading Tarot cards! And who OHNOEZ foretells death by lightning on a tower for one of the wimmens! Or something like that. After that point it was a bit hard to tell, because all the rest of what you can get out of the movie is "bikers go to sekrit church, bikers meet evil Satan-worshipping werewolf monks, bikers are turned into werewolves, the end!"

Notable quotes from the peanut gallery during this movie:

risu: "Bikes must be hard for wolves to steer."
solarbird: "I'm pretty sure one of those guys turns into Muttley!"
Me: "Oh hey, the monks have lembas bread!"

And also, in general, what was the point of Lucifer staging a hostile takeover of the Hell's Angels? Doesn't he already own them?

Meanwhile, in this corner, wearing Matrix-knockoff black leather and spending most of its film time lumbering into battle, brought to us by gamera_spinning, it's Steven Seagal in Against the Dark!

I knew this one was going to hurt when, in the godawful prologue explaining the setting to us, the movie felt it necessary to define the word "infect" to its audience. (risu then called it to task for not defining "dark".) But really, what set the whole pace for us was Mr. Seagal's opening line: "We're not here to decide who's right or wrong. We're here to decide who lives or dies!"

Nice of him to call that out. It must also be said that with dialogue like "It means we're the monsters now" and "The thing about luck is you never know when it's going to run out", this movie was not at all an improvement over the incoherence of its challenger.

But really, what pushes this movie over the top is that Seagal isn't even trying. He does literally just lumber into what few fight scenes he has--for a Seagal movie, this has surprisingly little Seagal in it--and then when he actually engages one of the monsters, he makes a few slashy motions with the sword he's carrying around while the camera lingers on his face. Let us not even get into the cheesy musical strike when he finally introduces himself to the little girl he's just rescued. At least in On Deadly Ground, he was moving. And I say that as someone who is haunted by the Slappy Hands TO THIS DAY.

So: this round goes to Against the Dark. Next up: Frogs vs. The Stuff!

So this was going to be an all-snake Movie Suckoff Marathon, thanks to kathrynt alerting solarbird and me to the snake movie marathon that the Sci-Fi channel ran this past weekend. However, we wound up getting a bonus non-snake contender as well, to round out the list to an even six. Our contenders were:

( House of Frankenstein... )

( King Cobra... )

( Snake King... )

( Boa Vs. Python... )

( Vipers... )

( Anaconda 3... )

Winner and champion: Boa Vs. Python! For combining the least interesting and stupidest plot with the highest count of characters you wanted to punch before throwing them to the snakes.

Ladies and gentlemen, the unthinkable has happened: a bad movie defeated us. solarbird and I could not last more than 32 minutes, 20 seconds into Decoys 2: Alien Seduction. We did, however, make it all the way through Incubus. Which means that Decoys 2 wins this round by default.

Breaking it down by the numbers:

Decoys 2--or at least, as much of it as we could stand to watch--let us know we were in for some pain even before the credits rolled, when we got some Extremely Naughty Tentacle action going on. But that was only the opening blow in a continuing salvo that included the main character from the last movie (looking broody and angstful), blonde alien babes trying to propagate their species (via the aforementioned naughty tentacles, though we do get a flashback of their actual and much uglier forms, presumably from the first movie, which presumably had a bigger budget), a side "plot" (and by "plot" I mean OMG MY EYES) involving horny college boys trying to set up a five-day competition about who could score the most babes, and an extremely bored-looking Tobin Bell (the only name in the credits recognized by spazzkat).

It was the scene with the horny college boy hitting on the girl reading Titus Andronicus that did us in. We're talking eye-gougingly bad here, people. We're talking Boy Has Sprayed Himself With What He Thinks Are Sex Pheremones bad. The poor girl he was hitting on was not only glaring daggers, she was radiating an entire armory of loathing and contempt for the entire movie, focused on the unfortunate schmuck who thought it was a good idea to put his hormones on display. Me, I don't blame her in the slightest.

And after all that, Incubus, in the words of solarbird, was a refreshing after-dinner mint.

Seriously, it was much less awful than y'all had led me to believe. Sure, there's the WTFery of an entire movie being filmed in Esperanto--which in turn of course means that all the actors delivering these lines tend to sound extremely stilted, since they're clearly frantically trying to remember exactly what syllable comes next. There are also long stretches of mood shots in which very little happens besides people wandering around in the woods, and one laughable goat-head costume at the very end.

The bones of a halfway decent story are here: young war hero has come home to recuperate from wounds sustained in battle, and is getting looked after by his sister. Only there's this blonde succubus babe who starts stalking him, as she's desperate to score herself a noble soul to pull down to Hell--desperate enough to ignore the warnings of an older succubus-type that truly good people are too powerful for them to take down. This is a plot we've certainly seen crop up in modern-day urban fantasy novels, and as a concept, there's nothing wrong with it.

Problem is, the way the story's implemented is boring. There are way too many mood shots and not enough character or plot development. The cast clearly has issues with the dialogue being in Esperanto. Though, here's the shocking part: William Shatner actually handles his lines most naturally out of anyone in the entire cast, and by and large is the only person who manages to come across as if he's actually talking rather than delivering lines memorized by rote out of a script. This doesn't stop him from going into a bit of truly Kirkian emoting at the end, mind you, but hey, this is Bill Shatner we're talking about here. ;)

So, yeah. Decoys 2 is the undisputed winner of this round. Last up: Mammoth vs. Shark Attack 3, which will bring us Summer Glau vs. John Barrowman. This promises to bring some lulz.

Today's hero of the revolution is kathrynt, who last night brought me not one, not two, but three DVDs of craptastic movie goodness. Which means, ladies and gentlemen, that the Movie Suckoff Marathon is about to commence.

