The Soto List: The Top Ten Awesome Things About 2011

So 2011 is about to shut it's door on us and has we move on to the year that'll probably bring the end of the world, I thought this would be a good time to reflect on the year gone by. Sure, why not?

10. I Won My Third LAMMY-If this is the first post you've ever read of mine, The LAMMY's is an award the LAMB (Large Association of Movie Blogs) gives out every year to all it's members. Every year since I been a member I been nominated for "Best Horror/Sci Fi" blog and out of those four years, I won three times. I've been nominated for "Funniest Writer" once or twice but lost to people funnier than me. But this year, I racked up my 3rd win for Best Horror/Sci-Fi and I couldn't have been happier. Next year, I think I'd like to win Best Podcast for The Lair. That'd be awesome! Speaking of The Lair...

9. The Lair of the Unwanted Has Gotten More Awesome By The Episode-I'll be the first to admit the first season of The Lair was shaky at best. The sound was fucking terrible, I have no idea what the fuck I was doing, and I didn't know Nolahn very well so I'm sure the chemistry wasn't there. Now, as it wrapped up Season Two, I think we're firing on all cylinders. Me and Nolahn couldn't be better friends, I figured out how to fix the sound, and I sorta kinda know what I'm doing. And we've had some awesome guests come through. But watch out! Next year, baby!

8. My New Feature-About 10 weeks ago, I started a new feature called "The Netflix Corner" where I spotlight a movie that's on Netflix Instant Watch and then play a game where I give a Netflix-like description about a movie and people have to guess what it is. And in the years past, I've started many reoccurring features that never seem to pan out but this one, man, people took a liking to it. And I'm glad, cause I have fun with it.

7. All The Awesome Stuff I Wrote-This is gonna be the biggest ego-centric entry here. Just a quick look back at some of my favorite posts from the past year.
I reviewed Stacie Ponder's (AKA Final Girl) "Ludlow".
I reviewed "The Bride of Frank" after a friend of my Future Wife's sister kept telling me to.
After a shitty day at work, I watched and reviewed "Cannibal Holocaust".
I wasn't nominated for Most Funniest this year and this was my totally mature response.
31 Things I Learned From Watching Bad Movies
The Troll 2 Drinking Game
I reviewed "Dreamaniac"
Remembrances of Video Stores Gone By
Why We Need Video Stores Again
Me and Nick Jobe wrote an awesome detailed review of "A Serbian Film" for Halloween.
My Shia LaBeouf Post
And finally, my review of "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2".

6. I've Met Some New Friends-Thing about naming names is you're most likely bound to forget somebody. I've met a bunch of people this year through podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, and writing for MILF. Oh yeah, speaking of...

5. I Got To Write For Another Website-Earlier this year, Dylan and Kai shocked the blogasphere by announcing they were quitting their perspective blogs, joining forces, and starting a new site together! That ended up being Man, I Love Films. And in the days before they launched, they came up to me and said "We need someone to write awesome horror movie reviews" and when the person they had in mind couldn't do it, they asked if I could do it instead. I jumped in with both feet and I've been grateful ever since. I'm still nervous that I'm gonna fuck something up but it's been a lot of fun. Plus I get to write about GOOD horror movies from time to time. Oh and, uh, you should probably check out the other stuff posted at MILF. I guess.

4. All The Awesome Movies I Watched This Year-Whenever you get to review some of the worst movies that's ever existed, you tend to come across some...less than stellar films. But often among the turds, you'll find a shining diamond. For example, this year I got to watch a movie called "Truth or Dare? A Critical Madness" with some friends and it was seriously the best experience ever. Then I got to introduce "The Room" to someone and it was just great seeing her reaction to it and now she's obsessed with it. I'll say my work here is done.

3. This Awesome Comment Adam Left-As linked aboved, I wrote a post about how I could've prevented Shia LaBeouf from ever happening and about my journey into Project Greenlight. Adam, who sometimes write reviews here, left this awesome comment and I'm gonna post the whole thing here now:

Ugh. I remember Project Greenlight. I had 2 friends; one who swore that he was the next big Hollywood director and another who thought he was a brilliant writer. They wrote a script, which I won't write the title of here because these fuckers probably still google it once a week because they thought it was sooooo awesome they wouldn't shut up about it for 5 years after it was over. For all I know, they're still trying to secure funding for this shit.
Before they submitted their script, they had me read it and give them feedback. My payment for this service was a pack of cigarettes.
Anyway, their script was a ridiculously pretentious vampire "art" movie that had no action, was impossible to follow, and seemed to focus on some asshole vampire (who was too deep for his own good), brooding over whether or not he should turn a particular child into a vampire while sitting on freeway overpasses being sullen. His mother and girlfriend were also vampires and his mother told long, boring stories in a 24 hour coffee shop (this monstrosity was actually written at The Steer) that were supposed to be profound but were just painful to read. (Keep in mind that these assholes began writing this in the late 90's, when an idea this stupid wasn't actually too far off from the shitty vampire movies of our late high school years).

All I know is when I told them the dialogue sucked and that their was no action and nothing at all to draw anybody into the movie, they, of course, told me I just didn't understand their creative genius.
My favorite part of their criticism of my criticism was when the "director" told me that I just didn't understand film noir. Perplexed, I asked if this was some sort of stylized crime drama set in the 40's or 50's, or maybe supposed to be in that style and I just wasn't reading that in their script. He looked at me like I was retarded and said no. He had no idea what film noir was! Not that I have a firm background in it to this day, but you shouldn't throw around names of sub-genres if you are just guessing what they mean by taking French for a semester freshman year. (BTW, this asshole once put you in a lead role in a high school play).
Anyway, from what I remember, they both read the other scripts and gave them low ratings even though there was some supposedly awesome zombie comedy in there that blew their fucking minds. They didn't want to give it a high grade because they didn't want the competition. As you can imagine, their FUCKING AWFUL script got shitty reviews. But, obviously, the people reading it didn't know a thing about film noir.

Then I said it sounded worse than "Twilight" and he responded back with:

From what I can tell, the main difference between Twilight and their vampire movie is that Twilight has a plot and characters. It might be a shitty story with terrible characters, but still. Their movie had virtually no plot. I don't even think the characters had names; like the main guy was VAMPIRE and his mom was MOTHER and the child was THE CHILD. And seriously, virtually nothing happened. I can't stress this point enough. No vampire attacks. No group of intrepid teens hunting the vampires. All the conflict was internal and it wasn't resolved. It was just the main character sitting alone and being morose about his sad existence of sitting alone and being morose. I cannot stress how much I hated this "story."

2. The Awesome Episode of The LAMBcast I Hosted-Also known as "THE BEST EPISODE OF THE LAMBCAST EVER!!" Sometime in August, Dylan said he was too sick or tired or something to host a couple of episodes so I stepped in to host one episode and I decided to do a favorite of mine: Roll Your Own Top 5! And I took this opportunity to bring in Nolahn for this first ever LAMBcast experience. Add James, Tom Clift, and that Sam guy who'll never read this and you have yourself an awesome episode. Seriously, check it out here!

1. All My Readers-Sometimes it feels like I'm not super popular or get a lot of hits. I don't get much feedback and sometimes when I put a poll up, I have to beg people to participate in it. But in the long run, I am grateful to you guys who do take the time out to read it and I should be lucky to even have one person reading all this shit I write. So to you guys, I say thank you very much and of course Happy New Year!
-Jason

The Netflix Corner #9

I hope you all had an awesome Christmas. I did. With that lame opening said, let's get to it.

