Guys, would you believe me if I told you there was actually a kind of GOOD Friedberg and Seltzer movie.
Like, there are some genuinely funny one liners in here;
“I wanna race”.
“What you driving?”.
“A car”.
That don’t lie, that’s at least some Loaded Weapon 1 tier shit.
Like, it’s not amazing, it’s still a Friedberg and Seltzer movie but I’d say it’s actually relatively enjoyable.
Vaguely sci-fi with some voodoo shenanigans. As with many bad/good movies, there are stretches of boredom interspersed with WTF moments.
Some of the keywords from IMDb: voodoo cult, gay bar, real finger gun, crotch gun, cyborg and public bathroom.
Ten times. I’ve seen this ten times. Let me explain.
The film is an icon in the horrendous animated Christmas movie cannon. And it deserves that place. Let me explain the plot completely from memory.
Santa Claus was once a pirate who stole toys and his brother Dingle regularly tried to one-up him. After getting frozen in ice, Santa and Dingle wind up in the North Pole where a bunch of elves are waiting for a savior. Santa becomes Santa and Dingle becomes a mooch. Then Dingle tries to take control of the elves, first through a botched, cheated game of elf bowling, then by blowing up Santa’s toy shop. The elves go on strike and through hypnotism are made slaves of Dingle on the island of Fiji. Santa takes back the elves through a successful game of elf bowling and Christmas is saved.
One thing that’s interesting is the writer of the film is Martin Olson. Olson is a comedy writer who wrote jokes for Penn and Teller, convinced Stephen Hillenberg to adapt “the Intertidal Zone” into “Spongebob”, and has written on a variety of cartoons like “Phineas and Ferb”, “Rocko’s Modern Life”, and “The Twisted Tales of Fritz the Cat”. He’s also an actor who appeared as the chief of the International Justice League of Super Acquaintances (a subsidiary of Viacom) and as Hunsen Abadear from “Adventure Time” where his real-life daughter Olivia Olson played his on-screen daughter Marcelene.
The film also has some good voices behind it. You’ve got Tom Kenny (Spongebob, Ice King) as Dingle and the Hip-Hoppin elf Wrapple (it’s as bad as Mudflap and Skids), you’ve got Jill Talley (Karen the Computer Wife) as Santa’s wife Grizelda and Dingle’s femme fatale Veronica, and the late, great Looney Tunes voice actor Joe Alaskey as Santa (Santa Maria Clausewitz Kringle). Tom Kenny had nothing but nice things to say about the making of the film, even saying that he recorded his lines in a rundown apartment building in a sketchy neighborhood of LA.
I think the reason I and many others come back is because of the out of pocket things which happen in the film. One of the first things Santa says is, “Who pooped in the peanut barrel?” There are also forgettable songs, except one where Dingle sings about the wonders of slavery. There are also jokes referencing body shots, a scene where a mob-penguin says “ay boss look I can do your mom”, Dingle says the line “keep that hot strudel in your pants” to a horny Santa, Veronica won’t let Dingle date her without “medical records”, an Easter Island statue gawks at a seductive “fire spirit” and says “awesome booty”, and when the elves wake up from hypnotism, one says “huh, how come my underwear’s on backwards”. This humor makes the film flipflop between being so-bad-it’s good, genuinely bad, and somewhat funny, that it’s a fascinating watch.
The film also features a glowing orb which basically does anything the story needs it to do. It can melt ice, rebuild a toyshop, and any inconvenience is due to it “being on the blink again”.
Please watch this one for X-mas or any time of year. Your family may abandon you, but you will have an experience like no other. In the words of that Easter Island head “This is like a chick flick, but instead of smokin’ babes dude, it’s a munchkin and a fat guy.” I know it’s not Christmas, so treat it as an early Xmas present.
Fun fact, according to a promotional video made for investors, there was going to be a sequel set around Halloween. That never happened. They also said the film had “franchise potential”.
Sales Promo:
https://youtu.be/TzZ40xIG2qg?si=vbYDmIeQITb2NMPw
Slavery Song:
It can't decide if it wants to be a drama or an erotic movie, about male strippers. There is also a kid businessman, and the ending makes no sense.
