Tag: Instant Watch

Last Second Instant Watch: Mystery Team

by Saintmort

Alright Geekscapists. Thursday is a big day on Netflix Instant Watch so clear your schedules. Before this week is over Netflix will be pulling some classic movies like Escape from New York, Swamp Thing &  Zapped!, 2 stand up specials by Bill Hicks (Sane Man & Bill Hicks Live), Last Week’s Guilty Pleasure Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever and what was almost the topic of this weeks Last Second Instant Watch Wristcutters: A Love Story (which honestly if you’ve never seen now is the time to check it out). However what I want to shine the spotlight on is the new cult classic Mystery Team

Much like Lonely Island, Derrick Comedy is a youtube sketch group that grew in popularity when one of the members hit it big on television. Lonely Island has Andy Samberg, Derrick Comedy has Donald Glover.

Mystery Team follows a group of young junior detectives. They solve mysteries like “who’s been eating the neighbor’s pie”. Suddenly they get hired on a real case, discovering who murdered a little girl’s parents. It’s like Brick meets the Three Amigos.

It’s a delightfully dumb comedy made on a shoestring budget that I can’t recommend enough.

Last Second Instant Watch: The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

by Saintmort

Greetings Instant Watchers,

Every week movies appear and disappear on netflix instant watch. Nothing is more frustrating when a movie was there and the next day it’s gone when you were planning to watch it. We here at Geekscape want to make sure this stressful thing doesn’t occur to you! So here’s our recommendation of a movie to instant watch before it’s removed on Feb. 28th, 2012

THE GHOST AND MR. CHICKEN (1966)

In the 50’s and 60’s Don Knotts was a big name in comedy. One of his finest films was this horror/comedy. In it Knotts plays Luther Heggs (aka Mr. Chicken), a wanna-be journalist who is hired to cover the mystery of the town’s haunted house. The film was written and directed by Alan Rafkin, Jim Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum (all who worked on The Andy Griffin Show). If you’ve only known Don Knotts as that guy who turns into a cartoon fish in a weird WWII kids movie or the inspiration for the principal on Doug, then you should check out this movie and see why he’s a comedy legend.

Also leaving Instant Watch this week:

Feb. 28th: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Bedazzled (1967), The Lady Eve, Valley of the Dolls, The Reluctant Astronaut, Thirtysome 

Feb. 29th: Toy Story 3, Tron: Legacy, Let Me In

This Geek In Netflix: Blubberella

by Allisonnnnn

I have discovered that someone has allowed Uwe Boll to direct yet another movie.  I know.  How does this man keep getting money and distribution?  

In mid-2011, Blubberella was released on DVD and Blu-Ray by Event Film Distribution (just so you know who to blame).  Please reign in your excitement.  There’s not a lot of information (well, easy to access information when it’s 1AM and your groggy author wants to be soaking her pillow in drool shortly) floating around the internet on this movie– IMDB doesn’t even have a photo of the cover (which is ridiculous, by the way).

Blubberella stars Lindsay Hollister, who you might recognize as Steve Carell’s dance partner if you watched that horrific flick Get Smart (even my love for Anne Hathaway could not compel me to watch that movie), as the titular Blubberella– a smart-talking, under-sexed, cock-blocked, over-hyphenated dhampir(e) who happens to be residing in Germany in 1940.  No, not the best of times to be living in Germany.

There’s some other minor actors in here, but none of them really have a recognizable background to draw from at the present time.  We also have Uwe Boll doing an oddly charming appearance as Hitler.  

So… the plot.  I swear there was a plot in there somewhere.

We meet Blubberella as she rises from bed (curled up next to a line of dildos) and begins to narrate who she is to the audience.

“Hiiiii everyone!  I’m Blubberella and I’m a superhero!  Yes, I am!  Stop laughing!  I hope that you’re not sitting too close to the TV, ’cause you’ll be in my splash zone!  Here’s some facts about me: I’ve been a superhero for the last 800 years, in high school I was voted most likely to marry a black man…”

That pretty much sets the tone for the movie.

Awkward love interest.  Afraid of sharks and being tall.  (Still kinda hot, though.)

We follow our lovely giantess as she attempts to find sex/love from the men she’s met on HerbrewHookup.com (yes, of course they had the internet in 1940s Germany) who keep “mysteriously” not showing up for their dates.  And we also watch her fight Nazis– usually while trying to get food or sex from them.