I reviewed this movie for Man, I Love Films this week and it's my recommendation because this movie is strangely awesome. Of course, I'm talking about "New Years Evil".

Now, onto The Netflix Game. I thought for sure we'd have a stumper on our hands, but Steve always surprises me. Here's the current scores:

Nick-26
Dan-7
Steve-4
Rachel, Dylan-3
Joe-2

And here are last week's answers:
Hard: Big guy forgets who he is and thinks he's someone famous.-Santa With Muscles
Medium: This guy just wants to have the best Christmas ever! Dammit!-National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Easy: He needs to learn his lesson in time for Christmas. (Only taking ONE answer for this one.)-Scrooged

And here ya go:

Hard: A guy sets out to make a movie about another guy, but that guy decides to make a movie about him instead.
Medium: A married couple has some unexpected guests in their house and need the help of a strange guy to get rid of them.
Easy: Kinda like "Hamlet" but set in a jungle.

There ya go! Have fun!
-Jason

I Battled A Royale!

If for some strange reason, you're not familiar with The Demented Podcast, it's a bi-weekly podcast by Nick Jobe and Steve Honeywell. They talk about two movies in a genre, then play this really hard but fun game at the end. I did so well on my episode that I was invited back in their big tournament called The Battle Royale. Give a listen before reading what I have to say about my appearance:



So did you listen? The fuck is the matter with me? All I can say is I got caught up in everything and got way too fucking cocky (or penis-y) and just fucked up. You have NO IDEA how awful I felt. And I fuckin' knew the answer but no! But oh well. It was still a lot of fun and I'll be back on their show next season. Hopefully I'll do better.

Hopefully.
-Jason

A Yearly Holiday Tradition

I didn't film a new Christmas special this year so I'll just re-show you last years special. It's still pretty good if you ask me.



Anyway, Merry Christmas!
-Jason

2012 Will Be My Year...And YOURS!!

So 2012 is literally a week away (or so) and there's all kinds of neat nifty things I'd like to accomplish before the world ends in December. One of them is to make The Lair of the Unwanted a Top 10 LAMB Podcast AND win a LAMMY. But while I work on all that, I decided it's time to give back to my readers. And how do I do that?

YOU TELL ME WHAT TO REVIEW! YAY!!!

Yes, it's Reader Recommendation time again! And this time it's gonna be a doozy. I'm gonna give you guys TWENTY (20) movies and the top 10 votes I will review. I posted links to the trailers to some of the movies, if you needed a clue on what they were. After watching some of them, I have some movies I hope will win, but this is all up to you guys, the reader!

Die-ner (Get It?)

Starship Troopers

Cool As Ice

Rubber

Zombie Nation

Chillerama

Birdemic

Pinocchio's Revenge

Graduation Day

The Dentist

Deadtime Stories Part 1 and 2

Simon Says (not Simon Sez)

Seed

Visiting Hours

Bane

Open House

The Evolved

Make A Wish

Long Kiss Goodnight

The Task

I will allow for multiple votes so you can vote for whichever ones you want. I will keep it open until New Years Eve and on New Years Day I will tally up the votes and announce which 10 movies I will be reviewing in January. Fun? Yes. Ready? 

GO!

-Jason

The Netflix Corner #8

Merry Christmas! So this Netflix Recommendation is probably cheating, but it's a annual Holiday tradition here in this household, where we watch "Mystery Science Theater 3000: 521-Santa Claus". Probably my favorite Christmas TV show episode ever.

But onto The Netflix Game! Dan came back after guessing the hard option and MIGHT have a shot of taking Nick down. Maybe. Here's your updated scores:

Nick-26
Dan-4
Rachel, Dylan-3
Joe-2
Steve-1

Last week's answers:
Hard: Two men go searching for a new Santa Claus.-Ernest Saves Christmas
Medium: A lovable drunk guy helps out a kid.-Bad Santa
Easy: Two best friends go searching for a Christmas tree. Misadventure ensues.-A Very Harold and Kumar
3-D Christmas

Alright, I hope this week's isn't too hard for you. Good luck!

Hard: Big guy forgets who he is and thinks he's someone famous.
Medium: This guy just wants to have the best Christmas ever! Dammit!
Easy: He needs to learn his lesson in time for Christmas. (Only taking ONE answer for this one.)

Have fun!
-Jason

Festive Up In This Bitch!

It's officially December 20th, which means Christmas is soon at hand. I don't know what the weather is like around you (probably nice, since 80% of the people I know live out west where it's fucking 75° all year long) but here, instead of cold and snow, it's been around 50° and raining. If I wanted a depressing wet Christmas, I'd move to Seattle.

BOOM! Insulted Seattle. Cross that off my bucket list.

But anyway, it won't be a white Christmas but it's still Christmas. And I need help getting into the Christmas spirit that doesn't involve Christmas songs about Jesus, Santa, or creepy date rape songs. So why not read some movie reviews of Christmas movies? Yeah? Sweet!

I already linked to Dope's awesome review of "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2" yesterday...but it bears repeating.

Nolahn reviewed the REMAKE of "Black Christmas", which starred a lot of hot chicks. SPOILER ALERT FOR THURSDAY: I will be reviewing the original at Man, I Love Films.

Over at CouchCutter.com, he reviewed the often forgotten '80s horror movie "Elves". Oh "Elves". You weird wonderful fucking movie.

Emily at Deadly Doll's House watched a Tori Spelling movie. That in itself is amazing, but the movie she reviewed is called "A Carol Christmas". Three guess on what the fuck the movie is a retelling of. Yeah.

Over at Man, I Love Films, Wayne from "Reel Whore" reviews "Die Hard". What? It's a Christmas movie!

And finally, I'm not sure if you're aware of this but since I closed down The Site, I been slowly transferring all those reviews to Blogger. I've started a separate blog to host them. I have them linked up above where it says "Archive" but if you wanna read all my old Christmas reviews here they are:

Silent Night, Deadly Night (Mass Invasion)
Santa Claus (Mass Invasion)
Jack Frost
Santa's Slay
The Star Wars Holiday Special
Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny

And that'll do it! I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and whatever else you may celebrate!

Ho!
-Jason

Merry Christmas From Blogger!

"Oh crap!" I thought one fine day in December in Indianapolis, Indiana, the home of the Super Bowl, as EVERYTHING IN THIS GOD DAMN TOWN KEEPS TELLING ME, "I forgot to include a link to The Great White Dope's awesome review of 'Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2' in my 900th post wherein I reviewed said movie. I know! I'll just make a new post about it! That'll be easier!"

As I foolishly thought this thought, I went to my Dashboard and clicked on "New Post" and as I was about to write something funny, clever, and possibly witty, I noticed something. "The fuck?" I said outloud, to nobody besides all these stuffed animals that I pretend talk in awesome videos I make for the Internet. It's a wonder nobody tried to have me committed yet. "Why does the post look different...where's the link?! Where's Compose AND the HTML buttons? THE FUCK!?!" I then calmed down and decided to take to said Internet. Surely, my fellow Blogger friends will tell me they're having the same problem. I leave a status on Facebook asking people to tell me if they are having the same problem with Blogger, and sit back and wait for thousand upon thousand of replies saying "No, Jason, you awesome handsome devil you! It's only you!" or "Yes, Jason you really cool guy that I'd love to hang out with all the time, I too am having the problem!"

Sadly, none of those comments came. So either I'm going insane or the entire world is. Both seem possible at this point. So I decide to wait it out.