While my expectations were modest, the film exceeded them in some respects, though it ultimately falls short of being genuinely good. It is neither a polished, straightforward production nor a tightly executed parody in the classic ZAZ mold.
The experience is perhaps best described as watching a movie like Hot Shots! while intoxicated. You can generally follow the parodies, recognize the intended jokes, and understand the scene’s purpose, yet everything feels slightly off-kilter and imprecise.
A notable example is the parody of the Hannibal Lecter prison interview scene. The concept offers some sharp moments: Dr. Animal Cannibal Pizza (the film’s Hannibal analogue) attempts to profile Joe Dee Fostar (the Clarice analogue) and mistakenly assumes he is a Black woman, leading to an embarrassed correction. The line, “Was the ham silent? Hams can be very quiet. Very quiet. Unless the ham is falling down the stairs, then they go boomdeboomboomboomboom,” elicited a genuine chuckle. However, the overall staging and execution feel overly bizarre and chaotic, which distracts from the humor rather than enhancing it.
Another sequence parodies the famous stair-falling scene from Psycho, featuring the original actor, Martin Balsam. The gag cleverly mocks the clunky green-screen effects of the source material by having the detective tumble out of the building, into the sky, and through a cityscape. While the idea has strong ZAZ potential, the execution, particularly the strangely sped-up editing, undermines its impact and leaves the viewer wondering about the directorial choices.
This highlights a broader shortcoming: unlike The Naked Gun or Hot Shots!, which carefully construct scenes that feel authentic to the films they spoof, allowing the absurd jokes to land with greater surprise and effect, this movie rarely lets its parodies breathe. It’s like they were worried people wouldn’t find the original scene funny so they can rushed to add in a bunch of jokes in post.
In summary, the film contains a fair share of clever ideas and decent laughs, undermined by inconsistent execution, awkward pacing, and tonal confusion. It sits in an awkward middle ground, ambitious in its parody but not quite disciplined enough to fully succeed.
Yeah I know Cobra is considered a trash movie, but I really enjoyed it. I loved the photography, the noir/action atmosphere and the soundtrack. If the plot had been more carefully crafted, if there had been a greater psychological introspection of the characters, I think it would have been a really great movie.
But here we are, and I wanted to show you a short I created after watching the film. I hope you like it, and I hope it can bring some "dirty" 80s vibes to all of you, because the song that inspired me to create it gave me exactly this kind of feeling. Thanks for watching!
I've been following, and sometimes contributing to, this sub and.. although I acknowledge that most of the times, the posts are on point, sometimes a "cult classic" or a fan-favourite shows up. For some, Lucio Fulci's classic output is good, for other Neil Breen is an auteur. I definitely appreciate the variety of human perception and I really enjoy r/badmovies.
Since the definition of "Bad" (or "Good") is quite subjective and, after all, some movies have "A face only a mother could love" ("Ogni scarrafone è bello a mamma soja" for the italian readers"), I've been wondering what really makes a movie bad for you.
Is it the pacing? The production values? The acting? The unwatchability? The amateurish practical or digital effects? A mix of all these things? What really makes you feel you're experiencing a stinker?
As for me, I know I'm experiencing a bad movie when I want to stop it right away, or get out of the theatre. Lately it happened with "The Bride!", who got mixed reviews: some love it, some hate it deeply. ...but I could watch "Jack & Jill" or "The Room" all day. My theory is: really bad movies are somewhat entertaining, bad bad movies are just garbage.
Ps. sorry for the wrong flair, I couldn't find anything related to the nature of this post. Hopefully I'm allowed to ask such questions :)
PPS: thank you for your contributions, some of them are really interesting
Okay... masterpiece is a stretch. But I genuinely had so much fun watching this movie. There's just something delightful about watching someone try to fulfill their artistic vision and it ends up absolutely bonkers.
Visually, it's such a engaging movie. The plot is kind of interesting but executed in the most bizarre of ways. It definitely has a 'theatre kids are weird' vibe; the level of seriousness the actors brought to this movie is amazing, I dunno how they kept a straight face. And somehow they managed to make Sean Connery unattractive, which I didn't know was possible.
