Double Feature! Gingerdead Man and Gingerdead Man II: The Passion of the Crust. Like most movies we watch in this club, I assumed that I would have to grit my teeth and just get through GDM I and II. I knew that these movies would involve a gummy, Gary Busey-voiced, murderous cookie puppet wreaking havoc and that whole concept just didn’t sit well with me.

I have always hated horror movies. When I tell people this about movies like Gingerdead Man they always say, but this movie is so bad it’s funny! You’ll like this one. But I don’t. I almost like the “funny” horror movies less because the poor quality adds a new level of creepiness. All movies in which one person kills other people for fun really bum me out. Now, swap our “one person” for “many different kinds of dinosaurs” and that’s a completely different story. I’ll watch the shit out of that.

So, in order to shield my tender emotions from Gingerdead Man, I brought my bike to Sam’s in order to work on it during all bummer parts. Paige made Gingerbread cookies and I made frosting and Sam made mashed potatoes and it actually seemed like I had an arsenal of distractions within my reach. And for GDM that’s just how it was. I kept busy while a 1-foot-tall cookie murdered the staff of a bakery. But I watched enough to be able to wonder, “Why can’t these normal sized people fight a small, albeit possessed, baked good? I guess a similar thing happens in the Chucky movies (he’s just a doll!), but I have never seen those because they look fucking miserable.

Anyway, luckily for us GDM I was only 70 minutes long. So before we knew it we were on to the sequel: Gingerdead Man II; The Passion of the Crust.

We frosted cookies and settled in for more confusing, confection filled scenes. What we got was maybe 10 minutes of opening credits set to an odd cover of Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation”. Only most of the lyrics just went, “run run run as fast as you can” over and over again. Every single person involved in the making of the second Gingerdead Man had their name flashed across the screen. This may be the longest song ever recorded that does not include a drawn out space jam at the end.

Finally the actual movie started. The first scene is set in a dungeon. A satanic ritual is being performed. Some Buffy-esque vampire demons are sacrificing a virgin in order to bring to life a group of evil puppets. The vampire leader chants out a spell that takes almost as long as the opening credits and then the puppets start to move. And this where we start to see that GDM II is going to be a lot better than its predecessor.

The puppets are known as the Tiny Terrors. I can’t remember all their names, but one is called the Knob Goblin and another is called Shit-For-Brains and one is the sickest veiny penis who is wearing a suit. There are others, but those were the 3 that really stood out.

Almost as soon as the puppets start to move, Shit-For-Brains explodes a bunch of (you guessed it) shit out of his head and you hear someone yell, “CUT!” It was just a movie! We are now watching a bad scary movie about people making a bad scary movie. So meta.

Even though I was armed with cookies and an impossible cantilever brake adjustment, I could not look away from this movie. Gingerdead Man ends up on the set, of course, but the focus is really on the weird characters in the puppet movie and in the other movies being filmed at the studio. Mind boggling movie titles are thrown around with hardly a care for their brilliance: Escape From Sloth Island, Space Spankers 2015, and best of all, Hamburger Time Traveler Detective. I could have happily watched an entire movie where characters just walked around making up movie names like these.

Sadly, this movie actually goes back to the sort-of plot and Gingerdead Man kills a bunch of people and there’s a weird scene where he masturbates (how?!) and then it gets homophobic and I started to look for more activities to distract myself and then Sam and Paige fell asleep sitting up. I decided to just go home at this point, but Sam woke up and made coffee and somehow we made it to the end where Gingerbread Man is crucified and lit on fire (duh!).

While we both agreed that the sequel was the superior, I still rode home feeling gross and weird. Space Buddies may have been cheesy, but everyone feels awesome after seeing puppies romp around on the moon.

