Teenagers from Outer Space

1959 alien movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: Some aliens, who don't really look like teenagers if we're being completely honest here, are scouting the galaxy to find a planet where their giant lobsters can thrive. They use the lobsters for food. Unfortunately, their food can kill them, and they decide our planet (earth) would be a good giant lobster farm. One of the aliens named Derek, a teenager who also coincidentally happens to be the son of their leader, has second thoughts after they disintegrate a dog. He runs off to find the dog's owners and falls for young Betty. Meanwhile, fellow alien Thor causes wreaks havoc as he searches for Derek.

I lost the notes I took for this one. Suffice it to say that this is a bad movie, but it's definitely more in the "good bad" category than it is the Wild Women of Wongo category. The acting is uniformly bad, especially Harvey B. Dunn as Gramps. Mr. Dunn's resume includes work in a couple Ed Wood Jr. movies--Bride of the Monster and Night of the Ghouls. Their acting seems even worse with this ineffectual dubbing, but aside from that, there aren't a lot of movies where the actors stand this stiffly. David Love, the guy who plays the lead, probably does the best job, but this is the only movie role he had. The dialogue's laughable, and the alien costumes (bulky white spaceman boots and jumpsuits with what appears to be masking tape on them) are very nice. But the biggest thrills from Teenagers from Outer Space come from the brilliant special effects. Seeing what I assume is the same skeleton used over and over again when Thor is on his rampage is bad enough, but when you finally get to see the giant lobsters, this reaches a new level of bad. This is the type of movie that is made so cheaply that you don't get an actual giant lobster. Nope. You get to see a shadow of a lobster! They couldn't even hold a normal-sized lobster close the camera for this one? I'm so happy that movies like this exist, and I'm proud to say that I own a copy of this bad boy.

Horrors of Spider Island

1960 go-go-ploitation movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: Sleazeball Gary, nightclub manager, hires himself a posse of leggy dancers and hops in a plane to Singapore. Unfortunately, the plane crashes and the group winds up stranded on an island. They find some food, enjoy their time skinny dipping, and struggle to survive. Gary, after wandering into the woods one night, is bitten by a dopey-looking spider and turns into a horrible monster. Will the dancers be rescued before Gary kills them all? Can they survive the horrors of spider island? And is this the worst movie I'll see all year?

I spent the majority of this movie trying to figure out why it was dubbed, very poorly dubbed. The actors and strippers certainly looked like English speakers. Turns out that this was filmed in Germany as Ein Toter hing im Netz, or A Corpse Hangs in the Web. It's also known as It's Hot in Paradise. References to both webs and spider (and horror for that matter) are misleading since there's a single shot with a corpse hanging in a web and not all that much action involving the dude who turns into a murderous spider/man hybrid. But anyway, this certainly shows how low Germany had sunk following WWII. What makes me most angry is that this movie was just a big tease. You saw a lot of leg and a great deal of skin, but nary a nipple. And you saw a spider puppet a couple times and a spider-guy a few more times, but the latter's hairy hand sort of grabbing at victims was about it for the titular horrors. I did dig that dubbing though. You get to hear people pronounce "rations" with a long a-sound, lots of exaggerated sound effects like slurping and moans, and inflection that doesn't come close to matching the moods of the character. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the characters had better things to say. "Is there anything more wonderful than water?" "A dead man. . .in a huge web." It's not good writing, but at least by the end of the picture, they had figured out what the plot would be. Throw in what has to be one of the worst fight scenes in cinematic history (it ends with a hug) and some special-ed effects (that plane crash was really something) and a jazzy score and you've got yourself a pretty bitchin' movie. Oh, there's a catfight in this one, too, if you're into that sort of thing.

Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story

2004 VH1 original movie

Rating: 2/20

Plot: An unauthorized biopic about the guy who ended up buying the bones of the guy the last movie I watched was about. Following early fame and fortune as a child singing sensation with his brothers, Michael Jackson becomes the King of Pop, buys a ranch, pretends he's Peter Pan, burns his scalp, molests a lot of young boys, marries Elvis's daughter, divorces Elvis's daughter, has some children, has some plastic surgery, and gradually turns into a white man.

Before I pushed play, I thought I was going to watch a documentary. Nope. It's an unauthorized biopic. And being an unauthorized biopic, they weren't able to get the rights to any of Michael Jackson's songs. That's right. This is a movie about the life of Michael Jackson that doesn't include a single Michael Jackson song. Oh, there are a lot of scenes where he's performing, but there are no Michael Jackson songs. There's just something completely wrong about that. It's like making a movie about Babe Ruth without showing any scenes with Babe Ruth playing baseball. But that's not the only problem with Man in the Mirror: The Michael Jackson Story. No, no, no, this movie has more problems than Michael Jackson had quirks. First, this has more awkward moments than any movie I've ever seen. Take this bit of dialogue between Michael and sister Janet:

Michael: (enters room) "Hey, Tink."
Janet: (looking up) "Hi, Peter Pan!"
Michael: "I'm Peter Pan!"
Janet: (clapping) "And I'm Tinkerbell!"
(A tickle fight ensues.)