Chapter 2: The Next Day

It is now the next day. I go to New Post and...nope. Nothing. Son of a fucking bitch!

Chapter 3: Another Day Goes By

 Day three. Check again. Nope! Chuck Testa! I decide to mess around with it. I did recently change my layout, maybe it had something to do with that? I go to the LAMB, which DID NOT change and...nope. It's gone from there too. FUCK! Now what? Suddenly, what do my wandering eyes see? "Switch to New Blogger Interface". Oh Blogger, if this was a ploy to get me to try the new interface, I'm gonna get SOOOO mad and-

Chapter Four: Guess What? It Was A Ploy

FUCK YOU, BLOGGER!!! You can't make me! You can't make me!! "But if you want to include links, or change the HTML in your posts, or do anything else, you're gonna have to!" Blogger said, in a rather sleazy tone. I knew if Blogger could talk, it'd sound like Ron Jeremy. Ugh. So fine. I guess I have to use this god damn awful Interface that's confusing and hard to understand. Oh...it shows me traffic? Ok, I kinda like that. I guess. Anyway, thanks for the gift, Blogger.

And now for what I was trying to do in the first place: The Great White Dope wrote an awesome review of "Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2" and you really should check it out if you didn't like my review of it. And frankly, my review was more of a fanboy look at it, while Dope's was more of a critical smart guy look at it. I think Dope has an IQ of like 498. Maybe he can tell me how to fix this Blogger interface thing.
-Jason

The Netflix Corner #7

In a film that seems to have people split, I'm gonna have to go with:



I had so much fun watching this movie. I have to wonder if the people who didn't like this movie took it too seriously? I mean, I'm sure they didn't. But it's an awful lot of fun. Weird characters, strange situations, fuckin' Rutger Hauer! I mean, what more do you need, man??

Onto The Netflix Game! Last week we had some new players! I'm always glad to see that. Let's see how the scores look:

Nick-23
Joe-2
Rachel, Dylan-3
Dan, Steve-1

Last weeks answers:
Hard: A kid gets a Christmas gift that immediately causes a whole bunch of trouble.-Gremlins
Medium: An out of towner messes up a robbery.-Die Hard
Easy: An angry person ruins a towns Christmas. Maybe.-How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Here's this week's clues. Have fun!

Hard: Two men go searching for a new Santa Claus.
Medium: A lovable drunk guy helps out a kid.
Easy: Two best friends go searching for a Christmas tree. Misadventure ensues.

Good luck!
-Jason

The Lair of the Unwanted #24: Something Something Beach Party

In this episode, Jason and Nolahn take on two beach movies...sort of. Movies covered are "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" and "Surf Nazis Must Die". Also we come clean about our favorite movie scene on a beach and so much more. Well, not too much more.

Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2

So this right here is my 900th post. I knew I had to make it something special so why not devote it to the most AWESOME Christmas movie I've ever seen. Why this movie isn't played for 24 hours on a loop on some channel I'll never know. In fact...I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING THIS CHRISTMAS!!!!!!

Anyway, "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2".

This is probably going to more about talking about the movie than reviewing it. This movie does hold a special place in my heart. I've talking about it non-stop. I've shown it to friends. So it's time I dive into the history of this movie. While talking about it.

First off, if you haven't seen the first movie, DO NOT WORRY! The people behind SNDN2 (as the kids say) got you covered. The first 45 minutes flashback to all the events of the first movie. The flashback is being presented by Ricky, the younger brother of Billy from the first movie. Don't think too much about how he knows all this stuff despite being only a baby AND not being there. Maybe he read a lot of newspaper articles and police reports.

The first time I seen this movie, it was like 1998 or 1999. My friend Bill had a shit ton of movies he and his Mom got from a video store that was closing and this was one of them. I guess he watched it before showing it to me cause he was super excited to have me watch it. And as we were watching it, I said "yes, this is a mighty fine film." And I was grateful for all the unneeded flashback stuff.

Anyway, after the flashback of the first movie, we focus on Ricky and his problems. His story is he was sent to many foster homes trying to adjust cause he kept having problems with nuns and the color red. Hmm...I wonder why?

Here's the thing about this movie. The first movie was about Billy and his problems of Santa Claus raping his mother and killing his parents and feeling the need to punish bad people, no matter what your definition of "bad" is. But here, Ricky actually kills people that kinda deserved it. Like his first kill was in a field somewhere and a couple is out having a picnic. Soon, the guy starts getting fresh with the girl and tries to rape her. She manages to stop him in time. Realizing he's not getting any, the guy walks away. And Ricky runs him over with a car.

Then there's the scene where Ricky kills some mafia goon guy who looks like Al Bundy in an alley. I was kinda rootin' for Ricky. I should mention that Ricky is played by Eric Freeman. Everyone here knows how ape shit I went over him but honestly, he's the best actor in the world.

When me and Bill watched it, we kept quoting all his lines non-stop. He just has a way of saying shit. Such simple things like "I had to GET a JOB!!!" and "RED CAR! GOOD POINT!" You need to see it to get it. And I'll be happy to show it to you.

Eventually, Ricky falls in love with a girl named Jennifer and he's happy for a long time. He still has a temper, like in a hilarious scene in a movie theater where Ricky kills some loud mouth asshole who keeps talking through the movie. Oh and get this. The movie they're seeing? Is about a guy who dresses up as Santa and kills everybody.

Hilarious.

I've lost count how many times I've seen this movie. Every time I watch it, I see something different in it. It's why I'm kinda bummed the DVD is not easy to find. But my friend Bill gave me the VHS copy he got and I'm proud to have it. Ah, hard to find movies on VHS.

Jennifer's ex-boyfriend, who looks like David Bowie at odd angles, shows up to bug her. Ricky isn't too happy to see him so he kills him. And this kicks off the most hilarious killing spree ever. You've probably seen one part of it but here, in it's entire glory, is the ENTIRE killing spree.



God, I love that. I was surprised, when I discovered the internet, the whole GARBAGE DAY! thing became a popular meme. Sometimes, I love the internet.

So this is why Ricky is now in jail. He kills his doctor/shrink/lawyer whoever he was talking to and simply walks out of jail. Alrighty. He decides to hunt down Mother Superior, who caused him and his brother so much trouble growing up. And Mother Superior must've had a stroke OVER a fryer cause her ENTIRE face is like melted off. Anyway, Ricky shows up dressed as Santa (of course, it's a sequel to a guy-dressed-as-Santa-killing-people movie) and, well, kills Mother Superior. Yay!!

There's an ambiguous ending whether or not Ricky is killed by the cops. Judging from what I heard about parts 3-5, it doesn't really matter. Maybe one day...

Obviously, the best part about this movie is Eric Freeman. If you watched that clip up above, you'll see why. His acting, his eyebrows, his voice. Needs to be seen to be believed. And if you're still not convinced, come over to my house and I'll make you watch this movie.

-Jason

And so the countdown begins! 100 more posts until 1000! WOW!

The Soto List: Really?! Edition

I don't normally do mainstream stuff here but I do watch a fair amount of mainstream stuff in my "off" time. But 2011 seemed to be a lackluster year for movies, even for me. There's been a shitload of movies that I looked at the trailer and said "Yeah...not even I would touch that". "Jack and Jill" immediately come to mind. (Can't wait to read Nick's awesome DVD review of THAT!)

Along with the stuff I've seen and all the crap, are movies that I saw and went "well that looks stupid/lame/not very good" and then all of a sudden, people start losing their shit over it! And I sit back and go "really?! THAT'S good?! Are you sure?" cause I'm convinced it's one big conspiracy to trick me to watch horrible movies that I wouldn't normally watch. What movies am I talking about?

