2,300th Post Celebration: Mondo Bizarro (1966)...Again

My how time flies.  Way back in July of 2009, I reviewed a film called Mondo Bizarro.  I had no idea when I started a website of the same name that it was a movie and a Ramones album.  Hell, I barely knew that it actually translated into a real expression: weird world.  The movie- which comes bundled with Mondo Freudo- is a curious one.  In case you're new to this, here's a quick summary of what Mondo Films are.  Mondo Cane was a big hit that 'showed people the World.'  Remember that this was in the very early '60s and long before National Geographic had its own Channel (or three)!  'Mondo Cane' translates to 'A Dog's World' and was apparently what the film was showing you (allegedly).  After the film was a hit, a lot of imitators jumped on board- in addition to the successive films made by the Directors.  That is how we got such classics as Mondo Magic, Mondo Topless and *arguably* Faces of Death.  This film is notable because it clearly is not what it claims to be.  It claims to be a look at real, weird facts and behavior around the globe.  What it actually is however is a film shot almost entirely in Los Angeles that is full of mostly-fake, mostly-staged events.  It is films like this that have given Mondo Films their alternate meaning- faked Documentaries.  Depending on your point-of-view, many films from recent times could be considered to be 'Mondo Films,' usually political films that don't align with people's own opinions.  That's far too serious to be talked about side-by-side with this film.  To see if I named the site after a terrible, terrible film, read on...

This is a globe.  This is a globe in a terrible movie.  Any questions?

Our first scene is a bunch of women being filmed by a 'hidden camera' in a 'real changing room.'  Some poor guy had to spend hours (possibly days) physically-scratching the film's negative to 'blur out' the eyes of these women.

You'll learn later that it has nothing to do with them suing.  I'm 99% sure that doesn't work that way anyhow.

The first real segment is about how people practice Voodoo in the Bahamas.  To maintain the 'this is real' illusion, they shot from about a mile away...at night...in the dark.  Enjoy.

In the next bit, we see a man going for a 'special massage' in Japan.  In one shot, it appears to be a Japanese man (who signs in the log book in Japanese), but suddenly becomes a white guy who speaks no Japanese for the scene.  Weird.

Oh and it's a joke bit.  The special massage: it's just being rubbed down with egg yolk.  Ha ha?

The next segment is informative.  In it, we learn that boobs exist and that bras hold them in.

It's actually about Frederick's of Hollywood, but...just look at this shot.  Russ Meyer approved!

This guy supposedly is a Yogi and can do ridiculous things like sleeping on beds of nails.  The scary part isn't when he drives nails through his body.

No, it's his freaky, super-thin, attached to his lip mustache that makes him look like a massive pedophile.

We next see a play allegedly being performed in Europe.  It's mostly an excuse to have a woman whipped and naked on stage.

Apparently plays like this were a thing.  I still 100% doubt that what they were showing was real though.  Could you imagine a Stage Show about Naziis whipping a 'young girl' would play to an audience of middle-aged couples?

The big finale takes place 'in Lebanon' (they even thank the Bureau of Lebanese Affairs).  Naturally, this film spends a good five minutes SHOWING YOU HOW THEY SET UP THEIR EQUIPMENT.

This film was ahead of its time.  It included a Making Of Featurette...only they put it into the film itself.

The big scene worth all of this build-up: illegal slave trade in Bronson Canyon...I mean, Lebanon.  The evil Arabs sell three ladies and a young man...which our Documentary Crew do nothing to stop.

Now here's the real reason for that 'eye blurring out' bit from the beginning- they use the same ladies.  Only this time, they blur out their genitals.  That's...good.

One awkward wrap-up and shot of that stupid globe again...and we're out.  The End.

This film has not aged well (in the four years since I saw it last).  Oh and it definitely hasn't aged well in the forty-eight years since it was made too.  As a product of its time, it is mostly an excuse to show Hippies, boobs and more boobs.  As a film viewed in a modern context, it is a stupid and shallow experience.  I'd love to know if someone saw it long ago and actually bought into it.  I really do.  As a modern viewer, this film has no real plot and just panders.  It is ironic that a film with 'Mondo' in the title never leaves the State of California!  The segments are mostly-silly and ridiculous.  A man eating 'glass' for dinner?  Sure.  A freaky man poking needles through his cheek?  Alright.  All those shots of women in bras- Damn!  There is a certain air of ironic hubris about the film too.  Like I said, they 'Thank' all of these places like Japan and Lebanon for their assistance, while clearly never needing to renew their Passports.  If nothing else, these people had cajones!  If you are a more forgiving viewer and want to see what people thought the 1960's looked like, this film does that well.  If you're looking for a real film about the world, look elsewhere.  This film has such a one-track 'mind' that they even find a way to include nudity in their B-Roll of Los Angeles...

