#24 Merlins Shop of Mystical Wonders (Wes)

Merlins Shop of Mystical Wonders

Once again the bad movie we had to watch next seemed to be on our list because of its appearance on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I can’t imagine any other reason why so many people would have seen this movie, unless they simply HAVE to watch everything that Ernest Borgnine ever made. Even then I can only imagine this would be pretty low on their list to watch. Since we couldn’t find a copy of the original movie, we watched the MST3K version, which I had previously seen, so for once after a few really poor movies this was a nice reprieve.

When the power cuts out Ernest Borgnine is forced to entertain his grandson. So he tells him two tales so dull they would guarantee that even The Narrator in Fight Club would drift off to sleep. The stories are connected by the ancient wizard Merlin (George Milan), who for some reason has now opened a curiosity shop filled with deadly goods. I guess encouraging young men to pull swords from stones just wasn't paying the bills.

The first is the story of an obnoxious reviewer (I know that movies aren’t real, but even with the biggest stretch of the imagination I just can’t believe such things exist!) Jonathan Cooper (John Terrance) who threatens to give Merlin’s shop a bad review. Merlin gives him a magic book to try out to prove that Merlin is the real deal, but warns him not to read any incomplete spells. That evening in his basement the sceptical Jonathan starts to read from the book… Will Jonathan believe in magic? Will he listen to Merlin’s warning? How much will Merlin overreact when he discovers Tripadvisor?

The second story is the time old tale of a boy and his possessed monkey toy. When a particularly unambitious thief steals a cursed monkey toy (you know, like the psychotic symbol monkey in Toy Story 3) from Merlins shop, he somehow manages to find a rival store that also specializes in selling any old shit and makes enough money to presumably buy some more of whatever he was smoking that made stealing such an ugly piece of crap a good idea in the first place. Selling ugly pieces of crap is apparently a good business model in this town though as Susie (Vicki Saputo) quickly buys the monkey for her nephew (who I assume she hates). Unbelievably Michael (Struan Robertson) likes his gift, but his gift doesn’t like him and soon mysterious deaths are occurring (plants, flies and fish this monkey is very low aspirations in evil-doing at first). Will anyone make the connection between a demonic looking toy being bought and everything dying? Will Merlin track down the toy in time to save the day? When Merlin gets home will he spank the monkey?

Although this is presented as a portmanteau, it’s really two movies squeezed into one. Well I say movies, they’re more like two rejected scripts for The Twilight Zone, that were found in a Hollywood dumpster and used to line the cat litter tray. Then, after years of being used as a toilet, they were then finally dusted off when director (and writer and producer), Kenneth J. Berton, ran out of ideas to pitch and became desperate enough to finally film the cat pee soaked script.

The first segment, whilst bad, could probably have been a passable episode of one of the 80s horror anthology series like Monsters or Tales from the Darkside. It has a campy 70s horror comic feel to the thing and with better actors and a little reworking of the script would have fit nicely into either of those series, which often mixed badly written humour with light horror.

The second segment has to be one of the strangest things I’ve learned about whilst watching the movies on this list. Because it actually was a whole movie (The Devil’s Gift) by Berton that was edited down and had a few shots added to include Merlin. Seriously when you make a movie so bad that you have to put it into another movie in a second attempt try to get people to watch it, then you know you’ve failed at being a director. If you’re curious as to what the original movie was like, then somebody has put it on YouTube.

I think at this point we really should be discussing the creepy monkey in the room. When David makes the connection between the monkey bashing its symbols together and things dying why the big charade to get rid of it? If you can put it on the edge of a coffee table over a bin, and then bash into the table with a vacuum cleaner until it falls into the bin (whilst whistling innocently), so you can empty it (pretending you didn’t notice it contained a cursed toy (which I’m guessing is aware of exactly what’s happening somehow)), then you could just as easily grab it from behind, jam a sock inbetween its symbols, cover the outside of them with cotton wool and duck tape and then work at detaching its arms, before putting each part into a separate box, fill the boxes with concrete and bury each one deep under consecrated ground miles apart from each other. Whilst whistling innocently.

More to the point, who even sees one of these obviously evil toys and thinks to themselves “Wow, what an amazingly innocent looking monkey! There’s absolutely no way out of all of these wonderful toys that are available that little Michael could be permanently traumatised by this one. I mean if I was to buy him that awesome looking Lego, or those Star Wars action figures that he’s been talking about for months, he’d probably end up in therapy for half his adult life, but this monkey that looks like it was shat out fully formed from the arse of Satan himself will in no way give him even the briefest of nightmares!”

In my honest opinion whilst this movie should be on our list, Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders isn’t such a poor movie that it deserves such a high placement. It’s badly acted, badly scripted, poorly paced and has all the entertainment value of a David Blaine endurance stunt. However, for all the lack of movie magic, it does have a certain creepy charm, much like an old abandoned building or Steve Buscemi. Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders is a strangely appropriate name. The biggest wonder of this movie being is there any level of crud that Borgnine won’t stoop to make?

#24 Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders (1966) (Colin)

Cast: Ernest Borgnine, George Milan, Bunny Summers, John Terrace

Director: Kenneth J. Berton

Genre: Fantasy, Horror

After having to endure a 3hr Borellywood movie involving subtitles which were hideously out of sync, followed by a movie centred on an American Idol winner, we decided to treat ourselves and watch the MST3K version of our next film, Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders, (1996).

As always when we watch an MST3K version of a bad movie, I’ll start by giving a brief review of the MST3K episode.

This is a Mike episode and is from the last season of MST3K.  Technically even though this is episode 3, it was the last ever new MST3K to be aired.  This was due to a copyright issue which meant that the air date was delayed and it was shown 1 month after the MST3K finale episode.  See, this blog is educational and not just a bunch of fart jokes bundled together!

If you’re a fan of MST3K, you know that the opening and in-between segments are generally hit and miss.  Unfortunately in this episode the segments tend to steer towards miss.  However, the riffing is on form.  It’s on YouTube and is very funny; check it out!

But what did I learn about the actual movie itself, well, let’s have a look shall we?

During a power cut caused by a lightning storm, Grampa, (Ernest Borgnine), decides to scare the living crap out of his grandson, (Mark Hurtado), by telling him a couple of dark stories about a Mystical Shop owned by Merlin, (George Milan).