5. Transformer 3: Something Something Dark Side of The Moon
The first two movies are the biggest pieces of shit movies that I've ever seen. Part 2 the worst. So when the trailer for part 3 came out, I rolled my eyes, said a loud "ugh" and went home and urinated on my voodoo doll of Michael Bay. Then the movie came out and people were like "DUDE! This movie...is actually good!" It's got a 6.4 out of 10 on IMDb (this is why I don't use Rotten Tomatoes for stuff like this, part 3 has 35%, part 1 has 50%, but part 2 has 24%. I don't...whatever.) and all my online friends, who I NORMALLY listen to, said "no really, it's not that bad." I'm sorry, I refuse to believe that. And I was planning on skipping the third one because the first two fucking suck royal cock AND because it doesn't have Megan Fox, the only reason I barely tolerated the first two to begin with. But, because of YOU GUYS, I will have to give this a watch. But my expectations are low!

4. Rise of The Planets of The Apes
I saw the trailer for this and said "that looks fucking stupid" and "why was this made?" I mean do people REALLY care how the apes took over? Isn't it enough the apes took over eventually? And wouldn't this just mean the first hour and 20 minutes is just people says "oh apes will never take over the world" and the last 10 minutes going "oh shit they totally CAN take over the world. My bad." But then the movie came out and everybody wouldn't shut up about it. The funny thing is, people were surprised. I refuse to believe this movie is really as good as everyone makes it out to be.

3. Drive
I was like "this looks like a boring remake of 'The Transporter' and...fucking Ryan Gosling? He's not an action guy? The hell? Fuck this movie." Then it came out and, holy fucking hell jesus christ I'm out of motherfucking curse words because everybody wouldn't shut the fuck up about this movie. I watched the trailer again and said "well, maybe there's more in the movie than the trailer is letting on" which is a good thing. But the trailer didn't make me want to watch it. It looked boring as fuck. And Ryan Gosling? I mean....FUCKING RYAN GOSLING?!?

2. Crazy Stupid Love
This is a famous argument I got into on The LAMBcast some months ago. We had to watch this trailer and talk about it. I watched it and said "eh, I don't do romantic dramas" and everybody said "WHAT?! It's a comedy!!! It's "40-Year-Old Virgin"! What do you mean "romantic drama"?! Convinced I watched the wrong trailer again, I said "Um, the one with Steve Carrell? He's divorced? He's trying to get back into the dating scene?" Yes, THAT movie. Ok...where the fuck is the comedy in that? How is that ANYTHING like "40-Year-Old Virgin"? Seriously, I think everybody is just fucking with me at this point. I still refuse to watch this because, again, I DON'T DO ROMANTIC DRAMAS! AND it's got Ryan Gosling in it. Case closed.

1. Fast Five
NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! I FUCKING REFUSE TO BELIEVE THIS MOVIE IS GOOD!!! The first movie FUCKING BLOWS! There shouldn't have been a sequel, let alone GOD DAMN FOUR of them, AND it's the 5th one in the series that people love?! The fuck kind of sense does that make!! NO! I'm sorry, everybody. You HAVE to be wrong about this. There is NO FUCKING WAY this is good. Fuck THAT shit!

So there you have it. Those are my 5 movies from 2011 that I can't believe people like. I'm sure there's some more smaller ones but these were the ones that sprung to mind. And if you took offense to anything on this list, well, sorry pal. You're gonna have to convince me otherwise.
-Jason

R.I.P 2005-2011

And the website is officially gone. Turns out I have to wait until after the 12th to repurchase the dotcom name because I didn't go through their complicated transfer process. I'm fine with that. So just a reminder, if you have my dotcom name, change it to here for now. Or just leave it. Whatever.

Meanwhile, I will be working on transferring all the reviews to the Archive. It's gonna take awhile cause I have over 150 reviews. Plus all the "Date My Mom" stuff, shorts, and whatever else I had.

Anyway, to anyone who did go there, thanks. I hope you stick with me here at the blog, cause I will be doing more reviews. Honestly. Why you looking at me like that?
-Jason

The Netflix Corner #6

Howdy all! This week's movie recommendation is gonna be a favorite '80s movie of mine. And that's gonna be "House".



No, not the TV show. OR the weird Japanese film. The film starring William Katt AND Norm from "Cheers". AND Bull from "Night Court". If only Alan Thicke made an appearance. Anyway, if you haven't seen "House" check it out!

With that done, time for The Netflix Game! I can't believe no one got the hard one last week. I didn't think it was THAT hard. Anyway, here's your scores and answers.

Nick-23
Joe-2
Dan, Steve-1

Hard: In order to prove himself, this guy must do dangerous things.-Hot Rod
Medium: A man is sent into a prison to look for a very important person.-Escape From New York
Easy: An inexperienced man tries to have sex. Hilarity ensues.-40-Year-Old Virgin

And this week:
Hard: A kid gets a Christmas gift that immediately causes a whole bunch of trouble.
Medium: An out of towner messes up a robbery.
Easy: An angry person ruins a towns Christmas. Maybe.

Good luck!
-Jason

A Memorial To Remember

Here's a trivia track for you:
-Movie references: "Easy A", "Heathers", "The Sixth Sense", and "Silent Night, Deadly Night Part 2". (Not the garbage day scene.)
-The picture of me was from a set of pics I took when I was working on a book a few years ago. They are of me in front of my movie collection.
-I actually know the words to the first two songs because I hear them EVERY! SINGLE! DAY at work. The third is just one of my favorite songs.
-The angles used to film me are all from Cokie's Point of View. Which is why it's so low.
-The song used at the beginning is "I Hope You Die" by The Bloodhound Gang.

That's it. I'll have more still this week, leading up to the final day of the website on Thursday. So stay tuned!
-Jason

The Prince of Pennsylvania

This is one of those movies I don't know what to do with. It's not bad enough to watch at a bad movie party. It's not good enough for everybody to have seen. It's not hilariously bad to make people watch. It's just simply...there. And I own it. On VHS. As a screener. I didn't even know this movie was released until I did some research and saw Roger Ebert did a review of it, and it's available on DVD through Netflix. But I figured I'd at least talk a bit about it.

Let's go back to 1988. Or 1989. Whatever. I was either 8 or 9. And I had a cousin who worked in a video store. As a result, she'd bring home all these screener tapes of movies that were coming out on video. Most of them were popular, like "Rain Man" and some weren't. Like "Prince of Pennsylvania". And for WHATEVER reason, she decided to give me "Prince of Pennsylvania".

I remembering being confused by it as a 9-year-old but what did I care? It was a free movie. I was happy! Since then, I've rediscovered it about 3 or 4 times. It sits in my VHS collection today but again, I don't ever plan on showing it to people. So just to get it out of the way, here's what this movie is about.

It stars Keanu Reeves. Yeah, how about that? You know who else is in this movie? Fred Ward! And Bonnie Bedelia (Mrs. John McClane)! What a cast, huh? Ok so Keanu is the teenage son of Fred Ward and Bonnie Bedelia. He doesn't go to school. He steals. He spends his time in a junkyard taking things. And he likes fucking an older woman.

Not much else happens. Bonnie Bedelia ends up cheating on Fred Ward with his friend (kinda like the "The Room" but with less football playing). Fred Ward and his friend work in a coal mine and they end up trapped in the mine for 16 hours. Because they thought they were gonna die, the friend confesses to the affair...but then they survive. Awkwaaard!