Next up, I actually cover that Norwegian film that I promised.  It sure is...a movie.  Stay tuned...

*Holiday* Lost in Translation: 12 Years A Slave

Well, I'm not the first person to mention this...but it is topical.  Someone had a dream.

The Internet went all kablooey when an Italian Distributor made their own Poster for the release of 12 Years A Slave at a Festival.  See if you can spot what about it offended a certain group of people...

According to a certain Italian, the film is actually 12 Years A Guy Who Was in World War Z.  Sure was nice of you to make the lead small in the film that is literally about him.

Yes, there is also one with Michael Fassbender as well.  It's pretty much the same one.

Lest you think that I'm just picking on a bunch of Foreigners.  Here's the *totally-real* Poster especially made for the State of Mississippi.

Fun Fact: They only ratified the 13th Amendment in 1995.  Bonus Fun Fact: They managed to do it without making it official...until 2013.  No, really.

Again- totally real.  Happy MLK Jr's Birthday!

Poor Bastards of Cinema: Big Ass Spider!

Hurray for random death!

Big Ass Spider! is so chock full of random death that it just has to be featured here.  Let's begin the film's first murder location: the Hospital.  This old man is lying in bed.

He sees a lump pressing its way towards him under his sheets.  This is exactly why the Call Button exists!

Will a Nurse come to help him?  Will he have company in the Get Killed By A Spider in Los Angeles Section of Heaven?

Well, no.  The slightly-big-ass spider kills him and escapes to kill many, many more people.

Who is this old guy?  Does he even have a name?  Nope.

There's more death to come.  There may even be time to cover a Cameo by a man who does nothing but make Cameos in worse films than this.  We'll see.

Lock Me Up!: Attack From Beneath (aka Atlantic Rim)

Holy lawsuit, Batman!  The Asylum is back with some seriously-lazy shit.  Today's film is Attack From Beneath (on DVD) or Atlantic Rim (every other format).  For some reason, they changed the title for the DVD Release (most likely a lawsuit threat), but didn't change the name of the film on their page.  How does that work again?  Does Guillermo Del Toro not care if you sell the movie via Streaming/On Demand?  Odd.  So yeah, this is The Asylum's version of Pacific Rim.  According to Wikipedia, the Budget for the film was $500,000.  In contrast, Pacific had a Budget of $190 million.  Translation: The Asylum made a film for 1/380th of the mainstream film's Budget.  Hot damn!  Fun Fact: This film was almost shot in my home State of Florida, but denied permission when someone read the script.  Score one point for Florida!  The film is about some monsters that come from the Ocean and...well, do I have to tell you this?  Whether you saw the film or not, you at least know what the film is about.  What you want to know is what's different (besides the Production values, of course).  To find out what I got for $1.99 (R.I.P. Blockbuster), read on...

After a surprisingly-long set-up, a leaking Oil Rig- was the BP Oil Spill still topical in 2013?- and sub are attacked by a sea monster.

Somehow, nobody knows that this happened.  How far from the shore was this Rig- 10,000 miles?!?

This Admiral is informed of what happened and convinced to use Project: Armada.

Oh and he never breaks from this expression.  Ever.  Not even for a second.

Armada is apparently a project designed around making three giant robots and training just three people to fly/walk them.  The plan is to dump them in the Ocean to investigate the disappearance.I have so, so many questions.

1. Why?
2. How did they do this in secret?
3. How do you transport three giant robots in secret?
4. What were these originally designed for?
5. Why do they walk so damn slow in this last shot?

After 'dicking around' on the bottom of the Ocean, the trio of robots run across a monster.  One of them follows it to land, disobeying orders and protocol.

Pacific Rim this is is not- at least quality-wise.

Our hero- Chokachi- gets locked up (in a small room that was probably also the film's Cafeteria), but also given a Medal.  Mixed message, much?

Unfortunately for us, another creature shows up...and it is the exact same one.  Yeah, they made one creature model and that's it.

This guy- who I'll dub Obviously-Evil Guy- complains about how things are done at all times.  He does miss the obvious point: Why are the three Pilots for your giant Robots not around?  I get that one of them is locked up, but the other two?

