1x400 - The X From Outer Space

August 10, 2023

An intrepid crew of astronauts is headed to Mars when they encounter a hidden menace: spores. Fortunately, the spores quickly realize how dull of a villain they are and decide to mutate into the terrifying rubber kaiju known as The X! The X, who resembles what the offspring might look like if Gonzo ever sealed the deal with Camilla, turns out to be named Guilala. NASA's top scientists figured this out when they looked The X up on Facebook and found his profile, which also indicated that he matriculated at “The School of Hard Knocks,” majoring in “Your Mom.”* It turns out the only way to defeat Guilala is a substance called Guilalalium. At this point it may start to dawn on more astute viewers that this movie is kind of silly. The X runs amok, doing a variety of general flailing that looks unimpressive until you realize how hard it must have been to see for the guy inside the Guilala suit.

1x401 - Truth or Dare

September 8, 2023

When we say we’re riffing a movie called Truth or Dare your mind might go to the black & white documentary full of naughty images of Madonna and her backup dancers. Hey, get your mind out of the gutter! And into the totally different gutter that is THIS Truth or Dare. The truth is, this is the kind of movie most people would only watch on a dare. It’s grimy, puzzling, and accidentally pretty damn funny. However there is at least one person who’s happy to watch it of his own free will: superstar actor Elijah Wood! He has loved this movie ever since he somehow saw it at age 5 – we’re not kidding, there are interview clips about it. Look ‘em up! The hallucinatory story begins when Mike Strauber comes home from work to find his beloved wife cheating on him with his best friend, who is also her boss. He reacts the way any man would: running away and playing a bloody game of Truth or Dare with an imaginary hitchhiker at a family campsite.

1x402 - Samson and Delilah

September 22, 2023

Naturally, we wanted to pick something special and grand for our first foray into the genre, so we went with a TV movie from the 1980s. The production values may have you thinking it’s from the 60s, until you see a young Daniel Stern facing off against Philistines. Yes, before he was a Wet Bandit in Home Alone or a reflective baby boomer narrating The Wonder Years, he was a Biblical soldier guy! The movie also features the legendary Max von Sydow as a Philistine general, certainly the role he’s remembered most for today. Daniel Stern’s friend is a guy named Samson, a big dumb chunk of muscle with a ponytail that gives him superpowers. Samson has a tendency to fall for women who betray him in complicated ways, starting with his wife and continuing with the seductive Delilah. Samson also has a tendency to fight his foes with unusual tools, including the jawbone of an ass and a bunch of foxes with their tails set on fire. Resourceful, maybe - but pretty weird, Samson!

1x403 - Robocop The TV Show

September 29, 2023

When that guy in the movie said “I’d buy that for a dollar!” he was talking about the show’s effects budget. RoboCop’s wife and son think he's dead, and he doesn’t want to tell them that he’s not, because have you seen how many games youth soccer teams play these days?? He can’t be driving all over town to drop the kid off every day! Not with all that RoboCopping he has to do! Meanwhile, a mad scientist is attempting to take over Motor City by using a Siri-esque virtual assistant to control the town’s elevators. His mission? To make it very clear to audiences why we never got a fourth movie. Helping him out is “Pud Face Morgan,” who must have slept through his alarm on the day they assigned gangster nicknames. RoboCop has to stop the evildoers before the Shareware Expo, which the bad guys intend to ruin, possibly by deploying a gigantic Keygen. It might be Detroit’s lowest moment since Barry Sanders retired, and that's really saying something.

1x404 - Demon Island

October 13, 2023

Hundreds of years ago, a shaman in a remote village took all the evil impulses out of his people and put them into a clay “piñata” shaped like a demon. Then the villagers sent the clay piñata floating down a river. If the piñata is ever smashed, all that evil will be released upon the world and cause endless destruction. So hey, what could go wrong? The answer, as always: COLLEGE KIDS. Specifically, fraternity and sorority kids who go to the titular island for an underwear scavenger hunt. Thrill as Jaime Pressly and the guy who played Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer struggle to provide romantic tension in this pseudo Spring Break adventure. But then, whaddaya know, a couple of stoned sophomores find the ancient clay demon - which they somehow recognize as a piñata - and smash it open, releasing all kinds of adorable heck.

1x405 - Amityville Dollhouse

October 27, 2023

Dad has spent the past ten months building a house all by himself, and it should surprise nobody that it kind of sucks. And that’s before evil spirits start lighting fires and making giant rats appear! Now, the house itself is not evil. Instead (try to keep up here), there’s an evil dollhouse in a shed in California that resembles the main Amityville evil house. This allows it to do a wide range of things from “turning the fireplace on” (lame, not that evil, probably just something Alexa can do) to “making a dead guy turn up in a boy’s closet” (terrifying, very evil, call Amazon support if your Alexa does this.) Also a stepmom gets real horny for her stepson, which makes us wonder what type of websites this evil dollhouse has been spending time on. We do end up in another dimension, but never get anywhere near Amityville. But that’s okay, because the next evil object could be anything! Ward them off by joining Mike, Kevin, and Bill for Amityville Dollhouse!