There is one funny moment in the movie when Fred Ward gets home and confronts the wife. He has an epic meltdown and starts yelling about all the things he bought her, including the VCR. She claims she didn't want a VCR, so he yells, pulls it out of the wall, runs outside, and throws it into a pool. It's really the only reason to watch this movie.

So despite the movie starring Keanu and he looks like this:


the movie doesn't focus too much on him. That is, until he realizes his dad sold some valuable land and is hiding the money. So Keanu and his older girlfriend decide to kidnap the father and have him tell them where the money is. But this is Fred Ward, so he doesn't give in that easily.

To get him to talk, Keanu takes Fred Ward back to the mine and threatens to blow it up if he doesn't tell him where the money it. It's revealed to be hidden inside a locked port-a-potty. Then there's a 20 minute chase scene down the mine, before it blows up and they think the older girlfriend is dead.

The movie more or less simply ends with Keanu walking down a hallway, cuffed to a refrigerator door. It's...not worth explaining. But that's it. That's "Prince of Pennsylvania". Sounds interesting, doesn't it?

Not really. It could've been funnier. Or more interesting. Or something. Not even Keanu sounding like a surfer in Pennsylvania could save this. I say don't bother watching it. But will I ever give up my copy? Probably not.

-Jason

The Netflix Corner #5

Oh my god, this movie is on Instant Watch! Now NOBODY has an excuse to not watch this! I'm of course talking about motherfuckin' "Lone Wolf McQuade"!



It's well documented all over the internet how much I fuckin' LOVE this movie. It should be declared the National Movie of America, it's so badass. So that is my choice for this week's Instant Watch.

Now onto The Netflix Game. I really wish more people would participate. Well, let's see how this week goes. But first, last weeks answers and scores:

Nick-21
Joe-2
Dan-1

Hard: America declares war on another country after the country does something offensive.-South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
Medium: A guy is called to help save a girl who's acting really strange.-The Last Exoricsm
Easy: A group of people must solve a murder that could be one of three solutions.-Clue

Ok, here's this weeks. Good luck!

Hard: In order to prove himself, this guy must do dangerous things.
Medium: A man is sent into a prison to look for a very important person.
Easy: An inexperienced man tries to have sex. Hilarity ensues.

That's it. Have fun!
-Jason

The Boneyard

Whenever I watch a trailer for a movie that I want to see, I think to myself, "There's no way that could live up to my expectations." I saw the trailer for "The Boneyard" and wondered "Is this movie REALLY gonna be about a giant zombie dog?" To anyone who finds their way here, I will tell you the answer in a little bit.

First, we have to get through an hour of bullshit!

The first 20 minutes of this movie plays like an episode of "Law and Order". I kept waiting for Jerry Orbach to come out with Christopher Meloni and Ice-T. Actually, that's all I know about "Law and Order" what happens on that show exactly?

Anyway, we meet two cops, one of them is named Jersey. He looks like the love child of Martin Balsam and Hoss from "Ponderosa". The cops are at the house of what looks like a horder. Jersey finds a way in the house and ever so fucking slow make their way upstairs. There, Jersey's partner (I forget his name. Mark? Junior?) is greeted by a GIANT PILLOW MONSTER! RAWR!!!

Ok, not really. Underneath all the pillows and blankets is Alley. I had NO IDEA Alley was going to be our main character because, and I'm just being honest here, she looks like a member of G.L.O.W. And normally, women from G.L.O.W aren't the main characters in many movies.

One thing this movie gets wrong (out of many things) is character development. For this first 20 minutes, I had no fucking clue who Alley was or why these cops were bugging her. From what I gathered after the movie ended, she's some lady who got into witchcraft when she fucked a Canadian, got cancer, and survived. Now, she has some weird psychic powers that can teleport her or something.

So I guess Jersey needs her help in a case but she says "NO! GET OUT OF MY ROOM! I GOTTA OIL UP FOR MY NEXT MATCH!" so the cops leave. Alley pulls out a scrapbook and has a flashback? Maybe? About a burnt kid. This causes her to change her mind on helping the cops.

What do the cops need help with? Fuck if I know. I know it involves some dude named Chin and three dead kids. I THINK Chin did some voodoo stuff to the kids, which caused the kids to die under mysterious circumstances but this movie doesn't explain shit.

Ok so the cops and Alley need to go the morgue to look at the body. I guess the only time they can do this is at night and they get to meet the nighttime caretaker. And it's here this movie finally makes watching it worthwhile. The caretaker is played by Phyllis Diller. And her character name is Poopenplotz. I swear. And she has a killer guard dog who's a poodle. Why Poopenplotz couldn't be the main character is beyond me but whatever.

So after 10 minutes of Poopenplotz not allowing Alley in the room with the bodies, and a mishap with a delivery of another dead body of a young chick who killed herself, we meet Mr. Roper, who plays an aging hippie. I'll tell you, you haven't lived until you seen Mr. Roper try to play an aging hippie. He went full tilt with this too. He had a cheesy mustache, small dark glasses, AND a pony tail.

Anyway, it turns out the young chick isn't dead and Alley psychically teleports to the morgue to see zombies about to attack. She disappears and reappears in the same room as Poopenplotz. Poopenplotz (I love typing that) won't allow Alley to go downstairs, so Alley steals the keys and run.

Remember I said it looked like Alley was a member of G.L.O.W? Well, that means she can't run fast. At all. But she's able to outrun Poopenplotz and her killer poodle. She makes it to the morgue and finds a bunch of carnage and three tiny zombies. The zombies chase her, Alley runs into the cops, Mr. Hippie Roper, and the not-dead chick.

The rest of the movie is them hiding from the zombies and trying to escape. It's basically a horror version of "Die Hard". Before it gets too slow, a zombie spits into Poopenplotz's mouth and she turns into a GIANT ZOMBIE! Holy fuck!

Giant Poopenplotz goes on a rampage, kills Hippie Roper in a scene I didn't see (I watched this movie with a few friends and they had to tell me this. That's how uninterested I was during this movie), and isn't stopped until...fuck something happened. I think she blew up. Let's go with that.

But guess who eats some zombie goo? The dog. Yes, we get a giant zombie poodle dog. Sadly, we're near the end of the movie. Everybody manages to find a way outside but Alley, because she looks like a wrestler from G.L.O.W, gets stuck in a small gap. Awww!

Alley manages to escape, finds a "disarmed" pipe bomb that isn't disarmed, and blows up the giant zombie dog. And the movie simply ends. Alrighty.

So NOTHING is totally explained. Where exactly did Alley get her powers? What the fuck was going on with the tiny zombie kids? What did Chin do? The fuck, man? This movie was a big letdown. At least I didn't do a whole post about how awesome this movie looked. I really learned my lesson this time around. And so you can see what I'm talking about, I present to you, the trailer:



-Jason

The Netflix Corner #4

Happy Thanksgiving! I can't think of a better movie recommendation than "Thankskilling"!



It's about a killer turkey...oh you know what? Read my review over at Man, I Love Films.

With that out of the way...

Nick is looking to dominate this game! He's the sole winner of last weeks game, after the Hard option was left unguessed for 24 hours! I didn't think I made it THAT hard. Anyway, here are the scores and answers:

Nick-15
Joe-2
Dan-1

Hard: A series of crazy events occur in Miami.-Big Trouble
Medium: A teenager moves and tries to fit in, until meeting an unusual student and they fall in love.-Twilight
Easy: A group of detectives are invited to a party to solve a case.-Murder By Death

And now this week. Don't forget, I'm looking for a specific movie:

Hard: America declares war on another country after the country does something offensive.
Medium: A guy is called to help save a girl who's acting really strange.
Easy: A group of people must solve a murder that could be one of three solutions.