The first story concerns husband and wife, Johnathan, (John Terrace) and Madeline Cooper, (Patricia Sansone).  Madeline is desperate for a baby by Johnathan, a writer for the local newspaper, appears to be firing blanks.

This fact has obviously given Johnathan a chip on his shoulder as when he and Madeline visit Merlin’s shop, he starts to shout abuse at Merlin.  Believing Merlin is not who he says he is, he threatens to write a negative review about the shop in the misguided belief that anyone gives a tinker’s cuss what he thinks.  Merlin, who should have said, ‘Sod off you Jaffa’, gives him a magic book instead to prove he really is the Merlin.

When Jonathan starts reciting spells from the book he realises quite quickly that Merlin was actually the real deal.  He starts to breathe fire, turns his cat into a demon and manages to correctly guess his wife had picked the ace of clubs.  What Jonathan does not realise is that every spell he recites uses life force and the consequence of this is that he ages quickly.

Desperate to regain his youth, Jonathan recites a spell to reverse the ageing and it works.  Too well!

Jonathan turns himself into a baby, to the delight of Madeline who now has a baby to look after and can raise him as one of her own.  (A nice end to the story, I am sure you agree and not at all creepy or in any way wrong on oh so many levels!).

Deciding he hasn’t freaked his grandson out enough and before anyone can stop him, Grandpa proceeds to tell a second story……

A thief steals Merlin’s toy monkey, (which he loved to spank) and sells it to an antique shop.  David Andrews, (Bob Mendelsohn), buys this monkey as a present for his son Michael, (Struan Robertson), but unbeknownst to David, the monkey is evil!  Every time it bashes its little toy cymbal, a living thing nearby dies.

When Michael unwraps his monkey present, things start to croak it.  Houseplants wither and die, (which happens to houseplants anyway in my experience, so I’m surprised anyone actually noticed), a fly drops dead in mid-air and the Andrew’s pet mutt becomes a flame grilled hot dog.

After talking to psychic, Adrienne, (Madelon Phillips), David discovers that the toy monkey is possessed!  He decides he must get rid of the toy and so puts it in the trash.  This does not work as Michael finds the monkey and puts it back into the house. David takes the monkey to the desert and buries it.  This monkey’s gone to heaven, he thinks and he goes home thinking a job has been well done.

Soon after, Michael’s grandmother, (J. Renee Gilbert), visits and gives Michael a present.  Yes folks, you guessed it, the return of the toy monkey!  All hell breaks loose and as the monkey gears up for one helluva cymbal crash that would surely wipe them all out, Merlin arrives and puts his hand between the cymbals, thus saving the day!

Hurrah!

Grampa finishes his story and his Grandson finishes wetting himself and mutters quietly to himself, eyes wide open.  The End!

This movie is 2 actually 2 movies stuck together with chewing gum and is supposedly aimed at a family audience.  As you can tell by these stories, Berton is way off track here and sure, if you want your kid to be a rocking gibbering wreck then by all means watch this movie and give them a toy monkey to play with.

The first story contains one of the worse pantomime baddies I have seen in a long time, Johnathan.  Seriously I don’t know what is wrong with his face but he gurns and chews his way through his story as if he’s eating a tractor tyre.  He looks like a cross between Richard Madeley and the Mask and I really do wish someone would stop him.

The storyline itself though, is not too bad and could easily have been told on Tales of the Unexpected, (a UK series similar to The Twilight Zone in which every story would have a twist at the end.  The twists were usually painfully obvious and could be worked out during the opening titles).

The second story was actually made by Berton 10 years before this movie and was actually already released under the title, The Devil’s Gift.  In the original movie there is no Merlin and the whole family dies at the end of the movie in a massive explosion.

This story is just plain stupid, partly because it would have been very easy to get rid of the toy if David had just kept hold of the receipt.  OK, Merlin would only have issued a store credit, but at least David could have purchased something a little less evil and fucked up.

Some critics have claimed that Berton has just stolen the short story by Stephen King; The Monkey.  I’m not so sure about this, I mean here’s a summary of the plot based on the Wikipedia entry for The Monkey:

The story starts with Petey and Dennis, finding a cymbal-banging monkey toy in an attic. The monkey is actually haunted, and every time it claps its mechanical cymbals together, someone close to Hal dies.

Here’s a summary of The Devil’s Gift:

The story starts with David, finding a cymbal-banging monkey toy in a shop. The monkey is actually haunted, and every time it claps its mechanical cymbals together, someone close to David dies.

See?  Completely different!

Whether this idea is stolen or not, one thing I think we can all agree on is that both stories aren’t really suitable for a children’s fantasy movie, which was Berton’s intention.

I mean, for starters for this to work, Merlin should be a lovable old wizard, a little bit bumbling maybe, but a good egg.  He actually comes across as a sadistic tosspot in both stories who exacts revenge on people who dare cross him, (and let’s remember, Jonathan was going to write a bad review, he was hardly threatening to kill Merlin’s first born!) and is happy to sell death causing toys to families with young children.

What a bastard!

At the end of the day, this movie has not really worked.  Whilst the heavy editing from The Devil’s Gift gives us a happier ending, (although I would have been just as happy for the stupid family to be fired 60 feet into the air and scattered over a large area as originally planned), it’s certainly no fantasy children’s movie.  Nor is a story about a local hack getting youthed for being a bit gobby.

What we really have here are 2 short stories poorly executed and tenuously linked by Borgnine who was firmly in the pension fund stage of his career.  Had these been left as short stories and put into a Sci-Fi series, then maybe they could’ve worked.

Ironically, however, neither story about one of the most fabled wizards of all time, had any magic whatsoever.

#25 From Justin to Kelly (Wes)

From Justin to Kelly

This list has thrown a lot of really crappy movies our way, some of which I may have ended up accidentally watching on my own, some I would have never been aware of if it wasn’t for this list. Our next movie was definitely one of the latter. Like Popstar. the last teen pop drama we had to watch (see here), a spring break love story featuring two former American Idol stars really isn’t the sort of movie that I would ever consider watching under any other circumstance. Unfortunately it was next in our list and I had no other choice, so would From Justin to Kelly defy all my low expectations? Only one way to find out….

