In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago (which takes place on the first Monday of every month). The idea behind the night is to screen cult classics, exploit movies, unintentional comedies and every other kind of film we collectively decide is so bad that it's actually good. In the ongoing search for the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' film I've decided to take on a weekly (or AT LEAST once-per-week) blog entry in which I'll review, summarize and rate bad movies of every variety imaginable. The goal is to reach somewhere in the range of 75-100 posts within a year, at which point I'll look for a place to publish a first volume of 'Bad Meaning Good' reviews in book form. Stay tuned...
Summary:
'Bloodz Vs. Wolvez' is an utterly joyless and astonishingly bad, direct-to-DVD feature released in 2006. It deals with two separate and centuries-old, supernatural gangs: the "Bloodz", a mobilized, high-society outfit of vampires and the "Wolvez", a bottom-feeding, fringe-society-dwelling outfit of werewolves. Taking more than a few pages out of 'The Wire' handbook, the movie seems to be trying to make some kind of statement about societal decay or class warfare or something like that... It's all incredibly unclear because there really is not one redeemable characteristic in this mess and at the end of the day, between the actors, production folks, and viewers alike (or really, ANYONE who even THINKS about 'Bloodz Vs. Wolvez' in any capacity at all), everybody is worse off for the experience.
The "action" is sparse and the pacing beyond labored. Most scenes were filmed in what appear to be empty, or at least minimally decorated apartments and retail spaces which paint a color spectrum of dull flesh tones, bland off-whites and light grays as a backdrop for the film's feverishly boring dialog and vaguely expository sequences. The film has all the visual flair of a Holiday Inn conference room.
Evidently, the battle between the two New York gangs has been waged over centuries of bloodshed and in an attempt to catalyze the growing, organizational strength of the Bloodz' various business enterprises, Bloodz leader Asiman opts to launch a ceasefire in a sort of bargain bin variation on the way Stringer Bell played diplomatic chess in 'The Wire'. What follows is a whole lot of back-stabbing from both sides of the ball game and a soap opera season's worth of trite melodrama, none of which offers anything warranting comment or revision. The script is full of a seemingly endless barrage of generic street-isms (I think the expression "Time is money." is uttered, without a hint of irony, no fewer than 6 or 7 times in the film) and the whole experience is so completely uninspired and lame that its admittedly slim 84 minute run-time more often than not felt torturous and downright sadistic.
Perhaps the film's worst offense though (in a very long list of them) is that no one involved seemed to be having any Goddamn fun. I mean, for fuck's sake people, you're making an extremely low-budget, straight-to-DVD movie about vampire and werewolf street gangs... Could we all just lighten up a little bit and not take this thing so seriously? Additionally, and as far as I'm concerned, it should be no mystery to anyone that if you as a director are unable to make even the most low-rent, girl-on-girl vampire action in ANY WAY hot or even remotely fun to watch, then that should be a sign that your film is a consummate, infernal failure from cinematic hell.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
Ugh. Not at all. Skip it people, I beg you. This one is not worth your time.
Oddly enough, there is one brief moment in the film that treads delicately close to the tipping point of becoming a fantastic comedic premise. It was a moment that required just the slightest amount of cool-headed, directorial and script-writing whimsy in order to blossom into something legitimately funny... And then with all the gentle and poised restraint required to incinerate an ant farm with a nuclear warhead, the idea was promptly dispatched, falling eons short of its potential evolution.
Said idea involved Loup Garou, the head of the Wolvez, employing an etiquette coach to help him overcome his brash, unrefined werewolf ways in order to create the facade of relative sophistication required to step up to bat against the vampires on a business level. What happens though is that the etiquette coach commits the werewolf-insensitive social faux pas of showing up to the werewolf lair with REAL silverware with which he intends to teach Loup Garou the basics of dining civility (an admittedly funny idea in its own right). Well, needless to say, the werewolves in the building do not take kindly to such a mistake and it proves to be a nearly instantaneously fatal one, suffocating the possibility of a potentially hilarious montage sequence of werewolf dining and courtesy coaching and leaving the film's much needed comic relief dead in the water.