This movie is set into chapters.  They are:

Chapter One: Blubberella’s Hobbies (in no particular order) 

   1. Walks on the beach

   2. Killing Nazis

Chapter Two: How to Make a Vampire for Dummies

Chapter Three: Titty Titty Fang Bang

Chapter Four: VILFS (vampies I’d like to fuck)

Chapter Eight: Intervention 

Chapter Ten: Highway to Hitler

I cannot tell you what happened to five through seven or nine, but I can tell you that, whatever may have happened, this movie is going to make a fat joke about it.  The sheer number of fat jokes this thing contained was ridiclous.  Sure, there were a couple of good one-liners, but overall… it was too much.  It’s like they were beating a dead horse and then decided to gangrape its corpse.

Before I start bitching too much, let’s get back to the film.

There is a series of what look to be unrelated (or very loosely related) events that this movie attempts to link together.  A dream about Hitler, rescuing Jews from a train headed for some unnamed concentration camp, experiments on a Nosferatu-looking vampire, romance with a freedom fighter, a visit to a bordello, an escape on a Segway, and (among others unlisted) Blubberella unpacking her shopping (for like two minutes and there’s so no point).

Herr Doctor?  Docktor?  Dockter?  Fuck it.

They all link up vaguely to… not much.  I have a feeling this movie was edited with an iron fist weighted down by a crazy person beating off in an alley (which I’ve seen waaaaay too much of recently).

Here’s a snippet from my notes on the story-line:

“Hitler suddenly shows up on Blubberella’s doorstep (which is odd, because a) they didn’t know where she lived, b) they didn’t know her name, but Hitler called her by it as soon as he entered, and c) A TINY BLACK MOUSTACHE DOES NOT MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE HITLER) and begins to bitch to her about how she’s ruining his war campaign.  She accuses him of cock-blocking her by sending so many Jewish men to camps and he decides to live with her.

Uwe Boll does not make a good Hitler– I kept wanting to hug him and pat his head.

Also, there’s a dude in black-face, bringing the total number of dudes in black-face to two– which is two more than there should be.  It just doesn’t work.  Also, black-face make-up = total fail.  He’s more like green-face, and the make-up artist continues to maintain this standard for excellence throughout the movie.

During his residency at Chateau de Blubberella, Hitler and Blubberella bond over board games (RISK), cooking, and intimate conversations about Hitler’s true passions and we are given amazingly epic lines like: 

“You’re just going to get lonelier the more people you kill.”

Cliched, but true.

But the whole Hitler-romance turns out to be a dream.  I was incredibly disappointed by this.

Why is there a resistance fighter dressed as a fish? (Still kinda hot, though.)

44 minutes in, and I still didn’t have a good plot summary.  That’s kinda fucked.  However, at 50 minutes in, we learn that Hitler is possibly taking over the world with an undead army.  Possibly.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Look, I’m still waiting for a coherent plot and the movie is over.

Plot-issues aside (far, far aside), this movie is packed so full of cultural references that, in ten years, no one is going to get a single joke that isn’t about her size.  We’ve got Blade, Blade II, The Matrix, The Dark Knight, Precious, Dancing with the Stars, Nosferatu, and probably about a dozen that I didn’t catch because I live under a rock.  Doing this amount of time-stamping on a film is bone-headed.

The tone of her hands doesn’t actually need to match her face.  (Still kinda hot, though.)

However, there were some great lines that actually had me laughing out loud (“LOL” for those of you that no longer use your words), like:

“Honey, there’s no black people in this movie so the whore’s probably going to die first.”

“I’ve never seen anybody move like you do– like a caged rhino that hasn’t been fed in weeks.”

Watching this movie was a bit weird for me.  For most of it, I was sitting there feeling really bad for the lead actress.  Who wants to be the star of a film that focuses on a part of their body (or all of their body?) that is considered by most to be, at minimum, unattractive?  Who wants to be the constant butt of jokes and be force-fed into a romance role?  This movie, to me, felt like a stab at fat people.  Well, repeated stabs.  Machine gun-speed stabs liberally spread over the course of an hour and some change.

You and me could have a bad romance.  (Still kinda… no.  No, it’s not.)

But then I saw that Hollister was one of the writers for the script.  That turns my concern on its head.  She willingly wrote a movie called Blubberella that makes joke after joke about how huge her vagina must be.  That compares her to various oversize jungle animals.  That’s quite unexpected.  I don’t really know what to think about it, but I really want to sit down with her now and find out her take.