Conservative Texan waitress Kelly (Kelly Clarkson) heads to Miami with her BFF’s Kaya (Anika Noni Rose) and Alexa (Katherine Bailess). Here in one of those spontaneous dances where everyone knows all the right moves the spring break is famous for, she meets up with Justin (Justin Guarini), who is there with his best buds Brandon (Greg Siff) and nerdy Eddie (Brian Dietzen). Kelly and Justin quickly fall for each other, but neither of them wants just a fling, so they are both cautious. Can their love survive all the singing and dancing that spring break seems to involve? Will Eddie ever meet the girl he met on the internet in real life? Since when was spring break so PG?

If there’s one piece of cockney rhyming slang that I’ve never really understood, it’s syrup of figs (wig). As often as I’ve that someone had an unconvincing syrup, I’ve never actually known what syrup of figs actually is. Well thanks to this movie and it’s God awful syrupy ballads, I actually decided to Google it. It turns out that a syrup of figs is a type of laxative, which seemed strangely appropriate as a massive, steaming pile of shit was exactly what I thought about the songs in this movie.

The songs are nothing but banal fluff, which is about the level I’d expect from an American Idol spin-off movie. To give the writers some credit, they did at least attempt to try to make some of the songs different from each other, including one where the characters sing their lines in some horrible opera or PG rated version of R Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet, but they may as well not have bothered. The songs all blend into one horrible, forgettable mess, seemingly missing the point of a musical, in that there isn’t a single song you’d even remember half an hour after you’d finished watching it, let alone still be humming it weeks after having watched it.

The big problem with this movie isn’t actually the songs though (nor is it the poor choreography that can best be described as “awkward uncle at a wedding dancing”). At least they may appeal to American Idol fans, so that alone would make their target audience happy. The problem is that this film is almost as though Marge Simpson wrote it in the classic Simpsons episode where she attempts to eliminate violence from Itchy and Scratchy cartoons. It so non- offensive that it’s just plain dull.

This is a tale of such wholesome spring break partying, that it would make John Belushi spin so hard in his grave that he could be considered the first perpetual motion machine. Even Andrew WK, Rodney Dangerfield and Caligua hijacking Mardi Gras, Oktoberfest and Rio Carnival and bringing them straight to Florida along with all of the revellers and the contents of Hunter S Thompson’s medicine cabinet, couldn’t save this dismal excuse for a party. This is the only movie that features a margarita party held by the only Americans who aren’t aware that prohibition ended in 1933.

I can only imagine that when writer Kim Fuller was told that having written Spice World, that at least they’d never be able to write a script worse, his response was “hold my beer”. Movie vehicles for pop stars are often badly written, if only for the fact that the makers know the fans will most likely go and watch it regardless, for example Mariah Carey's Glitter (see here), but From Justin to Kelly takes this to a new level.

This is a movie so dull that even a scene with some sort of hovercraft basketball jousting game that could have come straight out of Takeshi’s Castle (or maybe It’s a Knockout), just doesn’t seem fun. Even the predictable hovercraft crash is so safe and PG that it has all the drama of that time that I lost my pen, then remembered pretty much straight that I’d put it behind my ear. The only positive thing I can say about the script, is that it had a Sideshow Bob gag that I quite enjoyed.

For a non-professional actor, Justin Guarini tries his hardest, and isn’t absolutely terrible, but Kelly Clarkson seems to have taken her acting classes straight from the legendary sweeping extra in Quantum of Solace (if you’ve not seen him, check him out here, he’s incredible). I would love to describe her acting as an enthusiastic amateur, but “Only there because it was in a contract that she signed to be on a television talent show” amateur would be way more accurate.

Like Popstar, this movie was never made with someone like myself in mind as the potential audience, but I can only imagine that this movie could only ever be enjoyed by only the most hardcore Justin/Kelly fan or the least unfussy teenage girl. This movie is less Animal House and more Bear in the Big Blue House and the best way I can sum up this movie is with one of the tweets I shared whilst watching this movie with Colin:

This movie is making me wish that Coily the Spring Sprite from A Case of Spring Fever existed “no more spring(break)s!

(for those of you that have never seen A Case of Spring Fever, I recommend you watch the brilliant MST3K riffing of it here)

#25 From Justin to Kelly (2003) (Colin)

Cast: Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, Katherine Bailess, Anika Noni Rose

Director: Robert Iscove

Genre: Comedy, Music, Romance

The next movie in our list is a musical and regular readers of our blog will know that I absolutely hate musicals with a passion!  They are just so creepy!  If you were walking down the street and all of a sudden someone burst out into song, then a group of people joined in with that song and then the whole group performed a perfectly choreographed dance routine, you’d be freaking out.  I know if it happened to me I would need a clean change of underwear and a few sessions with the local shrink, (I actually put my hatred better in my blog about our #34(b) movie; At Long Last Love, (see review here))!

So our next movie, Justin and Kelly (2003), is already off to a bad start in my eyes, but matters were made even worse when I discovered it stars the winner and runner-up of 2002’s American Idol!

I’m going to sound like an old fart, but the music scene for the last 15 years has been bland, turgid and lacking any cutting edge.  It’s been wave after wave of manufactured pop divas, boy bands and auto-pitch.  Shows like American Idol just keep churning out more and more of these acts and with similar shows, like The X Factor, continuing this trend, there seems no end in sight.

It’s fair to say then, that I am not a fan of the 2 stars of this movie, Kelly Clarkson and Justin Guarini, heck I hadn’t even heard of Justin Guarini until I typed his name out a few seconds ago!

But was I being unfair?  Was it right for me to be dreading watching this movie?  Was it a yes from me?

Kelly Taylor (Kelly Clarkson) is a ‘singer’ at a run down Texan bar and normally performs to an audience of 2, (almost as many who bought this movie).  Therefore she doesn’t take much persuading when her friends, Kaya (Anika Noni Rose) and Alexa (Katherine Bailess) suggest going to Spring Break in Florida.

