#73a The Horror of Party Beach (1964) (Colin)

Our next movie is Danes Without a Clue (1997), or rather it isn't.  You see we have come across our first movie which we have been unable to get hold off.  It is not on DVD, (certainly not in the UK) or online and according to Wikipedia was only ever watched by 756 paying customers!

Danes Without A Clue stars 2 Danish comedians, Timm Vladimir and Gordon Kennedy and is regarded as the worst Danish film ever made, (although I am hard pushed to name another Danish film!).  It follows the 2 on tour telling awful jokes and singing terrible songs, (A kind of Nordic Underground Comedy Movie).  Even Vladimir and Kennedy have admitted it is awful and have pretty much decided not to mass release it.  For that I say thank you to them both.

So we had a dilemma about what to do now.  It was important that we did not miss any movies off the list, but this has become unavoidable as this film is not actually available!  When I made the list, I did have around 125 movies which I trimmed down to 100 based on IMDb scores.  This meant that in the background I have a list of about 25 movies doing nothing and minding their own business.  This gave us an idea.  In the now quite likely event that we can not get hold of a bad movie on our original list, we can sub it for a movie from the list of 25 films that did not originally make the list.  Perfect!

But that was too easy, there had to be a punishment for not being able to watch a movie on the list and for having to substitute it for another movie.  We decided the most suitable punishment was to swap the movie we could not find with not 1 but 2 bad movies from the 'subs bench' list of 25.

Our first from the subs bench is a 1960's Sci-Fi B movie, which to me is fantastic news and so I added my 2 new Dane friends to my Christmas card list, (they were subsequently removed when I discovered what the 2nd movie was, but more about that in my next blog).  Regular readers will know I do like a bad Sci-Fi B movie.  I love the wobbly sets, the campness and the aliens which are quite clearly just a bloke with a gorilla suit on and a goldfish bowl for a helmet.

And so it was with some relief and a feeling of optimism that I started to watch a movie, which I hoped would join Plan 9 and Robot Monster as one of my favourites.

Unfortunately, it did not work out that way.......

#73a The Horror of Party Beach (1964)

The Horror of Party Beach is a Sci-Fi B movie based on the beach party movies of the 60s.  Trying to be very much of the time, it fused pop surf music with 50s style monster movies.  The movie features a band called The Del-Aires, who are actually really good and an atomic monster, who is actually really bad.

We begin with the hero of our movie, Hank Green, (John Scott), taking his girlfriend, Tina, (Marilyn Clarke) to the beach.  Tina is a fun time girl and is knocking back copious amounts of booze and is ready to pahrtay!  Hank also used to be fun, but it appears that he would rather stay at home and alphabetise his vitamin collection as he scolds Tina for being a bit of a laugh.  To get away from her whiny fella, Tina runs off down the beach to a party which is in full flow with garage surf music and silly dancing.

Meanwhile, some men are dumping radioactive waste from a boat just off the coast of where the mad party is going on.  The barrels they dump sink to the bottom and because they were sealed with Pritt Stick and chewing gum, break open and release their black goo.  The radioactive treacle lands on some human skulls on the sea bed and a reaction occurs.  The skulls form into horrifying atomic monsters, hideous, ugly and grotesque in appearance, they are a bit like Piers Morgan, only with more personality.

Back at the party and Tina's flirting with the leader of a motorcycle gang, (Mike, played by Agustin Mayor, which sounds a bit like a council official with wind).  This does not go down to well with Hank and fisty cuffs break out as he tries to prove to Tina he is still fun and a bit butch.  Unfortunately his fight with Mike is so camp it makes the WWE look like all in bare knuckle cage fighting.

Jolly well miffed, Hank decides to leave and Tina decides to go for a swim.  Whilst sunning herself on some rocks out to sea, she runs into the atomic monster and quickly becomes the first victim.

Hank is gutted, if there was any killing of Tina to do, he was the one to do it, presumably by nagging her to death.  He soon gets over it though and begins flirting with Elaine Gavin, (Alice Lyon).  Elaine decides to cancel attending a slumber party that evening as she is worried about Hank and what has caused Tina's change of status on FB from 'living' to 'dead'. 

The slumber party goes ahead and a good time is had by all.  That is until the atomic monster turns up and promptly kills the 20 or so slumberettes!  It's fair to say this rather takes the mood out of the party and the celebrations come to an abrupt end.

The monster's numbers grow and next they kill 3 women who were having a changing a flat tyre by the side of the road party.  As their numbers grow, however, their intelligence seems to shrink as their next victims are shop mannequins.  Not only are they thick enough to mistake these for humans, they are so forgetful that they leave one of their arms behind after slicing it off on the broken shop window.