Was the movie good?  No.  But it was entertaining– mostly.  Some parts ran a little dry, some parts you knew Boll was giving the finger to various movie people.  And Hollister is fucking amazing.  I fell in love with her during the first half of the movie, watching her act out a scene with her “mother” when she gave the best puppy dog eyes I have ever seen.  

So if you want a cute little romp where the plot-line follows in the path of those damned “Family Circus” kids and is full of fat jokes, sex jokes, and gay jokes (the character of flaming Vadge was killer), queue this up on Netflix on Demand.

This Geek In Netflix: Muoi, the Legend of a Portrait

by Allisonnnnn

Hrm.  Intro.  I like puppies.

In late 2007, Muoi: The Legend of a Portrait was released and, according to Wikipedia (which is always suspect to me), was the second horror film to be released in Vietnam (the first being Haunted House/Ghost Stream) and garnered the first under-16 ban rating for disturbing imagery and violence.

I’d name the actors but, much like with Vampires, no one is going to know who they are anyway.  I’d also like to declare that Asians don’t have feelings (much like Europeans), but I don’t want to be the victim of some “accident” involving chopsticks.  So… ASIANS ARE AWESOME! <( ^_^ )>

Look at how awesome he is!

Now, this part is usually where I write up a plot summary, but I think you’re going to get my notes on the beginning instead.

Open with credits while panning through forest, then monster-lady jumps down and movie begins.

Tranny!  No, not a trannny.  So confused.  Not-a-tranny runs down street and wanders into a temple.  Smoke sweeps up from her feet, she drops her lantern, something from above swings down as she screams in despair.  DESPAAAAIRRRR!

Not the possible tranny.

Okay, back to the actual article.

Yoonhee (spelling is variable depending on translator, article, or database you are accessing but, uh… *(^o^)*) is a young Korean novelist who has, through help of her long-distance friend in Vietnam, Seoyeon, developed a mild obsession with turning the Curse of Muoi (more in a minute, simmer the hell down) into a best-selling novel.  

We meet aforementioned novelist as she receives the third degree about  Seoyeon from one of her cunty friends and leaner-on boyfriend and about her upcoming trip to Vietnam to do research for her novel.  After taunting her a second time, the cunty friend gets Yoonhee to take her camera, which comes into play later.  

Not that I’m going to talk about it in this article.  But if you’re planning on watching this thing and keeping track of inanimate objects, that’s one to pay attention to.

I need a fancy Vietnamese vacation house.

Back in l’abode de Yoonhee (that’s French for the house of Mistress Yoonhee the Mighty), we get to hear the answering machine recording of Yoonhee’s editor threatening her over the needed story.  She decides to flee the country.

I lied.  (I do that a lot.  You’ll get used to it.)  She goes to Vietnam (as previously mentioned– please pay attention) to pursue research for her book.  Chae Seoyeon, the giraffe-necked wonder who Yoonhee hasn’t seen in three years, meets her at the airport, and takes her on the city’s official Muoi Tour.

Giraffe.  Neck.

I lied again– there is no official Muoi Tour.  You should probably spank me for such naughtiness.

On the unofficial Muoi Tour, Seoyeon guides Yoonhee to a wall of photographs in some… park(?).  I’ve never heard of this, but good for them for erecting a wall outside and putting framed photographs on it.  Anyhow, Yoonhee (and therefore we) learn about how Muoi was born a normal child (even though her name means “ten”), and how when Muoi became a ghost, monks had to be called in to seal her spirit into a painting to keep her contained.

Because, you know, paintings aren’t easy to destroy or anything.  No, sir.

Seoyeon also informs us that Muoi has the power to curse on the 15th night of the month when there is a full moon (I curse during certain times of the month too) and that the curse lasts for 15 days (poor girl).  

When Yoonhee questions what the curse actually does and where the witnesses are, Seoyeon says that she doesn’t know what the curse is, but all victims of the curse are certainly dead.  Suspicous conversation follows, leaving us all with the knowledge that something isn’t right with Seoyeon, but Yoonhee isn’t socially adept enough to catch it.

Awkward vacation photo.

They get a room at a hotel and, while the little creepster sleeps, Yoonhee experiences ringing doorbells and showers that turn themselves on.  (I turn myself on all the time.  But usually not, you know, while cameras are running.)