Meanwhile, 3 friends known as the Pennsylvania Pussy Posse are also heading to Spring Break.  They consist of Justin (Justin Guarini), token jock Brandon, (Greg Siff), and generic nerd to make up the clichéd trio, Eddie, (Brian Dietzen).  They are trying to organise a whipped cream bikini contest, (a thought provoking piece of drama, as I’m sure you’ll agree).

Almost immediately Justin bumps into Kelly and they fall in love.  Literally 6 minutes into the movie, (but don’t worry dear reader, they manage to string this out for another 80 minutes!).  This coincides with the first song of the movie, the first dance routine and the first incident of me slipping into a coma.

Soon after their first encounter, they meet again, this time in the ladies bathroom, where Justin has gone to hide after a hoard of girls wanted wrist bands to the bikini contest, (really?).  After helping Justin to escape from the bathroom via the window, Kelly decides to take her chance and writes her number down on some tissue paper and throws it out of the window.  Unfortunately it lands in a puddle and Justin is left with a nasty mess in tissue paper, (not for the first time I believe!).

Desperate to get Kelly’s number, he runs into Alexa and tries to get the number from her.  Unfortunately Alexa also has her sights set on Justin and gives out her number instead of Kelly’s.  It’s not long before Alexa gets to put her plan into operation as Justin texts ‘Kelly’s’ number asking her out only for Alexa to text back ‘Kelly’ is not interested….

Will Alexa’s plan succeed?  Will Kelly get with Justin?  Will Kelly manage a dance routine without being exactly 1 step behind?

Watch From Justin to Kelly to find out!  Actually, don’t bother and here’s why:

If this story seems familiar to you, it’s probably because it has been done a thousand times before.  There is nothing new on offer here and there are many movies which have done this storyline far better.  It’s boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins back girl but without any clever twists and turns along the way which elevates an average film into a good film.

The jokes are as flat as the cast’s pitch and generally centre on Brandon dicking around.  He tries to inject some American Pie type humour into the movie, but without the crudeness or humour.  In fact this has to be the tamest Spring Break I have ever seen and I never realised Spring Break could be PG.

Guarini’s acting is actually OK.  He does walk around with a smug look and as the b@stard son of Yahoo Serious, but generally lines are delivered convincingly and if I had any interest in the movie, I might actually care if he ends up with Kelly or not.

Clarkson on the other hand seems to be trying to win Madonna’s, ‘Singer Who Can Not Act for Toffee’ award.  She is so wooden that a lump of 2 x 4 in a bikini could have put on a better performance.  There is no emotion, lines are rushed and monotone.  Hell, actually you could have replaced her and Guarini for Hacksaw Jim Duggan, (now there’s a movie I would happily pay to watch).

The rest of the cast are just filler and pad out the movie with further will they / won’t they get together.  It’s hard to invest any time in caring about what happens as the characters are just a bunch of tired clichés with about as much depth as a piece of paper.  They are only in the movie to provide backing singing and dancing.

The dances themselves are uninspired and generally involve some poorly worked arm flapping and side steps.  They look more like people trying to cool their mouths down after eating a hot chilli, than dance routines.

The songs are generic and lifeless and not a single tune stands out.  Guarini and Clarkson can sing, (or rather use a lot less auto-pitch than the rest of the cast), but does this movie showcase their ‘talent’?  Definitely not.

So was it right for me to dread watching this movie?  Definitely!  It’s a million percent no from me!

This movie is just a shameless attempt to cash in on the winner and runner-up on American Idol.  When you see that the production company behind the movie, 19 Entertainment, are also the production company behind American Idol, then the pieces begin to fall into place.

Back in my Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever blog, (see review here), I mentioned that movie studios usually ask video games makers to produce a game as a tie-in to their movie.  What the games makers will usually do is take a generic platform game that they have been working on and will shoehorn the characters into the game.  This is why movie tie-in games are usually quite lousy.

Exactly the same has happened in From Justin to Kelly.  Some execs from American Idol have asked their production company to make a movie to cash in on the winner / runner-up.  That company has then just taken a generic boy meets girl story and shoehorned Clarkson and Guarini into it.  This movie was not made for them, it was made to make money from them.  This is why this movie is so lousy.

From Justin to Kelly was never going to be for me, I don’t like musicals, I can’t stand pop music and I’m not a fan of Kelly Clarkson.  This is probably a movie for those, back in 2002, who voted for Clarkson or Guarini and who wanted to see more of the people they had been following and showing an interest in for several weeks.

For the rest of us, From Justin to Kelly is From DVD Player to Bin.

Ram Gopal Varma’s Ki Aag aka Indian Flames (Wes)

Ram Gopal Varma’s Ki Aag

If you’re a long time reader of our blog you may remember way back near the beginning we utterly failed to find the Danish movie Danes Without a Clue. Well it turns out that obscure Danish comedies aren’t the only European imports that are impossible to find. This time round we failed to find a copy of the Norwegian movie A Story About Love (Dis - en historie om kjærlighet), so it was back to the subs list. I however didn’t relish the prospect of having to watch an extra film, so like I did with Sura (see here) I tried to revisit some of our past failures, and with a lot of searching, and some luck, managed to find separate copies of one of the movie and the subtitles needed. So now we were equipped with a copy of Ram Gopal Varma’s Ki Aag and we wouldn’t have to face the punishment of an extra movie. But was this punishment enough? Only one way to find out…

Bodyguards Heerendra Dhaan (Ajay Devgan) and Raj Ranade (Prashant Raj Sachdev) are forced to flee to Mumbai after they assault a police officer. Once there they are employed by local gangster Shambhu, but it isn’t long until they are arrested and they agree to help bring Shambhu to justice. However once this happens they still get a year in jail. When they are released they are met by Inspector Narsimha (Mohanlal) who wants their help in taking down the gangster Babban Singh (Amitabh Bachchan). For some reason (well about 800,000 reasons), they agree and set off to Kaliganj to capture this notorious criminal. Will they succeed? Will Babban realise that he could probably just sneak away whilst Heerendra and Raj are singing and dancing? Why didn’t we consider that two movies probably have about the same running time as this film and wouldn’t necessitate having to read subtitles when bored?

Reading the reviews, this movie seems to be in the IMDB bottom 100 mainly because it’s a rip-off of a beloved Bollywood movie, Sholay, so much so that that Ram Gopal Varma was fined by the Delhi High Court for copyright infringement. Now never having seen the original movie I can’t comment on that, however I can confidently say that this is one of the most boring movies I’ve watched in a long time.