Hard is worth 3 points, medium 2 points, and easy 1 point.

Good luck and happy Thanksgiving!
-Jason

How I, Jason Soto, Could've Stopped Shia LaBeouf From Happening

I can't think of a better time than Thanksgiving to tell this story. It's an interesting story and after thinking about it a few weeks ago, I came to a horrible realization:
If things would've went better for me, Shia LaBeouf wouldn't have had a career. That's a bold statement, sure. And looking at his IMDb, I doubt little ol' ME would've actually have stopped him, but it's fun to think that if the events in the story I'm about to tell you played differently, some other guy (maybe me?) would've been making out with Megan Fox in two horrible Michael Bay movies.

Ok. The year is 2000. I was unemployed at the time and I was living with my dad and grandmother. It wasn't really a high point in my life but hey, I was still alive and I had a roof over my head. I couldn't complain. I was a budding screenwriter, just writing scripts left and right. My ex-girlfriend, who I talked to on occasion, told me about this awesome contest she heard involving screenwriters. You submit your script and if it wins, it gets made into a movie.

This contest was called "Project Greenlight".

I don't know if anybody remembers "Project Greenlight" but basically Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and some other guy started it, opened it to the public and fronted the money to make this movie. The instant I heard about this, I said "Fuck yeah I'm in!"

After carefully selecting which script I wanted to submit, I went with a comedy I wrote called "The Adventures of A Loser". It's the touching tale of a high school reject who goes on his first date with a girl, who only used him to help get money she owed to some dangerous drug dealers. I still think it's a cool little script I wrote.

So here's how this process works. You sign up on their website and they give you a little account and space. You upload your script to this space. This was 2000, and I was still using dial up. So this process took a few hours. After it was uploaded, I had to wait.

The next step then was on a certain date, they were gonna place three other scripts into your account. They were randomly selected and I had to read them, take this stupid test to prove I read it, and send it back with my thoughts.

So to clarify this step, all of us people in this contest got to read other people's scripts and had to say if they thought it was good or not. If you think the trolls of 2011 were bad...but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I barely remember the three scripts I had to read. I remember one was a straight up comedy about some guy pretending to be a therapist to get back at an ex-girlfriend and he used the office of some lawyer and things get mixed up or something. The other was some action film about a homeless guy. I promise it wasn't "Hobo With A Shotgun". I liked both of those scripts.

Then I got the third one. Take David Lynch's worst movie, give it to Hunter S. Thompson, and then have Salavor Dali throw up on it for good measure and you got this movie. I had NO FUCKING idea what was going on in this script. Some guy went into a basement, got turned into a woman, who was alive in the 1950's, there's some party going on, some ice cube trays start talking. It was....a fucking mess. And I said so. I think I even failed the little test cause I didn't understand fucking anything.

Ok so, I finish all three scripts, send in my recommendations and then we had to wait again. Now comes the fun part. The feedback from the people that read my script. I guess how it worked was each script was sent to 10 different people so a wide array of people would read and judge it. Meaning 9 other people read that third script I read and said "WTF was that?!"

Anyway, all 10 people send in their feedback and recommendations for my script. To put it in a nice way...they were less than nice.

Needless to say,I didn't make it to the "second round". Yeah, there's "rounds" to this thing. The semi-final round was Afflect, Damon, and that other guy actually read the script and pick a winner. I think if they read my script, I would have a shot cause I know they have a great sense of humor. A bunch of starving screenwriters don't.

Ok so what kind of feedback did I get? I don't remember exactly what they said. I know someone said it was the "worst thing they ever read" and "the screenwriter has some maturing to do" and something about "this isn't even a REAL script. FAIL!" Something to that effect.

Yadda yadda yadda I have self esteem issues.

Anyway, the winner of the year I partook in this ended up being some movie that starred a unknown guy named Shia LaBeouf. I'll tell you now if I won, he wouldn't be in my movie. I was picturing the "Dude, you got a Dell" guy.



Yeah, it was a sign of the times.
-Jason

A TV Horror Show?! WHA??

I know people have been camping out by their computers, just WAITING to see what I have to say about the FX show "American Horror Story". Well, sorry to keep you waiting, I was behind a bit. The day it debuted, I forgot about it and missed the first episode. So I had to wait for all the episodes to repeat to catch up. Now that I'm caught up, I can finally talk about this show.

Oh and spoilers if you're not caught up or haven't seen any episode but plan on it later. This post will be right here waiting for you when you do catch up.

With that said...

I love the fact the teenager Tate did a Columbine before there was a Columbine. He's like a deadly hipster. Of course there's that whole thing of him not remembering doing that, which I wonder what that's all about. Does he really not remember killing those kids or is he just pretending? And what's up with the whole "he doesn't know he's a ghost thing, so we need your help to send him to the other side" thing?

Did anyone else think the bitchy old lady next door was also a ghost? I did for the longest time. Hell, I'm still convinced she is.

How come the bitchy old lady's daughter isn't running around being a ghost? Can you only be a ghost in this house? Well, that's not true cause those kids Tate shot died at school and they showed up. Maybe she didn't wanna roam around as a ghost is the only thing I got.

My favorite part has to be the maid and how she changes her look, depending on who's looking at her. When she's the hot young chick, she says all these strange things in a sexual innuendo type way, but you gotta keep in mind, she's ALSO this old lady. It's all very strange.

What THE FUCK is up with that gimp dude?

I'm starting to have a problem with how much weird shit is going on this show. I don't know how many quirks they're gonna give Jessica Lange's character but NOW she had a deformed son that was chained up in the attic? What's next, a two-headed dog? I hope it stops there otherwise the show's gonna end up being goofy for no reason.

Overall, it is a great show. Unlike "Lost" when they present something, they actually explain it right away, but leave a few small things unexplained (like gimp dude, or the baby being twins). I hope this show doesn't end up like "The Walking Dead" and slow down or get too full of itself. It's perfect the way it is and I hope it continues the path it's going down now.
-Jason

MST3K Month: A Touch of Satan

So I apologize that MST3K Month has been kind of a bust. I guess you could call it "my eyes were bigger than my stomach" cause frankly I just kinda lost track of time and I'm surprised it' already the 21st. Even though there's 9 days left in the month, and I could squeak out a few more reviews, I wouldn't have accomplished all that I wanted to. With that said...I did watch "A Touch of Satan" last night.

I can't even imagine what the filmmakers were going for when they made this movie. I watched this episode on Youtube (I do have it on VHS and it is on Instant Watch but I didn't feel like messing with any of that) and reading the comments I saw someone compare this to "Twilight" and oddly enough, it fits.

You have some guy named Jody driving cross country cause he "wants to be independent" from his father, who stops in a small town that keeps a secret! OOH!! There's been a bunch of killings in this town but no one seems to know who did it. Jody goes "alright then" and keeps on truckin' (it's a '70s film). He passes by a field and decides to stop there and eat lunch. There, he meets Melissa. She's sorta hot in a way that's hard to describe. I guess I can describe it this way: she's the only girl under 50 in this movie. So in that aspect, she's the hottest thing you'll see in this movie.

Anyway, what makes this movie memorable is.......the.......long.......pauses......between......conversations. Holy hell, did the director realize he only had enough material for a 30 minute movie and told them to talk slowly?