Now... Forgive me if I'm allowing my undoubtedly coarse and juvenile sense of humor get the better of me here but I honestly thought this idea had comedic legs to stand on and I still do. For comparison's sake, and just to demonstrate my point, imagine it for a second in the hands of the 'Mr. Show' folks (which is of course an incredibly lopsided comedic comparison) and then think about what they could have done with such an idea. Even if you were to take your imagined 'Mr. Show' version of that bit and imagine it further as a half-as-funny version of itself, you'd still probably have something both relatively amusing and infinitely funnier than what actually happens in 'Bloodz Vs. Wolvez'... And that's what kind of film we're dealing with here folks; a film that gets it all wrong so comprehensively that the best compliment I can pay it is to offer one example of potential humor that failed catastrophically.
I'd like to give it a 0.0/10 because ultimately there was nothing I liked about it (and by the way, next time you see me you should thank me for not providing details about the part where a werewolf takes a shit on a newspaper) but I have this vague, internal feeling that somewhere out there exists some greater, more life-sucking time-waster than 'Bloodz Vs. Wolvez' and for that reason alone I'll give it an extremely generous 0.4.
'Bad Meaning Good'-O-Meter:
0.4/10
The best I could do (or perhaps worst) in youtube footage of the film:
Monday February 1st marks the latest in our 'Bad Meaning Good' film event saga and this time around we'll be screening the much-beloved 1978 trash musical and triumphant, cinematic tour-de-force 'The Apple'.
The cult appeal of 'The Apple' has endured for obvious reasons... The movie is an outrageous spectacle of excessive and terribly half-assed ideas... And it is totally, fucking hilariously awesome. I've always thought of it as a see-through attempt at trying to recreate the underdog success of 'The Rocky Horror Show' while cutting as many production corners as possible. The film has such a preposterous mess of a premise and is so inherently flawed at its core that its potential for success starts somewhere fathoms deep in the red. It is by far the most inept musical I've ever encountered and I find it a thoroughly hilarious and laughable production from top to bottom. It's great and if you haven't, you need to see it.
I've yet to do a proper Bad Meaning Good case study on the film (though I might be forced to in light of its upcoming screening) but here is a review from Bad Movie Planet.
Also, here is an even better one from the House Of Self Indulgence. (This person's write-up is particularly fantastic.)
... Can't wait for this one to go down. More info to come!
Tonight we welcome guest Heaven Malone best known in Chicago for being a part of Angels & Kings' 'Disappear Here' party... Shit's gonna get unruly, no doubt.
The rest of the month is as follows:
Jan 20th - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Guest Dj Michael Serafini (Gramaphone)
Jan 27th - Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Guest Dj Nate Manic (SmartBar)
It's a new year and with the new year (at least around these parts) comes the freezing rush of winter. With that in mind, I've drawn up a new DJ mix made specifically for the occasion; the latest contribution to my ongoing 'Kaleidosope' series for Samurai.fm.
It's a head-y and contemplative mix full of some very moody and dramatic moments. I wanted it to represent not only where I am going musically (as evidenced by the inclusion of my original "Nightswim" track that I blogged about recently), but also to just be a totally unpretentious sequence of songs; a sequence of songs that allows the music to shine and simplifies the transitions so as not to detract from the power of the music itself. About half of the tracks are properly mixed in time and the other half are mixed using a more free-form sort of style, blending synth patches and washes of sound rather than locked grooves. To put it short, this listening experience is not in any way meant to show off my abilities as a DJ; it's meant to be a seamless and thoughtful listen from start to finish... Almost as if the DJ's presence isn't even recognizable.
There are vocals at the beginning, around the halfway mark and at the end and although it's mostly instrumental, I think there's a very strong and cohesive, melodic and emotional thread throughout... The spirit of the thing remains consistent. Additionally, every track was painstakingly selected in order to work for its respective moment within the context of the entire thing and hopefully that translates to you, beloved listener that you are.
So... Here's a tracklisting for ya:
Popstatic 'Nightswim' - Unreleased
Damian Lazarus 'Moment' - Get Physical Music
Murcof 'Memoria' - Leaf
Burial + Four Tet 'Moth' - Text Records
F.U.S.E 'Nightdrive' - Plus 8 Records Ltd.