Now I have no problem with watching movies with subtitles, however if a movie has subtitles and is nearly three hours long, then I’m going to have a lot of trouble paying attention (Seven Samurai and Kwaidan are the only two exceptions I can think of right now). Hell, it takes something like Schindler’s List or The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly for movies that long to keep my attention without subtitles, so Aag really never was going to fare well, especially as the subtitle file I had found looks like it was for a different cut of the movie and kept going out of sync.

I had the same problem with the length of Sura, however that movie was made bearable by having a charming lead character. Unfortunately all of the characters in this movie have the combined charisma of the speakers at a pro-Brexit march. At no point do you even remotely care about the fate of anyone in this movie. Amitabh Bachchan, who seems to be held in high regard in India (even presenting the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire) is laughable as the villain Babban. He’s as menacing as a new born baby equipped with a gun that fires rainbows instead of bullets. The fact that he looks a bit like Al Pacino kept making me think he should have been better, unfortunately he wasn’t the Pacino of Tony Montana or Michael Corleone, but more that of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade (does anybody know the Hindi translation for “ho haa!”?).

Helium addict Rajpal Yadav as Rambhabhai Is probably the most irritating out of the bunch though. His high-pitched voice, that I hope is supposed to be for comic effect just brings to mind Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Unfortunately his performance is neither funny, nor is it convincing as a gangster coming across more as Joe Pasquale than Joe Gallo.

Aside from the poor acting, the film isn’t helped by the fact that it looks like it was filmed by someone who’s just discovered that you can add movies to Instagram complete with filters. Honestly it’s like watching a movie that’s entirely made with badly developed Polaroid film. I’m not sure if this was to give it some form of gritty urban feel, or if they just couldn’t afford to buy decent film stock, and just used some that they found abandoned in the bottom of a well.

I still can’t get used to the whole Bollywood thing of inserting seemingly random songs into a movie. Not only do they interrupt the flow of the film, and just seem like filler, but they also distract you from the barely present storytelling to such a degree I found myself not quite following what was happening for much of the movie. I honestly don’t understand the point of them unless it’s to sell more copies of the soundtrack (just like Suicide Squad seemed to be doing). But it wasn’t just the songs that irritated me; the background music is wildly over dramatic and even more distracting than the songs.

Aag is an overly long movie, where nothing much really happens, and having to pay attention due to the subtitles made this film feel like way too much hard work. The only thing that I’ve taken from this movie, is that I really must watch Sholay one of these days. But until I get this movie far from my memory any desire to explore the wonderful movies that I’m sure Bollywood has to offer have gone up in the Indian Flames that this movie claims to be.

#26 Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (Indian Flames) (2007) (Colin)

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Mohanlal, Ajay Devgn, Vinod Jaywant

Director: Ram Gopal Varma

Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy

The next movie in our list…. well, it’s a little complicated……

The next movie in our list was supposed to be Dis - en historie om kjærlighet (in English: A Story About Love) (1995), a Norweigen movie which has the strangest first 2 line summary I’ve ever seen on IMDb: ‘Two young people stand on a street corner in a run-down part of New York, kissing. Despite the lawlessness of the district they are left unmolested’. Wow, that really is a rough part of New York in which a couple having a quick smooch, can result in that level of abuse!

Unfortunately it appears this movie was not on general release in the UK and was not readily available online.  Therefore we were about to go back to our subs bench in which we have to replace a movie we can not find, with 2 bad movies as punishment, when Wes had a breakthrough….

Back at #34 we were supposed to watch the Indian movie, Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (2007), but we could only find the Hindi version. As neither of us speak Hindi, (after a couple of sherbets we can barely speak English!), we had to drop the movie and take on 2 others as punishment. Removed from our list, I thought no more about the movie until Wes managed to find some English subtitles.

Therefore it turned out we could watch this movie after all and we just needed an opportunity to get it back onto our list. With the A Story About Love proving as hard to get hold off as a greased up baboon, we decided now was a good time to put Aag back onto our list……

Aag is only the second Indian movie I have ever seen, the first being Sura, (2010), which also appeared on our list, (see review here). I actually liked Sura and ended that blog by saying if the opportunity arose, I would try to watch another film from India. But the issue I had with Sura is the length of the movie, which my concentration and bladder struggled to cope with. I was a bit annoyed because the story could have been told in 30mins and I felt like my time was being wasted.

So how would Aag compare to my first experience of Indian cinema? It was time to find out…..

Smug bastard Heerendra (Heero) Dhaan, (Ajay Devgan) and Silas from Heroes lookalike winner Raj Ranade, (Prashant Raj Sachdev) are former bodyguards who are forced to find alternative employment, when their politician employee is jailed for claiming expenses for a duck castle, (I may have made some of that up!).

They hook up with a man with an unbelievably high pitched voice called Rambhabhai, (Rajpal Yadav), who manages to get them work with local gangster, Shambhu. Things don’t get off to a great start when they are arrested by Inspector Narsimha, (Mohan Lal), almost immediately and are asked to betray their new boss and to help Narismha arrest him.

As men who do not let their friends down and with a new sense of loyalty to Shambhu, they do the right thing and promptly stitch Shambhu up like a kipper. Narsimha returns the favour by arresting Heero and Raj and the pair end up in jail!

Karma promptly bites the Inspector on the butt as evil sod, Babban Singh, (Amitabh Bachchan), kills his wife, and son, Subbu, (J.D. Chakravarthi) and then makes it tricky for him to play the piano again by cutting his hand off. Narismha is a bit miffed by all this and when Heero and Raj are released, he asks them once again for a favour and to hunt down and kill Babban.

Having memories like goldfish, Heero and Raj inexplicably agree to help!

They base themselves in a town called Kaliganj and begin the fight with Babban. In fact they manage to capture him and throw him in the slammer within the blink of an eye. Was that the end of the movie?, I hear you ask? Unfortunately no as some crocked cops help him to escape and we have to endure another 2 hours.

Babban seeks his revenge by kidnapping Heero’s love interest, Ghungroo, (Priyanka Kothari) and threatening to kill the townsfolk unless they give up Heero and Raj.