Or this one between Michael Jackson and a little boy:

Little Boy: "Hi. . .you're famous."
Michael: (shakes head wildly like he's in a cartoon or like he's trying to get a wasp out of his hair) "Am I?"
(A tickle fight ensues.)

Or look no further than a scene where Elizabeth Taylor tells Michael Jackson, during the time when the molestation accusation is causing him problems, that she'll always be there for him. It's a corny scene. But the next shot is with a group of photographers taking pictures of an apparently nude Michael Jackson (as I recall, part of the investigation) while Jackson's assistant stands in front of him and holds up a painting of Elizabeth Taylor. What the hell? That might give me nightmares. At one point, Elizabeth Taylor tells Michael, "This is not a joke." It's really hard for me to see this production as anything but a joke.

Don't believe me that this is stuffed with awkward? Look no further than Michael and Lisa Marie's first date, a date where they apparently go outside to look at stock footage of butterflies. One of them lands on Lisa Marie's finger, and Michael points out that "That's rare" and that it's probably because Lisa Marie is sweet. Then cut to what might be the worst montage I've ever seen--shitty music (not Michael Jackson's music though) with different shots of Lisa Marie and Michael striking slightly different poses with some trees in the background. Right at the moment when you're about to throw up, it cuts to a shot of the happy couple in the bedroom where Michael (thankfully!) announces that he doesn't believe in premarital sex. But they still kiss. And if you ever find yourself in a position where you're forced to watch this movie (i.e. you've died and gone to hell), you will still throw up all over the floor.

OK, you still don't believe me? Then take this line of dialogue, spoken right after a news person has made fun of Michael Jackson for naming one of his children Blanket. "But he's like a blanket. . .a blanket of love."

The camera work will make you wish the people involved had gone to a film school where they taught the students about tripods. There are so many scenes where the camera will very quickly pan to another character and stop to, for whatever reason, shake a little bit. You're jerked very quickly from episode to episode, and although it touches upon most of the most difficult times in Jackson's life, it's mostly very pro-Michael. The acting in this travesty is almost as good as you'd expect to get from any television commercial. Flex Alexander, an actor who presumably used a pseudonym to protect his career, had terrible writing to work with, but his Michael Jackson isn't far from what you'd expect to see in a late-night parody. The woman who plays Elizabeth Taylor (Lynne Cormack) gave another performance that seemed like a parody. In fact, I thought at first that it was Saturday Night Live's Cherie O'Teri. A lot of the story is pushed along with words that pop on the screen. It's insightful stuff. Like "A dream come true." Or, "Michael's new friend, Manny." And somehow they manage to tie in O.J. Simpson and 9/11.

This will easily be the worst movie I see all year. So why am I giving it a 2/20 instead of a 1/20? Outstanding special effects (I'm thinking a powder) used to show Michael Jackson's weird skin discoloration thing. I was impressed with that.

Eegah

1962 masterpiece

Rating: 2/20

Plot: In a world where people don't move their lips when they talk, there's a giant caveman loose in the desert. He grunts "Eegah!" a few times, so everybody assumes that's his name because, you know, people usually go around saying their own names over and over again. A guy who claims to be a scientist, his daughter, and her rock 'n' rolling dune-buggy driving beau investigate.

The worst caveman movie I've seen all year, Eegah approaches a Manos or Yucca Flats level of ineptitude. The main issue is probably the sound. This might in fact be the worst sound editing in the history of cinema, and not just movies with caveman. It's almost like all the characters are ventriloquists with their volume rising and falling inexplicably. The best example is when the characters are following some footprints and this voice from the heavens, one that doesn't sound like any of the characters, warns, "Watch out for snakes!" while none of their mouths move. Eegah's grunts don't match his lips either, but the craziest sound problem is when Tommy (played by Arch Hall Jr. [the film was directed by Arch Hall Sr. by the way]) plays his guitar. He sings almost enough songs for this to qualify as one of the worst musicals ever (definitely the worst musical with a caveman), most of them as a serenade to his girlfriend Roxie even though he sings about somebody named Valerie in a couple of them. If you're keeping score at home, you shouldn't. Anyway, when Arch Hall Jr. plays his guitar and sings, a full ghost band accompanies him. He's got drums, background vocals, piano. Neat trick, Tommy! Eegah does have a bitchin' dune buggy in it. I know some of my readers are interested in dune buggies. In fact, this has the best scene featuring a caveman chasing a dune buggy with a stick that I'll probably ever seen. There's another great scene where Tommy and Roxie (or, more accurately, people who sort of look like Tommy and Roxie) are riding around the desert looking for her father, and Roxie keeps saying, "Whee! Whee!" Whee? They might have said that in the 1950s, Roxie, but this film was made in '62! This movie ends with a character talking about how giants must exist because they're written about in the Bible. I'm sure Bill Maher would have questions about that one.

Eegah, by the way, is played by 7'2" Richard Kiel who would use Eegah as a springboard to bigger and better things. Aside from playing Jaws in the James Bond movie, Kiel would get several opportunities to play thugs, tall goons, swamp monsters, tall men, and strong men.