Tuesday, October 9, 2012

1,900th Post Celebration: The Amazing Bulk

This shit is real and it is glorious!  To celebrate another post milestone, I needed something special.  As it turns out, I found something that certainly qualifies!  That film- The Amazing Bulk!  Just let that title soak for a while- really take it in.  Someone seems to have made an Incredible Hulk rip-off and took the descriptor from Marvel's Spider-Man to cover it up.  That's some extra-special logic!  This comes to us from the Director of Aliens vs. Avatars and Aliens vs. Titanic- bonus!  The plot is simply awful...but that's its charm.  Mind you, it's ME saying that, so your results and opinions may differ.  The best/worst part: the whole movie was shot in front of a green screen.  This is more like The Spirit than Sin City.  To see just a hint of how ridiculous and terrible this movie is, read on...
The film begins In Media Res because...um, I don't know.  Regardless, it gives you a fair warning of what this film has to offer.
The Bulk kills this mugger, but only after he kills a Hooker (credited as Hooker).  Way to rush into action, Bulk!

This silly F/X shot is extra bad, since the gun changes make for this single shot.  I guess Windows Movie Maker didn't have a pistol firing animation.
Our hero is a Scientist who is working on a formula to improve human DNA.  It would help if he had an actual lab and not this cheap background, I suppose.

Oh and get used to that face.  Get really used to it.
The biggest problem with/best part of this film is the green screen stuff.  My working theory is that the guy who did Editing and Post-Production just hated everyone.  That's the only explanation for the stuff like the South Park background.
The villain is Dr. Kantlove- a more annoying version of Newman- and he likes to blow up monuments since he can't have sex with his blond girlfriend.  No, really.

Hi, Background Monkey!
After the film returns to narrative order, our hero is confronted by these Cops...with a couch for their seats.

I won't SPOIL what happens next, but it is amazingly-bad.  It's some glorious crap that is the film's second-biggest selling point.
In a bid to gain a cure for his *giggle* disorder, our hero works for the government to take out the evil Doctor.  Just to note: he's unaware of any of the monuments being blown up.  How is that possible?

Play the Amazing Bulk Drinking Game: Take a shot every time the Bulk changes size.
After taking out the villain (I won't SPOIL how), he is double-crossed.  You can't trust the guy who was obviously-lying?  Get out!

This leads to the film's true highlight: the Bulk running past a series of random GIFs and backgrounds.  A single image doesn't do this justice!
Our hero has one last confrontation with the General- who is also the father of his girlfriend- that is so dramatic that both of them turn into bad CGI sprites!
Being the stupid film that is, we need one last silly shot to end it all.  I won't SPOIL the context, because you NEED to see this movie!  The End.
I love this movie!  Granted- most of you will probably hate it.  It's okay- I know that I have a sickness and I have made peace.  I mean, who else would pay $2.99 for a copy of The Corpse Grinders II?  If you had a good laugh at the sights of this film that I showed you, you will probably get a laugh out of the actual film too.  Even I will grant that some jokes go on way too long- the objects enacting sex bit- and were never that funny to begin with.  That said, those have a certain ironic charm- provided that you can pretend that the filmmaker was being satirical.  He obviously wasn't, of course, but let's pretend.  The biggest aspect of the film to mock/enjoy are the terrible CGI backgrounds.  If these were meant to be taken seriously, they failed miserably.  If the guy they (under)paid to do the Effects was just being a dick, that would explain a lot.  To be fair, the Director did approve the final cut, so the mystery deepens.  This movie is terrible- plain and simple.  However, it is so terrible that it makes me laugh.  Two moments come to mind to really sum up the film.  In one moment, Dr. Kantlove makes a Family Guy cutaway gag...for absolutely no reason.  In the other moment, a dramatic scene ends with a monkey popping out of a rocket...on the moon.  No context would help either of these jokes.  I recommend this film for all of the reasons that I shouldn't recommend this film.  It's stupid, badly-made and just constantly fails at everything.  For doing it with such (silly) style, I salute you, The Amazing Bulk.
Up next, the official subject of this week: The Amityville Horror.  First up, the original film that started (the crap that was) it all.  Stay tuned...

4 comments:

  1. This looks...spellbinding.

    I'm fairly certain that those hands in the final pic are just THESE--Hulk Smash Hands--painted purple.

    Which is just plain fantastic.

    --J/Metro

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    1. Yeah, they use the Hulk hands in at least one other shot, too. There's also an awesome moment when the cop (the bald guy in that shot with the hands) is painted purple to act as the Bulk because they needed him to interact with a model of...can't recall if that's the helicopter or the jet. Why they did the rest of the movie with horrible CG and that rated an actors & models approach, I don't know...I guess they couldn't find stock animations for what they wanted to do. :-P

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  2. This was one of the most incompetent films I've ever seen, even if I include Blood Red Moon. It features some amazingly bad acting, truly horrid special effects, and an utterly incomprehensible plot. They do absolutely nothing right!

    I guess I can say I don't feel everyone involved was totally hopeless--if the male lead can learn to stop making that face that makes him look like a sad pug dog all the time, he otherwise seemed like he could be okay in a better film and with better direction, for instance--but by and large...um...not so much. I wish them all the best, but I can't say I hold a lot of hope for most involved in this...in no small part because now they have this in their history. I mean, a lot of actors have something less-than-dignified in their past, but I can't imagine "I was in The Amazing Bulk" is going to help get a better acting job.

    That chase sequence is just...wow. There's no reasonable explanation for how that came to be. All I can come up with is that either, like you said, the guy doing the effects and all hated everyone involved, or...geez, I don't know, maybe he left to go take a nap and his 5-year-old kid came in the room and mistook the program for one of those kiddie art programs where you take the clipart and put it around the page to make random nonsensical slightly-animated designs. Pretty much what that ended up as.

    That said...aside from a couple mind-numbingly lengthy moments (like the very obvious sex references involving various spaceships and satellites and such, which can safely be skipped even if you for some reason care about the plot of this thing), this is amazingly hilarious for those who love bad films. I'm pretty convinced that if Rifftrax ever did this, the entire track would just be them laughing their heads off helplessly. It doesn't need their help--it's that bizarre.

    (Though if they want to give it a go anyway, I'm all for it!)

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  3. Honestly, the thought of this movie just broke my brain. I think if I actually watched it, my head would explode.

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