Will the good citizens of Kaliganj rat on Heero and Raj? Can they save Ghungroo? Can someone please nudge me to make sure I’m still awake?

Seriously, it took a lot of caffeine and will power to get through this one!

Aag is based on the movie Sholay, (1975), which unfortunately I have not seen, (and clocking in at 4 hours, it’s unlikely I’ll ever see!). Judging by the plotline of Sholay which I read online, Aag is not just based on Sholay, it is a carbon copy and actually Varma was fined $15k for essentially stealing the movie idea, replicating the storyline and then spitting on the original.

However, Varma forgot to steal any action, excitement or drama from Sholay, (judging by the reviews, Sholay is a cracking movie, Aag is not). What we ended up with was an incredibly dull overly long movie. So what went wrong?

Well let’s start with the positives. There is a fantastic display of moustaches on offer. All shapes and sizes are available, nice thick busy ones, thin but effective ones and my personal favourite, full on ginger mutton chops with a peak cap combo. Very nice indeed!

And that is the only good thing I have to say about this movie.

The main problem with this movie is that the 2 main characters, Heero and Raj, are not likeable in any way shape or form. The reason why I managed to get through Sura is because he is actually a nice character who you warm to and who you want to win in the end. Heero and Raj are just arrogant, grumpy and dull and have no appeal whatsoever.

Heero’s attempts to woo Ghungroo is a good example of his brashness. It starts off by him telling Ghungroo, (who is a Rickshaw driver), that women shouldn’t be allowed to drive Rickshaw’s and that it’s a man’s job, (Emmeline Pankhurst, he is not). At a festival party he reverts to calling her names and wishing he could kill her to try to win her heart. But most disturbing is when he is teaching her to fire a gun, in which he grabs her whilst she’s aiming, pulls himself onto her, rubs himself on her like a dog on heat and proceeds to try to lick and bite her neck off.

At best, he looks like a clumsy out of date character, at worse it could come across as assault.

Raj seems to serve no other purpose that to grind 2 metal balls together throughout the movie, (judging by the high voice, I suspect they were Rambhabhai’s) and looking as if someone has just farted in his soup.

Babban is also a dull character. He is supposed to be this feared ganglord who murders, threatens and intimidates, but just walks around looking like he needs a shave and has worn too much eye liner. His main form of intimidation seems to be breathing out sharply to which his ‘victims’ just look a bit disgusted, rather than frightened.

Feared ganglord? Babban is more like a tramp with halitosis.

The songs in this movie ire me, and it’s not because I hate musicals. In Sura, the songs kind of kept the plot going and were usually about Sura and what a great guy he was. They were quite entertaining, however in Aag, they just seem to be about how smug and arrogant Heero and Raj are, (we can see that, we don’t need a song) and just seem to be used for filler.

And that’s the overall problem, there is an awful lot of filler in this movie and at 3 hours long, it could have so easily have been told in 30mins.

This is similar to my experience with Sura, but Sura had a charm to it that made me forgive it’s lengthy storytelling. Aag does not have this and you really notice the 3 hours creeping by, like a lengthy root canal whilst watching Birds of a Feather.

So how was my second experience with Indian cinema? Unfortunately nowhere near as good as my first!

The novelty had worn off, I knew the format and so the story had to be interesting; it wasn’t. The characters had to be endearing; they weren’t. It had to draw me in; it didn’t.

If you do find yourself with 4 hours spare, then check out Sholay instead as judging by the general consensus in the reviews, this is a good movie. Do not be tempted to save yourself an hour and attempt to watch this pale imitation, you will be disappointed.

#27 Zodiac Killer (Wes)

Zodiac Killer

Bad movie time again and this week it was a serial killer movie inspired by the serial killer who stalked LA in the 1970s, but was never apprehended. Like many horror movie fans I’ve read a lot of books on serial killers, and watched as many documentaries and movies about them as I can find. So having a serial killer movie this low down on our list came as a surprise. Then I saw that this movie was directed by Ulli Lommel and suddenly I started looking through my Facebook invites to see if Hannibal Lecter had invited me to dinner so I could get out of bad movie night. Unfortunately for me he hadn’t.

Michael Cosnick (Vladimir Maksic) works in an old peoples home, where he overhears a man plotting to kill his grandmother. Incensed by his callousness, Michael kills the man, which sets him on the path of becoming a serial killer. When the papers compare him to the original Zodiac Killer, Michael takes this as inspiration to become a copycat murderer. Will the police catch up with him? Will he actually research the murders he’s supposed to be copying and commit anything like them? Have I finally found a worse serial killer movie than Ice Cream Man?

Some directors have such long lasting careers that they just completely defy all logic. Ulli Lommel is one such director. Not to say that everything he’s ever done has been bad, I actually like some of his earlier movies. The Tenderness of Wolves (based on the German serial killer Fritz Haarman) and The Boogeyman are both decent movies, but his later output really is terrible. He’s like the Steve Martin of directors.

Lommel’s direction isn’t only sloppy, but it’s desperate as well. Since the budget clearly didn’t extend to hiring a decent make up artist, Lommel instead inserts various autopsy photos into the movie in a bid to shock. If anything these photos remind you how horrific some peoples crimes are, and how bad this movie is at portraying anything like them.

Because of the use of the Zodiac Killer’s crimes as the plot, it’s hard not to compare this movie with David Fincher’s Zodiac. Aside from the obvious differences in budget and quality of actors, Fincher’s movie shows how a good director can take an already fascinating story and base a movie around it. It was extremely well researched and beautifully shot, and at no point did it feature a bunch of mysterious men wearing black hoods without eyeholes cut into them, which is way more than Zodiac Killer can say for itself.

The other movie I found myself comparing this to was the remake/sequel of The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Both movies are based on copycats of real life serial killers that were never caught (The Town That Dreaded Sundown was based on the killings by the murderer known as The Phantom Killer in Texarkana in 1946). However The Town That Dreaded Sundown is a perfectly watchable movie for a reimagining (even though it essentially tells the same story with the same murders, including the infamous trombone scene, it is the story of a copycat murderer inspired by the film of the original murders). Its reveal as to who is committing the latest murders doesn’t seem ridiculously unrealistic, and The Phantom Killer actually has eyeholes cut into his mask, which is way more than the stupid bunch of mysterious hooded men in Zodiac Killer can say for themselves.