Pantha Du Prince 'Saturn Strobe' - Dial Records
Lulu Rouge 'Bless You' - Music For Dreams
Joris Delacroix 'Calin Cale' (Rodriguez Jr. Remix) - WOH Lab
Mymy 'Fast Freeze' - Cocoon Recordings
Petter 'Some Polyphony' - Border Community
Extrawelt 'Mit Liese Auf Der Wiese' (Max Cooper's Melt Remix) - Traum
Charlie May 'Midnight' - emFire
Sylvain Chauveau 'Fly Like A Horse' - Kompakt
Sigur Ros 'Samskeyti' - MCA Records
... As is always the case, you can stream or download the mix in it's entirety from my podcast page, you can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or you can always catch all my 'Kaleidoscope' shows directly from my Samurai.fm showpage. Feel free to leave any comments or feedback that you please, be it complimentary, critical or otherwise.
Tonight we welcome our close, personal homeboy and DJ collaborator Pr3-Frosh (The Booty Up) as our guest for GGD at Berlin and as always, we're expecting a fantastic party from start to finish. Much thanks again to Tim Zawada for participating in last week's foolishness, your contributions were of course much appreciated. Additionally, the remainder of the month's GGD programming is as follows:
Jan 13th - Heaven Malone (ChicagoSuicideClub)
Jan 20th - 'Viva la Vinyl' - A monthly GGD installment to celebrate wax only. No Serato, No Cds... Guest Dj Michael Serafini (Gramaphone)
Jan 27th - Disco's Revenge' - A monthly GGD installment featuring all disco, all night long... Guest Dj Nate Manic (SmartBar)
In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago (which takes place on the first Monday of every month). The idea behind the night is to screen cult classics, exploit movies, unintentional comedies and every other kind of film we collectively decide is so bad that it's actually good. In the ongoing search for the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' film I've decided to take on a weekly (or AT LEAST once-per-week) blog entry in which I'll review, summarize and rate bad movies of every variety imaginable. The goal is to reach somewhere in the range of 75-100 posts within a year, at which point I'll look for a place to publish a first volume of 'Bad Meaning Good' reviews in book form. Stay tuned...
Summary:
A brooding, mostly silent lunatic named John Kirby goes into a fit of uncontrollable hysterics and axes a few people to death in a halfway house. Unfortunately for him a certain ten gallon hat-wearing sheriff arrives at the scene and that sheriff is none other than Chuck Norris. The two wrestle around in the yard for a little while and some sweet 2x4 action ensues but being that this is Norris who this man has to contend with, it of course isn't long before the psychopath is subdued, handcuffed and gift-wrapped for central booking. What no one on the scene is prepared for though is the man's superhuman strength and inability to remain shackled which results in both a flurry of bullets sent his direction and his inevitable death.
Upon arrival at the morgue, a group of rogue, unchecked scientists on a quest for the Nobel Prize secretly use the man as a test subject for an experimental serum and miraculously re-animate him. What's more is that he's retained the ability to take nearly unlimited physical punishment and his wounds heal instantaneously, making him something of a supernatural, Michael Myers-like adversary to contend with Norris's karate-in-tight-jeans bad-assery.
Meanwhile, Norris re-ignites an old flame with a lady friend who happens to be the sister of one of the scientists involved and a web of wild vengeance is spun for our now undead, bloodthirsty villain on the loose. Kirby and Norris wander around town simultaneously, kicking a whole bunch of local ass independent of one another and the table is set over time for an inevitable showdown between the two.
Of course, this wouldn't be a Norris the film if the heavy and exorbitantly conservative undertones weren't piled on in abundance. Additionally, the film's general sentiment seems to equate scientific inquiry with reckless and irresponsible experimentation (at one point, the lead and most culpable scientist even shouts "We're scientists, not moralists!"). It's basically your typical Norris-lead action feature with a heaping serving of 'Halloween' influence and small doses of slasher movie components peppered throughout. In short, if you're a fan of Norris in general but think his films could use more pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo and super villains of fantastical, comic book-like proportions than this is probably one you're going to enjoy.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
Unsurprisingly, the film is at it's best when Norris is in his element and beating the ever-loving shit out of everybody in sight. The best sequence in the movie sees Norris enter a bar being ransacked by bikers and, cool as ice, contain the tawdry scene with a quiet, restrained panache. The man maneuvers throughout the bar unleashing an efficient barrage of spin-kicks, ball-punches and broken bottles to the head, while also utilizing all manner of barroom implements at his disposal to dispatch the various tattooed, leather-clad baddies on hand. It's kind of like barroom violence as clumsy ballet... Norris-style. There's also some gratuitous boobs thrown in for good measure. All things considered, the scene is five or so minutes of unbridled, Norris-led action bliss; the kind of which the film deserved significantly larger portions.