There is, of course, a second ghost reveal.  Now, this is 13 minutes in (OOOoOOOoOOooOOO) and we’ve seen the ghost twice.  Not exactly a suspense-builder, is it?

The next day, they head to l’abode du Seoyeon le creepster (the house of Seoyeon the creepster) and have a typical Bluebeard set-up.  You know, the moment when some creeptastic creeper says “Don’t go into that part of the castle/house/shack, it’s where I do perfectly innocent things, but it’s my special place”?  And then they smile like they’re already planning about anally raping you with a loaf of banana bread next time you sleep?  That thing.

She has memorized the recipe for banana bread.

The legend of Muoi and her curse is revealed later that day on a romantic boatride that ends at Muoi’s old cottage.  Before Muoi became a ghost, the tale goes, she was a humble peasant girl who fell in love with an artist who tragically had to leave her after starting her portrait because he was engaged. Inconveinent, that.

What was more inconveinent was that this fiancee was psychotic and decided to have Muoi’s legs broken immediately before throwing a jar full of acid onto her face.  Horribly scarred from this incident (and not just psychologically), Muoi decided that she could not chase after her love with her newly gained physical deformity and instead hung herself in order to turn herself into a ghost and get revenge. (AKA: bitches be crazy.)

Probably not the best day of her life.

Seoyeon wanders outside and lets Yoonhee explore the property alone.  As alone as she could be, given that she’s being fucking haunted by a crazy ghostbitch.

The film degrades (as much as this film could degrade– it’s pretty much a flatline the entire way through) to where you’d expect: Yoonhee continues to get spooked by spooky things while pursuing her research and Seoyeon continues to be a creeper.  Eventually there’s the obvious reveal and the obvious end– which I felt was amateurly done.

Nothing to do with any of the surrounding text.  Carry on.

This movie is, while not exactly slow, terribly disjointed.  I’m not sure if the fault lies with the screen-writer, the editor, or the translator (or all three), as the subtitling is pretty damn bad and leads one (me) to believe that with as many spelling and grammatical errors as I caught upon first reading, the content of the translation itself may be dodgy.

Overall, was this movie worth watching?  Seoyeon was hot in that creepy, Wednesday Adams sorta way that I really appreciate… but did it really make up for the lukewarmness of this movie?  Does my creation of “lukewarmness” offend anyone?  These are things you’ll have to answer for yourself, though I’m not really going to encourage anyone to queue this corpse up on Netflix.

This Geek In Netflix: We All Scream for Ice Cream

by Allisonnnnn

Introduction, introduction, catchy phrasing that looks good on Facebook when you share it, jerk off, jerk off, jerk off.  OKAY, LET’S GO!

HOLY FUCK.

Apparently, there’s this show called Masters of Horror which is neither full of mastery or horrific, but I suppose one has to set goals.  From what I can gather, it’s like Tales from the Crypt without the prerequiste Crypt Keeper but with the super low budget.

Normally, I would avoid such things.  Or I’d try to avoid such things, watch a movie, and then realize that, shit, I just watched an episode of a show.  Because this is a *movie* review column, not a television episode review column… thing.

But I saw the cover of this movie, “We All Scream for Ice Cream” with its little melty ice cream cone/clown head and read the description and I shouted, “Bring it!”…  at my computer.  Which was really kinda awkward, it being an inanimate object that has absolutely no chance in hell if we got into a fist fight because IT HAS NO FISTS.

You couldn’t say no to this level of awesome.

Quick actor rundown: we’ve got William Forsythe as Buster, the retarded stuttering clown, who you may know as Manny Horvitz from Boardwalk Empire (he does a good job being a retarded stuttering clown, FYI).  Then we’ve got some little kids who were from Trick ‘r’ Treat which is one of the best Halloween movies ever.  And then there’s Lee Tergesen playing Layne (who only has a retarded name and is not actually retarded like Buster), who you’ll know from a variety of TV shows like Army Wives (Officer Boone), Generation Kill (Evan ‘Scribe’ Wright), Wanted (US Marshal Eddie Drake), Oz (Tobias Beecher), and Weird Science (Chett Donnelly).  That man loves his TV.

Wow, that paragraph was too long.  Look at the size of that thing.  Jeez.  Fucking Lee Tergesen throwing off my rhythm.