Hank takes this arm to Elaine's dad, Dr Gavin, (Allan Laurel), who is a consultant on all sciencey stuff for the police and has been trying to find a way to destroy the monsters.  Dr Gavin is an intelligent man and speaks a lot of scientific sounding words throughout the movie and wears a very nice crisp white coat.  None of them make sense and the various explanations of the existence of these atomic monsters seems to change in each scene.  No-one seems to notice and they regard him as a genius, after all he is wearing a white coat.  Dr Gavin goes on the Eddie Izzard principal that people pay attention to 70% of how you look, 20% how you sound but only 10% to what you say.

The answer on how to destroy the monsters is not resolved by Dr Gavin, but by his very stereotypical black housekeeper, Eulabelle.  Eulabelle accidentally knocks over a beaker of sodium and the arm bursts into flames and is destroyed.  Hank then proceeds to buy every ounce of sodium in a 100 miles radius of New York City.

With the knowledge of how to kill them in hand, the team set about trying to locate all of the monsters.  Elaine is the unlucky one to find them and is attacked, fortunately Dr Gavin and Hank, who by now has a dustbin full of sodium, arrive in time.  They fling the sodium and the monsters explode in a nice firey mess.

The film ends with Elaine and Hank sharing a kiss as The Del-Aires play us out.  Tina is by now a very distant memory.

I have to admit, I am not sure if I love this movie or if it was disappointing.  I have seen a lot of bad Sci-Fi lately and maybe this just came at the wrong time and I am suffering from bad Sci-Fi overload, (which is impossible, so it must be the movie!).

The acting in the movie is bad, by no means is it Madonna bad, but it's borderline.  And that is a problem, because the acting in say, Plan 9, is truly awful but entertaining.  Tor Johnson's mumbling nonsense, for example, is brilliant to watch and the cops scratching their heads with their guns and knocking over polystyrene graves is hilarious.  In Horror Beach, however, the actors in this are just lifeless, dull and uninteresting.

The actors are not completely to blame though as the characters they are given are one-dimensional, stereotypical and there is not a character in this movie that I warmed to or was even remotely interested in.  Hank comes across as an arrogant, boring ex-jock who has all the charm of a cheese sandwich.  He is stereotypically male from a certain era and you do expect him to say to all the ladies, 'don't worry your pretty little head about it'.  The ladies would not be offended however, but only because not one of them has been given a brain cell by the writers.  Even Elaine, who is supposed to be very smart, just goes all gooey eyed in the presence of Hank and unable to comprehend what her father is saying, (although to be fair, no one understands what he is bloody saying).

In a movie set in the swinging 60's with feminism, anti-racism and a wave of liberal attitudes emerging, this film is very much stuck in the past.  Even though this was made in 1964, I can imagine at the time that it would have felt very outdated and stereotypical and that the surf pop sound was just shoe horned into it so that the movie appeared to be 'down with the kids'.

Eulabelle's character is by far the worst.  Having a black servant in your picture, probably wasn't the best idea, but to then make her speak slowly and appear backward is just ill judged.  Having Eulabelle carping on about voodoo and the like throughout the movie, is just plain insulting.  Even the writers of 'Mind Your Language' or 'Soul Plane' probably couldn't believe what the director, Del Tenney, was trying to do here.

The monster itself is awful.  This is a good thing and makes me like the movie a bit more because a 'good' bad B movie, should have a daft looking monster.  Trying to explain what it looks like is tricky and indeed the movie itself does not know what to call it.  Monster, Sea Creature, Atomic monster and even Zombie were used to describe it in the movie and various posters for the movie.

To me, the monster is like Jar Jar Binks with the Cookie Monster's eyeballs.  Or the costume which Hannibal Smith wears in the opening credits to the A Team, (please see below).  My friend actually thinks he looks like Arsenal mascot, Gunnersaurus, (please see below) and you know what, I think he may have nailed it!

Either way the monster is crap, and in no way scary whatsoever.

The best thing about this movie by a country mile, is the soundtrack.  I really do like The Del-Aires music and one song in particular, 'Zombie Stomp', is incredibly good.  I was humming this song for days.  This creates a problem for the movie in that I would rather have watched The Del-Aires for 90 minutes than the piece of crap Tenney dished out.

So did The Horror of Party Beach join my growing list of B movie films which I really love?  Well the problem is I don't know, I want to love it but it just doesn't hit the mark for me.  It misses the charm and warmth of the Plan 9 or Robot Monster movies, it's bad, but not funny bad.  It never really catches me and apart from the music there is nothing I would want to visit again.