Anyway, Melissa invites Jody to her house to meet her parents. They get nervous for some reason, and get more nervous when Melissa makes Jody stay the night. Jody meets the great-grandmother, who's face is horribly burned and looks to be roughly 500 years old.

So what's going on? Basically, Melissa is a witch who, a long ass time ago (like 1850 or something) she and her family were attacked by the local townspeople who wanted to "burn the witch"! They started with Melissa's sister, who is the burned great-grandmother. Melissa saved her by selling her soul to Satan. And I guess this caused her to never age? It was never explained.

Jody doesn't believe any of this, even after watching sister/great-grandmother kill a cop in front of him. Melissa gets tired of her sister's shit and decides to kill her herself. The next day, Melissa and Jody fuck, which freed Melissa, I guess, and causes her to finally look her age. Jody claims he's in love with her and doesn't want her to die, so HE sells HIS soul to Satan to save her.

Man. I've said I been in love with my ex-girlfriends and thought I'd be with them forever. Glad I didn't do that.

Anyway, check out the MST3K episode if you haven't, there's a part where one of them time the pause and it gets to 8 seconds. It's ridiculous.


-Jason

The Lair of the Unwanted #23: Before They Were Stars!

If you ever wanted to hear Nolahn wish ill upon another human being, here's your chance. But he doesn't wish it against Jason or their guest James Blake Ewing from "Cinema Sights". You'll just have to listen to find out who, as they talk about "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation" and "Hercules in New York".

The Netflix Corner #3

Hello and welcome to week 3! Let's get this train a-rolling!

My movie suggestion is something I reviewed sometime last month. And that's going to be motherfuckin' "TerrorVision"!



You just need to take my word for it and watch this movie. It's so awesomely bad, you can't even comprehend!

Now, onto The Netflix Game! Here are last weeks answers and scores so far:

Hard: A woman makes her relationship complicated when she decides to cheat on her fiancee with a guy he know.-The Room
Medium: Three friends are trapped and are unable to escape.-Frozen
Easy: Two cops must learn to work together in order to stop a bad guy.-Lethal Weapon

Nick-9
Joe-2
Dan-1

Without further ado, here's this weeks game:
Hard: A series of crazy events occur in Miami.
Medium: A teenager moves and tries to fit in, until meeting an unusual student and they fall in love.
Easy: A group of detectives are invited to a party to solve a case.

Good luck!
-Jason

Life, The Site, And Everything Else

Ok, not really "life". Life is ok, so far anyway. But I do have some changes I want to/have to make about everything Invasion of The B-Movies.

Oh, now what?! Didn't you just change shit two months ago?! Why don't you make up your mind, dick-bag??

Well, since you asked oh so nicely...

-The video reviews aren't doing as well as I thought they were going to be. And they're really not as fun to put together as I thought they would. It's pretty time consuming and while working on the third one for "The Green Slime" I couldn't find video footage of the movie anywhere to put in the video, and I didn't wanna cheapen it by just filming my TV. Plus, I didn't get a whole lot of feedback on the previous two. I got SOME but not enough to keep going with it. So I'm putting a ka-bosh on that. What's a ka-bosh anyway? Does anybody know?

Why don't you Google it, you fucking retarded limp dick?!

...Anyway, onto the second thing, and this is a biggie:
-In December, I will be getting rid of The Site. I will only do reviews here on The Blog, and I will try to have the dotcom name transferred here to The Blog. I am doing this mainly for monetary reasons. I don't know if anyone is aware of this, but I actually PAY money for the space on The Site and whatnot. And after looking through my stat counter a couple of weeks ago, I found out many people don't visit The Site. So I don't really see the need to have it if everyone just visits The Blog. And I have been told by several close friends they visit the Blog more, and don't understand why I have two places where I do reviews.

Because you're so full of yourself, ass hat!

And they're right, I don't need two places. So with that, sometime in December The Site will be no more and hopefully I won't have a problem with the domain name. We'll see.

And that's it really. Me and Nolahn are still gonna do The Lair, I'm still writing stuff for Man, I Love Films. I'm involved with a few small secret projects that'll come to light someday. So I'm not going anywhere.

Damn!

Shut up!
-Jason

The Soto List: My Top Ten Favorite Joel Episodes

This being MST3K month here at Invasion of the B Movies, I figured I should list off some of my favorite episodes, but seeing how the show can be divided by who likes which host better, I decided to split them and count down ten of my favorite Joel episodes and ten of my favorite Mike episodes. Naturally, we start off with Joel.

10. Attack of The The Eye Creatures-I just recently rewatched this and I never realized how much fun they had while doing this episode. The movie certainly doesn't deserve to be taken seriously and it's only fitting they don't.

9. The Slime People-A very early episode. They hadn't found their footing yet but this episode is one of my favorite Season 1 episodes. The riffing is good, considering, and if you want a good snapshot on what Season 1 was like, this would be a good episode to watch.

8. Rocket Attack, USA-I was surprised on how much I liked this episode. The movie is very boring but all the riffs had me laughing. This is also a landmark episode: it's the first time they used what's called a "stinger", a short clip featuring a really weird, goofy, or plain funny scene from the movie.



7. Operation Double 007-This is a weird premise for a movie. James Bond's brother, played by Sean Connery's brother in real life, is sent out on a spy mission. I'm only putting this movie on the list cause of this segment:



6. Warrior of the Lost World-DO YOU HAVE ANY FRUIT TO DECLARE?!?

5. The Pod People-Out of all the "E.T" rip-off's, this is probably the dumbest. Featuring an ALF-like alien named Trumpy, a very annoying kid, and a group of rock stars, this is the PERFECT MST3K episode.

4. Santa Claus Conquers The Martians-One of two Christmas MST3K episodes I watch every year (The other coming up in a future post), this is a wacky film but I excuse it cause it's really geared towards kids.

3. Manos: The Hands of Fate-Calling this a favorite is like calling the Yadda, Yadda, Yadda episode of "Seinfeld" a favorite but you have to give it up to them, they had to watch this movie 7 or 8 times. I could only stomach it once without the riffing.

2. Mitchell-Joel's last episode. He made sure to go out with a bang and considering this film stars Joe Don Baker, what a bang.

1. Teenagers From Outer Space-This episode makes me laugh and laugh and laugh. Especially when they have characters singing classic rock songs. It's a great episode and a perfect movie for them.

So those are my favorite Joel episodes. A Mike one will be coming sometime next week. And yes, I promise I'll get to my reviews of "The Green Slime" and "Laserblast" before the month is over. Promise.
-Jason

The Netflix Corner #2

Alright! This new feature is getting a lot of love! Awesome!

First, your Instant Watch recommendation.



"Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter", as you probably figured, is one crazy ass movie. And it's pretty much what you think it's about. The world is a vampire and only one Son of God can stop it! Ok, the middle of the movie gets a bit complicated when they throw in lesbians and Mexican wrestlers but it's still a fun movie and I highly recommend it.

And now The Netflix Game! Here are last week's answers and winners

Hard: In order to succeed, a man must re-learn everything he didn't learn the first time around.-Billy Madison
Medium: An unclean cop who loves big weapons must stop a serial killer.-Dirty Harry
Easy: Two guys who hate their job talk about relationships, pop culture, and awful customers.-Clerks

Nick-4
Joe-2

A reminder how it works: I'm gonna give a pretty crappy description of three movies, you have to guess what movie I'm talking about for each. Hard is worth 3 points, medium is 2 points, and easy is 1 point. Here you go.