I had never heard of it until recently, despite inheriting my love of bad movies from my dad (who would've LOVED this). I highly recommend watching it, it's bonkers but you won't regret it. >!and smoking a little weed ahead of time only increases the fun haha!<
I have a group of friends that gets together to have campy movie marathons every once in a while. This time the theme is sports movies, and we are all supposed to show up with a secret movie to add to the list. I am drawing a blank, and am looking for some ideas. I think "sport" can be interpreted loosely, and post apocalyptic gore fest type movies are always a good time, the more obscure the better.
editing to say, we usually love to go for the "its so bad its good" category
So you’ve watched sand shark, house shark and graveyard shark. Now see mountain shark. Set in the uk. Made with state of the art cgi, award winning script and bafta level acting it’s a sight to behold.
Top secret military experiment escapes and a team of elite soldiers are called in. Includes mad scientist and an interesting understanding of the whole close/far away paradigm. Does have some good British use of swear words.
Trying to identify an ultra low-budget sci-fi alien invasion movie I rented from Redbox sometime around 2008-2015.
The movie took itself completely seriously, but it was unintentionally hilarious. The “alien invasion” was shown by what looked like PowerPoint-style still shots of famous city skylines with completely normal water towers visible, as if the towers themselves were alien structures. No CGI added. Just… water towers.
There was also a climactic confrontation in a desert/arid area where the characters treated a single water tower like an alien entity or mothership.
Other details:
Does anyone know what this movie was? I’m starting to feel like I hallucinated it.
A woman looks for her boyfriend in an abandoned house. Finds him stabbed with scissors. Immediately gets murdered and dragged into the cellar by a rotting ghoul. Title card. Welcome to Fulci country.
The Boyle family (workaholic dad Norman [played by Paolo Malco], dreamlostic mom Lucy [played by Catriona MacColl], and their whiny son Bob) moves into the same cursed Oak Mansion / Freudstein House in "New Whitby," Massachusetts. Previous owner murdered his mistress then killed himself. Normal real estate stuff.
Highlights of this beautiful mess:
- Little redhead ghost girl Mae (played by **Silvia Collatina**) randomly appears to warn Bob (and only Bob) to stay away, talking to herself like a creepy psychic GPS. And she keeps randomly teleporting into scenes like a malfunctioning horror NPC. She either mutters to herself “don’t go inside… don’t go inside…” or stares intensely at Bob like she’s sending psychic WhatsApp messages (or telepathically harassing Bob).
Half the movie you think she’s some tragic guardian ghost… until it slowly dawns on you that she’s been talking to herself the entire time like a lonely, schizophrenic warning system. Peak Italian horror character development.
- Bat attack in the cellar that refuses to die until stabbed like 47 times 💀.
- Real estate lady gets her ankle crushed by a tombstone then poker-murdered.
- Hot Babysitter (played by **Ania Pieroni**) gets casually decapitated.
- Final boss is a 150-year-old rotting surgeon who stitches himself back together using his victims’ body parts like a budget Frankenstein.
- Bathtub blood, maggots falling out of lab coats, throat-ripping, head-bashing down stairs, and one of the most random “ghost family saves the day” endings ever.
The practical gore is pure Fulci nastiness (this is part of his Gates of Hell trilogy). The plot? Complete dream-logic nonsense. The English dubbing is hilarious. The kid’s voice will make you want to move into the cellar yourself.
It’s slow, confusing, atmospheric as hell, and features some genuinely disturbing imagery mixed with moments that make zero sense. Peak Italian horror cheese from the 80s and the master of “why is this happening?”
**Brutal honesty:** People in the 70s/80s clearly had mountains of black money to keep funding these unhinged gore spectacles💰.
If you love Fulci’s brand of “logic is for cowards” horror, this is essential viewing.
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What’s your favorite disgusting death in this one? Or are you Team “this movie makes no sense but I’ll die on this hill”?
I've been slowly rewatching this whole series. Has all the hallmarks of a Bullets, Bombs and Babes flick. "Enhanced" hotties, wooden acting, RC car murder, a plot that doesn't matter, an Andy cameo, and a champagne celebration.