But I know I should like it as the ingredients are there, crap monsters, awful acting, no storyline.  The problem is, you can have all of the ingredients but if you don't know how to put it all together you could end up with a 'soggy bottom'.  The stale characters, the fact half of the movie seems to have been shot in pitch black, (it may just be my copy, but for much of the movie I could not make out a damn thing on screen) and the lack of any warmth or entertainment make this movie truly hard to like.

In trying to make a hip version of a typical B Movie, Tenney unfortunately was without a clue.  Still, it could have been worse, it could have been Danes Without A Clue.

#74 Troll 2 (1990) (Colin)

We have been doing this blog for over 10 months now and the most common question I get asked is 'Why on Earth are you doing a bad movie blog?'.  I must admit 60 minutes into a movie with John Wayne trying to be Genghis Khan and I do ask myself the same question.

I have mentioned in other blogs the reasons, so apologies if I am repeating myself, but essentially it would have been all too easy to have done a blog about the top 100 movies.  You know any list you make would involve Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Star Wars etc and I would have ended up watching a bunch of movies I have already seen, that I know I like and would offer nothing new to me.

A bad movie list, in theory, should contain films I have never seen or wanted to see and offer something new to me.  I also thought it would be more interesting and good fun taking the piss out of bad films on Twitter and through our blogs, than to keep going on about how great a film was, how wonderful the plot is and the fantastic cinematography.  I can only praise how good a movie is so many times before it becomes repetitive, whereas because I am a cynical person, I have a million ways  to 'slag something off'.

However that has not always happened.  For our #80 film, Inchon, I stared at the computer screen for about an hour and I had absolutely nothing to say about it.  I was going to cut and paste the word 'shit' 1,000 times, which would have been quite dull, but far more exciting than watching the movie itself.  In fact the blank screen staring for 60 minutes was far more entertaining.

For every 4 or 5 Inchons though, we have come across some bad movie gold so far.  The fabulous Ed Wood's transvestite 'information' film, 'Glen or Glenda' or his low budget, camp, sci-fi classic, 'Plan 9 From Outer Space' or Tommy Wiseau's mumbling nonsensical classic 'The Room', (Oh hai!), are all brilliant movies and are my favourites so far.  These movies fall into that 'so bad, it's good' category' and are the type of movie that I hoped this list would unearth.  Yes, we had to watch a lot of crap to get there, but boy, was it worth it!

Our next movie was pointed out to me by Wes near the beginning of our bad movie journey as a film which very firmly fitted into that category.  In fact I think he said something like, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, that film is awful, it is bloody brilliant.  You MUST watch it!'.  A ringing endorsement indeed and if you haven't read his blog on this movie yet, then please do as it is brilliant and you do get the feeling he sort of likes the film :)

You see Wes knows that I like the 'so bad it's good' movie and Troll 2, the next movie on our list, fits the bill.  In fact it is part of a documentary called, 'Best Worst Movie Ever' and is considered to be just that by a very large following of fans.  I have to admit, I had not heard of it, which was a good thing, because this means the bad movie list is working.

So is Troll 2 really the 'Best Worst Movie Ever'?

#74 Troll 2

Troll 2 centres on a young lad called Joshua Waits, (played by Michael Stephenson) who is warned by his dead grandfather, Seth, (Robert Ormsby) about nasty little creatures who turn humans into vegetation, (a bit like Glee does) and eats them. Seth appears to Joshua like the ghost of Orson Wells Christmas past. In case you're wondering it's not Citizen Kane Wells but wine advertising Wells.

Joshua's family go on vacation to a small town called Nilbog. The family consists of dad Michael, (George Hardy), mum Diane, (Margo Pret) and big sister Holly, (Connie Young). Holly's boyfriend, Eliot, (Jason Wright) also follows them to Nilbog in a camper van with his pals, Arnold, (Darren Ewing), Drew, (Jason Steadman) and Brent, (David McConnell).

Along the way, Joshua sees a hitchhiker who Seth possesses to warn Joshua that Nilbog is in actual fact a town filled to the brim with those nasty vegetarian Goblins. This leads us into the first thing you'll notice about Troll 2 in that it contains absolutely no trolls whatsoever, none, nada, not a blinking sausage. The eagle eyed amongst you may have already spotted that the town of Nilbog is in actual fact Goblin spelt backwards. Presumably the lack of trolls explains why the town is not called Llort. Also if it was called Llort then the entire filming would have had to be moved to Wales, so logistically not practical either. Mlifparc was also rejected.