Those mysterious men really do help sum up why Zodiac Killer is such a ridiculous movie. I think they're meant to be a secret organisation of powerful men who meet up and boast about their latest murders (well they say who they killed), and then decide whether or not a killer can operate in their area. They seemingly meet in a church, say amen at the end of their meetings, name themselves after signs of the zodiac and apparently respect law and order. I don’t think even Lommel knew their purpose in the movie. I think he just bought a job lot of (eyehole-less) black hooded masks cheaply on eBay and needed to find a reason to use them. But as menacing secret society’s go, they’re less The Court of Owls and more Caught by the Short and Curlies.

We’ve now reached the point where the movies we’re watching are sub-porn movie level acting, but this film brings us to a new low. It’s like watching members of the general public, with absolutely no acting experience ever, trying to act out a scene in cheap daytime TV show about giving a house a makeover, or maybe something about buying and selling collectables. I think the only movie I’ve seen with worse acting is the slasher movie made behind the scenes at the Vans Warped Tour in 2003, Punk Rock Holocaust. It makes me worry, that as we still have so many movies left, we will soon surpass that level and I know we have a couple more Paris Hilton movies on our list, so I think I know when that come to pass.

Watching Zodiac Killer, it’s clear that when it comes to making a decent movie Ulli Lommel is stuck up Wolf Creek without a paddle. Using a Zodiac Killer copycat, who doesn’t actually copy any of the original killers crimes is one of the most incompetent, and cynical moves to cash in on the murders of real life people that I’ve ever heard of. A dreadful movie that in the spirit of the Zodiac I shall sum up with my horoscope for the day:

Gemini

A lunar tie with the nebulous energies of Neptune means that tonight you will be forced to sit through a movie so bad that you could pull a better film from Uranus without even trying. Avoid men in eyeless black masks and care home workers. Your lucky numbers aren’t going to get you out of this one.

#27 Ulli Lommel's Zodiac Killer(2005) (Colin)

Starring: Vladimir Maksic, Ulli Lommel, Todd Jensen, Peter Beckman

Directed by: Ulli Lommel

Genre: Crime

The next movie on our list is Zodiac Killer (2005) and is directed by a man called Ulli Lommel who will because very familiar as he has 3 movies in total on our list!  I do not know much about him other than he directed a movie in 1980 called The Boogeyman, which I have not seen, but I believe was rather good and has a bit of a cult following.

Sounds like a promising start then and the added bonus is that Lommel has had a further 25 years to hone in his craft.  Top stuff.  The 3 movies on our list, must just be a silly oversight.  Or was it?

Just as a bit of background, The Zodiac Killer was a real life serial killer in the US around the 1960's and 1970's.  He was never caught and his identity was never known. This movie has absolutely nothing to do with this....well sort of....

The movie starts of with the most pretentious piece of nonsense I have ever witnessed.  A disclaimer informing us that 'being killed is neither fun, pretty or romantic...'.  I mean, no shit!  Well thanks for clearing that one up Lommel.  He then goes on to inform us ducks like water, the Pope is catholic and that bears do their number 2s in wooded areas.  Prat!

Anyhoo, we jump straight to the 'action' as Michael Cosnick, (Vladimir Maksic), who works in a nursing home, overhears a plot to murder one of the residents.  He decides this is not on and tracks down the would be assassin to his house and shoots him dead.

In the morning Michael wakes to hear of news of his killing and that the police are liking it to the Zodiac serial killer, (really?  After one murder?).  The news announcer goes on to say if you wish to know more about the Zodiac Killer, then to read a book by Simon Vale, (Ulli Lommel).  Cosnick promptly goes out in search of the book.

Upon reading the book, he reaches out to Vale and after exchanging a few emails, Cosnick discovers he has the same personality disorder as the original Zodiac Killer, (DSM4).  Inspired, Cosnick decides to copy Zodiac and to kill again and again.

 Meanwhile, a mysterious group of serial killers meet in secret to discuss their latest murders.  Wearing black hoods to hide their identity, Cosnick's killings have caught their attention.  They all agree that there is nothing more wretched than a copycat serial killer and something needs to be done.

Will Cosnick's killing spree be allowed to continue?  Will we learn the true identity of The Zodiac Killer?  Will Lommel hire any actors to take part in this movie?  Watch Ulli Lommel's Zodiac Killer to find out, (but really, don't.  I beg you, it's absolute hog wash!).

A movie about a serial killer which includes some pretty gruesome photos of actual killings, should be exciting, tense, edge of your seat stuff.  This movie is none of those things.  It's as dull as beige and plods along at such a slow pace that I honestly thought I was looking at a photo rather than a movie.  The 1hr 23mins run time feels like so much more and if you feel that life is passing by too fast, then just watch this movie ad nauseam.  You'll be begging for a decent serial killer to show up and give you mercy.

There's no real story here apart from bloke kills some people.  The killings themselves are not really shown which means there is no real shock factor or wow moments.  I'm not for violence or gore just for the sake of it, but hell, this is supposed to be about a serial killer and watching bad actors chomping down on blood packs and wearing raspberry coulis hardly heightens the atmosphere.  The scariest part of this movie is actually Maksic's hair cut.  But hey it's nice of his mum to do his hair and it's lucky they have a bowl that fits his stupid head.

The acting from everyone is stupendously bad, I mean really truly awful bad.  Think of amateur dramatic actors.  Now think of their understudies.  Now imagine those understudies practising their lines by asking their partners or friends to read the script with them.  Those partners and friends, who very reluctantly read out the lines with no emotion and just want to get it over with as quickly as possible, are a million times better than the absolute dog mess of a cast which Lommel has used.

Then there is the filming itself.  It appears to have been shot from a camera phone which has been dropped down the bog and then peed on.  It's incredibly poor quality and jerky as if Lommel's camera guys were trampolining or on board a ship at the time of filming.