Good movies are infinitely harder to write about than bad ones, so I’ll keep it short.
The basic plot of Delicatessen is that a bunch of weirdos from sepiatone era, post (or perhaps pre) apocalyptic Europe live in an apartment building owned by a scary murderer butcher landlord, who is slowly killing them all in order to sell their meat at his shoppe. Initially, this premise sounded like something I would have no interest in watching. I don’t like creepy murdery stuff. Just not my thing. But it turned out to be just whimsically dark instead of mark-you-feel-weird-about-humanity-scary. You know what I mean?
And I am pretty sure Andrew said it was made by the same guy that made the movie Amile. That movie is just plain whimsical. I didn’t really like it because it was too much magic, but my friend’s boyfriend really loved it. One day she was using his computer and found that he’d been photoshopping his own face on Amile’s head/body. Then they broke up.

But in Delicatessen love triumphs over adversity. Despite a ton of people trying to kill them, the protagonist and love interest are able to survive their house of horrors and eventually start a pretty good rooftop band.

Also, this one charactor makes a lot of chain reaction machines to try and commit suicide. Here’s a video of some other chain reaction machines:

Anyway, right after watching the movie I left town for a week. I had visions of relaxing in some random Philadelphia coffee shop, writing my review in full vay-cay mode. But what actually happened is I just totally flaked.

So here, dear readers is my belated review of Delicatessen. Thanks for your patience.

p.s. Please stay tuned for the upcoming reviews of Sam’s new movie pick: a double feature of Gingerdead Man 1 and 2 (the passion of the crust). Thank goodness all things are returning to normal and we are watching shitty movies again!

Now what does the title Space Buddies bring to mind? To me it conjures up a vision of futuristic technology being used in current time, friendship, and, or course, adorable animals acting like people. And while this plot prediction was fully validated as we watched the actual movie today, we were pleasantly surprised by the many other aspects this cinematic masterpiece brought our way.

The first scene opens as a little boy gazes at the moon through his telescope, donning a kimono. His dog-friend, “Buddha” sits beside him. We only need a few minutes to discover that a) Buddha can talk (but humans don’t notice) and that b) this weird, white kid is very into appropriating Asian culture.

As he bids Buddha a “namaste” and heads off on his school field trip, the other Buddies mobilize to set off on an im-paws-able adventure featuring a myriad stereotypes that are OUT OF THIS WORLD!

The Buddies have the following personalities:
Buddha- The leader. Everything Zen.
Mud Bud- The one who likes to get muddy. The Pigpen of the group.
B-Dog- The one who uses slang and makes us feel really uncomfortable. His name might actually be B-Dawg. I’m not sure about the name, but I am sure that I hated it every time he talked.
Butterball- The fat one….who also wore those black football lines under his eyes for no apparent reason. Also, the one who is gassy.
And Rosebud- The girl.

Their owners have the exact same character traits except for Mud Bud’s, whose owner is just some kid.

They also meet another dog in space, Spudnick (played by Spuds Mackenzie). He and his owner Sasha are Russian. Sasha and his family live in a mansion in Russia, but for some reason dress like Victorian peasants.

In a complete “fuck you” to logic, science, and technology, the Buddies not only walk onto a space shuttle in broad daylight, but are also fitted into matching dog-monaut outfits. A tip of the hat must be given to the costume designer here. The canine space suits are the most adorable fucking things we have ever seen. In a truly genius move, they decided that the suits should cover the tail in a sheath of sorts, instead of having it stick out of a hole in the back. This ensures that the puppies look awkward and have trouble walking whilst wearing the suits. The result is fantastic. There’s a good deal of footage of the dogs running in slow motion, the suits making their movements look sloppy and confused. It was the definition on LOL. Bravo there, Disney.

The ship that the dogs have boarded is on a mission to go to the moon, land, and then almost immediately return home. This trip takes about 2 days. During this time there are some fun scenes involving zero gravity, Russians (more stereotyping!), dogs wearing sunglasses, and most importantly, dogs farting into their spacesuits.

In a near death situation Butterball faces all his demons and goes outside the ship to fix a broken thing that a meteor ran into. Or maybe the thing got broken by the Russian escape pod…either way, Butterball nuts up to fix it with his non-opposable thumbs and a heart of gold. But in a truly edge of your seat moment we discover that his jetpack fuel has run out! Just when you think he’s totally fucked, they realize that all you have to do is pull his paw to illicit a fart. Now, this is done by way of a robot arm that comes out to the front of the spacecraft (duh!). Once the paw is pulled and the fart expelled, Butterball has enough methane gas to propel himself to safety. This all makes perfect sense.