Norris is accompanied around town by a fat, stupid, heavy-breathing man-child of a sidekick played artlessly by Stephen Furst (aka Kent "Flounder" Dorfman from 'Animal House') and he also logs a great deal of screen time bedding-down his lady-friend with some light jazz on the hi-fi. We get to see plenty of shirtless Norris too so that viewers of the feminine persuasion are not snubbed a little bit of the ol' eye candy along the way.
It is of course no secret that Norris intends to ultimately get even with Kirby though and he undoubtedly will, just as the scientists will no doubt get theirs; leaving good ol' fashioned, American ass-kickery to triumph over scientific folly and general pansy-dom everywhere.
Ultimately, it's a pretty silly film and also relatively competent (by 'Bad Meaning Good' standards at least) given the likely self-aware modesty of its production. While the score and sound fx are frequently bad, there are some scenes that make good use of sound sparsity and menacing, 'Halloween'-style POV shots. However, there's definitely nothing exceptional about this film, save for the barroom brawl scene which provides a much needed rush of amusement at around the halfway mark. Personally, I'm not sure this is one that calls for repeat viewings but if for example it happens to be what you have to get you through an hour and half then you probably won't walk away from the experience feeling the lesser life form.
Tonight, and for the final Get Get Down of 2009, we'll be featuring Tim Zawada (So So Disco) as our esteemed guest DJ and trust me, it's gonna be a corker. If you've been paying attention at all to party-related happenings around Chicago over the last year then you'd be hard pressed to have not become familiar with Mr. Zawada. Those of you who have know that the man means business when it comes to the disco...
It of course goes without saying (though I'm about to do it anyway - :) that myself and Zebo will be holding down the proceedings in the early going and I'm expecting a jolly good time as usual.
On Monday January 4th we'll be hosting the ninth 'Bad Meaning Good' event (and the first of the new year) at The Burlington and this one's gonna be a rowdy one no doubt... The ninth installment in the 'Bad Meaning Good' canon is none other than the infamous 'Shark Attack 3: Megalodon', one of the new millennium's very shittiest and most unintentionally hilarious films.
You may remember my recent 'Bad Meaning Good' case study for the movie but if not, be sure to check it out for an in-depth review and summary of all things 'Shark Attack 3'. Apart from that, all relevant info should be on display in the flyer above... For any additional info or questions, feel free to leave a comment or drop me a line in the contact form.
Also, if you've never seen "the line" from Shark Attack 3 then behold its magical brilliance below...
In April of 2009, myself and DJ Intel launched the 'Bad Meaning Good' monthly movie event at The Burlington in Chicago (which takes place on the first Monday of every month). The idea behind the night is to screen cult classics, exploit movies, unintentional comedies and every other kind of film we collectively decide is so bad that it's actually good. In the ongoing search for the perfect 'Bad Meaning Good' film I've decided to take on a weekly (or AT LEAST once-per-week) blog entry in which I'll review, summarize and rate bad movies of every variety imaginable. The goal is to reach somewhere in the range of 75-100 posts within a year, at which point I'll look for a place to publish a first volume of 'Bad Meaning Good' reviews in book form. Stay tuned...
Summary:
It's the future and the world has been ravaged by chemical warfare. All men are presumed dead and a witch-like dictator-bitch runs the show. Her name is the Reverend Mother and she barks orders from a room draped in plastic sheeting while being fed through tubes and some sort of space age dialysis machine that keeps her alive. Women who have survived the fallout exist in one of two camps: They are either subservient to the Reverend Mother's (we'll call her RM for short) dictatorship and surrender themselves to be harvested for their life-giving abilities that keep the RM alive, or they go rogue in the wasteland and are relentlessly pursued by the RM's crack team of punk rock bounty hunter babes.