But above all else, it's stupid.  It thinks it's a really clever movie full of arty pieces and profound speeches, but it's not, it's bollocks.  Michael's monologues are supposed to be insightful but I've heard more intelligent speeches from The Speaking Clock.  The hooded figures are meant to give the movie a sense of mystery, but it doesn't, it just looks like a bunch of idiots who have forgotten to cut out the eye holes out of their masks.  The twist isn't clever either and I called it right at the beginning.  Heck there are as of yet, unidentified alien species on distant planets who have sussed it straight away.

A dull script, poorly acted and just plain stupid, this movie is one to avoid.  It's nowhere near the it's so bad it's good bracket, heck it's not even in the same time zone.  This is definitely one movie where our tagline, 'we watch bad movies, so you don't have to', should be heeded.  We watched it guys, we took one for the team, never ever even consider watching this steaming pile of rhubarb fertilizer.

2 years after Zodiac Killer, Lommel would go on to make another movie about the Zodiac Killer called Curse of the Zodiac.  Did he manage to learn his lessons from the absolute crapfest he offered before?  Well judging by the 1.3 IMDb score, (Zodiac Killer gets a 2.8!), absolutely not and I think it's safe to say I would rather smash my face in with an iron and then clean the bloodied mess with a brillo pad than watch another Lommel movie.

What's that?  There's still 2 more of his movies on our list?  Oh FFS * sits in corner and slowly rocks *

#28 Zaat (Wes)

Zaat

After the craptacular Turks in Space (see here) I needed something entertaining to watch on this list, but with a name like Zaat, I didn’t have the slightest clue what to expect. Searching for this movie soon gave me some clues for what to expect though, and seeing a monster on the movie poster filled me with a deep joy. This far into our list, I wasn’t expecting something great like The Toxic Avenger, but at this point any movie featuring a man in a rubber suit looks like a ray of sunlight. So with that in mind I went into this movie with high hopes. So would I be disappointed, or would I be adapting the lyrics to The Automatic’s Monster and singing “What’s Zaat coming over the hill, is it a monster? Is it a monster?” all night afterwards?

Mad scientist Dr. Kurt Leopold (Marshall Grauer) has been brooding over his former (and sane) scientist colleagues laughing at him and denying his requests for human subjects for a formula he’d invented called Z_aA_t. This formula has the ability to mutate a human into that of a walking catfish. When he uses the formula on himself, he mutates into a monster, and plots his revenge against those he feels wronged him. He poisons the local water supply and kills the two scientists who stood in the way of his insane plans. Marine Biologist Rex Baker (Gerald Cruse) along with two INPIT agents (Sanna Ringhaver and Dave Dickerson) assist sheriff Lou Krantz (Paul Galloway) in trying to track down the cause of these nefarious occurrences. Will they be able to stop the monster before he makes himself a bride? Will the monster find the drugs he needs in the pharmacist? Why won’t the monster kill the hippies playing the rubbish folk song?  What sort of movie could make me ask such ridiculous questions?

As mad scientists go, Dr. Leopold may not quite have the genius of Dr. Farnsworth, the vision of Dr Frankenstein, or the sheer evilness of Dr. Forrester (If you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you must have watched some MST3K by now, if not (or if you’re a first time reader) then I recommend you check some out), but was probably mistaken for the janitor much more often than any of those, so that’s something.

His opening monologue praising various sea creatures like a paranoid schizophrenic Jacques Costeau, doesn’t quite show how insane he actually is, but he does fit highly amongst the most batshit of the mad scientists, To see the level of his madness you just need to look at his plans. These take the form of a bizarre hand drawn zodiac wheel stuck to the wall of his laboratory, which looks like a junior school project. Throughout the film he sticks first photo’s of his two intended victims onto it, and then later hand drawn sketches of women that he wants to turn into monsters like him. Looking at that you can see that Dr. Leopold is more unhinged than a broken door.

Looking even closer at his plans shows a man who should be bouncing off the walls of his cell like a human squash ball, rather than messing around with chemicals and harassing innocent octopuses. He mutates himself into a monster to kill just two people. Two. If he was really that desperate for revenge he could have just shot them or something, and then he wouldn’t have had to go to the trouble of kidnapping women to turn them into monsters like himself to find a bride. Instead he could have just got some new clothes, a decent haircut and gone dancing and tried talking to women. I hear that most women like that much more than being kidnapped and monsterfied.

Dr. Leopold isn’t the only person who seems to have lost the plot. Writer (also director and producer) Don Barton doesn’t seem to have understood that only having ten minutes worth of plot in a 100 minute film isn’t a good idea. Zaat is an extremely drawn out film. It could have easily been half an hour shorter and you wouldn’t have lost a single thing (except 70 minutes of your life). The pace really is quite clunky and the amount of pointless scenes is astounding, however even at a faster pace and without scenes of the monster making a quick trip to Boots or a ten-minute hippy interlude this would still have been a terrible movie.

The killings, which you’d normally expect to be amongst the more entertaining of scenes, are cut with stock footage of sea creatures, and are strangely brief. They’re also completely laughable. At one point one innocent victim of the monster gets killed by it barely swiping her sweater. The sheriff confronting the monster isn’t much better either, with him obviously failing his firearm exams when joining the police as he seems to think a gun should be used as a club, rather than used to fire bullets.

The movie also isn’t helped by so much of the screen time being occupied by a monster that looks like a cross between an ape, a fly and the Swamp Thing. How this is supposed to be a mutated walking catfish, only Don Barton would be able to tell you. I read online that the mouth of the monster was designed as it was (like a fly’s proboscis) as it was originally going to suck the blood from its victims, well they got one thing right, this monster really did suck. The costume itself looks like it was found in the bins behind the Doctor Who sets of the 60’s and the only thing in its favour, is that it doesn’t look too bad in the underwater scenes (which are probably the most professional looking thing in this whole movie).

Despite it’s length and ridiculous amount of filler, I actually enjoyed Zaat. I think a lot of it was down to how much fun it was to mock on Twitter (follow us here and here). It’s a bad movie, that’s got so much wrong with it, but somehow it adds up to be a strangely charming movie. It could have easily been made a couple of decades earlier, and for a while I thought it was. However by the 70s movies and costumes really should have improved even on low budgets, which makes this movie less Creature From the Black Lagoon and more Creature From the Broken Latrine…