Right before the end of the movie a little religion is tossed in for good measure as a newscaster asks the world to pray for the Buddies. Sasha, turns his tear streaked face to the sky and asks god to take care of the puppies. And you know what? It works. With a little help from the lord and some words of advice from a ferret (played by Amy Sedaris) the Buddies complete their mission.

The puppies arrive home safe and sound and are immediately the guests of honor in a lackluster parade.

The end.

Immediately after the credits roll the special features start playing. This starts out with a blooper reel. In theory, this would be the best part of the whole DVD. But in actually the bloopers aren’t funny puppy pratfalls, but are instead faked misread lines by the dogs. Not funny at all. Then after that there’s an odd teenage music video.

As soon the video ended Sam rushed out the door to go do a bike race. Which he ended up winning. After American Haunting he got dropped at the Twilight Crit. After Space Buddies he became the Oregon State Criterium Champion. I’m just saying…

When informed that the first film I’d be weighing in on was entitled “American Haunting” I naturally assumed that some sort of extra terrestrial being was enraged by the American flag impaling the moon and had sent evil alien ghost warriors down to earth to freak these aging astronauts the fuck out. Or maybe that the US sent some of our own ghosts up to Mars to show those pussy Martians how a real American haunting is done. Because this reviewing club is sci-fi themed…right?

Well, it turns out that Wet Hot American Haunting is actually just a horror movie. And that this club just reviews member-selected movies of all genres. And it turns out that although I talked through this entire movie, I can still aver with confidence that it totally sucked. Sam said he was going to rewatch it to more accurately write his review, but I am betting that the one full scene I did give my full attention to is enough for me to give you, internet public, the gist of American Haunting. So here goes:

American Haunting is about two families. Two American families. Who are haunted.

They both live in the same house. The same haunted house. One family lives during olden times and one during current times. Yes despite a century having passed, this pesky ghoul is still dead set (get it? DEAD set!) on totally fucking with the daughter in the family by haunting the crap out of her in her sleep. Also, sometimes the ghost turns up as a menacing wolf. And other times as a cute girl who, upon closer inspection, has a hideous burned up face and hand.

Sounds pretty scary, right? Well actually more than anything it’s just loud. You see, every time the ghost intrudes on the sweet slumber of poor Betsy, she wakes up screaming. This scenario plays out perhaps 40 times throughout the film. In between the ear splitting night terrors there’s just scenes of the family freaking out and praying. There’s no gore, you never see the ghost, and no one dies. On the one hand, I was impressed that a modern horror movie didn’t rely on fucked up brutality to get a reaction from the audience, but on the other hand I really didn’t need to watch a girl screaming in her bed for over two hours.

This is not to say there weren’t good moments: The haunted daughter maintains a really creepy relationship with the burned-up-face girl throughout the film. The dad is played by a guy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie not the show). The mom is played by Carrie aka Sissy Spacek.

Also, one Betsy’s relatives bears a striking resemblance to a long haired Steven Beardsley.

In the end, after what seemed like an eternity of noctournal scream-fests, American Haunting finally ended, at last bringing peace to its ear-haunted viewers. While I can’t say I enjoyed the film, I have to admit I learned a few things:

1) If you’re living in an obviously haunted house and you find a creepy old diary backing up your suspicions of specters, for goodness sakes MOVE OUT!

2) Avoid wolves at all costs. They are a more dangerous kind of ghost than the kind that lives in your house.

3) Movie clubs should stick to just reviewing sci-fi movies.

4) Steven Beardsley should grow out his hair.

Really, the credit must be given to Sam, who wisely pushed us to make solid plans for this fine evening. And coincidentally, I just got (“got” = borrowed for eternity) a heart rate monitor. Due to my avid luddite cyclist aesthetic, I have yet to use it. I figured the T1 viewing party would be as good a time as any to give it a try and get all my HR numbers and levels figured out.