Fortunately, the Military has a Stealth Bomber and just dumps about 2,000 bombs on the creature within a second.  Why would you stack those things so close together?  How heavy must that plane be?  How silly is this?!?

Naturally, we have one more creature- after an Act Break that sets up nothing- and now our Robots are *finally* going to fight it together.  Oh and these are just Dinosaurs and not interdimensional giants.  Bummer.

Chokachi gets side-tracked when Obviously-Evil Guy launches a Nuke at NYC.  He flies out to stop it?  Why does this feel familiar?  Hmm...

I wouldn't dare SPOIL this super-silly climax.  Instead, I'll give you this random shot of the War Room featuring Radar Grids, Maps and...CNN's Reliable Sources.  Um...what?  The End.

Oh wow, this is...just wow.  The Asylum tends to make one of two films.  One- boring films that just waste alot of potential.  Just check out stuff like 8213: Gacy House, Monster or Alien Origin.  Two- they make films that turn out to be worthwhile, if only because they are either surprisingly-decent or just plain hilarious.  For that, check out stuff like Bram Stoker's Dracula's Curse (confusing possessive tense aside), Ballistica or The 7 Adventures of Sinbad.  This film mostly falls into the latter category.  The whole thing is low-budget (by any Hollywood standard) and really feels like it.  Big Stars- David Chokachi, Graham Greene and Treach.  Wow.  They made three Robots, but they're really just the same model with slight color tweaks.  I get it- you don't have alot of money.  I won't hold your Budget against you.  I will, however, hold the fact that you are still trying to make a comparable film with said Budget.  Don't.  Just don't.  Seriously, just stop it.  Atlantic Rim aka Attack From Beneath aka Attack From The Atlantic Rim is funnier than it should be, because it is just as bad as you think it will be.  Let this face say it all...

Next up, while it is still Winter, why not go out in the snow.  Unfortunately, this Nordic film does almost nothing new.  Stay tuned...

Because I Watched It!: Upcoming Asylum Films (God Help Us!)

I dared go to The Asylum's homepage yesterday and discovered a whole bunch of new shit to talk about with them.

To begin, here's a film that rips off/is inspired by the Robocop Remake AND Fox's Being Human.  Wow.

Poor Black Dynamite- you deserve better than this.

Up next, a film that must be inspired by Hercules (either version really).  It reminds me more of Demonicus, but whatever.

Nice and generic.  Joy.

Lastly, the film that had to come.  This film must have just narrowly-avoided being a Sharknado sequel (which is happening, naturally)...

Will this be nothing but in-jokes and silliness?  Probably.  Oh and 'Teal'c' is in it.  Happy, Bob?

That said, I'm still going to see it.  Will I pay for it?  Nah.

Hey Asylum Screener Guy/Girl, hook me up!

Indy Fun: Big Ass Spider!

It's all in the name, really.  Today's films is Big Ass Spider!  I could stop right there for alot of you, I'm sure.  There's much more to this film than its big, silly title.  If anything, it is actually the best part.  For me, it does a big thing and makes the 'Funny Title, Boring Film' Rule not a hard and fast one.  Finally!  Japan has been the only country to break that rule- see Robo-Geisha, Tokyo Gore Police, etc-, so it is nice to see us Yanks do it.  The film is about...well, you can figure it out.  Do I have to spell it out for you?  You want to know if this film is scary, funny or both.  Well, I will tell you...in the review.  Read on...

The film gets all arty and starts In Media Res.  How did we get to this point?  Well, that's what the remaining 80% of the movie is for, of course!

Oh and there's a Big Ass Spider on the U.S. Bank Building in Los Angeles.  I probably should mention that, I guess.

A mysterious corpse ends up in a Hospital.  This same Hospital houses our Exterminator hero- seen two pics above- after a housewife- Lin Shaye in a Cameo- accidentally gets him bit by a Spider (of normal size).

Holy shit- Ray Wise is here.  Him and Shaye were both in FDR: American Bad-Ass...but that's just a coincidence.  A weird one, mind you, but one all the same.

The Spider gets more big-ass when it escapes the Hospital and attacks a park.  It takes out one deserving victim (which I will cover in a future Poor Bastards of Cinema).  Holy Jurassic Park, Batman!

Said Spider gets REALLY big-ass eventually and terrorizes the whole city.

As a side-note, these bug effects must be making the folks behind Starship Troopers jealous.  They nailed it!

Our hero has teamed up with a Hospital Security Guard to take down the beast.  They're quite the comedic duo and they just might be up to the task.