The Waits arrive at Nilbog and meet the family with whom they are going to house swap with for their vacation.  On entering the house they find a feast of yummy food all laid out for them as a 'welcome' present from their fellow house swapees.  The fact the food is covered with a green toothpaste like substance that resembles the colour of Puff the Magic Dragon's snot, does not seem to put them off and the Waits sit down to eat. 

Seth appears again, freezes time and warns Joshua that the food they are about to eat will turn them into vegetation which the Goblins will then eat.  He warns Joshua to find a way to stop them eating the food.  This leads to the funniest part of the movie as Joshua comes up with a very unique way to stop the family from eating the food.  It probably gives it away, so I'll put *spoiler alert* here, but this does lead to my favourite line from the movie as Michael scolds Joshua for spoiling the dinner they were about to enjoy and shouts, 'you can't piss on hospitality'.  Classic line!

Meanwhile, Arnold tries to help a woman called Cindy, who is being chased through the woods by Goblins.  They seek shelter in a chapel and meet the baddie of the movie, Creedence Leonore Gielgud, (Debroah Reed).  Creedence is a gothic cackling witch pantomime baddie, who, we are told, has come from Stonehenge. We could have guessed she was of British decent due to the state of her teeth. (I just thought I'd do that gag before our US readers beat me to it!).  Creedence is the Goblin Queen and uses magical whatsits to control the Goblins.  She displays her power by promptly giving Cindy a refreshing drink which turns her to green slime which the Goblins then yum right up. Arnold's quick mind realises something may be afoot here but it's too late as Creedence turns Arnold into a half man half tree combo.  Unfortunately his acting was so wooden from the start, you probably wouldn't notice.

In the morning, Michael and Joshua go to the store to purchase some non urine soaked food.  Joshua goes wandering and finds a church in which the locals are attending a sermon.  The locals are in fact Goblins too in human disguises and when they spot Joshua are none to pleased at his sneaking around and decide to force feed him some nice turns you into green slime ice cream.  Fortunately Michael finds Joshua in time, the preacher convinces everyone it was all a silly misunderstanding and by the time Michael and Joshua return home, the town has taken a quick short cut ahead of them and has laid on a lovely feast.  All food is topped with some more of the contents of a used tissue from Jurassic Park.

Joshua is having none of this malarkey and so runs off to find his dead grandpa, finds him, grandpa throws a lightening bolt at the preacher, (Har Nu Ken!), and the preacher, now dead, turns back into a Goblin.  Finally this convinces the Waits that they are indeed in great danger and they lock themselves in the house.

Meanwhile, Creedence turns herself into a saucy minx and sets about seducing Brent.  For some reason she brings some corn on the cob with her and I must admit my eyes did start to water as I let my imagination run wild.  Fortunately the worst that happens is that whilst Brent and Creedence get all steamy, the corn on the cob turns into pop corn!  I will admit, Creedence is looking mighty fine in this scene and I suspect many a lad popped his corn in the cinema during this part of the movie.

Back at Creedence's chapel, Joshua and Seth set about trying to destroy Creedence and her Goblins and do so in the most boring way possible.  Eating a bologna sandwich and touching a stone.  (The meat eaten by Joshua makes him unappealing as a veggie dish and the touching of the stone, does some sort of magic thingy.  Stop me if this is too technical).  Creedence and the Goblins are no match for processed meat and stone touching and are destroyed.

The world is saved from veggies once more and the Waits head on home.  Joshua's mum celebrates by eating a nice juicy apple, turns into green sludge and is eaten by more Goblins.  Joshua screams 'Stop eating my mommy' and I wet myself laughing.  And so ends one of the worst movies I have ever seen.  And I absolutely loved it!

Yes Wes got it totally right and this movie was right up my, (corn on the cob free), alley.  The acting is terrible, the Goblins look like a bunch of Ewoks going to a austerity Halloween party and the script feels like it was written in crayon.  The fact Troll 2 contains no trolls either is the icing on a 'how to make a movie so bad it becomes good' cake and sets the film up for ridicule from the off.

The blame for this awful film lies in 2 camps, the studio and the director, Claudio Fragasso.

The studio is to blame for the fact that Troll 2 has no trolls as they changed the title of the film.  The movie was originally called Goblins, which makes complete sense, but the studio decided to tie Goblins in with a movie released a few years earlier called Troll.  Fans from the Troll film will then watch Troll 2, they concluded before disappearing up their own backsides.  They were right, Troll fans watched and then wandered out of the movie theatre 10 minutes later once they realised it has sod all to do with Troll.  On the basis of this studios idiocy, I will call my next movie Star Wars: Episode 7.  It has jack all to do with Star Wars but what the hey, (it can't be any worse than Star Wars: Episode 1).