According to my data my threshold is fairly low.

In fact, throughout the entire movie, which I assumed could be referred to as a “thrill-ride”, the three of us using the monitors were legally dead. We averaged 50-70 heartbeats.

Sam got up to a whopping 125 at the brief glimpse he got of Sarah Connor’s nipples and sexy sheet grabbing.

Joino “busted” 100 when Sam yelled the word boner at him a lot.

I made it to the mid 90’s watching my air popper make popcorn. Not even the famous eye removal scene could get our tickers a’ tockin’.

This Tuesday we’re going to give T2 a try. I haven’t seen it since I was a teen or maybe even a pre teen, but I can feel my heart rate go up just by thinking about the part where the Terminator gives a thumbs-up as he disappears into some kind of vat of urban lava. And what about when the bad, liquid-metal Terminator stabs his sword-arm through a milk carton and throat of a lady? That’s just fucked up.

Also, at one point when they are panning across a shot of young John Connor’s room, you see a transparency (like one you’d use to burn a silk screen) for the band Social Distortion…but it actually reads SOCIAL DISTORTIOZ. So they wouldn’t have to pay the band money, I guess. Sam and I are starting a Terminator-themed Social Distortion cover band called Social Distortioz, where we change all the lyrics to be about the movies. Our first album is called “Have you seen this boy?” We’re going to go on tour with the guy that made a techno remix of Christian Bale freaking out on the set of Terminator Salvation (his band is called Tech Noir).

It’s going to be pretty great.

I am sure I will have a lot more to say about T2 after revisiting it this Tuesday. Once we get our HR averages for the movie series figured uot we’ll then compare them with the Jurassic Park and Tremors series’ (that’s right, there’s more than one Tremors). Eventually we should be able to determine the most intense movie of all time.

This was our lifeline to fun and gave us the confidence to challenge all the other bike messenger companies in Portland to a dance-off (which will still happen someday when those pussies at Transerv or ABC Legal or whatever finally get their routine together). But recently it just hasn’t been doing the trick. At the recent Spand And Deliver after party we just couldn’t get people psyched on some uncomfortable, inappropriate grinding in Cait’s living room. We gave them beer AND the Kid n’ Play demo, what else did they need?!

And then it hit me: It’s time for something new.

Just as Play’s late 80’s rap skills were totally trounced by Kid’s early 90’s contemporary styles during the House Party freestyle competition, Cait and I needed to revamp our party-initiating moves from said movie. I wasted no time in putting the DVD on hold at the library. Miraculously no one else had it on hold, so I got it within a week.

I realized that it had been far too long since I’d watched this cinematic masterpiece. I soon discovered that besides a multitude of other sweet moves during the dance scenes, the film also brings with it a positive message that is still relevant now, in 21st century: “Have fun with your friends and learn to respect women”. Or at least that’s what I got out of it.

For those of you that also don’t really remember the plot (and should quickly have a copy sent to your local library) here are some quick highlights:

Kid (big, tall hair) and Play (charming smile) are in high school…with Martin Lawrence…who everyone calls Dragon Breath because he has bad breath. Play’s parents go out of town and so (duh) they decide to have a bitchin’ House Party. Everyone is there, including some school bullies (played by adults) and these two girls who both have crushes on our leading men.

Kid is a nerdy goofball, but he can rap, instigate party-wide synchronized dancing, and get babes without much trouble. Play is slightly more of a cutty teen; kissing girls he barely knows, encouraging Kid to have unprotected sex, and squeezing like 8 people into a really small car. Together they are the perfect best-friend duo, just like Cait and I.

Really, over a decade later, we’re not so different. We are just a rag tag group of young(ish) people trying to navigate our way through life and love, and hopefully doing so with a danceable soundtrack. Our hair may be less vertical, our parties might be more milder, we may spend a lot of money on brightly colored spandex outfits instead of brightly colored cotton ones, but the pulse of the party still pumps in our veins. We should all take a moment to just have fun with out friends…and as always, to respect women.