Hmm...you may want to look behind you, Greg.  I'm just throwing that out there.

Will the Spider win?  Will the humans blow the shit out of it?  Will Los Angeles recover in time for the next Asylum film to assault it?  To find out, watch the movie.

This is actually another one of those films where I was expecting to be disappointed.  In all honesty, I wasn't.  The movie is not the most complex work of Fiction out there- not by a long shot.  It had a simple goal- be a bizarre and fun monster movie.  In that regard, it really succeeds.  It is weird, it is wacky and it is quite fun.  It doesn't skimp on the Horror side of it, which is nice.  Alot of these kinds of films are either scary or funny.  This film has a big, ugly monster and it doesn't hold back.  The body count on display is, well, quite large.  It will keep Poor Bastards of Cinema busy for awhile- count on it.  The film is a bit uneven at times, to be fair.  It's not perfect.  That said, it is a fun film that feels like a breath of fresh air when compared to all of the damn Remakes.  The closest thing this film does is target the same building as D-War...

Up next, a return to The Asylum!  There's a smaller budget, a dumber story and one monster design in this recent Mockbuster.  Stay tuned...

Project Terrible: Carl J. Sukenick's Alien Beasts

Welcome back to Project Terrible, for my last film of this round. Coming to me from Alex Jowski, may I present:

This was absolutely mind-breakingly awful.

Carl J. Sukenick's Alien Beasts is barely a movie, and falls pretty much in the Actium Maximus: War of the Alien Dinosaurs quality range. Awful acting, awful effects, a nigh unintelligible plot (that barely exists at all), horrid and obscenely lengthy action scenes, constant, droning music...the list goes on. Honestly, all we're missing is the snot dinosaur puppets and the awful green-screen effects and it'd be Actium Maximus all over again.

The basic plot is this: there's a team of spies, and they're trying to transport some kind of device that ceases to matter immediately after its introduction. They're opposed by another team of spies (ostensibly Iranian, despite, well...you'll see in the pictures). The whole spy vs. spy thing really doesn't matter, though, as some kind of interdimensional portal opens and an alien beast takes over the enemy spies. Also, apparently, some of the spies on the good side are traitors...or something...

Okay, can I be honest here? I pretty much just played Splinter Cell: Blacklist with this playing off to the side because I could feel my soul leaving my body every time I looked over at it. Despite that, though, I do have a few notes about this cinematic catastrophe.

Absolutely nothing is done correctly here. This film is basically the sort of thing you make when you're 8 years old and playing with your dad's video camera, except that the people making this appear to be in their twenties or thirties. The people making this film managed to make a mess of every single part of moviemaking, with one unfortunate exception: they managed to properly load a tape in their camera. Ah, what a grand world this would be if they'd somehow mucked that up too.

Yeah, I'm getting the sense the filmmakers knew nothing at all about Iran. Or spies, for that matter.

There's not a plot to criticize, really, though what they do have makes absolutely no sense and frequently contradicts itself. I'm not going to waste time trying to dive into that particular Charybdis, so I'll just move on to note some of the spectacularly strange things about this production.

• After an extraordinarily long still frame title screen, we first see a very lengthy (and very poor) fight scene between person A, person B, and person C (who I think is person B's ally, but I'm not sure). We get no context for any of this, and in fact person B just kind of wanders off sometime in the middle of the fight.

• There is a wondrously awful narrator for this film. He seems to be just kind of trying to make things up as he goes along, so he repeats lines constantly, gets lost and has to restart lines, pauses awkwardly, and contradicts himself multiple times (sometimes almost immediately). It's simultaneously awful and utterly hilarious to hear what an absolutely train wreck the narration is.

I kid you not, we get several minutes of the camera just staring at this woman's face while the narrator gives a long speech. Twice.

• There's one point early on where he clumsily gives an entire setup for the next sequence, revealing tons of (meaningless) information, and then decides to repeat the entire thing. It's even worse the second time, by the way.
• The film is very, very fond of putting up a still frame shot of some kind and just kind of leaving it there for, oh, several minutes. Sometimes you get narration during this. Other times, just music. This happens probably a good 5-7 times in the course of the film.

And then there's the times the narrator reads what's on the screen...repeatedly...for about a minute or more.

• There's one shot, though, that I don't think is actually a still shot--it's just that the two actors sitting at the table don't do anything. For several minutes.

If I had made an animated GIF of this scene, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, I promise.