Hard: A woman makes her relationship complicated when she decides to cheat on her fiancee with a guy he know.
Medium: Three friends are trapped and are unable to escape.
Easy: Two cops must learn to work together in order to stop a bad guy.

That's it. Good luck!
-Jason

MST3K: Werewolf

"Werewolf" came out in 1996, and the MST3K episode came out in 1998, which made this movie the NEWEST movie they've riffed. Some speculated that the filmmakers made the movie bad on purpose to be put on MST3K, which back in 1996 was around it's 7th season. Unless the director Tony Zarindast emails me telling me the truth, we may never know.

But (ir)regardless, "Werewolf". I swear the worse things to happen to movies is the direct to video market. It's like people don't even try anymore and say "Well, if this doesn't get a theatrical release, this can go direct to video. YAY!!" Because out of all the shitty werewolf films I've seen ("Twilight" included), this is probably the shittiest.

A group of...people? I refuse to call them archaeologists cause they just stand around, drink beer, and fight. So these people are in the desert digging around when they come across a skeleton that looks like a human with a wolf head. The local Indians think it's a werewolf and freak out. Joe Estevez is there to calm everybody down. And...

HOLY FUCK RICHARD LYNCH IS IN THIS MOVIE?!? I FORGOT RICHARD LYNCH IS IN THIS MOVIE!



Ok, I'm calm. So Richard Lynch takes the werewolf bones back to his office where he and a chick named Natalie try to figure out what it is exactly. There's a guy named Yuri who's fuckin' hysterical because every scene in this movie, he has different colored hair and even different hairstyles. I can't figure out what the hell that was about. Maybe he was bald and wanted to try out different wigs? I mean, what the fuck?

Anyway, Yuri takes the role of "I want to exploit this" the best I can. Meanwhile, some Indian who got attacked by the werewolf skeleton is now turning into a werewolf. When Yuri finds out and realizes the bones have essence of werewolf, he decides to turn people left and right into werewolves!

Then we meet Paul. He's a writer from New York who moved here to Arizona (I guess, they call the city Flagstaff) and he meets Natalie and instantly they fall in love. Paul meet his own hilarious character of Sam, the caretaker of the house Paul is renting. I have no idea how to describe Sam so here's a picture:



Anyway, Paul and Natalie have a small romance, so she takes him to show the werewolf bones, when Yuri is there. He uses the bones to attack Paul (so Yuri loves these bones but he uses them as weapons? The fuck?), which gives Paul a huge gash on his back.

Surprise surprise surprise! Paul is a werewolf! Yuri discovers this and wants to cage him, but Paul escapes and roams around Arizona and attacks random people. Natalie, when she's not hustling people at the pool tables, is out looking for were-Paul. Did I mention Natalie looks like this?



Butter-face?

Ok so Yuri is looking for Paul, Paul kills Yuri, and because Paul had sex with Natalie, Natalie turns into a werewolf and the movie simply ends. And if you watch the MST3K episode, you get this awesomeness!



The movie sucks, plain and simple. I don't get what the fuck Yuri's problem was, between fighting everybody and having 200 different hairstyles. The acting is terrible. I'm sure the chick playing Natalie is a porn star. It's all very...weird. And Richard Lynch is sorely underused in this movie. Cause lord knows we need more Richard Lynch.


-Jason

One Demented Podcast

Recently I was asked to be on "The Demented Podcast" to talk about slasher flicks. I spent my weeks preparing by watching all the "Friday the 13th's", "Halloweens", and one-off slasher flicks I could, only to be told we're watching..."Blood and Black Lace" and "American Psycho". Oh well.



It was still a fun episode and easily the best Tower experience ever. But did I win? You're just gonna have to find out.
-Jason

MST3K Month: Attack of The (The) Eye Creatres

Now here's a great example of not only how NOT to make a movie, but the perfect "Mystery Science Theater 3000" movie. It's horrible but fun, features scenes and situations you need to see to believe, and feature laughable monsters. But I need to address something that you probably noticed right away: The title.

The film was originally titled "The Eye Creatures" but sometime later it went through a weird re-distribution process where someone decided to retitle the movie "Attack of The Eye Creatures". The problem was they weren't paying attention and ended up adding "Attack of The" before the title card. Good job, Gomer.

Anyway, the movie itself. During the credit sequence, some military guy is locked up in a classroom and he's showing a film to some other military guy. The film is suppose to be PROOF that aliens have arrived! The film (narrated by Peter Graves) just shows a toy on a string flying over a plant. This is suppose to represent a UFO landing in a town.

Then we meet the most loathsome characters I've ever seen in my life, and I just recently seen "A Serbian Film". They're two military guys sitting in some room watching some top secret satellite camera thing, which they have aimed at a bunch of teenagers making out. The two guys just make jokes, and mugs at the camera about watching this. It's pretty weird.

We finally meet our central characters. First up is Carl and Mike. They're friends who drifted into town a month ago and they're trying to find jobs and/or women to hook up with. Well, Carl is anyway. Mike just wants to go home and sleep. Killjoy.

Then we meet Stan and Susan. They are young lovers who plan on running away and eloping. Susan's father, who is some bigwig in this small town, doesn't like Stan a whole hell of a lot. But you know how that goes. And finally, we meet the best character in this movie: Old Man Bailey.

Old Man Bailey literally spends his days and nights standing on his porch with a loaded shotgun, chasing "damn smoochers off his property!" That's all he does throughout the whole movie, stand there, yell about smoochers, and shoots a shotgun. And speaking of day and night, the main flaw this movie has (out of a billion other flaws) is the day-to-night shots. Everybody says that it's too dark outside or it's nighttime, but it's clearly 1 PM. They didn't even try to hide this fact by tinting the film, or having people stand in shadows, or anything. Just bam! It's "night".

Ok so in the forest, the aliens, the Eye Creatures, are roaming around. Stan and Susan are driving when they hit one, killing it. Killing it caused the alien's hand to break off (I don't know) and the hand tears a hole in the tire. They walk to Old Man Bailey's house to call the police, but because they're "kids", the cops don't listen to them.

Then here comes Carl. He spots the dead monster, rushes to a phone (I think it was Old Man Bailey's phone as well) and calls Mike, telling him they're gonna be rich! Mike doesn't believe him either and just wants to go back to sleep. Carl goes back to the body to put it in his car when another alien shows up and kills Carl.

The police show up (because Old Man Bailey told them to cause of all the people coming in and out of his house) and spot Carl's body. The cops think it's what Stan and Susan hit and arrest them for manslaughter. They prove their innocence by saying they hit an alien, but no one will listen. Then it turns into "The Fugitive".

Stan and Susan are left alone in the police station by a unlocked door, so of course they run out, steal a car, and go to Mike's house. They think if they get Mike on their side, the cops will listen to them. Mike at first doesn't believe them, but once he learns about Carl's death, he slowly gives in.

All three drive back to the first, where they spot the disembodied hand locked in a car. Mike sees it, believes them finally, and goes to take a picture of it. The flash from the bulb causes the hand to blow up. Armed with this knowledge, they now know how to kill the aliens: by shining bright lights on them. So they're the original "Gremlins"?

Like I said, this is a really bad monster movie but it's a lot of fun. It's so bad and cheesy that you'll find plenty to laugh about. Especially when we see Mike and his choice of sleepwear. Even if you watch this movie without the guys of MST3K, I think you'll enjoy the experience. Just don't take it seriously, lord knows the people who made it didn't.


-Jason