But I need suitable challengers for this Triumvirate of Suck, and this is where you come in! Please to submit your suggestions for which movies should go up against these contenders:

Phantom Force, a Sci-Fi Pictures Original from 2004

Decoys 2: Alien Seduction, not a Sci-Fi Pictures Original, but it did air on the USA channel, which is almost as bad

And last, but certainly not least, as this one features the redoubtable Summer Glau:

Mammoth, a Sci-Fi Pictures Original from 2006

ETA 4:56pm: Please to note: anything I have already seen is automatically disqualified. This includes the vast majority of MST3K episodes, as well as anything of Ed Wood's. Ideal contenders: big-budget theatrical releases, preferably as grandiose, overblown, and badly acted as possible. Previous contenders have included Battlefield Earth, The Day After Tomorrow, and On Deadly Ground; if you can come up with something to match those, that's exactly what I'm looking for. ;) Extra bonus points if the movies in question match up with the three above in general theme or monster type!

We're having quite the storm here in Kenmore. We just had a helluva flash and a boom strong enough to rattle the house. And I mean physically rattle the house. That was actually scary!

We think we may have angered the movie gods having watched Mosquito and Battlefield Earth. We may have to appease them by watching Citizen Kane or The Manchurian Candidate.

Consensus, by the way, is that Battlefield Earth is hands down the worst of the movies we've watched so far in the Movie Suck-Offs. Go see solarbird's tally of the damage. We're taking it back to the video store down the hill tomorrow. It's not due back till Wednesday, but we're not letting it stay in the house any longer than absolutely necessary. The lethal anti-quality field it's emitting may start sucking quality out of the movies in our actual collection, after all.

And the only reason I'm not taking it back to the video store right now? Because we're having a storm with lightning and thunder close enough to RATTLE THE HOUSE.

More Friday miles: 2.1 (walking)
Miles out of Hobbiton: 512
Miles out of Rivendell: 54
Miles to Lothlórien: 408

Bad acting. Bad effects. Bad everything. This bad film just oozed rottenness from every bad scene...simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness.

Well maybe not that bad, but lord, it wasn't good.

--Opus, Bloom County

kathrynt came over this afternoon for our Bad Movie competition, bringing with her a tape of Alien Express (with apologies from her and llachglin written on the label)--and an actual purchased copy of On Deadly Ground. That's right, folks, Q paid actual money for this movie. She wound up having to do this because she had no rental card at Hollywood Video, nor did she have a credit card. She relays to us that she had the following conversation with the clerk at the store:

"Hi, I need a copy of On Deadly Ground!"

".... Why?"

"I'm having a bad-movie-off!"

"Ohhhhh, okay!"

Then she discovered that she couldn't rent it, and the clerk said, "Y'know what? This is maybe kind of sketchy, but I'm just going to sell it to you out of inventory."

And Q said, "You sure that's all right?"

And the clerk replied, "Honestly, I don't mind if I never see that movie ever again."

With a lead-in like that, and with me on Percocet, we were absolutely in the right frame of mind for the bad movie competition!

In this corner: Alien Express, featuring Lou Diamond "I look badassed putting on my alien-attacking garb!" Phillips. Todd "I'm a Secret Service agent but still Gary Coleman's big brother" Bridges. Bad guy who can't stick to an English accent to save his life. Smarmy overweight Senator who's got his ex-wife AND a blonde bimbo mistress on board the train they're all taking to Vegas. Effects that look like they were put together in Photoshop, badly, complete with pixellated explosions. And, the crowning glory, aliens that looked like sock puppets.

And in that corner: On Deadly Ground, written by, directed by, and starring Steven "I really need to make the audience understand what a big badass I am, so I'm going to have two different characters spout off paragraphs of dialogue about how I'm everyone's worst nightmare" Seagal. Which is really all you need to say about this movie, and which now has led me to understand the true depth behind this quote out of The 776 Nastiest Things Ever Said:

On Macho, Not So:

I don't get why anyone takes this guy seriously. With his soft chin, black-shirted paunch, and ponytail the size of a chihuahua's penis, Seagal looks more like a schnorrer at a Hollywood party than like the toughest man in creation.

critic John Powers in a review of macho actor Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground

Now, spazzkat had a very good point going into this contest, which is that Alien Express is a "Sci-Fi Pictures original" and therefore has a very low quality bar to start with, while On Deadly Ground was actually a theatrical release. But that said, there was amazingly little distance between these two films' badness especially when watched back to back. And I did in fact have to call it a draw as to which was worse--because while Alien Express was overall a worse film, On Deadly Ground did in fact have several excruciatingly bad, fork-in-your-eye moments.

Alien Express wins hands down in terms of craptastic effects, almost universal badness in every cliched line of dialogue uttered by every character, the token black character biting it, an (well, we hope it is) unintentional allusion to Manos: The Hands of Fate, and a godawful setup for a sequel.

On Deadly Ground competes with the excruciating "slappy hands" sequence (complete with the pontification at the end of the fight), multiple characters sounding off about how badassed Seagal's character is (Mary Sue points right off the scale, making this film way more of a Mary-Sue wankfest than even Star Trek V), mizkit's "favorite" line of "Of course I can ride, I'm a Native American!", and the fork-in-the-eyes badness of the environmental speech at the end. Paul claimed it was fifteen minutes long. smeehrrr claimed it was twenty. I timed it; it was more like three. But it was interminable enough to feel like half an hour.

So yeah. It's a draw, and Paul and Kathryn now have to buy each other beer, a verdict they have both cheerfully accepted. Though Kathryn has to buy Paul extra beer because he recognized one of the lesser characters in On Deadly Ground and she didn't believe it was who Paul said. So Paul comes out ahead anyway.

Me, I'm just happy to have survived both flicks.