1x406 - Top Gun: Maverick

November 10, 2023

Some “Unspecified Bad Guys” are building “Something Very Bad” in a “Country That Shall Remain Unspecified So As To Not Harm Foreign Box Office Receipts.” If they’re able to complete this device, many people will die, and more importantly, the Navy’s shirtless volleyball game could be interrupted. Tom Cruise is determined not to let this happen, despite the fact that he is now as old as Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau combined were when they filmed Grumpy Old Men. Thankfully, there are some youthful pilots whose main training at the Naval Academy appears to have been re-enacting all your favorite moments from the original Top Gun. Maverick has to take them under his wing to make sure they master the fine points of aerial combat, such as “clearing rights for songs that appeared in the original movie” and “picking a really stupid code name.”

1x407 - The Paradise Motel

The Paradise Motel is brought to you by some of the same folks behind the shark-free shark movie Apex Predators. Including Mel Novak as a creepy motel manager who reads human taxidermy books for fun. And the one and only Dawna Lee Heising, who can best be described as “if Weird Barbie from the Barbie movie was really, like really, weird.” Dawna stars as a woman on the run from her awful marriage to a man who’s furious she won't return “this crap” to the store, without ever specifying what the “crap” actually is. From there, she picks up a couple of the world’s most annoying hitchhikers on a deranged, low-budget Lynchian trip that brings her to the town of Paradise and its eponymous motel. Beyond that, you’re gonna need a corkboard and a whole lot of string to sort out the timeline of the plot, who’s who, and why they’re doing any of the things they’re doing. Almost forgot to mention, the movie soundtrack includes original songs sung by the director, who also acts in the film.

1x408 - The Christmas Martian

December 15, 2023

The Christmas Martian, a French-Canadian movie that’s sure to become a beloved holiday tradition right up there with that VHS of Christmas With The Kranks you discovered your older brother recorded over with an episode of Red Shoe Diaries. Poo Flower, (that is his name, we’re all gonna have to deal with it) is the titular martian. He does not come from Mars, and that’s honestly way down on the list of things that concern us about this movie. He shows up in Canada and proceeds to endanger the hell out of the two children who discover him. Fire, heavy machinery, horse manure, and a whole pile of alien pills are but a sampling of the delights these kids encounter at the hands of, say it with us now: Poo Flower. As you’d expect this ends with a violent mob chasing down the poor alien on Christmas Eve. That’s when he’s forced to unleash the full force of his Martian powers to… well, you wouldn’t even believe us if we told you.

1x409 - The Little Mermaid

January 5, 2024

Your first indication that this version of The Little Mermaid might be different from the one you’re used to comes when it opens with several minutes of live action tourism footage of Denmark. Come on kids, time to watch men in sweaters purchase cheese! From there, you’ll meet a young mermaid princess named Marina, with a clingy dolphin friend named Fritz. There’s no fun singing crab, but there are crab policemen ready to enforce martial law. Yippee! It’s oddly serious and sad. Marina falls in love with a statue of a prince, and even more in love with the actual prince depicted in the statue. Despite the endless tears and protestations of Fritz the emotionally erratic dolphin, Marina goes to a sea witch (no, not THAT sea witch) and makes a bargain to get a pair of feet. Even the sea witch tries to tell her it’s a bad idea, but Marina won’t hear it.

1x411 - Terminus

January 26, 2024

Put on your favorite action beret, because Terminus is one of the most European action movies we’ve ever encountered. It’s a French/German production, sort of a Euro Mad Max full of big ideas that don’t really come together, kind of like Euro Disney, or a Coca-Cola served at room temperature. The least European part of the movie by far is Karen Allen of Indiana Jones fame. Instead of bantering with Harrison Ford, she spends this movie in the company of an intelligent truck with a realistic mouth. We’ll let you read that again. Yes, the focus of the movie Terminus is a self-driving truck that speaks with a huge, fleshy, human mouth. On top of that, the Mouth Truck speaks in what we can only describe as the French idea of “urban slang.” The Cybertruck wishes it could be this off-putting. Karen Allen and the Mouth Truck are part of a big game, designed by a creepy little blonde boy and his team of pretentious scientists.

1x412 - The Brain From Planet Arous

February 2, 2024

When a giant evil floating brain arrives on Earth, everyone has the same question: does it come in peace? It responds by blasting people, taking over bodies with psychic powers, and lunging at women. Yep: it’s a close encounter and the third kind is horny AF The evil brain shows up at a place called Mystery Mountain, which sounds like the name of a ride at a traveling carnival that has a handwritten sign on it that says “Closed pending trial outcome.” Our hero is played by John Agar, who does not appear to have any discernible charisma, but at least Wikipedia informs us married Shirley Temple when she was 17 years old. Wait, maybe we should be rooting for the giant evil brain…?

1x413 - Spy High

February 9, 2024

Who’s ready for a movie about Kids who Spy? Yes that’s right, we’ve got the most famous film ever made on the subject of Spying Kids Who Are Spies, you guessed it: the one and only Spy High! Oh, that’s not the one you were thinking of? Not our problem, go take it up with Antonio Banderas.