But it is Fragrasso who has to take nearly all of the blame for this fiasco as every other thing which is wrong with the movie, comes back to him.

Let's start with the acting and believe me this will not take long as there is no real acting to talk about.  With the exception of Deborah Reed who is fantastically over the top as baddie Credence and Michael Stephenson who despite being the youngest, gives the most mature performance, the rest of cast feel like they have just turned up on the day and got thrown into the movie.  This is because that is exactly what happened!

George Hardy, (Joshua's dad), for example, was a dentist and turned up expecting to be an extra in the movie!  He is then given one of the largest speaking parts in the movie!  I feel sorry for Hardy as he delivers the lines as if he is reading them for the first time, (he was) and like he is stumbling from scene to scene not knowing what is going on, (he didn't).  Fragasso has obviously not been to the dentist for a while because he would have known that they are simply awful actors.  I can not remember the last time a dentist was a good enough actor to convince me that, 'this isn't going to hurt'.

I don't mean to pick on Hardy, the rest of the cast are just as bad.  Margo Pret, (Joshua's mum), for example, is far more scary than the Goblins for most of the movie.  She stares intently throughout the movie and must be followed by weeping angels as I don't think she ever blinks.  Her lines are also delivered as if she is reading out aloud from the back of a cereal box and she displays as much emotion as a teaspoon.

The poor delivery and performance are not the 'actors' fault, it is Fragasso's.  They did not audition for the roles but nevertheless Fragasso handed them out like flyers for a golf sale.  It reminds me of Guy Goma.  If you do not know who he is, Guy went to the BBC News Channel studios in 2006 to apply for a job but was mistaken for another chap called Guy and ended up being interviewed live on air about the Apple vs Apple court case, (If you would like to see this, here is the link, his face is a picture once he realises what is going on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYg2Z73_KfY. ) I have this vision of all members of the public stumbling onto set asking for directions to the next town but ending up being cast in the movie!

Fragasso spoke little or no English, but wrote the script.  He insisted that the actors stuck to the script and did not stray.  After all, what does a native English speaker know about the English language!  This explains why the cast speak as if reading for the first time and why some sentences don't make sense or are full of grammatical errors.  They don't speak proper like what we does.

The rest of the production team did not speak much English either and communication to the actors was difficult.  This is why in various scenes you will spot the cast members looking directly into or just behind the camera.  They are desperately trying to work out what the flapping arms signal Fragasso is giving actually means.

And then we come onto the Goblins themselves.  Wes and I have a running gag about the bad movies that we have seen so far, in that these bad movies seem to insist on showing clips from way better movies. In Myra Breckingridge, (to pick one at random), there are many clips of good movies, (Laurel and Hardy, for example) and all this does is remind you how bad the actual film you are watching is and how much you actually would rather watch the other film.  Troll 2 has many pictures of Goblins which are far better than the actual Goblins we have on offer.   This is not saying much as a picture of a pile of horse manure would look closer to a Goblin, but does highlight how truly awful the costumes are.

The masks appear to be from a 99p store which are fire damaged and have 99% off the marked price.  It is very obvious that they are masks and not some clever CGI trickery as you can quite clearly see the actors mouths and cheeks behind the mask.  When they do try some animatronics with the Goblins they are painfully slow, for instance, when they are 'talking' the sound is traveling much faster than the mouth and looks like some badly dubbed foreign movie.  It is so bad that it makes Jaws from Jaws The Revenge look like a James Cameron epic.

Thanks to Fragasso's poor casting, awful script and staggeringly bad Goblins, the whole movie feels very cheap.  It truly is a terrible film, but the day Fragasso released it, I hope he also bought a lottery ticket because he has been incredibly lucky and made a film so bad it's good.  Is it the best worst movie ever though?  For me it's in the top 3 definitely.

The recent popularity of Sharktopus, Pirahnaconda or Sharknado on SyFy has shown that there will always be a place for a truly bad movie in our hearts.  That's why Troll 2 quite rightly has a large fan base and why it will continue being some people's best worst movie.  For me, unfortunately, we have another 74 bad movies to watch, so for now I'll have to take a rain check on where this is on my final favourite bad movie list.  I will say though, that if you do get a chance to watch it or if someone offers you the DVD or invites you to a Troll 2 showing, take it, you will not be disappointed.  Also it would be rude not to, after all 'you can't piss on hospitlity'.