A woman named Keela achieves the near impossible double-whammy of not only escaping the RM's compound but also being the first woman in untold generations to have become impregnated with a male seed. (This premise does create something of a logic gap when it comes to understanding how exactly women continued to produce more and more women for so many years without any men around but I digress...) Forced to flee in a quest for survival, Keela teams up with the renegade warrior Phoenix (played by the uber-hot Kathleen Kinmont) in a chase through the wasteland that has life-or-death implications for both them and humanity at large.
Along the way they miraculously discover a lone man-in-hiding presumed to be the only living male on Earth. Tired of living a life in seclusion, he joins their quest to free the women of the wasteland and do away with the RM once and for all.
The title is more than a tad misleading because there is nothing remotely wolf-like or even wolf-related in this film at all. Instead what follows is a whole lot of 'Mad Max'-styled, post-apocolyptic silliness. It also deserves note that 'She-Wolves...' came out the same year as both 'Willow' and 'Hell Comes To Frogtown', two other films it greatly resembles in terms of both content and aesthetics. It's all pretty low-rent, made-for-cable stuff though and functions primarily as a vehicle for scantily clad babes with punk-ish, glam haircuts to ride around the desert in dune buggies while firing assault rifles and generally looking pretty damn hot. This is the kind of movie where women on the run in animal skin bikinis stop to take topless showers under waterfalls... And this is of course a good thing. While a few of the women look just a little bit too much like Vince Neil for comfort, the majority are a good notch or two above the prevailing b-movie grade chicks of the era. No doubt, 'She-Wolves Of The Wasteland' is a thoroughly and undoubtedly 80's sort of affair.
How 'Bad Meaning Good' was it?:
For ostensibly mindless, T&A entertainment, 'She-Wolves...' was FAR more entertaining than it had any business being. There really wasn't a dull minute in the entire thing and it had the kind of pacing and directorial makings of a far superior film. In that regard it's really not much of a surprise to me to see that director Robert Hayes has had a 20+ year film career as a cinematographer, DP and camera operator.
As fodder for camp enthusiasts it leaves much to recommend as well. We see 'Gladiator'-style death fights in the round between babes in junkshop armor fashioned from hockey shoulder pads, broom handle weaponry, shin guards and other ridiculous and assorted wasteland get-ups. Nearly every character has a name that would instantly qualify her for employment with the American Gladiators (Riptide, Whiplash, Cobalt, Chainsaw, Neon, Snapper, Ginsu, etc.) and the whole thing is scored by a propulsive drum machines and electro bass soundtrack with flourishes of Boards Of Canada-style, analog synthesizer portamento freak-outs.
The performances are of course generally laughable but Keela, the lead (played by ex-Playboy Playmate Peggy McIntaggart), lends the film a degree of acting anti-chops that, off the top of my head, I've only seen equaled by actors in 'Samurai Cop' and 'Troll 2'. She's REALLY bad.
In the film's funniest sequence, the protagonists' journey lands them in the "badlands", a sequestered area haunted by the 'Rezules', a group of nomadic, occultist folk who worship at the altar of television's past. The badlands are littered with skeletons on lay-z-boys (presumably having died while watching tv) and while the Rezules prepare to kill the main characters, they make a ritualistic, chant-like offering to their deities: "Sesame Street... The Flintstones... The Jetsons"... It's one of several of the film's laugh-out-loud moments and an utterly inspired turn of script-writing stupidity.
Additionally, there's a wealth of hilarious and out-of-the-blue dialog crudeness and some extremely economical, well-placed vulgarities to keep you laughing along the way. While the film at times had the look of a bad 80's music video stretched to feature length, I often found myself shocked by how much I was enjoying it and those of you seeking out a quality piece of mindless entertainment could do much, much worse than this.
Stamp it with that 'Bad Meaning Good' seal of approval. 'She-Wolves Of The Wastland', you have won me over.
'Bad Meaning Good'-O-Meter:
7.9/10
Check out some of the film's sweet action below...
This week the Get Get Down crew welcomes Brooklyn's and The Rub's DJ Eleven for another go-round of musical bad-assery and assorted fun. You are, I'm sure, well aware of The Rub and what they've been doing all these years so it is of course not news to any of you all that The Rub are among the east coast's finest crews of selectors and always know how to get a party started something proper. We intend to have a grand ol' time and would love for you to join us!
Next week, for the final Wednesday of the month, we'll be joined by Tim Zawada (So So Disco) and I'll also be keeping you all posted about what February has in store as well.