• No one involved in this film can act, at all, but the spy commander deserves special recognition for repeatedly just kind of dropping his role entirely and starting to give this weird undulating yell...actually, he kind of reminded me of the Ultimate Warrior. Though definitely not in physique.

Wait, are you giving me orders now? Also, two members "is," huh?

• I'm pretty sure there's also a shot in the film of him and a buddy lighting up some weed, which would explain a lot.
• We repeatedly get very long, very awful fight scenes with no real context, all shot from a really long distance so you can't much tell who is doing what.

• "Abe was watching on the security monitor" is repeated approximately 339 jillion times over the course of the movie. What does Abe do about all the things he sees on the security monitor? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. And yet we keep cutting back to him and getting that line constantly.

You watch that monitor, Abe! You're my hero!

• The film also loves switching that there camera into negative mode! That's the "energy pulse" effect, usually combined with, you guessed it, still frames.

• At one point I'm fairly sure the filmmaker just filmed a friend, his wife, and his daughter enjoying a day at the park and then stuck that in the film.

• There's a lengthy pointless nudity sequence midway through the film that is creepy for many reasons. For one thing, I'm pretty sure this was kind of a project made by a bunch of friends for kicks on at least some level, which means that this dude asked a girl he's friends with to basically do a stripper act (ostensibly as an enemy spy controlled by an alien beast), and then get felt up by another of his friends (ostensibly a good guy but acting incredibly creepy...like "call 911, there's a sexual predator attacking a woman"-level creepy). Charming.
• I think a lot of the dialog is improvised (probably the narration too). Not sure if this is actually a Zen filmmaking project, but it has all the signs of one. In any case, this is another fine example of why you shouldn't improvise your film, especially if you lack any possible acting talent. Some winners, with commentary:
• "I have a knife and an axe in the pocket of the blue jacket over here if you need them." 
• Really? Stuffed a whole axe in a jacket pocket, huh? That seems...unlikely.
• "I knew that they were traitors but I didn't know who was a traitor and I had to wait for the right time to destroy them all."
• So, wait, you knew they were all traitors? Or only some were traitors? Are you "destroying" all of them because they're all traitors, or are you accepting collateral damage? I'm so confused.
• "Get the knife and the axe and the blue jacket inside the house, and kill the monster!" 
• Is the blue jacket really necessary to this plan?
• As the film wears on, we get a lot of artsy juxtapositions, like repeatedly cutting back to Abe's bored face quickly between parts of a shot of something bad happening. So basically, this film is both utterly inept and incredibly pretentious.
• The end of the film is a sight to behold. After a very, very boring fight between...you know, I'm not even going to try to make sense of that. Anyway, after the fight, only the spy leader is left, so he has to stop the alien beast. He goes into the house, and we get a glorious stop motion animation section involving a drawing of a ninja, or possibly three ninjas, a shuriken, a...I don't know, a razor or something...a clay model of a monster, a squishy goopy monster hand model, a guy's face staring openmouthed, an animator drawing the ninja, some film glitches, and very likely several other strange things I'm forgetting. Several shots are repeated in their entirety multiple times over the course of the sequence. That serves as your final fight, and the film wraps up with the narrator saying, and I'll write this like he says it: "Carl, you've destroyed the enem...enemy agents and the alien..............interdimensionalmonster. Everything is destroyedyouwon!" 

• Cut to credits.

Yes, not only do we get a "music recomposed" credit, which I don't think I've ever seen before, it actually comes before the "music composed" credit.

Wow. Just wow. This is unquestionably among the worst films I've ever seen, right up there with Actium Maximus: War of the Alien Dinosaurs, though in some different ways. In a way, it's actually a little worse, because at least Actium Maximus has enough actually going on that you have some things to comment on when talking about it. This...uh, not so much. This was an absolutely worthless piece of trash, and the lone thing I can say positive about it is that it wasn't Baked Baby Jesus, which sounds like it was even worse. That's kind of akin to saying, "Well, sure, it hurts, but at least I only got kicked in the balls 417 times instead of 418." At a certain point, things are so bad that they technically can be worse, but not in any way you're likely to be capable of recognizing.

"Coincidental." How do you screw that up? Also, the events are fictitious, not the characters (more common for this statement), but it's still a similarity to persons that's "incidental?" Oh, whatever. Look, I don't think anyone was going to confuse your movie about suburban spies fighting non-Iranian Iranians possessed by an alien force utilizing the mighty power of stop-motion animation with reality, okay?