Now, I know you’re sitting there going “Who cares about the actors, tell me about THE CLOWN!” and, first off, I want to let you know that it isn’t very nice to be so dismissive about their hard work.  Secondly, THE CLOWN, fuck yes, I will tell you so much about THE CLOWN.

This movie opens with an older man, assumedly “Dad” talking to assumedly “son”, Kenny, trying to convince him not to eat the ice cream bar he’s holding.  Kenny basically tells him to fuck off and bites the bar.  The dad gurgles and melts into ice cream like dads tend to do.  Kenny says, “You shouldn’t have grounded me,” and continues to munch.

Dad’s creamy filling.

Cut to: the funeral of the dead man who is now, you know, just melted ice cream.  And what I want to know is how he’s staying in a coffin– shouldn’t he be in a large tupperware or maybe even an over-sized ziploc baggy?  Where on earth were the ice cream containment consultants when the script was being written??

Anyhow, there’s some dialogue and the phrase “horse-pucky” gets worked in.  In case you were counting the amount of times “horse-pucky” gets used in a movie.

Reason #38 as to why I’m never reproducing.

Then we move to Papa Joe’s Bar, where vaguely drunk, possibly Canadian guy (possibly only Canadian when drunk, which some of us are) informs bartender (Papa Joe) and friend of the deceased about how the death of some guy named “Skip” may not have been caused by what they all think.  He informs the bartender that Skip’s supposedly totaled car was found, perfectly fine, with only Skip’s clothing inside it.  Theories about nudity and covered-up murders ensue and Layne eventually enters the bar.

On his way home later that night, Layne sees children standing on the edge of the street holding quarters while a creepy voice chants about ice cream.  AGAIN, WHERE’S THE REALISM?!  Show me a fucking ice cream truck where the most basic of popsicles isn’t at least a dollar.  WHAT THE HELL ARE THESE KIDS GOING TO BUY WITH A QUARTER?!

?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!!!!!!!!????!!!?!!!!!!

Anyhow, he pulls onto his street and his windows start rapidly icing up and he almost runs over his own kid, who also labors under the delusion that ice cream only costs a quarter.

Meanwhile, back on the route home from the bar, the drunk guy demands to have the car pulled over so he can run across the street, vault the fence, and vomit.  Instead of, you know, just opening his car door and letting the highway take his bile.  While he’s off vomiting in the woods, some unnamed and previously unseen kid bites the head off of an ice cream bar shaped like a human and the drunk guy starts… well, he’s either orgasming or someone installed a retarded hamster at the base of his brainstem.

It could honestly be either because, after a moment, all that’s left of him is creamy white… goodness(?).

As the movie-type-thing goes on, Layne has sex with his wife and, during post-sex confession booth time, he relates the story of Buster the clown, the retarded man who drove the Cheery Time Ice Cream Truck and would sell ice cream to all of the neighborhood kids, and how the local bully, Virgil, ripped off Buster’s nose and, eventually, with Layne’s assistance, accidentally killed him.

All he wanted was to get the high score on Burgertime!  LIFE IS SO CRUEL!

After some very non-logical “detective work”, Layne realizes what is going on and sends his wife and kids off to grandma’s house so he can do a vague Home Alone-type battle with Buster.

This movie in sum: HOLY SHIT, THERE’S A RETARDED GHOST CLOWN ON THE LOOSE!  HIDE YOUR WIVES, HIDE YOUR KIDS CUZ HE’S MELTING EVERYBODY UP IN HERE!

Dear out-dated cultural reference, I will continue to use you until someone pays me not to. (Email me at allison@geekscape.net if you want to arrange payment.)

He’s checked his Pyramid Head watch and determined its raping time in the hot tub.

Overall, this would have been a horrible movie, but as a Tales from the Crypt deal, it was exactly the quality you’d expect, and so it makes it okay.  The plot is, as shown above, hysterical. The dialogue is colorful but iffy, as you can find some lovely “country” phrases in it like:

“It ain’t a stretch to think that one of his wild sperms got away.”

Yes, somewhere a lone bucking bronco of a sperm is racing wild through sun-filled desert valleys enjoying his freedom.  Run free, wild sperm, run free.

That’s a severe amount of power lines.  Jesus.

This sweet little number (HA!) is available on Netflix on Demand, and I suggest you watch it if you have a hankering for new cheesy horror material.  I also suggest getting a gallon bucket of ice cream and sculpting little human-shaped dessert statues while staring creepily at your friends as it plays.